Stories for Challenge

by Nick Niels Sanders

  One by one, they washed their dishes and joined the enlarging group, being joined last by Jeanne and Val, who arrived and sat silently down just after Marcella, Shelly and Julia had settled themselves. As silent as they were, everyone was together, sitting and working quietly, gathered close to one-another, Mark silently whittling, the others all threading flowers.

  Jim was the one who finally broke the silence. Very quietly, he began to hum Dona Nobis Pacem. Ron joined him, then James and Maria and Roger. It was Maria’s soft soprano voice that led the singing, the others joining in gradually, the volume increasing very slowly – it truly was a prayer that they were singing, a prayer of togetherness, a prayer of rescue, a prayer of salvation. They sang and their fingers moved and tears rolled down their cheeks, tears of sadness, tears of joy, tears of change, anticipated with relief and regret. And they sang. Over and over they sang the short song and it gradually changed from being soft to loud, from a prayer to a statement, from regret to celebration. Jim was too much a part of the time and place and the singing and feeling to have the thought at the time, but an hour later he felt again the sudden regret that he had not been able to record that singing, for, though no one was paying attention to artistry in singing, they were all so totally engaged, so totally together in the singing – well, he thought in retrospect that it was probably the best he had heard them sing.

  And, without direction, at one point, one group did not begin the round again, but sang the last line again. The next group joined them, and the singing ended.

  James started the conversation: “Thank you, Jim. We needed that. It is hard to know whether to cheer or to cry, and I think we are all doing, and have been doing, both.”

  Roger: “We turn another corner. There have been so many of them lately. Or maybe I have felt them more than others.”

  Shelly: “We have all felt them, Roger. In some ways, they have all been the same for all of us, and in some ways, they have been vastly different. Your suffering, especially. But we were all lost and we all found one-another. Now that we are found, we are all about to lose one-another.”

  Val: “And we cheer about being found. And we cry about losing our community.”

  Maria started to sing:

  “We laugh we cry, we love, we die, we dance, we sing our song.

  “We need to feel there’s something here to which we can belong.

  “We need to feel the freedom just to have some time alone.

  “But most of all we need close friends we can call our very own.

  “And we believe in life, and in the strength of love;

  “And we have found a need to be together.

  “We have our hearts to give; we have our thoughts to receive;

  “And we believe that sharing is an answer.”

  James also knew this song, which is part of the Unitarian-Universalist hymnal, from which he and Maria would frequently sing at their church; at about the fourth line, he began to sing along with her, singing softly, almost meditatively.

  “Our lives are full of wonder and our time is very brief.

  “The death of one among us fills us all with pain and grief.

  “But as we live, so shall we die, and when our lives are done

  “The memories we shared with friends, they will linger on and on.

  “And we believe in life, and in the strength of love;

  “And we have found a place to be together.

  “We have the right to grow; we have the gift to believe

  “That peace within our living is an answer.”

  By this time, Ron was humming along, and Jim had pulled out his recorder and was playing. They launched into a third verse:

  “We seek elusive answers to the questions of this life.

  “We seek to put an end to all the waste of human strife.

  “We search for truth, equality and blessed peace of mind.

  “And then, we come together here, to make sense of what we find.

  “And we believe in life, and in the strength of love;

  “And we have found a joy being together

  “And in our search for peace, maybe we’ll finally see:

  “Even to question, truly is an answer.”

  There was silence.

  Maria was the first to speak: “I’m sorry, but it just came to me. It is from our church’s hymnbook, and it expresses so much about who we are and where we are today that it just came to me and I had to sing it.”

  Paul: “It was beautiful and most appropriate. I would like to learn it.”

  Roger: “So would I.”

  Jim: “Tonight, let us start by learning this new song. Maybe James and Maria have another song they would like to sing us that will help us to express what we have found here.”

  James and Maria looked at one-another and disagreed. Maria suggested “Spirit of Life” and James suggested “Come Sing a Song with Me.” There was a moment of shocked silence – no one had heard them disagree before. Then James and Maria laughed as each suggested the other’s song, making it clear that it was truly a tossup between them. Jim had them sing both. Everyone agreed that they were both wonderful, but no one was sure they could learn three new songs in one evening. Jim promised to work it out.

  Roger: “The first thing I want to know is what denomination it is that you belong to. Your calmness, your strength, and your clear belief in the power of love have been an inspiration to all of us. If your religion gives you that strength, I want to start attending”

  James: “I don’t think our religion gives us that strength, it merely helps us to realize that we have that strength within us. We did nothing here that had anything to do with giving anyone strength, but I did help you, Roger, to see the strength you had within you; and you, Julia, I seem to recall.”

  Paul: “And all the rest of us by your example.”

  Of the others, only Mark and Julia had heard of the Unitarian-Universalist Church; Val thought she might have heard of it; no one else recognized it. The conversation moved on.

  James: “I’d like to eat a few more of the tuna from the lagoon.” Within moments, Paul, Ron and Jim were committed to the fishing expedition. Roger, Mark and Ralph thought they would stay in the Kitchen Tent and string flowers while the women went snorkeling in hopes that the fishermen would be successful and want to snorkel later in the afternoon.

  And so the plan of the afternoon was adopted and events moved forward again.

  Afternoon Activities

  It took Paul, James, Ron and Jim some time to clear the buried life raft of sand and install the outboard motors back onto both of them, but eventually they were done. They had asked Roger and Ralph to dig the fishing net out of the sand and check it for damage; they finished and determined that the net was intact before the rigging of the life rafts was complete.

  The foursome set out for the reef, hoping for quick good luck. They knew the women had snorkeled to the east, so they headed to the tip of the sand bar to drop the net near the reef and trolled westward, motors silent, paddling slowly along. Slow movement and focused attention make time move laboriously; it seemed to be a very long time before they encountered a school of yellow fins – good sized ones, too. Carefully, they worked around them and closed the net, bringing up about a hundred of them in the net. James and Paul rapidly selected four of the larger ones and they dumped the rest back into the lagoon.

  Whooping with joy, they sped back to the closest possible approach to the Kitchen Tent, pulled the life rafts up out of the water, and brought the four fish to the Kitchen Tent, where Mark, Roger and Ralph were still working peacefully. They looked around for the women, thinking that they must have returned from snorkeling some time ago, but they were nowhere in sight. But they were soon audible – a sudden burst of female voices announced the emergence of six mermaids from the placid waters of the lagoon. The entire process of rigging the boats and catching the fish had taken less than an hour and a half! />
  The women relinquished their snorkeling gear amid a happy chatter about how beautiful the reef was and what they had seen today. They were very pleased with the catch of four tuna – Marcella was instantly planning supper and giving orders for what would be needed. She kept Shelly to help her in the kitchen and sent the other four to harvest vegetable leaves. She wanted a large bucket of the largest leaves that were not wilting and a smaller, salad-sized bucket, of the smaller leaves to make another tossed green salad. The four women took an extra container in case they saw flowers they wanted to pick.

  In the kitchen, Marcella and Shelly prepared the fish for roasting and chose cans of fruit for a fruit salad dessert.

  The foragers walked to Coral Beach and began collecting vegetable leaves as directed. It was an activity that took some time and coordination. After some fumbling around, they decided that Val and Jeanne would collect the little leaves for the salad and Maria and Julia would collect the large leaves for cooking. This seemed to work well, and presently both containers were filled with fresh, green leaves.

  The flowers were as beautiful as they had been in the morning, and the supply had been miraculously replenished so that there were plenty of them to pick – in fact, more than they had time or energy to pick. But it seemed that a resupply was warranted, and resupply was exactly what they did. They arrived back at the Kitchen Tent with plenty of food for Marcella to work with and more flowers for threading. Mark was whittling by himself, the other men having gone snorkeling. They all sat down and started stringing flowers while waiting for tai chi time, while Marcella and Shelly continued to work on preparing the supper.

  Having donned the snorkeling equipment, the other six men had headed for the reef and eastward along it, fascinated again by the unfolding of the colors of the corals and the fish. With increased proficiency, they were diving down toward the bottom of the reef and resurfacing to look around again and see what was the next thing to look at more closely.

  They had a wonderful time and headed back to the Kitchen Tent, just arriving in time to stow the snorkeling equipment and head for the tai chi lesson.

  Tai Chi

  It was 5:45. The sun, already well down in the west, was sending out the first hints of impending sunset. Clouds at the western horizon blurred the boundary between sky and sea, scattered the sunlight and helped to cool the hot beach. It was a day of sadness and joy – tomorrow the rescue boat would come and they would be on their way back to civilization and their separate lives. It had been a special day in a number of other ways too – with flowers, with salad, and, at supper, with fresh fish. Most of the castaways came dressed in flowers this evening – several of the women had great festoons of flowers dwarfing their shoulders, and many of the men were wearing flowers around their necks or on their heads.

  They gathered on the beach for tai chi exercises. They were all present, but their hearts were not in tai chi tonight. Spirits were too high. Roger realized this, but also wanted to honor the tradition of their exercises.

  They lined up and began with Qi’ gong exercises, then moved on to doing the form. Roger again demonstrated “raise hands” and they did the whole move this evening. They practiced “raise hands” several times, did the whole form again once, followed by a few more qi’ gong exercises and broke for supper.

  Supper

  As they drifted back from tai chi, Marcella asked Maria to help her in the kitchen and the two of them worked to produce the supper. The four tuna had been baked in aluminum foil, with shredded coconut and the larger leaves from the indigenous vegetable. To accompany this dish, Marcella had made rice. For the green salad, she had plenty of dressing left over from lunch, so the only issue in salad preparation had been washing the leaves, which Shelly had done before tai chi. The final piece of preparation was the fruit salad – opening many cans and adding more shredded coconut. As an experiment, Marcella had spiced two of the tuna with coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and cayenne; the other two she spiced with a variety of herbs that would be more characteristic of her native cooking. The fruit salad got a liberal dose of nutmeg and cinnamon.

  It was a feast. Everyone enjoyed it and ate with gusto. There was an extended debate about which tuna was better, tuna curry or tuna Provençale. There was no consensus at the end of the discussion, personal preferences being diverse. What everyone agreed on was that the one they preferred, or both, were excellent. And the fruit salad was just what was needed to set off either (or both).

  After the storm, they had had two days of intense activity, and now a celebration supper. The activities of the afternoon had left them exhilarated and excited about their impending rescue, but the supper now gradually turned the mood back to a more contemplative one. The chatter over supper gradually diminished to near-silence as they washed their dishes and Shelly and Julia retired to the kitchen to clean up. Val and Jeanne went to the infirmary tent for Jeanne’s evening treatment, and for the rest, dusk faded into darkness for over an hour until the moon rose, still almost full, to provide what seemed like an excess of illumination.

  Shelly Tells her Story

  Shelly indicated that she would like to tell a story this evening, and everyone was happy to hear from her.

  “Once upon a time there was a girl named Dorothy, who grew up being not too smart and rather poor but very loving. Her father had not been part of the family since Dorothy was about seven years old. Dorothy knew it was hard for her mother, who had to work hard and never had anything nice. Dorothy was willing to work hard too, so when she got out of school, she got jobs and got promoted, and thought she was doing pretty well. But she was lonely, and she was still poor.

  “One day, her Fairy Godmother appeared and told Dorothy that because she was working so hard, the Fairy Godmother had gotten permission to give her three wishes. So Dorothy thought very hard about what she wanted. Then she told her Fairy Godmother what her wishes were:

  “First, she wanted to have a lot more money;

  “Second, she wanted to find love;

  “Third, she wanted to be able to feel better about herself and be proud of who she was.

  “The Fairy Godmother waved her magic wand. Nothing happened. Dorothy asked if something was wrong. The Fairy Godmother said, ‘Wishes are like children. We can conceive them and give them birth, but after that, we cannot control them. Sometimes they turn out a little different from what we thought they would be, and sometimes it takes a long time for anything at all to happen. Be patient, keep working hard, and in some way, your wishes will be granted.’ She disappeared.

  “So Dorothy went back to work at the fast food restaurant. She worked hard; she was promoted. She forgot all about her Fairy Godmother and the wishes, or if she remembered at all, she thought it was probably a dream, because nothing ever changed.

  “Then, one day, she got a phone call from someone she hardly knew who wanted to give her a lot of money. Dorothy had a friend named Sally. It was Sally’s mom who was calling. Sally had inherited some money and was going on a trip around the world. Sally’s mother wanted Sally to have a companion on the trip. Sally’s mother said she’d pay Dorothy a salary for taking the trip and pay all of her expenses if she’d keep Sally company and help keep her out of trouble.

  “What’s funny about it is Dorothy wasn’t reminded of her three wishes at all by this. Of course, this wasn’t what Dorothy had been hoping for when she wished for money. She’d thought she might win the lottery or the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes or something like that. In fact, she’d bought lottery tickets regularly for about a year after the wishes, but finally stopped hoping and remembering, and stopped buying lottery tickets.

  “An all-expenses-paid trip around the world and a salary to boot sounded like a good deal, especially since the salary mentioned was much more than Dorothy was making at her job, even as associate manager of her restaurant. Dorothy accepted the offer. Sally’s mother told Dorothy to quit her job, that she would start pay
ing her immediately so she could help with the planning. Dorothy had not seen Sally for several years, but the two of them hit it off right away and started making plans for the trip. Dorothy had always thought Sally was one of the smartest people she knew, and lots of fun to be with, but she had never thought Sally liked her particularly, so she was surprised to find out that Sally had known about the plan all along and had asked her mother to hire Dorothy for the job.

  “Anyway, they set out on their journey by heading west across the United States. They took trains and busses mostly to get from one place to the next. They went to Niagara Falls, to Chicago, to New Orleans. They had to see Oklahoma because of the movie. From Denver, across the Rockies, visiting Bryce Canyon, Zion and the Grand Canyon, they were awestruck by the open spaces. They loved Las Vegas; they stayed for a week, doing a little gambling – Sally won and Dorothy lost – and seeing a lot of shows. They went to Los Angeles to visit Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm and Universal Studios, and spent fabulous days at each. They went north up the coast to San Francisco. They spent five days exploring the Napa and Sonoma Valleys and the wineries there. Then they flew from San Francisco to Hawaii.