Wedded Bliss

By Maggie Kelly

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons.
~Blaise Pascal

More than twenty-five years ago we stood at the altar, two freshly-scrubbed kids wearing fancy clothes with the same fervor as children playing dress-up. Responding when spoken to and reciting the empty words the pastor prompted, we took our vows and left the church with absolutely no comprehension of the impact that evening would have on the rest of our lives.

I was running away -- always running away -- from something. This time it was childhood. It had been horrible, replete with the wrath of the hurtful hands and cold heart of a calculating, manipulative mother. I longed for nurturing, but received none. I wanted a life like the families I saw on TV. I wanted a mother who'd fix my hair in beautiful ringlets and ribbons, a mother waiting with cookies and hugs for me after school. I wanted a mother who would warmly greet my daddy at the end of his long day at work.

Instead, my mother was a tyrant, and I fled from her straight into the arms of a product of the same dysfunction I was escaping. Through no fault of his own, my groom was about as ill-equipped at dealing with married life as I was. His parents, although married for many years and still enduring one another's company, were alcoholics and lived in perpetual denial of their affliction. In his family, a good time was when everyone got to watch his father get drunk and pass out in a plate of beans.

Misery does indeed love company, and so we stayed with each other for quite some time -- long enough, in fact, to have three children. If dysfunction breeds dysfunction, we contributed heavily to its cause. We had less business having children than we did marrying in the first place. I remain thankful for the merits of good counseling, which each of the three has received.

I don't know exactly when I knew it was over. It wasn't a specific day or hour or moment. In fact it was a blur of time when I felt my words weren't comprehended and my actions were misconstrued. I just knew when it was time to go -- and I went. Tumult followed for many years. We endured each other's injuries and insults, and hurled daggers of retaliation. The children were innocent victims often caught in our crossfire.

But the ensuing years proved to be an amazing healing tool. The healing ointment of time is called perspective, and it is applied it in small subtle doses. It seeps gently under the skin and results in a calming and soothing of the heart and mind. This salve is a gift.

When we open gifts, we mentally put them in one of two piles -- the first, things we love and plan to use; the second, after muttering polite thanks to the giver, remains unused, untouched, and is eventually forgotten.

My ex-husband and I used this gift of time and perspective. Each of us, in our own way, utilized the strength that had come boxed and wrapped. We threw away the paper wrappings and bows and with them, a great deal of unnecessary debris. What emerged was clean, purified. Images of a world filled with hate and bitterness were replaced with serenity and beauty. Words that once rolled off harsh tongues were squelched and from sweeter lips come words of praise and encouragement and thanksgiving.


Gifts such as these lead us down new paths. Our paths obviously veered in different directions, yet with the anchor of the children, somehow stayed close enough. The road I took led me to the heart and arms of a wonderful soul, my husband of nearly eleven years. The years with this saint of a man have taught me to trust, to love, and to give of myself without holding back. But I wouldn't have achieved this level of appreciation for these blessings had I not endured some hardship and pain. Our family has grown with the addition of two more children. We have been blessed.

Soon, my husband and I will attend a wedding ceremony in a local chapel. Undoubtedly, one of my sons will usher me and my husband to our seats. I think guests of the groom sit on the right. As the bride walks down the aisle, I'll remember what I learned so many years ago in another time, another state, another life. I'll smile as she meets her groom, and I'll pray that God grants them many happy years together. A chapter in my life will close, the one that has been read and re-read, and now is filed away under "lessons learned." A new chapter will begin for the father of three of my children. He begins this marriage older, wiser, and more aware of what it takes to nurture a relationship. And I'll wish him well -- from a seat in a pew on the right.

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Beginning Again

y Harriet May Savitz

There is no more intrepid explorer than a kitten.
~Jules Champfleury

New beginnings are like getting ready for an exciting trip to a place you've never been. Or like falling in love without a parachute. There is always the promise of adventure and none of the security of knowing the outcome.

When my twelve-year-old cat had a stroke and died, my grown children suggested I get a kitten. I was uncertain whether I was ready for this new beginning. No matter how tempting the journey, for the first time in all my years of loving pets, I wasn't certain that I should continue bringing animals into my life.

Though I still had my five-year-old dog, another twelve-year-old cat, and a parakeet living in a cage in the kitchen, it occurred to me that perhaps I was being selfish at my age, adding another animal to my family. When I'd adopted a pet in my thirties, I was confident that I would outlive him. But now, at more than twice that age, my certainty had disappeared. Chances were the animal would outlive me. And then what? I had never thought of the future in these terms before, and did not enjoy thinking like this now.

There were other reasons for not introducing a new pet into the house. I told myself, "Be reasonable. Be practical. There are benefits to keeping the pet population down. Less work emptying kitty litter. Less money spent for pet food. Fewer trips to the veterinarian. When the one cat remaining is gone, that will be the end of it. No more cats. Eventually no more pets. And then you will have more freedom."

I knew it was good advice, but the house took on shadows I never noticed before. And a stillness that seemed ominous. There had always been two and sometimes three or four inside cats. Now, the one remaining cat, who had daily groomed the other, slept with her paws wrapped around a stuffed animal. Something was missing from her life and she knew it. The dog, who had been a loving companion to his deceased cat friend, appeared listless. Bored. His nap times increased. And so did mine.

Yes, it was easier now. Too easy. I lay in bed one day, persuading myself to remain there another hour and another. In fact, when I piled up all the sad stories I could think of and all the pets I had bid goodbye, I thought it would be quite easy to remain in bed the entire day. After all, what did the outside world offer? Trouble, that's what. If I didn't go out, why even bother to get dressed? Who would know anyway, if I walked the dog in my long coat?

"You need a kitten," my daughter told me one day as she frowned in my direction, sensing my mood. "This place needs some excitement."

That's how Sunny came to live here. A tiny thing rescued from the woods, he arrived in my daughter's arms, rehabilitated, cleaned, de-fleaed, and inoculated. "He's perfect for you," she said. I had not yet reached that conclusion. Neither had Sunny.

It took only a second for him to step onto the living room rug, but in that moment, silence rushed from my home -- exiting through the front door -- and chaos entered without warning.

The dog ran after the kitten. The older cat hissed and spit. The two ganged up on the new kid in town. What ingratitude, I thought. Here I'd been concerned that they were lonely, in deep depression, and they were rejecting my solution.

"I'm too old for this," I said at one point in the evening, as I tried to catch the kitten that had hidden in the basement.

"I'm too old for this," I repeated after four trips to the basement, two stiff knees kneeling on the kitchen floor, two attempts to scramble beneath the bed to retrieve a frightened Sunny hiding from the dog that was on guard duty.

Exhausted and certain I had made a mistake, I pleaded, "Take him back. I'm too old for this," as soon as my daughter entered the house the next day.

At that moment, I meant it. I believed it.

I stood in the kitchen, tears in my eyes. I was crying not only for the cat in my mind already gone, but for the part of me that had vanished also. My enthusiasm to try something new. The belief that I could. The energy to do it.

I wanted everyone who told me I was young enough, to be here, running after this kitten. I wanted them to be with me at five in the morning when Sunny arose and decided to attack my feet beneath the covers and then woke up all the other animals in the house. I wanted them here when he explored the lampshade until he knocked over the lamp, or decided everything on the kitchen table needed reorganizing, removing all napkins, spoons, glasses filled with water, and of course any tempting food on the plates that begged to be shared.

But I knew I could not blame it all on Sunny. It was just too difficult to begin again. To love again. To take on the responsibility again. I was frightened because I did not know if I had it in me. I didn't want to find out.

While I agonized over his future, Sunny had settled in a basket and was enjoying a nap. The sun settled on his beige fur. The old cat had left her stuffed animals to sit by the basket, suddenly interested in the new member of our family. The dog, exhausted from kitten guard duty, had settled in the same sunny spot, sharing it. It was as if they understood things had changed. Nothing would ever be the same. Something had left and something else had entered. Now they would have to adjust. I understood the message in their eyes. We could do it together, accept the change, and perhaps even enjoy the challenge of beginning again -- if I let myself.

The next morning, Sunny investigated the kitchen with renewed interest. Something was different and he noticed it immediately; it was raining for the first time since he had come to live with me. The raindrops splattered on the roof and made tantalizing sounds. He looked up as he explored each room. As if he expected whatever he heard to eventually come down and introduce itself. They were just raindrops falling. But their sound was new to him. And suddenly, through his eyes, the falling rain became refreshingly wondrous for me, too.

I hurried to get dressed. Sunny started his adventures early, and I didn't want to miss any of them.

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The Stepfather

By Sally Schwartz Friedman

You will find that if you really try to be a father, your child will meet you halfway.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

I was enraged. Furious.

My widowed mother was "dating." At sixty-one, she was, in her own words, "Seeing someone."

That someone was named Irv, and before I ever met him, I was predisposed to hate him. I was, you see, a daddy's girl, though a troubled one. Even by young adulthood, I had not quite unraveled my complicated, intense relationship with the man I had loved so much -- and so imperfectly.

So this Irv was a usurper, an intruder, and someone who clearly already had a place in my mother's life just a year and a half after my father's death.

"What is she thinking?" I asked my sister, who had none of my rage. Ruthie had made her peace with our father before he left so suddenly one April day, felled by a massive heart attack. Her conscience was clear. Mine was cluttered with the might-have-beens that could never be.

The loss of my father was still so raw for me that despite my being a thirty-one-year-old woman, I was locked in a battle with myself. The emotions didn't go to college, after all, and the loss of a parent knows no timetable, especially when guilt is the handmaiden of grieving.

So I held off meeting this Irv, and settled for hearing snippets about him from my mother, who was undeniably showing signs of renewed spirit and -- dare I admit it? -- happiness.

It wasn't my imagination that her green eyes actually sparkled at the mere mention of his name. And that hurt even more.

What about loyalty to my father, her husband of thirty-eight years? What about honoring and cherishing his memory?

It took a good friend to set me straight over a long, painful and honest lunch. She had picked up on my anger, my guilt, my confusion, and made one simple statement that cut through the fog. "This isn't about you," she said. And how right she was.

I wish I could say that it was smooth sailing from there.

I wish I could report that I welcomed Irv with an open heart when we finally met several months into the courtship. But that would be fudging.

It took more visits with Irv for me to begin to acknowledge his humor, his spunk and his obvious affection for my mother. I was not a pushover, and Irv knew it. He had the wisdom to bide his time and let a relentlessly critical daughter make her way to him in her own time.

There was actually no pivotal moment, no dramatic breakthrough. There was just a slow, steady and growing comfort with the man and the relationship he'd forged with my mother. There was a lessening of that early rage, and the sobering realization that I was being a brat about something far too important for self-indulgence.

Irv married my mother in our living room two years after their meeting through a mutual friend. My sister and I were their attendants. My three daughters, still too young to fully understand what was happening, were the excited flower girls in organdy dresses.

It was those little girls who also ultimately got me to the place I needed to be. Irv became their buddy, their "stand-in" grandfather at milestone events. Only the older two even remembered my father, and Nancy, who was a baby when he died, made the purest connection to Irv.

As he shared school plays, the angst of three adolescences, graduations, birthdays and holidays, Irv became a fixture in our lives. I no longer bristled at the notion that it was his face in family photos, and it was his hug at those occasions of state.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped thinking of this gray-haired man with the playful spirit as a wan substitute for my father.

His son and daughter and grandchildren were woven into our tapestry. We were that sociological phenomenon, a blended family, in our middle years.

Irv and Mom were married for nineteen years. They had plans for a twentieth anniversary celebration, but Irv's raging prostate cancer aborted that plan.

It was my final hospital visits with Irv that wordlessly sealed our relationship.

During his last days, I would tiptoe into his hospital room, shooing my mother away from her vigil, and sit beside him. I was never sure whether he was aware of my presence as he slipped in and out of consciousness.

But each time, I held his hand in mine.

Each time, I like to believe, he felt not just my presence, but my total, uncompromising acceptance.

It was time.

A man named Irv was no longer the enemy.

And as he slipped away one fine spring day, I mourned -- and also rejoiced -- that a foolish stepdaughter and her patient stepfather had finally found their way to peace.

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Like a Child

By Deborah L. Kaufman

The start of a new school year always brings a return to routine at my house. It's the same routine practiced all across the country: roust the children out of bed, make sure everyone has eaten, check to see that the five-year-old has her shoes on, see that hair and teeth are brushed, distribute lunches or lunch money, grab the book bags, and race for the door. Little thought is required for routine. As a mom, I just get in the zone and get it all done. The mental clock is usually ticking the whole time.

One recent morning proved an exception. "The trees are dancing!" exclaimed the five-year-old as we pulled out of the driveway. Her conversation about dancing trees and their choreography went on for about two minutes before I finally came out of my "accomplish the routine" mindset and noticed the amount of wind that day.

Oh! The trees were dancing! I was so busy with my routine that I failed to notice the world around me. Once I started paying attention to the movement of the leaves and the beauty of the trees "dancing," it changed my whole mindset.

Experiencing life through the eyes of a five-year-old brought beauty and appreciation back to my morning. I often find it easy to lose the sense of wonder for God's creation that I had as a child. The same is true of my relationship with God. The longer I've been in "the routine," the more likely I am to lose some of the wonder, the awe, and the freshness. It took a young child to remind me that I need to stop and enjoy the wonder of my relationship with God and His creation.

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The Perfect Mom for Cooper

By Kay Klebba

Happiness is life served up with a scoop of acceptance, a topping of tolerance and sprinkles of hope, although chocolate sprinkles also work.
~Robert Brault

I slumped in the doctor's office chair. "Your son exhibits the symptoms of Asperger's syndrome," the doctor said. "It's a form of autism." While she danced around the words, careful only to say he had the symptoms, I tried to remember what I had read about this confusing, multi-faceted syndrome. Did kids with Asperger's function at a high level, or were they the children who rocked silently in corners? I searched my memory while she casually knocked my world off its axis. "Cooper is very highly functioning," the doctor told me as she picked hairs off her sleeve. I wanted to scream and shake her, but I sat and said nothing.

Questions raced through my mind. Does she mean that Coop will never be normal? What is normal anyway? Why do I have a child with autism? Why would God give me this child when I was clearly not ready for him?

For months, we had suspected something was wrong with Cooper, so we started him in speech and occupational therapy. Twice a week for seven weeks, I piled all four kids in the hot van for the forty-five-mile trip to the therapist. Tired, frustrated, and overwhelmed, I now faced the ugly truth.

Will Cooper ever want to play with the neighborhood kids? Will Cooper ever have a friend when he can't reach out? How will he communicate when his little world is black and white and the English language is shaded gray?

It wasn't fair. I didn't ask for four children, including a set of twins, but I'd rolled with the punches and kept smiling. I loved them, watched over them, and prayed for them. All I wanted was normal children.

But Cooper had Asperger's syndrome along with developmental delays. There was no cure, no known cause. Over the next few weeks, I struggled to control my emotions. As a mother, I felt disheartened. As a follower of God, I felt angry. Why would God do this to me? To my family. To my child. Could someone please tell me how God was taking care of this mother of four? Was I some cosmic joke to Him?

All of my children would be affected by Cooper's problem. Was the situation fair to them or to Cooper? Stumbling, swearing, and just about cursing God, I found no answers and put away my Bible in disgust.

A few weeks later, the phone rang. "God put it on my heart to call you," my sister Dawn said. She asked how I felt, and I opened the vault. I cried and yelled and cried some more. When I was spent and exhausted, Dawn quieted my heart. "God knows you are angry, and this is not about you."

"What do you mean this isn't about me?" I said. "This has everything to do with me and how Cooper's autism affects my family. I have to change our meals, our schedules, and everything about our daily lives. How in the world is this not about me?"

Dawn answered with God's truth. "This is about God giving Cooper the perfect mom for him," she said with love. "God knows you will stand up for Coop and fight for him. You'll care for him, and Cooper will become the best Cooper possible because of you." She paused and added, "You are the perfect mom for Cooper."

Dawn was right. At that moment, I felt God's undeserved grace wash over me, filling me with strength. I couldn't focus on me; I had to focus on Cooper. I would be his protector, the one who let him explore and expand. I would be his advocate in countless school meetings and doctor appointments. When I didn't have the strength to go on, I would open my Bible and pray. I'm not a perfect mom and never will be, but I could be a pretty good mom for all my kids, especially Coop.

I still struggle with my son's autism. I battle to accept who Cooper is and what he can do without limiting or overprotecting him. I cry when I make Cooper study his spelling words one more time because he spells words according to their sounds rather than the dictionary. I rejoice when he gets 100 percent on the same test he took the previous week. If a new treatment doesn't work, I try something else. I can never cure Cooper, but I help him start the day calmer and handle situations differently. My son is funny and wonderful, and I laugh at all the "Cooperisms" that come from his mouth.

You see, motherhood isn't about me. It's about God giving a mother to four wonderful children, including one who stands out and demands a little more work. I am God's gift to Cooper, the perfect mom for a unique child. And he is God's gift to me.

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A Matter of Opinion

By Sharon McGregor

When I am right, no one remembers. When I am wrong, no one forgets.
~Elizabeth Arden

Rural Manitoba is dotted with stone cairns marking the spot where old schoolhouses used to stand. These one-roomed schools were a big part of our prairie life until consolidation sent our farm kids bussing into town. Now, the old schoolhouses have disappeared from the landscape. The few that remain have been transformed into granaries or sheds or even homes, and have been carted away from their original sites.

My Aunt Ethel attended one-room country schools for the better part of her life -- first as a pupil, then as a teacher. After decades of boarding with local families, or living in teacherages, she finally retired to her home area and bought a little house.

Aunt Ethel was one of the few alumni still living when the cairn was dedicated to Sunny Slope School. She was also the oldest, now in her early nineties. As such, she was asked to attend the ceremony and had her picture taken standing beside the cairn.

This picture appeared in the local weekly paper, along with one of the original school and a description of the event. In the story my aunt was mistakenly identified as Miss Edith Sherson, instead of Miss Ethel Sherson. Now, my aunt was not one to make a fuss. She was a retired teacher, never married and quite content to live out her days quietly in her small house on a corner lot with her garden and flowers. So, although a little annoyed, she would never have contacted the paper to point out the mistake.

My Aunt Shirley, her sister-in-law, on the other hand, felt no such compunctions. She phoned the editor of the weekly paper to let them know the name should be Ethel, not Edith.

The paper did the honourable thing and printed a correction the next week, "We are sorry for the printing error. The identification should have read Miss Elsie Shearson, not Miss Edith Shearson."

Well, they still didn't have it right. Aunt Shirley contacted the paper again.

Once more, the paper printed the apology and correction. "The third time is the charm. The name of the oldest student has been reported erroneously in the past two issues. Our apologies to Mrs. Ethel Sherson, not Elsie or Edith."

Well, now the names, first and last, were both correct. The only problem was that the paper had conjured up a husband, past or present for my aunt, something she would have had no truck with. She tolerated men, as long as they were someone else's husband and didn't smoke in her living room, but taking one for herself had never been in her plan. She had been an independent woman with a very strong mind of her own in the days when women were encouraged to echo their husbands, whether they agreed with them or not. It just wasn't her style.

Still, she didn't believe in creating a scene and kept her opinions to herself. It was Aunt Shirley who again contacted the weekly.

Finally, they got it right. The final version got both the names right, as well as marital status. They could have worded it a little better though. The correction read, "We've finally got the name right, and we are sorry that Miss Sherson never married."

Somehow, I don't think she would have looked at it that way.

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Recovered Memories

By Mike Sackett

It's surprising how much of memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
~Barbara Kingsolver

I'll always remember 1979 as the year Janine and I ran our last marathon together. Running tech, (technology, technique and training), was a far cry then from what it is today. Good running shoes were as rare as Spandex and just as expensive. Janine and I usually saved the good stuff for races, training in bargain-store sneakers and cut-off jeans, whatever we could fish out of the laundry basket.

Sunday runs had replaced Sunday mass for this fallen Catholic and Gatorade had become my holy water. I gulped it with salt tablets to replenish my electrolytes (whatever they were) and wolfed down plates of spaghetti before every big race. Carbohydrate loading was the mantra of the moment, the best and blessed buzz words of runners in the know. At least that's the way I remember it. After years of washing down my racing pasta with Chianti I had more than a few of my own buzzes going on, so who can know for sure?

Janine didn't enter her first marathon until 1975, a time when running's Dark Ages were just coming to an end. Our daughters might be shocked to learn that the Boston Marathon didn't lift its ban on women runners until 1972 and probably wouldn't have lifted it then if not for the negative publicity Beantown's event garnered a few years earlier when a race official-turned-bouncer tried to manhandle Kathrine Switzer off the course. Luckily, Switzer's boyfriend was running beside her and did a better job of manhandling the official. Kathrine finished the race, shaken but unbowed.

Like Switzer and her beau, Janine and I were running side by side in the '78 and '79 Maryland Marathon. Our times in both races were about three and a half hours, not too shabby for a married couple trying to sandwich daily training sessions between slices of sleep and full-time jobs.

Don't think I didn't catch your half-mumbled "so what?" or the thump of a forehead on the coffee table. This old writing teacher is savvy enough to recognize the sound of a reader nodding off mid-paragraph. But bear with me, pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a NoDoz if you feel the need. I promise you we're getting to the story's hook.

I'll grant you that if the ghost of Phidippides kept a ledger of every marathon ever run there'd likely be enough married couples running races together to fill a phone book. But don't go looking for Janine and me in that book because we won't be there.

We were married all right, just not to each other. Janine and I didn't even know each other then... and wouldn't for more than a quarter century.

She showed up in one of my writing classes a few years ago, umbrella in hand (to remind me it was raining outside) and wearing spike heels with her jeans (to remind me how French women dressed... did I mention Janine was born in France?). Until that moment I'd been the consummate pro who'd never forgotten a lecture. But now I found myself speechless for a moment, summoning the courage to pull a shopworn pick-up line out of mothballs, when Janine beat me to it.

"You look familiar," she said. "Do we know each other?"

We both knew it wasn't a pick-up line because we both had the feeling we'd seen each other before, not once but dozens of times. The nagging question was where?

That evening I noticed an old photograph gathering dust on my mantle. Framed in one of those clear plastic boxes popular in the seventies, the photo showed me nearing the finish line of the '78 Maryland Marathon. I picked up the frame and slid out the cardboard backing. Don't ask me why. I peeked inside. Behind the photograph was my sweat-stained race number and a folded edition of the Baltimore Sun with the race results. I was more than a little startled to find Janine's name just a few lines below mine on the finishers' list. Our times were less than 2 minutes apart.

Months later, over coffee at Starbucks, I told Janine of the list I'd found behind my photograph and how we'd competed side by side so long ago. She smiled and produced a photograph of her own, showing a group of runners training on one of the hilly roads winding through Maryland's Loch Raven Reservoir. I recognized the road immediately and why not? I'd run it hundreds of times. Janine was in the foreground of the photo, surrounded by an elite group of runners, including the great Olympic miler, Marty Liquori.

"Recognize anyone?" she asked.

"You must be kidding," I said, handing back the picture. "I know who Marty is."

"Recognize anyone else?"

"The woman looks familiar," I said, glancing at the photo. Janine wasn't buying into my sarcasm, so I looked again. I noticed a bearded figure in the background, wearing a threadbare green ski jacket. "I had a jacket just like that," I said, my chair beginning to resemble a dunce stool.

Now Janine and I understood why we'd looked so familiar to one another. We'd trained on the same roads and ran the same races for years, probably passed each other a hundred times. Yet we never said hello. Or maybe we did, just didn't remember.

A psychologist might call the sudden flood of "Janine" images coursing through my temporal lobes a case of recovered memory, while the cynic might call it wishful thinking. Maybe it was a little of both.

Eventually Janine divorced her husband and I separated from my wife. Our children are grown. These days we're living a Nights in Rodanthe kind of life on North Carolina's Barrier Islands, writing our books, collecting sea shells and feeding the gray foxes and feral cats.

My knees and I gave up running years ago but Janine still runs every day through the little village near our home. Although she's always been the better runner, Janine knows I can still catch her now and again.

If I'm on my bicycle.

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