Tag: Story

The Last Tape

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“The Last Tape” Story wrote By Nan Pinkston, Stone Mountain, Georgia.

The bustle of the hospital was a welcome distraction as I opened my new patient’s chart and headed for her room. My son, Eric, had just brought home a disappointing report card, and my daughter, Shannon, and I had argued again about her getting a driver’s license. For the next eight hours, I wanted to throw myself into helping people who I knew had much more to worry about than I did.

Rebekah was only 32, admitted for chemotherapy after breast cancer surgery. When I entered her room it took me a moment to spot her amid the bouncing forms of three giggling little girls.

I told Rebekah I would be her nurse and she introduced her husband, Warren; six-year-old Ruthie; four-year-old Hannah; and two-year-old Molly. Warren coaxed the girls away from their mother with a promise of ice cream and assured Rebekah they would return the next day.

As I rubbed alcohol on her arm to prepare it for the intravenous line, Rebekah laughed nervously. “I have to tell you I’m terrified of needles.”

“It’ll be over before you know it,” I said. “I’ll give you a count of three.”

Rebekah shut her eyes tightly and murmured a prayer until it was over. Then she smiled and squeezed my hand. “Before you go, could you get my Bible from the table?” I handed her the worn book. “Do you have a favorite Bible verse?” she asked.

“‘Jesus wept.’ John 11:35.”

“Such a sad one,” she said. “Why?”

“It makes me feel closer to Jesus, knowing he also experienced human sorrow.”

Rebekah nodded thoughtfully and started flipping through her Bible as I shut the door quietly behind me.

During the following months, I watched Rebekah struggle with the ravages of chemotherapy. Her hospital stays became frequent and she worried about her children. Meanwhile, I continued to contend with raising my own kids. They always seemed either out or holed up in their rooms. I missed the days when they were as attached to me as Rebekah’s little girls were to her.

For a time, it had seemed Rebekah’s chemotherapy was working. Then doctors discovered another malignant lump. Two months later, a chest X-ray revealed cancer had spread to her lungs. It was terminal. Help me to help her through this, I prayed.

One day when I entered her room, I found her talking into a tape recorder. She picked up a yellow legal pad and held it out to me. “I’m making a tape for my daughters,” she said.

I read the list on her pad: starting school, confirmation, turning 16, first date, graduation. While I worried how to help her deal with death, she was planning for her children’s future.

She usually waited until the early hours of the morning to record the tapes so she could be free from interruptions. She filled them with family stories and advice trying to cram a lifetime of love into a few precious hours. Finally, every item in her notes had been checked off and she entrusted the tapes to her husband.

I often wondered what I would say in her place. My kids joked that I was an FBI agent, with my constant questions about where they’d been and who they’d been with. Where, I thought, are my words of encouragement and love?

It was three o’clock one afternoon when I got an urgent call from the hospital. Rebekah wanted me to come immediately with a blank tape. What topic has she forgotten? I wondered.

She was flushed and breathing hard when I entered her room. I slipped the tape into the recorder and held the microphone to her lips. “Ruthie, Hannah, Molly this is the most important tape.” She held my hand and closed her eyes. “Someday your daddy will bring home a new mommy. Please make her feel special. Show her how to take care of you. Ruthie, honey, help her get your Brownie uniform ready each Tuesday. Hannah, tell her you don’t want meat sauce on your spaghetti. She won’t know you like it separate. Molly, don’t get mad if there’s no apple juice. Drink something else. It’s okay to be sad, sweeties. Jesus cried too. He knows about sadness and will help you to be happy again. Remember, I’ll always love you.”

I shut off the recorder and Rebekah sighed deeply. “Thank you, Nan,” she said with a weak smile. “you’ll give this one to them, won’t you?” she murmured, sliding into sleep.

A time would come when the tape would be played for her children, but right then, after I smoothed Rebekah’s blanket, I got in my car and hurried home. I thought of how my Shannon also liked her sauce on the side and suddenly that quirk, which had annoyed me so many times, seemed to make her so much more precious. That night the kids didn’t go out; they sat with me long after the spaghetti sauce had dried onto the dishes. And we talked without interrogations, without complaints late into the night.

Grandma and The Paper Girl

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“Grandma and The Paper Girl” Story wrote By Ella Duquette, Syracuse, New York.

I squinted against the afternoon sunshine, looking out the window for the paperboy. Ever since a stroke had weakened my legs I hadn’t been able to get around so well. I depended on the paper to keep me up to date with the world from which I often felt disconnected. When the paper came late, I got edgy. Finally, I saw someone coming down the street. A girl, no more than 10 or 11 years old, hurled a rolled-up newspaper toward my screen door. It landed with a thud.

“Just a minute,” I called out the window. “where’s the usual carrier?”

“I’m the carrier now, lady,” she said, hands on her hips.

“Well, the old one used to bring the paper into me.”

“Oh, yeah? well, I can do that.” She came in and plopped the paper onto my lap. I got a better look at her. Frayed shorts and a cropped top and it wasn’t even summered yet. She tossed back her shoulder-length red hair and blew a huge pink bubble.

“I hate bubble gum,” I said.

“Tough beans,” she said.

I gasped. This snippy little thing needed to be taught some manners.

“The children around here call me Mrs. Lee, after my late husband.”

“Well, you can call me Kristin,” she said with a sassy tilt of her head, then bounded down the steps.

Just what I need, I thought. nothing was easy anymore. Simple tasks like dusting and doing laundry were an ordeal these days. And baking, which I used to love, was far too much trouble. My husband, Lee, and most of my friends had passed on. Lately, I had found myself wondering why the Lord had left me behind. It was clear to me, anyway, that if young people today all acted like that smart-alecky paper girl, I had been too long in this world.

Kristin’s attitude didn’t much improve over the following weeks. Still, I had to admit she never missed a day or forgot to bring the paper inside to me. She even took to sharing some small talk when she stopped by. She came in from a wicked rainstorm once and pulled the paper out from under her coat.

“H of a day, huh, Gram?” she said, handing me the paper.

I could feel the muscles in my jaw tense. “Do you talk like that just to shock me?” I asked. “And I’m not your grandmother.”

“I just talk to all my friends.”

“Not in this house, you don’t,” I shot back. “In my day you’d have your mouth washed out with soap.”

She laughed. “you’d have some fight on your hands if you tried it, Gram,” she said.

I threw up my hands. Why do I even bother with you? I wondered as she strutted down the street.

But she started coming by after her paper route and other times as well, chitchatting happily about school, her friends. Each time she left it was as if a radio had been turned off. One day a bundle of newspapers slipped from her hands onto the floor and she uttered a dirty word. Instantly she clapped a hand over her mouth and said, “Oops! Sorry, Gram.”

Well, she’s learned something, I thought, smiling secretly.

I dug out some of my old photographs and outfits, thinking she might like to see them. She never tired of my stories of growing up on a farm, how we had raised our own food and washed our clothes by hand. All this girl needs is some pushing, I thought. Why else would she keep coming back when I was always fussing at her over her clothes or talk? God, is that why you’re keeping me around for Kristin?

She showed me her report card when I asked one afternoon.

“This is awful,” I said.

“I do better than lots of kids,” she snapped.

“You’re not ‘lots of kids.’ Have a little pride in yourself.”

“Oh, Gram, you make such a big deal out of things,” she said. But I kept after her about her grades.

A short time later Kristin gave up her paper route and shifted her visits to after school. I didn’t ask why she kept coming to see me because—though I wouldn’t have been caught dead admitting it her visits had become the highlight of my days.

Once she told me, giggling, about some of her friends who had been shoplifting.

“That’s nothing to laugh about, young lady,” I said. “Shoplifting is stealing, plain and simple.”

“Well, I didn’t do it.”

“All the same, you could be guilty by association. Your reputation goes with you all your life, you know.”

“Oh, Gram, stop preaching.”

“If you don’t like it, there’s the door,” I declared. But she didn’t leave. In fact, we spent more time together. Still, we had our moments. Like when she baked a cake, then sank down on a chair without laying a finger to the mound of dishes.

“Come back here and clean up after yourself,” I ordered.

“No way. I’m not putting my hands in that sink. It’s gross.” She had just polished her nails a ghastly purple.

“Tough beans!” I blurted. She laughed. Mercy, I thought. Now I’m starting to talk like her. But she did the dishes that day and many another. I taught her how to bake fresh bread and my famous apple pie. It was wonderful to smell those familiar smells coming from the kitchen again.

One Sunday Kristin stopped by. “You didn’t go to church dressed like that, did you?” I asked. She glanced at her shorts and t-shirt. “All the kids dress like this.”

“I’ve told you before, Kristin, you’re not ‘all the kids.’”

“Well, I suppose you think I should wear one of your old outfits, complete with hat and long white gloves!” she flounced out the door, only to come back a moment later. “I’m sorry, Gram,” she said, giving me a quick hug. “Forgive me?”

How could I not? Making up with her seemed as natural as making up with one of my own daughters after a fight. Gradually, Kristin started dusting and cleaning up around the house, without the slightest hint from me. She even did my laundry. It chafed at my pride to let her do things I had done for myself all my life—but she was insistent. And this was the same girl who just a short while earlier wouldn’t put her hands in a sink of dirty dishes!

“How about I set your hair?” she asked one day. “My mom taught me.”

This was too much. “I’m not so old and helpless that I can’t take care of myself.”

“Oh, don’t be so stubborn. Come on, Gram,” she wheedled. For the first time, that nickname didn’t annoy me. I gave in, and she proceeded to work several different lathery formulas into my short locks, not letting me look in a mirror until she was done. I had visions of my hair dyed the same awful purple as her fingernails. I was amazed to find it soft, shiny, and still blond. “You’re good at this,” I said, and Kristin beamed.

I was even more impressed when, shortly after graduating from eighth grade, Kristin brought me a scrapbook filled with certificates of academic achievement.

“See, I told you-your wasn’t like everybody,” I said, hugging her. “You’re special.” It was wonderful to see she valued my approval. But the best part was seeing she was pleased with herself.

I still didn’t think much of her study habits. She insisted on keeping the television on when she did homework. I couldn’t fathom how she could concentrate with all that racket.

But then there was a lot I couldn’t fathom about Kristin’s world. “Gram, do you know there are eight girls pregnant in the freshman class?” she told me. I gasped. “And that’s nothing,” she continued. “In some schools, they have police guards and metal detectors and just about everybody smokes, drinks and takes drugs.”

I shuddered. It’s so different nowadays, Lord. How can I help her deal with all these things I know nothing about? Then I thought of how far Kristin had already come, and I knew the best thing I could do was to keep being there for her, as she always was for me.

One evening Kristin brought over a cake mix. “I’m going to bake us a super-duper double-chocolate cake, Gram,” she announced.

“No way,” I said. “Shortcuts won’t make a cake as good as from scratch.”

“Oh, come on, Gram. it’s easier this way.”

“Don’t ‘oh, Gram’ me, young lady. Easier isn’t always better and in this house” She broke into laughter the laughter I had come to know so well and in a moment, I joined in.

Kristin shook her head and took my hand. “I don’t know what it is, Gram,” she said. “We hardly ever agree on anything and you make me so mad sometimes. But I always come back. I guess I must love you.”

Who would have known that when I looked out the window for the paper carrier that afternoon five years ago I would end up finding my best friend?

A House for Katherine Red Feather

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“A House for Katherine Red Feather” story wrote By Robert Young, Bozeman, Montana

Ten years ago, if you told me I’d give up the business I spent my life putting together to go build houses on Indian reservations instead, I’d have said you were nuts. the Seattle-based loungewear company I started with a partner was cranking out a profit. At 33, I had just married my longtime sweetheart, Anita. I wanted to slow down, have a family, savor life and the rewards of success.

Then I saw that headline.

I was in New Mexico on business and picked up a local paper called Indian Country. There it was on the front page, like an epitaph: “Elders Freeze to Death.” How could such a thing happen here in America, the richest country in the world? I tore out the article and stuck it in my pocket.

That night in my hotel room, meetings done, I read the story again. it seemed so tragic. Somebody the government, the tribal council would no doubt do something to make sure it did not happen again. Still, I tucked the clipping into my briefcase instead of throwing it away. Why I had no idea.

Two weeks later, another business trip. Another headline staring at me from the local paper. “Taos Woman Starts Adopt-A-Grandparent Program for Aging Native Americans.” According to the article, on reservations across the country, thousands of elderly native Americans struggled not just to make ends meet but simply to stay alive. At the end of the piece, there was a number of people interested in volunteering to call. I didn’t stop to think. I just picked up the phone and dialed.

Soon I was matched with a “grandparent” Katherine Red Feather, of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. I dropped her a note introducing myself. “I am 78 years old,” Katherine wrote back, “and blessed with thirteen children and seven grandchildren. I am so happy to learn I now have another grandchild! Do you have a wife and children of your own? I hope so, as they are one of the most wonderful gifts the Great Spirit can give a person in this life.”

I told her about Anita, and how she was indeed a godsend. Then I asked Katherine if there was anything I could send her. “Yes,” she wrote. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would very much appreciate a bottle of shampoo and some aspirin. Thank you for your generosity, Grandson.”

Grandson … Katherine was really taking this program seriously. But shampoo? Aspirin? Why wouldn’t she have such basic items? I decided to visit the reservation after my next business trip and look in on Katherine.

Pine Ridge Reservation encompasses the two poorest counties in the United States. So the letter from the Adopt-A-Grandparent program had informed me. But I was not prepared for the reality of that poverty. Rutted dirt roads, dilapidated shacks, rusted-out automobiles with entire families living in them…. The dwellings I passed wouldn’t keep a person warm on a chilly fall night like this. In the Dakota winter, temperatures sometimes plunged to 60 degrees below zero. How could people freeze to death on a reservation? The answer was right before my eyes.

Katherine’s “house” was a small, busted-up trailer pushed against the body of an old school bus. The trailer door opened and a delicate-looking woman wearing slacks and a simple patterned sweater emerged.

“Grandson! Come in out of the cold.”

The trailer was dark and barely big enough to turn around in, but the three people sitting by the wood stove stood when Katherine led me inside. “This is Robert,” she announced. “My new grandson. Robert, these are my children. They are your family now too.”

Katherine must have seen my confusion. “The Great Spirit has chosen you to be a part of my life,” she told me. “We are one family in his eyes.” We sat down to a simple meal of white bread and beans heated on a propane stove.

There was no running water, so Katherine needed to carry it from a well out back. it was next to an outhouse with a black flag flying overhead. “To scare away the rattlesnakes,” she explained. “They think it’s a hawk.” Katherine took such pains to make me feel at home that it was only at the end of my visit two days later that I could bring myself to ask her, “Isn’t it hard for you to have to fetch wood and water every day?”

Katherine took my hands in hers. “I know how my life must look to you, Grandson, but all of us here live this way. I’m no different than anyone else.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about Katherine once I got home to Seattle. The days grew shorter and colder. I looked out the window of my cozy apartment and imagined my new grandmother in that tiny trailer, huddled over her smoky little stove.

“She needs to be in a place that will keep her warm,” I told Anita one night. “A place where the wind doesn’t blow through the chinks in the walls. Katherine needs a real house.”

A real house. The moment those words left my lips, I knew what I had to do. At the end of that summer, I took two weeks off and went back to Pine Ridge. Anita and a handful of friends came with me. We were going to build Katherine a house. None of us had built so much as a doghouse before, but I figured that with a simple floor plan and plenty of enthusiasm, we could get the job done.

Word got around the reservation. Dozens of Katherine’s neighbors and family members pitched in. Toward the end we worked round the clock, my car headlights trained on the site. Finally, the last nail was driven. Katherine’s tribal chairman said a prayer of thanks, and there was a big celebration. It was the first time Katherine had all her relatives together since the Red Feather clan had been divided and made to live on two different reservations years back. She welcomed them all into her house, her eyes brimming with tears of joy.

Anita squeezed my hand, and I knew what we had done here was bigger than anything I could ever hope to achieve with my business. At last, I understood what Katherine meant about all of us being one family.

Back in Seattle, I tried to concentrate on my work. Katherine would be safe and warm this winter. But what about all the neighbors who’d pitched in to build Katherine’s house, only to go home to ramshackle trailers? America has about two million tribal members, and some 300,000 of them are without proper homes. What about all those people?

Building frame houses like we had done for Katherine was impossible. Too expensive and labor-intensive. I had to come up with a design that was warm, inexpensive and easy to build. A little research and I came across straw bale houses. Built from blocks of straw covered with stucco, they’re ideal for reservations. The straw is plentiful on the Great Plains and provides extremely effective insulation.

Getting straw bale houses built on a large scale, though, would take the organization. A huge investment of time and energy. Time and energy I wouldn’t have if I kept my day job. I sold my half of the business and started a new venture, the Red Feather Development Group, to help native Americans get decent housing. Eventually, Anita and I moved to Bozeman, Montana, in the vicinity of half a dozen reservations.

To think, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t seen those headlines 10 years ago. Even then I’d known someone would look after elders like my grandmother Katherine. I just never expected that person to be me. But that is how the Great Spirit works.