Christmas is a special day, even in a hospital bed thousands of miles from home. Today the nurses are especially loving and gracious. Red Cross volunteers help us write letters to our families. All of us still need special attention plus our routine shots, IVs, blood work and I swallow twenty-two pills three times a day. Even on Christmas, life goes on in our little community, like clockwork, thanks to the dedication of our nurses. They never miss a beat, always friendly and caring.
There's a rumor that General Westmorland and Raquel Welch will visit our ward today and award Purple Hearts to the combat wounded. I'm especially hopeful it's true because I would receive the commendation. The thought of meeting Raquel Welch and General Westmoreland gives me an adrenaline boost that lasts throughout the day.
By early evening we realize they aren't coming. Everyone is very disappointed, especially me. The day's activities cease quickly after a yummy Christmas dinner and most of my ward mates slip off to sleep by seven or eight o'clock.
It's impossible to sleep. The IVs in my arms continue collapsing my veins one by one. I'm pricked and probed by what feels like knives, not needles. My arms are black and blue after many failed attempts to locate a vein for IV fluids. I occasionally doze off, only to be awakened by the agonizing pain of another collapsed vein and infiltrating fluids. My arms are swollen to twice their normal size. This pain is worse than my gunshot wound.
It's 11 o'clock Christmas night. The ward is silent. My comrades and the Cambodian warrior sleep. I'm tense and suffering.
To avoid waking anyone, I silently signal a nurse. She comes to my side and gazes into my tearing eyes. Quietly, she sits on the side of my bed, embraces my arm, removes the IV, then lightly massages my swollen, painful arms.
Gently, she leans over and whispers in my ear, "Merry Christmas," and gives me a long, tender hug. As she withdraws, our eyes connect momentarily. She has tears running down her cheeks. She felt my pain. She turns and moves away, ever so slowly back to her workstation.
The next morning I wake slowly. I have slept throughout the night and feel rested. I see while I slept a new IV was inserted in my arm. The swelling is gone. Suddenly, I remember the nurse coming to my side in the night and my Christmas present. I'm thankful and think of her kindness. I look towards the nurses' workstation to see if I can see my angel nurse but she's gone.
I never see her again, but I will forever honor her compassion toward me on that lonely Christmas night.
Big Red By Linda Gabris
The first time we set eyes on "Big Red," father, mother and I were trudging through the freshly fallen snow on our way to Hubble's Hardware store on Main Street in Huntsville, Ontario. We planned to enter our name in the annual Christmas drawing for a chance to win a hamper filled with fancy tinned cookies, tea, fruit and candy. As we passed the Eaton's Department store's window, we stopped as usual to gaze, and do our bit of dreaming.
The gaily decorated window display held the best toys ever. I took an instant hankering for a huge green wagon. It was big enough to haul three armloads of firewood, two buckets of swill or a whole summer's worth of pop bottles picked from along the highway. There were skates that would make Millar's Pond well worth shoveling and dolls much too pretty to play with. And they were all nestled snugly beneath the breathtakingly flounced skirt of Big Red.
Mother's eyes were glued to the massive flare of red shimmering satin, dotted with twinkling sequin-centered black velvet stars. "My goodness," she managed to say in trancelike wonder. "Would you just look at that dress!" Then, totally out of character, mother twirled one spin of a waltz on the slippery sidewalk. Beneath the heavy, wooden-buttoned, grey wool coat she had worn every winter for as long as I could remember, mother lost her balance and tumbled. Father quickly caught her.
Her cheeks redder than usual, mother swatted dad for laughing. "Oh, stop that!" she ordered, shooing his fluttering hands as he swept the snow from her coat. "What a silly dress to be perched up there in the window of Eaton's!" she shook her head in disgust. "Who on earth would want such a splashy dress?"
As we continued down the street, mother turned back for one more look. "My goodness! You'd think they'd display something a person could use!"
Christmas was nearing and the red dress was soon forgotten. Mother, of all people, was not one to wish for, or spend money on, items that were not practical. "There are things we need more than this," she'd always say, or, "There are things we need more than that."
Father, on the other hand, liked to indulge whenever the budget allowed. Of course, he'd get a scolding for his occasional splurging, but it was all done with the best intention.
Like the time he brought home the electric range. In our old Muskoka farmhouse on Oxtongue Lake, Mother was still cooking year-round on a wood stove. In the summer, the kitchen would be so hot even the houseflies wouldn't come inside. Yet there would be Mother - roasting - right along with the pork and turnips.
One day, Dad surprised her with a fancy new electric range. She protested, of course, saying that the wood stove cooked just dandy, that the electric stove was too dear and that it would cost too much hydro to run it. All the while, however, she was polishing its already shiny chrome knobs. In spite of her objections, Dad and I knew that she cherished that new stove.
There were many other modern things that old farm needed, like indoor plumbing and a clothes dryer, but Mom insisted that those things would have to wait until we could afford them. Mom was forever doing chores - washing laundry by hand, tending the pigs, or working in our huge garden - so she always wore mended, cotton-print housedresses and an apron to protect the front. She did have one or two "special" dresses saved for Church on Sundays. And amongst everything else she did, she still managed to make almost all of our clothes. They weren't fancy, but they did wear well.
That Christmas I bought Dad a handful of fishing lures from the Five to a Dollar store, wrapped them individually in matchboxes so he'd have plenty of gifts to open from me. Choosing something for Mother was much harder. When Dad and I asked, she thought carefully then hinted modestly for some tea towels, face clothes or a new dishpan.
On our last trip to town before Christmas, we were driving up Main Street when mother suddenly exclaimed in surprise: "Would you just look at that!" She pointed excitedly as Dad drove past Eaton's.
"That big red dress is gone," she said in disbelief. "It's actually gone."
"Well...I'll be!" Dad chuckled. "By golly, it is!"
"Who'd be fool enough to buy such a frivolous dress?" Mother questioned, shaking her head. I quickly stole a glance at Dad. His blue eyes were twinkling as he nudged me with his elbow. Mother craned her neck for another glimpse out the rear window as we rode on up the street. "It's gone..." she whispered. I was almost certain that I detected a trace of yearning in her voice.
I'll never forget that Christmas morning. I watched as Mother peeled the tissue paper off a large box that read, "Eaton's Finest Enamel Dishpan" on its lid.
"Oh Frank," she praised, "just what I wanted!" Dad was sitting in his rocker, a huge grin on his face.
"Only a fool wouldn't give a priceless wife like mine exactly what she wants for Christmas," he laughed. "Go ahead, open it up and make sure there are no chips." Dad winked at me, confirming his secret, and my heart filled with more love for my father than I thought it could hold!
Mother opened the box to find a big white enamel dishpan - overflowing with crimson satin that spilled out across her lap. With trembling hands she touched the elegant material of Big Red.
"Oh my goodness!" she managed to utter, her eyes filled with tears. "Oh Frank..." Her face was as bright as the star that twinkled on our tree in the corner of the small room. "You shouldn't have..." came her faint attempt at scolding.
"Oh now, never mind that!" Dad said. "Let's see if it fits," he laughed, helping her slip the marvelous dress over her shoulders. As the shimmering red satin fell around her, it gracefully hid the patched and faded floral housedress underneath.
I watched, my mouth agape, captivated by a radiance in my parents I had never noticed before. As they waltzed around the room, Big Red swirled its magic deep into my heart.
"You look beautiful," my dad whispered to my mom - and she surely did!
River Baptism By Garth Gilchrist
The summer I turned thirteen, my family's summer vacation was a visit to our relatives in the mountains of North Carolina. My cousin Jim, who was my age, took me down to his favorite swimming hole along the river. It was a deep pool under a high canopy of leaves. From the top of a twenty-five-foot cliff we looked down into the shimmering water and across to a sandy beach.
Standing beside us on the edge of that cliff grew a big white oak tree, with its roots sunk deep down into the rock. And hanging from a limb that stretched out at just the right height and angle, was a rope swing.
"Look here," said Jim. "This is the way you do it. You got to get a running start. Then you grab the rope and swing out and up as high as you can, and then you let go and fall to the water. Here, I'll show you."
Jim made it look easy, and when his head surfaced in the bubbling water he hollered up, "Now it's your turn!"
I was certain I was going to die, but at thirteen dying is better than looking bad. When I came up sputtering, Jim smiled approvingly and we swam a few strokes to the beach, lay on the hot sand for awhile, and then swam back across the pool to do it again.
Jim and all of his friends always wore the proper North Carolina swimming attire, for skinny-dipping was a time honored tradition among boys throughout the mountain states. Sometimes I felt like I was a wild boy, or a beaver sliding through the water. Jim said he felt like an otter, since he loved to turn and twist in the deep pools and could swim under water a long ways.
Jim's family was Baptists. On Sunday, Jim's mom made us dress up in straight-jacket white shirts and strangle-hold ties, marched us down the street and filed us into church.
"You must be baptized, by water and by the Spirit" the preacher thundered. That water baptism sounded mighty good. I sat there dreaming of the river and waiting for the wonderful moment when the sermon would be over and Jim and I could go running down the path to the river.
On the tails of the closing prayer, Jim and I flew out into the sunny day and home for a quick sandwich. Then we plunged down the trail into the woods alive with the hum of cicadas hanging thick in the branches of the burr oaks and hickories.
When we got within a hundred yards of the rope swing, Jim said, "I'll race you!"
"You got it!" I replied.
We dropped our clothes right there and tore down the trail to see who could get to the rope swing first. I was a fast runner, but Jim was faster. He pulled ahead of me and dove for the rope. With a shriek of victory, Jim swung out over the water and up, to the very top of the arc. In perfect form, Jim let go of the rope and looked down to see where he was going to land.
But there - not twenty yards away on the beach - stood the preacher and two dozen of the faithful, performing a baptism. I could see they were looking straight up at Jim with their mouths wide open.
As fervently as Jim prayed to fly, he quickly descended from the heavens. Jim abandoned his plans for a graceful swan dive and instinctively assumed the cannonball position - known for its magnificent splash.
The whole congregation got baptized that day. But Jim never saw it. He broke his record for underwater swimming and was around the bend and out of sight while the congregation stood stunned and speechless on the shore.
"Don't worry, Jim," I consoled him later. "I'm sure everybody thought you were an angel, and besides, it turned out fine. You got the river dunking you wanted, and those folks will never forget that baptism."
Thinking about it now, I don't think there's much difference, anyway, between wild boys and angels, or between heaven and a rope swing on the river.
The Greatest of These By Nanette Thorsen-Snipes
My day began on a decidedly sour note when I saw my six-year-old wrestling with a limb of my azalea bush. By the time I got outside, he'd broken it. "Can I take this to school today?" he asked.
With a wave of my hand, I sent him off. I turned my back so he wouldn't see the tears gathering in my eyes. I loved that azalea bush. I touched the broken limb as if to say silently, "I'm sorry."
I wished I could have said that to my husband earlier, but I'd been angry. The washing machine had leaked on my brand-new linoleum. If he'd just taken the time to fix it the night before when I asked him instead of playing checkers with Jonathan. What are his priorities anyway? I wondered. I was still mopping up the mess when Jonathan walked into the kitchen. "What's for breakfast, Mom?"
I opened the empty refrigerator. "Not cereal," I said, watching the sides of his mouth drop. "How about toast and jelly?" I smeared the toast with jelly and set it in front of him. Why was I so angry? I tossed my husband's dishes into the sudsy water.
It was days like this that made me want to quit. I just wanted to drive up to the mountains, hide in a cave, and never come out.
Somehow I managed to lug the wet clothes to the laundromat. I spent most of the day washing and drying clothes and thinking how love had disappeared from my life. Staring at the graffiti on the walls, I felt as wrung-out as the clothes left in the washers.
As I finished hanging up the last of my husband's shirts, I looked at the clock. 2:30. I was late. Jonathan's class let out at 2:15. I dumped the clothes in the back seat and hurriedly drove to the school.
I was out of breath by the time I knocked on the teacher's door and peered through the glass. With one finger, she motioned for me to wait. She said something to Jonathan and handed him and two other children crayons and a sheet of paper.
