Looking up, we saw the most magnificent sight. Rain cloudsgigantic rain clouds with black, ominous bottoms!
"Robby! Help me, quickly! We need all the pots and pans from the kitchen!"
The whistle dropped from his lips and he raced with me to the house. Tom ran for the barn to drag out an old washtub. When all the containers were placed in the yard, Robby ran back to the house. He emerged with three wooden spoons from my kitchen drawer and handed one to each of us. He picked up my big stock pot and sat down cross-legged. Turning it over, he began to beat a rhythm with his spoon. Tom and I each reached for a pot and joined in.
"Rain for Robby! Rain for Robby!" I chanted with each beat.
A drop of water splashed on my pot and then another. Soon the yard was enveloped in soaking, glorious rain. We all stood with faces held upward to feel the absolute luxury of it. Tom picked up Robby and danced about the pots, shouting and whooping. That's when I heard itsoftly at firstthen louder and louder: the most marvelous, boisterous, giggling laughter. Tom swung about to
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show me Robby's face. With head tilted back, he was laughing right out loud! I hugged them both, tears of joy mixing with the rain. Robby released his grip from Tom and clutched my neck.
"W-W-Wobby's!" he stammered. Stretching out one tiny cupped hand to catch the downpour, he giggled again. 'Wobby's . . . wain . . . Mom," he whispered.
Toni Fulco
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A Dance with Dad
I am dancing with my father at my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. The band is playing an old-fashioned waltz as we move gracefully across the floor. His hand on my waist is as guiding as it always was, and he hums the tune to himself in a steady, youthful way. Around and around we go, laughing and nodding to the other dancers. We are the best dancers on the floor, they tell us. My father squeezes my hand and smiles at me.
As we continue to dip and sway, I remember a time when I was almost three and my father came home from work, swooped me into his arms and began to dance me around the table. My mother laughed at us, told us dinner would get cold. But my father said, "She's just caught the rhythm of the dance! Dinner can wait!" And then he sang out, "Roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun," and I sang back, ''Let's get those blues on the run." That night, he taught me to polka, waltz and foxtrot while dinner waited.
We danced through the years. When I was five, my father taught me to "shuffle off to Buffalo." Later we won a dance contest at a Campfire Girls Round-Up. Then we
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learned to jitterbug at the USO place downtown. Once my father caught on to the steps, he danced with everyone in the hallthe women passing out doughnuts, even the GI's. We all laughed and clapped our hands for my father, the dancer.
One night when I was fifteen, lost in some painful, adolescent mood, my father put on a stack of records and teased me to dance with him. "C'mon," he said, "let's get those blues on the run." I turned away from him and hugged my pain closer than before. My father put his hand on my shoulder and I jumped out of the chair, screaming, "Don't touch me! Don't touch me! I am sick and tired of dancing with you!" The hurt on his face did not escape me, but the words were out, and I could not call them back. I ran to my room sobbing hysterically.
We did not dance together after that night. I found other partners, and my father waited up for me after dances, sitting in his favorite chair, clad in his flannel pajamas. Sometimes he would be asleep when I came in, and I would wake him, saying, "If you were so tired, you should have gone to bed."
"No, no," he'd say. "I was just waiting for you."
Then we'd lock up the house and go to bed.
My father waited up for me all through my high school and college years, while I danced my way out of his life.
One night, shortly after my first child was born, my mother called to tell me my father was ill. "A heart problem," she said. "Now, don't come. It's three hundred miles. Besides, it would upset your father. We'll just have to wait. I'll let you know."
My father's tests showed some stress, but a proper diet restored him to good health. Little things, then, for a while. A disc problem in the back, more heart trouble, a lens implant for cataracts. But the dancing did not stop. My mother wrote that they had joined a dance club. "You
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remember how your father loves to dance."
Yes, I remembered. My eyes filled up with remembering.
When my father retired, we mended our way back together again; hugs and kisses were common when we visited each other. But my father did not ask me to dance. He danced with the grandchildren; my daughters knew how to waltz before they could read.
"One, two, three and one, two, three," my father would count out, "won't you come and waltz with me?" Sometimes my heart ached to have him say those words to me. But I knew my father was waiting for an apology from me, and I could never find the right words.
As the time for my parents' fiftieth anniversary approached, my brothers and I met to plan the party. My older brother said, "Do you remember that night you wouldn't dance with him? Boy, was he mad! I couldn't believe he'd get so mad about a thing like that. I'll bet you haven't danced with him since."
I did not tell him he was right.
My younger brother promised to get the band.
"Make sure they can play waltzes and polkas,"' I told him.
"Dad can dance to anything," he said. "Don't you want to get down, get funky?" I did not tell him that all I wanted to do was dance once more with my father.
When the band began to play after dinner, my parents took the floor. They glided around the room, inviting the others to join them. The guests rose to their feet, applauding the golden couple. My father danced with his granddaughters, and then the band began to play the "Beer Barrel Polka."
"Roll out the barrel," I heard my father sing. Then I knew it was time. I knew the words I must say to my father before he would dance with me once more. I wound my way through a few couples and tapped my daughter on the shoulder.
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"Excuse me," I said, almost choking on my words, "but I believe this is my dance."
My father stood rooted to the spot. Our eyes met and traveled back to that night when I was fifteen. In a trembling voice, I sang, "Let's get those blues on the run."
My father bowed and said, "Oh, yes. I've been waiting for you."
Then he started to laugh, and we moved into each other's arms, pausing for a moment so we could catch once more the rhythm of the dance.
Jean Jeffrey Gietzen
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A Miracle of Love
My grandson, Daniel, and I have always been very close. When Daniel's father remarried after a divorce, Daniel, who was eleven, and his little sister, Kristie, came to live with us. My husband and I were more than happy to have kids in the house again.
Things were going along just fine until the diabetes I've lived with most of my adult life started affecting my eyes, and then more seriously, my kidneys. Then everything seemed to fall apart.
Three times a week, I had to go to the hospital to be hooked up to a dialysis machine. I was living, but I couldn't really call it a lifeit was an existence. I had no energy. I dragged myself through my daily chores and slept as much as I could. My sense of humor seemed to disappear.
Daniel, seventeen by then, was really affected by the change in me. He tried as hard as he could to make me laugh, to bring back the grandma who loved to clown around with him. Even in my sorry state, Daniel could still bring a smile to my face.
But things were not improving. After a year on dialysis,
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my condition was deteriorating and the doctors felt that if I didn't receive a kidney transplant within six months, I would surely die. No one told Daniel this, but he knewhe said all he had to do was look at me. To top it off, as my condition worsened, there was a chance I would become too weak to have the transplant surgery at all, and then there would be nothing they could
do for me. So we started the tense and desperate wait for a kidney.
I was adamant that I didn't want a kidney from anyone I knew. I would wait until an appropriate kidney became available, or I would literally die waiting. But Daniel had other plans. The times that he took me to my dialysis appointments, he did a little secret research on his own. Then he announced his intentions to me.
"Grandma, I'm giving you one of my kidneys. I'm young and I'm healthy. . . . He paused. He could see I wasn't at all happy with his offer. He continued, almost in a whisper, "And most of all, I couldn't stand it if you weren't around." His face wore an expression of appeal mixed with determination. He can be as stubborn as a mule once he decides on somethingbut I've been told many times that I can out-stubborn any mule!
We argued. I couldn't let him do it. We both knew that if he gave up his kidney, he'd also give up his life's dream: to play football. That boy ate, drank and slept football. It was all he ever talked about. And he was good, too. Daniel was co-captain and star defensive tackle of his high school team; he expected to apply for a football scholarship and was looking forward to playing college football. He just loved the sport.
"How can I let you throw away the thing that means the most to you?" I pleaded with him.
"Grandma," he said softly, "compared to your life, football means nothing to me."
After that, I couldn't argue anymore. So we agreed to
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see if he was a good donor match, and then we'd discuss it further. When the tests came back, they showed Daniel was a perfect match. That was it. I knew I wasn't going to win that argument, so we scheduled the transplant.
Both surgeries went smoothly. As soon as I came out of the anesthesia, I could tell things were different. I felt great! The nurses in the intensive care unit had to keep telling me to lie back and be quietI wasn't supposed to be that lively! I was afraid to go to sleep, for fear I would break the spell and wake up the way I had been before. But the good feeling didn't go away, and I spent the evening joking and laughing with anyone who would listen. It was so wonderful to feel alive again!
The next day, they moved me out of ICU and onto the floor where Daniel was recuperating three doors away. His grandfather helped him walk down to see me as soon as I was moved into my room. When we saw each other, we didn't know what to say. Holding hands, we just sat there and looked at each other for a long time, overwhelmed by the deep feeling of love that connected us.
Finally, he spoke. ''Was it worthwhile, Grandma?"
I laughed a little ruefully. "It was for me! But was it for you?" I asked him.
He nodded and smiled at me. "I've got my grandma back."
And I have my life back. It still amazes me. Every morning, when I wake up, I thank Godand Danielfor this miracle. A miracle born of the purest love.
Shirlee Allison
[EDITORS' NOTE: As a result of Daniel's selfless gift, he was chosen as the nation's Most Courageous Student Athlete and flown to Disney World for the awards ceremony. While there, he met Bobby Bowden, coach of Florida State University's football team, the Seminoles. Daniel told Coach Bowden that he was an avid Seminoles fan and that it had always been his dream to be a Seminole. Bowden was so moved by this that he decided to make the young man's dream come true. At the time of this writing, Daniel is a student at FSUon a full scholarshipand is a trainer for the university's football team, a highly valued member of the Seminoles.]
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A Dream Come True
They called it "A Dream Come True." The staff at Air Canada had been soliciting funds and donations for a year to take a planeful of kids to Disney World for a day, and this was the day. It was earlier, of course, than any day has a right to begin4:00 A.M.
I scraped the frost from my windshield and started the car. The Children's Aid Society, where I worked, had been offered places for ten children in the Dream Come True flight, and we'd selected ten children, most of them in foster care, with backgrounds of poverty, neglect and abusechildren who would never otherwise get to see the Magic Kingdom. In my bag, I had the legal documents for each child, documents that with their formal language hid the reality of the traumas these young children had experienced.
We hoped that this trip would give them a glimpse into a brighter world, give them a chance to have one day of feeling special and having fun.
The chaos as we gathered at the airport before dawn was incredible. Each child was given a backpack stuffed with donated gifts, and the level of excitement was
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indescribable. A little girl with two brown braids asked me shyly if she could really keep the T-shirt in her backpack.
"This is all yours to keep," I explained, showing her the contents of her backpack.
"Forever?" she asked me.
"Forever," I said, and she rewarded me with a beaming smile. Several of the children rushed to the washrooms and put on their new clothes over the clothes they were already wearing. I couldn't convince them that they'd be too hot with all those layers once we reached Florida. Two little girls found a travel checker game among their gifts and plopped themselves down in the middle of the airport floor to play.
Then there was Corby. He was one of the older children, almost twelve, and he looked cynically at the other children who were almost bouncing around the room. Corby sat on a chair, his arms folded, his backpack tossed on the floor.
When I walked over to him, he just looked at me without saying a word.
"What's the matter, Corby?" I asked. I'd seen his file. I knew he'd been abused and repeatedly abandoned by a mother who breezed in and out of his life as it suited her. I don't think anyone was sure who his father was, least of all Corby. But it's painful to see someone so young look so cynical.
"Nothing." He looked around. "What's really happening, anyway?"
"You know what's happening. First, we're having breakfast. Then we get on the airplane and spend the day at Disney World."
"Right." He shook his head and turned away.
"Corby, it's the truth."
He didn't believe me. Before I could say anything else, the Air Canada staff began handing out juice and muffins,
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and I found myself busily mopping up spills and making sure everyone got enough to eat. Soon after, we followed the path of stars that had been put in place to guide us to the right plane, and I almost forgot my conversation with Corby as I settled the kids into their seats.
As I sat down, though, I found Corby right beside me.
"So," he said, "we're really going on an airplane."
"I told you."
"Where are you really taking us?"
"Corby, we are really, truly going to Disney World."
He shook his head again, clearly beginning to think that I was as foolish as the excited children around him. I, too, had been duped.
None of the kids in our group had ever been on an airplane before, so the trip was almost as exciting as Disney World itself. Everyone had a turn to sit by the window, to visit the pilot in the cockpit, and to order drinks or treats. Before long, we were on the ground again and emerging into ninety-degree Florida weather.
I could tell Corby was stunned. He grabbed one of the airport staff helping to unload the plane. "Is this really Florida?" he asked. The man in coveralls laughed and assured him that this was, indeed, Florida.
A Second Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul Page 4