Teach him gently,World,but don"t coddle him,because only the test of fire makes fine steel.

This is a big order,World, but see what you can do. He"s such a nice little fellow.

Author Unknown

To Give the Gift of Life

You had your eyes open a little while ago, but now you just want to sleep. I wish you would open your eyes and look at me. My child, my precious, my angel sent from heaven... this will be the last time we are together. As I hold you close to me and feel your tiny body warm against my own, I look at you and look at you... I feel as if my eyes can"t hold enough of you. For a human being so small, there is a lot of you to look at ...in such a short time. In a few minutes, they will come and take you away from me. But for now, this is our time together and you belong to only me.

Your cheeks are still bruised from your birth-they feel so soft to my fingertip, like the wing of a b.u.t.terfly. Your eyebrows are tightly clenched in concentration-are you dreaming? You have too many eyelashes to count and yet I want to engrave them all in my mind. I don"t want to forget anything about you. Is it all right that you are breathing so rapidly? I don"t know anything about babies-maybe I never will. But I know one thing for sure-I love you with all my heart. I love you so much and there is no way to tell you. I hope that someday you will understand. I am giving you away because I love you. I want you to have in your life all the things I could never have in mine-safety, compa.s.sion, joy and acceptance. I want you to be loved for who you are.

I wish I could squish you back inside of me-I"m not ready to let you go. If I could just hold you like this forever and never have to face tomorrow-would everything be all right? No, I know everything will only be all right if I let you go. I just didn"t expect to feel this way-I didn"t know you would be so beautiful and so perfect. I feel as if my heart is being pulled from my body right through my skin. I didn"t know I would feel so much pain.

Tomorrow your mom and dad are coming to the hospital to pick you up, and you will start your life. I pray that they will tell you about me. I hope they will know how brave I have been. I hope they will tell you how much I loved you because I won"t be around to tell you myself. I will cry every day somewhere inside of me because I will miss you so much. I hope I will see you again someday- but I want you to grow up to be strong and beautiful and to have everything you want. I want you to have a home and a family. I want you to have children of your own someday that are as beautiful as you are. I hope that you will try to understand and not be angry with me.

The nurse comes into the room and reaches out her arms for you. Do I have to let you go? I can feel your heart beating rapidly and you finally open your eyes. You look into my eyes with trust and innocence, and we lock hearts. I give you to the nurse. I feel as if I could die. Good-bye, my baby-a piece of my heart will be with you always and forever. I love you, I love you...I love you...

Patty Hansen

Mother"s Day

One day while in my early 30s, I sat in a Midwestern church and burst into tears. It was Mother"s Day, and ladies of all shapes and sizes, young and old, were being applauded by their families and the whole congregation. Each received a lovely rose and returned to the pews, where I sat empty-handed. Sorry to my soul, I was convinced I had missed my chance at that great adventure, that selective sorority called "motherhood."

All that changed one February when, pushing 40 and pushing with all my might, I brought forth Gabriel Zacharias. It took 24 hours of labor for me to produce that little four-pound, eight-ounce bundle of joy. No wonder those ladies got flowers!

Any mother who has survived one birth amazes herself at her willingness to go for two. Jordan Raphael was born the following March. He was smaller and labor was shorter; but I still felt I deserved flowers.

The sorority I joined requires an extended hazing period: nine months of demanding cravings for unusual foods you can"t keep down; weight gain you can"t explain; a walk that is part buffalo and part duck; unique bedtime constructions of pillows designed to support this bulge and fill in that gap but avoid all pressure on the bladder; and extensive stretch marks culminating in excruciating labor pain.

With labor, the hazing period ends. But with the child"s birth, the initiation period in this great sorority has just begun. The painful tugs on the heart strings far exceed whatever physical pain labor required. There was my older son"s first cut that drew blood, his spiked fevers, his long bout with pneumonia; my younger son"s terror at a big barking dog, his near-miss with a car, the death of his pet rat.

While the hazing period may seem overlong, this initiation period never ends. I wake up when my sons cough. I hear their teddy bears land with a soft thud on the floor next to their beds. In the supermarket I respond to children calling "Mother!" and the kids, I realize, aren"t even my own!

I"ve advanced past bottle weaning, potty training, the first days of school and the first trip to the dentist. Coming up are first crushes, first heartbreaks, and first times behind the wheel of a car. I hope to someday see them each happily married with children of their own. Then I will gain entry into that even more exclusive sorority of "grandmotherhood."

For now, the pa.s.sword to my heart is "Mom," and I thank my sons for this. Especially on the days of their birth, happily on a special Sunday in May. My young sons do not yet realize how much I value this remarkable membership and won"t note it with flowers unless prompted. Yet every time we take a walk, they pluck me a short-stemmed blossom, "just because."

This year I look forward to celebrating Mother"s Day- the divine achievement of the physical, the grand acceptance of the commonplace, the exquisite grat.i.tude of watching my sons become uniquely themselves. Because of Gabriel and Jordan, I am a dues-paying, card-carrying member of The Club. Happy Mother"s Day to me!

Sharon Nicola Cramer THE FAMILY.

CIRCUS.

"Poor Mommy. We get to go to the movies for Mother"s Day and she has to stay home."

Reprinted with special permission of King Feature Syndicate, Inc.

6.

SPECIAL.

MOMENTS.

Today a new sun rises for me; everything lives, everything is animated, everything seems to speak to me of my pa.s.sion, everything invites me to cherish it...

Anne de Lenclos

In a Hurry

The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won"t wait while you do the work.

Patricia Clafford I was in a hurry.

I came rushing through our dining room in my best suit, focused on getting ready for an evening meeting. Gillian, my four-year-old, was dancing about to one of her favorite oldies, "Cool," from West Side Story.

I was in a hurry, on the verge of being late. Yet a small voice inside of me said, Stop.

So I stopped. I looked at her. I reached out, grabbed her hand and spun her around. My seven-year-old, Caitlin, came into our orbit, and I grabbed her, too. The three of us did a wild jitterbug around the dining room and into the living room. We were laughing. We were spinning. Could the neighbors see the lunacy through the windows? It didn"t matter. The song ended with a dramatic flourish and our dance finished with it. I patted them on their bottoms and sent them to take their baths.

They went up the stairs, gasping for breath, their giggles bouncing off the walls. I went back to business. I was bent over, shoving papers into my briefcase, when I overheard my youngest say to her sister, "Caitlin, isn"t Mommy the bestest one?"

I froze. How close I had come to hurrying through life, missing that moment. My mind went to the awards and diplomas that covered the walls of my office. No award, no achievement I have ever earned can match this: Isn"t Mommy the bestest one?

My child said that at age four. I don"t expect her to say it at age 14. But at age 40, if she bends down over that pine box to say good-bye to the cast-off container of my soul, I want her to say it then.

Isn"t Mommy the bestest one?

It doesn"t fit on my resume. But I want it on my tombstone.

Gina Barrett Schlesinger

No Small Act of Kindness

If I can stop one Heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one Life the Aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting Robin Unto his Nest again, I shall not live in vain.

Emily d.i.c.kinson The day was Thankful Thursday, our "designated day" of service. It"s a weekly tradition that my two little girls and I began years ago. Thursday has become our day to go out in the world and make a positive contribution. On this particular Thursday, we had no idea exactly what we were going to do, but we knew that something would present itself.

Driving along a busy Houston road, praying for guidance in our quest to fulfill our weekly Act of Kindness, the noon hour appropriately triggered hunger pangs in my two little ones. They wasted no time in letting me know, chanting, "McDonald"s, McDonald"s, McDonald"s" as we drove along. I relented and began searching earnestly for the nearest McDonald"s. Suddenly I realized that almost every intersection I pa.s.sed through was occupied by a panhandler. And then it hit me! If my two little ones were hungry, then all these panhandlers must be hungry, too. Perfect! Our Act of Kindness had presented itself. We were going to buy lunch for the panhandlers.

After finding a McDonald"s and ordering two Happy Meals for my girls, I ordered an additional 15 lunches and we set out to deliver them. It was exhilarating. We would pull alongside a panhandler, make a contribution, and tell him or her that we hoped things got better. Then we"d say, "Oh, by the way... here"s lunch." And then we would varoom off to the next intersection.

It was the best way to give. There wasn"t enough time for us to introduce ourselves or explain what we were going to do, nor was there time for them to say anything back to us. The Act of Kindness was anonymous and empowering for each of us, and we loved what we saw in the rear view mirror: a surprised and delighted person holding up his lunch bag and just looking at us as we drove off. It was wonderful!

We had come to the end of our "route" and there was a small woman standing there, asking for change. We handed her our final contribution and lunch bag, and then immediately made a U-turn to head back in the opposite direction for home. Unfortunately, the light caught us again and we were stopped at the same intersection where this little woman stood. I was embarra.s.sed and didn"t know quite how to behave. I didn"t want her to feel obligated to say or do anything.

She made her way to our car, so I put the window down just as she started to speak. "No one has ever done anything like this for me before," she said with amazement. I replied, "Well, I"m glad that we were the first." Feeling uneasy, and wanting to move the conversation along, I asked, "So, when do you think you"ll eat your lunch?"

She just looked at me with her huge, tired brown eyes and said, "Oh honey, I"m not going to eat this lunch." I was confused, but before I could say anything, she continued. "You see, I have a little girl of my own at home and she just loves McDonald"s, but I can never buy it for her because I just don"t have the money. But you know what . . . tonight she is going to have McDonald"s!"

I don"t know if the kids noticed the tears in my eyes. So many times I had questioned whether our Acts of Kindness were too small or insignificant to really effect change. Yet in that moment, I recognized the truth of Mother Teresa"s words: "We cannot do great things-only small things with great love."

Donna Wick Copyright 1987 by David Sipress. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

The Last Jar of Jelly

Our children grew up on peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly sandwiches. Even my husband and I sometimes sneak one in late at night with a gla.s.s of milk. I believe that the Earl of Sandwich himself would agree with me that the success of this universally loved concoction lies not in the brand of peanut b.u.t.ter used, but rather in the jelly. The right jelly delights the palate, and homemade is the only choice.

I wasn"t the jelly maker in this family. My mother-inlaw was. She didn"t provide a wide range of flavors, either. It was either grape or blackberry. This limited choice was a welcome relief in the days of toddlers, siblings and puppies. When all around me other decisions and choices had to be made, making peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly sandwiches was easy. And since we liked both flavors, we usually picked whatever jar was at the front of the pantry or refrigerator.

The only contribution I made to the jelly making was to save baby food jars, which my mother-in-law would fill with the tasty gel, seal with wax and send back home with us. For the past 22 years of my married life, whenever I wanted to make a peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly sandwich for myself or my husband or one of the children, all I had to do was reach for one of those little jars of jelly. It was always there. Jelly making was just a way of life for my mother-in-law. She always did it, following the same rituals- from picking the fruit to setting the finished jelly on the homemade shelves in her little pantry off the kitchen.

My father-in-law died several years ago and this past December, my mother-in-law also pa.s.sed away. Among the things in the house to be divided by her children were the remaining canned goods in the pantry. Each of her children chose from the many jars of tomato juice, green beans and jelly. When my husband brought his jars home, we carefully put them away in our pantry.

The other day I reached in there to retrieve jelly for a quick sandwich, and there it was. Sitting all alone on the far side of the shelf was a small jar of grape jelly. The lid was somewhat rusty in places. Written on it with a black marker was "GR" for grape and the year the jelly had been made.

As I picked up the jar, I suddenly realized something that I had failed to see earlier. I reopened the pantry door to be sure. Yes, this was it, this was the last jar of "Memommie jelly." We would always have store-bought jelly, but this was the last jar we would ever have from the patient, loving hands of my mother-in-law. Although she had been gone for nearly a year, so much of her had remained with us. We hardly ever opened a jar of jelly at the breakfast table without kidding about those thousands of little jars she had filled. Our children had never known a day without their grandmother"s jelly. It seems like such a small thing, and most days it was something that was taken for granted. But today it seemed a great treasure.

Holding that last jar in my hand, my heart traveled back to meeting my mother-in-law for the first time. I could see her crying on our wedding day, and later, kissing and loving our children as if she didn"t have five other grandchildren. I could see her walking the fields of the farm, patiently waiting while others tended to the cows. I could see her walking in the woods or riding the hay wagon behind the tractor. I saw her face as it looked when we surprised her by meeting her at church. I saw her caring for a sick spouse and surrounded by loving children at the funeral.

I put the jelly back on the shelf. No longer was it just a jar of jelly. It was the end of a family tradition. I guess I believed that as long as it was there, a part of my motherin-law would always live on.

We have many things that once belonged to my husband"s parents. There are guns, tools, handmade sweaters and throws, and some furniture. We have hundreds of pictures and many more memories. These are the kinds of things that you expect to survive the years and to pa.s.s on to your children. But I"m just not ready to give up this last jelly jar, and all the memories its mere presence allows me to hold onto. The jar of jelly won"t keep that long. It will either have to be eaten or thrown out...but not today.

Andy Skid more

A Christmas Story