Chicken Soup for the Soul

by Amy Newmark

  For the next few weeks, the tension between us grew. For the most part, we avoided each other. If we did pass in the hallway, we huffed or sneered.

  Initially, I felt I had won a small victory by securing the folder, but as time passed, I dreaded coming to work. I had always gotten along with people, and this situation gave me a nervous stomach each morning.

  When I finished the brochure, I gave it to Ben.

  “Good job,” he said later that day. “Why don’t you run it by Carolyn to see if she has any comments?”

  Run it by Carolyn? No way. She’ll rip it apart. I went home without giving it to her.

  Unable to eat dinner, I took out a book I often consulted: There’s a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem, by Wayne Dyer.

  I found one section where he talked about how holding onto pain and seeking revenge against someone would keep one stuck in pain. “Practice letting go of injured feelings with love and pardon… Let go, and let God.”

  I knew that as hard as it was going to be, I needed to make peace with Carolyn if I wanted peace at work. I started by treating her in a friendly way the next morning.

  “I know you’ve been working on these types of projects for a long time,” I said, handing her the brochure. “Could you take a look at this and let me know what you think?”

  She looked surprised.

  Let go and let God, I thought.

  She took the brochure from me. “Okay,” she said.

  The next day when I came in, the brochure was on my desk. She had made some suggested changes in red, but not as many as I had expected. I actually agreed with some of them.

  I poked my head around her cubicle. “Thanks, Carolyn,” I said.

  No response.

  I continued saying “Good morning” when I came in, and I smiled when I ran into her during the day. It was hard, because she continued to ignore me. I felt like a salmon trying to swim upstream. But each time, I would say to myself, “Let go, and let God.”

  Carolyn’s birthday was coming up. I found a nice card with a fish on the cover and put it on her desk. Around noon, she stuck her head around the corner and said, “Thanks for the card.”

  As time went on, we began getting to know each other and talking. I learned that she had been at this job for a long time and no longer felt appreciated. She had been trying to find another job closer to where her family lived and wasn’t having any luck.

  After the new culvert was installed, we went to the stream together to see if we could spot any salmon. The sun was out, and it was hard at first to see through the stream’s current.

  “There’s one!” she said, pointing.

  “There’s another over there!” I shouted.

  The new culvert was working — and so was our friendship.

  — Wendy J. Hairfield —

  Halloween Heroes

  A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.

  ~Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

  A week before Halloween, my young children were parading around our home in their Halloween costumes. Then the babysitter called and canceled. I knew that emergencies do occur, and I told her that I completely understood. But what was actually going through my mind were feelings of frustration and self-pity. Now I would have to pile the kids in the car, drive to my appointment, and get the kids out of the car and into the elevator, all while making certain they behaved.

  On the drive, I thought about how life should be going. I was thirty years old, a mother of three daughters — twin five-year-olds and a one-year-old. I should be playing in the park with them or visiting the library. But there I was, once again, going to see the oncologist.

  It had been a year since I had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I knew that I was one of the lucky ones. I was grateful that surgery and chemotherapy were over, and this was just a routine blood test. As always, there was the lingering fear that they would find the cancer had returned. But today, it was more than that. I felt alone, tired, and sad. My family and friends had been great during the past year, but they were also busy with their lives, and I did not want to burden them with my feelings of unhappiness. I just wanted to see the positive things in life and be truly grateful — without reservations.

  When we finally arrived, we sat in a crowded waiting room. It was pretty uneventful until my youngest daughter, dressed up like an angel, walked up to a complete stranger and said, “Tweet.” This was how she said, “Trick or Treat,” having been coached previously by her twin sisters. The woman, who was in a wheelchair and accompanied by her caregiver, knew exactly what my daughter meant. She ordered her helper to take her over to the vending machine. She put in enough money to give each of my girls a treat. This caring act started a run on the vending machine. Soon, everyone had a candy bar or bag of chips ready for impromptu trick-or-treating. The nurses managed to find three plastic bags, and the angel, dog and cat collected their treasures.

  Everyone was smiling and laughing, and my daughters were overjoyed at their good fortune. The happiness in that room touched me to my very core. Here were these people, facing who-knows-what health difficulties, and they only thought of giving three little girls some Halloween fun. It was a lesson for me about how good, kind and generous people are. The gratitude I felt was overwhelming, and the thankfulness didn’t fade away.

  I have shared my story about the best Halloween ever with my children and grandchildren. Even this many years later, I still feel extremely beholden and grateful to those waiting room Halloween heroes.

  — Diane St. Laurent —

  Angelica

  It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.

  ~Napoleon Hill

  They were a group of at-risk, inner city teen girls; we were a group of childless career women, at risk of living only for ourselves. A professional women’s organization was matchmaking us to help these kids focus on their studies and get them into colleges, and to help us workaholics find meaning in mentoring them.

  Our first meet-up took place at a bowling alley. The girls were instructed to recite their first names and follow up with a few words to describe themselves. One by one, they stepped forward. Some got stumped on the brief description of themselves. Girl by girl, the names came with giggles as punctuation: Mary, Leticia, Cindy, Toni, Lourdes, Maria Elena. Silly, good at science, kind to animals, loud, love my sisters. One girl was too shy to make an audible sound, so great was her shame. We were all teary-eyed.

  The final, poised young person rose and said, “My name is Angelica, and I am intelligent.” Oh, yes, she is! I thought to myself. Both angelic and very intelligent. She was slender with long, straight, thick hair and a big smile made shinier by silver braces. When the bowling began, she and I drifted into one another’s lanes. I would certainly not be guiding anyone out of any gutters in the bowling department, but our chortles about it created a natural bond. When we were later asked to tell the organization our choices, Angelica and I had chosen each other.

  It was a relief to feel mutual enthusiasm. I was in a very dark period of my life. Two years before, I’d learned that the man I loved was neither father nor marriage material. I was left with a waning career in an ageist business and no life to enjoy at the end of hard days. As an actor making a living with my imagination, this mentoring would be my first real-life responsible role, not ending at the curtain or the word “cut.” This was not pretend, and I wanted very much to be a reliable point person to someone beyond myself.

  I met Angelica next at the women’s tennis finals. We’d come with homemade lunches, and she helped herself to chicken from my bag, offering me some spicy rice from hers. Serena Williams’ war screams of victory provided a powerful background as we shared confidences over the roar of the crowd.

  I came from an English-speaking Jewish family of four living in five rooms on the East Coast. Hers was a Spanish-speaking family of five from Oaxaca, living in two rooms. Sharing family-style
came naturally to her, as she had shared one bed with her two sisters for years. To me, that sounded crowded but cozy. Angelica’s parents both worked as cooks, and she was their translator, accountant and attorney. Her own goals and dreams were hard for her to figure out with so much responsibility and so little opportunity.

  When I was invited to her home for Christmas, her mother made me her version of matzohs, and her father prepared a delicious brisket, both with a Mexican spin. I was touched beyond the burn on my tongue by their warmth, and tickled by their laughter over my attempts at Spanish. I was much funnier in Spanish than English, apparently.

  As Angelica went on to amaze me, acing her sophomore finals and earning an award at our organization’s spring dinner, I felt a pride I’d never known. When she thanked me from the stage and called me her “angel,” I was shocked and humbled to tears. From my perspective, I was just relishing her company, encouraging her and, in the guise of “benefactor,” benefiting one hundredfold from what I was receiving in return.

  In the next few years, I drove her to her first horseback ride, and her first experience with snow and sledding. I shared in her yelps of delight as she slid down snowy hills on a trash-can cover. That was the most fun I’d ever had anywhere with anyone. I could feel tight things inside me letting go around this freedom-loving female.

  Things that were easy for me to provide were monumental for her. I gave Angelica an old bicycle, and she taught herself and her sisters how to ride it. When I gave her an old computer, she mastered it. Fast learner, generous soul, grateful, proud person — Angelica came in with all that. I wept at her quinceañera and screamed “Bravo!” when she graduated high school with honors. I cheered her decision to get her B.A. and become a social worker. She hugged me tight and tenderly, and said, “I love you!”

  Then, out of the blue, I had to have emergency foot surgery. Unable to drive, I needed someone to get me to the hospital, fetch me in a post-op drug haze, and stay in my home to get me through the first druggy night and day. With no local family and all my career girlfriends too busy to help, I was humiliated by how helpless I was. Taking control, Angelica took a sick day from school, and her uncle brought her in his gardening truck to drive me to the surgery at 6:00 a.m., wait for me, and drive me home.

  That night, her sisters came by bus and took care of me. They iced my foot, helped me to the bathroom, cooked for me, and undressed and dressed me. The three slept in two of my spare-room double beds, which they declared, “Muy grande!”

  As I stumbled my way online through date after date looking for love, Angelica’s hugs and kisses eased many disappointments. Her screams of joy on my wedding day, and her screeches when she and her older sister fought for the bouquet, made me laugh and cry. They didn’t catch it, but they caught the infectious fever of getting married, and both wed soon after.

  Now, Angelica is a grown-up, married woman, with a B.A. in social work, so she can help other people as she did me. She’s now living a life in which I’m no longer much needed. But I will think of her forever as my precious angel — despite the fact that she always calls me hers.

  — Melanie Chartoff —

  Snapshots

  Life is all about perception. Positive versus negative. Whichever you choose will affect and more than likely reflect your outcomes.

  ~Sonya Teclai

  It’s funny how we live so much of our lives based on snapshots. Still photos of an instant in time, a specific location, looking in one direction with our attention focused on just a tiny corner of the viewfinder… and that snapshot becomes our reality.

  This morning, I’m sitting in a restaurant eating breakfast. At the table in front of mine sits a woman and her young daughter, who is wearing a pink hat. I only notice the hat because it is exactly the sort of thing my own daughter would wear.

  Across the aisle from my table sits an old man staring out the window, a cup of coffee held, as though forgotten, in his gnarled hands. His face is creased with years, and his mouth droops slightly at the corners. A bushy, white mustache and matching stubble give the distinct impression of a moody walrus.

  He looks tired. Worn.

  As he sits, slump-shouldered and lost in his own thoughts, the little girl whispers something to her mother that I cannot hear.

  Her mother responds in a hushed voice, “I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t have any family or friends to have breakfast with.”

  I hear another undecipherable whisper.

  “Yes, I think it’s sad, too. But sometimes that’s what happens when we get older.”

  Then their breakfast arrives, and they move on to another subject. The moment passes.

  That is their snapshot.

  What the mother (my assumption) and the girl in the pink hat don’t have, can’t have, is the picture from my perspective.

  My view from just a few minutes earlier, a few feet away, at a slightly different angle, is an entirely different reality.

  When I arrived at the restaurant roughly a half-hour earlier, a dozen old men had been sitting at three adjoined tables.

  They were loud and joyful. The room rang with their gravelly, unrestrained laughter, sometimes-bawdy jokes, and much back patting and leg-pulling.

  I overheard (yes, I’m a shameless restaurant eavesdropper) plans to meet up for a round of golf later that afternoon, an invitation for dinner with the wives, and even talk of a deep-sea fishing trip this summer.

  One man had shared about a recent business trip to Florida. Another (our old man) spoke about a trip to Greece with his granddaughters.

  One by one, his friends had finished their breakfasts of eggs, thick bacon, and coffee with heavy cream, and then dropped bills from nearly identical creased and weathered leather wallets onto the tables. Then they excused themselves (after several handshakes and a couple of hugs), and most of them flirted with the young waitress, who appeared to know all of them by name.

  Finally, only the old man remained. The tables were cleared and separated. As his cup was refilled, he turned toward the window to watch the geese waddling around the rain-speckled parking lot.

  Just then, the bell above the door jingled, and a woman walked in with her daughter, who wore a pink hat.

  They saw an old man, seemingly lonely, perhaps embittered, obviously reflective and cognizant that his better days were behind him.

  A sad, old man, all alone.

  My snapshot, however, showed me a man full of joy, a life rich with friends old and dear, a loving family, a man of appetite who laughed freely and embraced life.

  What a strange thing perspective is… and what a powerful force on how we perceive this thing we call reality.

  Each of us fashions our world from our own small collection of snapshots.

  I hope I remember this… Life is not always what it seems in my viewfinder. Some things may be gold even if they don’t glitter.

  The grayest, bare walls may shelter the most beautiful gardens… ones that are just around the corner from my view.

  — Perry P. Perkins —

  Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

  How Losing My Home Improved My Life

  Coming out of your comfort zone is tough in the beginning, chaotic in the middle, and awesome in the end… because in the end, it shows you a whole new world.

  ~Manoj Arora

  “I’m sorry, Lisa, but Debbie and I are going to move back into the house. You’re going to have to find another place to live.”

  I couldn’t quite believe what Neil, my landlord, was telling me on that warm April night. I’m going to have to move? But I want to stay right here where I am. This is my home!

  I had tears in my eyes, and so did he. I had lived on the first floor of his Staten Island two-family house for more than twelve years — longer than I had lived in any place since my childhood home. Ever since I moved back to the New York City area in 2000, Neil, a butcher in his fifties, had been like family to me.

  Originally, Neil lived on the second floor of
the house. But a few years ago, he had moved a few miles away into his girlfriend Debbie’s house. He renovated his old apartment and the attic, and rented out that space to some young members of the Coast Guard. But after a torn rotator cuff had ended his grocery career, he and Debbie had decided to sell her house and move back here.

  Neil had never raised my rent, which was $750 a month, dirt-cheap for New York City. This was a big comfort when I was laid off from my newspaper job during the height of the recession and couldn’t find more than piecemeal work for two years. He promised me that I would always have a home, even if I had a hard time making the rent. However, I always made sure that I paid the rent before any other bill.

  Now, I was still recovering from the recession, and I was going to have to find a new apartment and pay more. A lot more, I thought.

  That was part of the problem. Neil was making a lot more money from the new tenants upstairs, so it made sense for him to keep those tenants and move into my apartment. He was very nice about it, and gave me six months to find a new place. Nevertheless, I was devastated and worried. I was so upset that I got into bed, pulled the covers over my head and cried. It was only 8:30 p.m., but I just wanted to go to sleep and forget this was happening.

  Around 12:30 a.m., my upstairs neighbors had a few friends over, and they were making some noise. I stormed out of bed, opened my front door, and yelled up toward their apartment: “Can you keep it down already? I have to get up in five hours to go to work!”

  I was so wound up afterward that I couldn’t sleep. So I called Jon, my best friend, to bemoan my bad fate. But Jon surprised — and annoyed — me.

  “Look on the bright side,” he said. “Maybe you will find a place you like better. Let’s face it. Your apartment isn’t exactly the Taj Mahal. And you complain all the time about that crowded bus to and from the ferry. Why don’t you find a place where you don’t have to take that bus?”

  “How can you say that?” I snapped at him. “This is way out of my comfort zone!”