I nodded stupidly, my mind racing for something, anything, to say to this lovely young woman.
She handed me a smeared envelope, with MRS. P printed in bold, childish letters.
Inside was a drawing in bright crayon huesa yellow beach, a blue sea, a brown bird. Underneath was carefully printed:
A SANDPIPER TO BRING YOU JOY
Tears welled up in my eyes, and a heart that had almost forgotten how to love opened wide. I took Wendy's mother in my arms. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," I muttered over and over, and we wept together.
The precious little picture is framed now and hangs in my study. Six wordsone for each year of her lifethat speak to me of inner harmony, courage, undemanding love. A gift from a child with sea-blue eyes and hair the color of sandwho taught me the gift of love.
Mary Sherman Hilbert
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The Most Caring Child
Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four-year-old child whose next-door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap and just sat there. When his mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry."
Ellen Kreidman
Submitted by Donna Bernard
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Information Please
When I was quite young, my family had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I remember well the polished oak case fastened to the wall on the lower stair landing. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box. I even remember the number105. I was too little to reach the telephone, but used to listen with fascination when my mother talked to it. Once she lifted me up to speak to my father, who was away on business. Magic!
Then I discovered that somewhere inside that wonderful device lived an amazing personher name was "Information Please" and there was nothing she did not know. My mother could ask her for anybody's number; when our clock ran down, Information Please immediately supplied the correct time.
My first personal experience with this genie-in-the-receiver came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the toolbench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible, but there didn't seem to be much use crying because there was no one home to offer sympathy. I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger,
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finally arriving at the stairway. The telephone! Quickly I ran for the footstool in the parlor and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver and held it to my ear. "Information Please," I said into the mouthpiece just above my head.
A click or two, and a small clear voice spoke into my ear. "Information."
"I hurt my fingerrr" I wailed into the phone. The tears came readily enough, now that I had an audience.
"Isn't your mother home?" came the question.
"Nobody's home but me," I blubbered.
"Are you bleeding?"
"No," I replied. "I hit it with the hammer and it hurts."
"Can you open your icebox?" she asked. I said I could.
"Then chip off a little piece of ice and hold it on your finger. That will stop the hurt. Be careful when you use the ice pick," she admonished. "And don't cry. You'll be all right."
After that, I called Information Please for everything. I asked for help with my geography and she told me where Philadelphia was, and the Orinocothe romantic river I was going to explore when I grew up. She helped me with my arithmetic, and she told me that a pet chipmunkI had caught him in the park just the day beforewould eat fruit and nuts.
And there was the time that Petey, our pet canary, died. I called Information Please and told her the sad story. She listened, then said the usual things grown-ups say to soothe a child. But I was unconsoled: Why was it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to whole families, only to end as a heap of feathers feet up, on the bottom of a cage?
She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, "Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in."
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Somehow I felt better.
Another day I was at the telephone. ''Information," said the now familiar voice.
"How do you spell fix?" I asked.
"Fix something? F-I-X."
At that instant my sister, who took unholy joy in scaring me, jumped off the stairs at me with a banshee shriek"Yaaaaaaaaaa!" I fell off the stool, pulling the receiver out of the box by its roots. We were both terrifiedInformation Please was no longer there, and I was not at all sure that I hadn't hurt her when I pulled the receiver out.
Minutes later there was a man on the porch. "I'm a telephone repairman. I was working down the street and the operator said there might be some trouble at this number." He reached for the receiver in my hand. "What happened?"
I told him.
"Well, we can fix that in a minute or two." He opened the telephone box, exposing a maze of wires and coils, and fiddled for a while with the end of the receiver cord, tightening things with a small screwdriver. He jiggled the hook up and down a few times, then spoke into the phone. "Hi, this is Pete. Everything's under control at 105. The kid's sister scared him and he pulled the cord out of the box."
He hung up, smiled, gave me a pat on the head and walked out the door.
All this took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. Then, when I was nine years old, we moved across the country to Bostonand I missed my mentor acutely. Information Please belonged in that old wooden box back home, and I somehow never thought of trying the tall, skinny new phone that sat on a small table in the hall.
Yet, as I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me; often in
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moments of doubt and perplexity I would recall the serene sense of security I had when I knew that I could call Information Please and get the right answer. I appreciated now how very patient, understanding and kind she was to have wasted her time on a little boy.
A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down in Seattle. I had about half an hour between plane connections, and I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister who lived there now, happily mellowed by marriage and motherhood. Then, really without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown operator and said, "Information Please."
Miraculously, I heard again the small, clear voice I knew so well: "Information."
I hadn't planned this, but I heard myself saying, "Could you tell me, please, how to spell the word 'fix'?"
There was a long pause. Then came the softly spoken answer. "I guess," said Information Please, "that your finger must have healed by now."
I laughed. "So it's really still you. I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during all that time. . . ."
"I wonder," she replied, "if you know how much you meant to me? I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls. Silly, wasn't it?"
It didn't seem silly, but I didn't say so. Instead I told her how often I had thought of her over the years, and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister after the first semester was over.
"Please do. Just ask for Sally."
"Good-bye, Sally." It sounded strange for Information Please to have a name. "If I run into any chipmunks, I'll tell them to eat fruit and nuts."
"Do that," she said. "And I expect one of these days you'll be off for the Orinoco. Well, good-bye."
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Just three months later I was back again at the Seattle airport. A different voice answered, "Information," and I asked for Sally.
"Are you a friend?"
"Yes," I said. "An old friend."
"Then I'm sorry to have to tell you. Sally had only been working part-time in the las
t few years because she was ill. She died five weeks ago." But before I could hang up, she said, "Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Villiard?"
"Yes."
"Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down."
"What was it?" I asked, almost knowing in advance what it would be.
"Here it is, I'll read it'Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He'll know what I mean.'"
I thanked her and hung up. I did know what Sally meant.
Paul Villiard
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Two Nickels and Five Pennies
In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. "How much is an ice cream sundae?"
"Fifty cents," replied the waitress.
The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it. "How much is a dish of plain ice cream?" he inquired.
Some people were now waiting for a table and the waitress was a bit impatient. "Thirty-five cents," she said brusquely.
The little boy again counted the coins. "I'll have the plain ice cream," he said.
The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table, and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and departed. When the waitress came back, she began wiping down the table and then swallowed hard at what she saw. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five penniesher tip.
The Best of Bits & Pieces
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The Ice Cream Girl
Eleanor didn't know what was wrong with Grandma. She was always forgetting things, like where she put the sugar, when to pay her bills, and what time to be ready to be picked up for grocery shopping.
"What's wrong with Grandma?" Eleanor asked. "She used to be such a neat lady. Now she looks sad and lost and doesn't remember things."
"Grandma's just getting old," Mother said. "She needs a lot of love right now, dear."
"What's it like to get old?" Eleanor asked. "Does everybody forget things? Will I?"
"Not everyone forgets things when they get old, Eleanor. We think Grandma may have Alzheimer's disease, and that makes her forget more. We may have to put her in a nursing home to get the proper care she needs."
"Oh, Mother! That's terrible! She'll miss her own little house so much, won't she?"
"Maybe, but there isn't much else we can do. She'll get good care there and make some new friends."
Eleanor looked sorrowful. She didn't like the idea at all.
"Can we go and see her often?" she asked. "I'll miss
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talking to Grandma, even if she does forget things."
"We can go on weekends," Mother answered. "We can take her a present."
"Like ice cream? Grandma loves strawberry ice cream!" Eleanor smiled.
"Strawberry ice cream it is!" Mother said.
The first time they visited Grandma in the nursing home, Eleanor wanted to cry.
"Mother, almost all of the people are in wheelchairs," she said.
"They have to be. Otherwise they'd fall" Mother explained. "Now when you see Grandma, smile and tell her how nice she looks."
Grandma sat all by herself in a corner of the room they called the sun parlor. She sat looking out at the trees.
Eleanor hugged Grandma. "Look," she said, "we brought you a presentyour favorite, strawberry ice cream!"
Grandma took the Dixie cup and the spoon and began eating without saying a word.
"I'm sure she's enjoying it, dear," Eleanor's mother assured her.
"But she doesn't seem to know us." Eleanor was disappointed.
"You have to give her time," Mother said. "She's in new surroundings, and she has to make an adjustment."
But the next time they visited Grandma it was the same. She ate the ice cream and smiled at them, but she didn't say anything.
"Grandma, do you know who I am?" Eleanor asked.
"You're the girl who brings me the ice cream," Grandma said.
"Yes, but I'm Eleanor, too, your granddaughter. Don't you remember me?" she asked, throwing her arms around the old lady.
Grandma smiled faintly.
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"Remember? Sure I remember. You're the girl who brings me ice cream."
Suddenly Eleanor realized that Grandma would never remember her. Grandma was living in a world all her own, in a world of shadowy memories and loneliness.
"Oh, how I love you, Grandma? she said. Just then she saw a tear roll down Grandma's cheek.
"Love," she said. "I remember love."
"You see, dear, that's all she wants," Mother said. "Love."
"I'll bring her ice cream every weekend then, and hug her even if she doesn't remember me," Eleanor said.
After all, that was more important toto remember love rather than someone's name.
Marion Schoeberlein
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How Magic Helped a Blind Girl See
My friend Whit is a professional magician, and he was hired by a restaurant in Los Angeles to perform walkaround, close-up magic each evening for the patrons as they ate their dinners. One evening he walked up to a family and, after introducing himself, pulled out a deck of cards and began performing. Turning to a young girl sitting at the table, he asked her to select a card. The girl's father informed him that Wendy, his daughter, was blind.
Whit replied, "That's okay. If it's all right with her, I'd like to try a trick anyway." Turning to the girl Whit said, "Wendy, would you like to help me with a trick?"
Being a little shy, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "Okay."
Whit took a seat across from her at the table and said, "I'm going to hold up a playing card, Wendy, and it's going to be one of two colors, either red or black. What I want you to do is use your psychic powers and tell me what color the card is, red or black. You got it?" Wendy nodded.
Whit held up the king of clubs and said, "Wendy, is this a red card or a black card?"
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After a moment, the blind girl replied, "Black." Her family smiled.
Whit held up the seven of hearts and said, "Is this a red card or a black card?
"Wendy said, "Red."
Then Whit held up a third card, the three of diamonds and said, "Red or black?"
Without hesitating, Wendy said, "Red!" Her family members giggled nervously. He went through three more cards, and she got all three right. Incredibly, she was six for six! Her family couldn't believe how lucky she was.
On the seventh card, Whit held up the five of hearts and said, 'Wendy, I want you to tell me the value and suit of this card . . . whether it's a heart, diamond, club or spade."
A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul Page 4