Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul (3 page)

For many years the four of us have been speaking to audiences—often women’s audiences—about living our lives more fully and joyfully. We’ve been inspired, even overwhelmed, by how eager women are to share their hearts, their stories and their lessons. It is from this inspiration that
Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul
was born.

We experienced miracles every day in the creation of this book! We felt as if an invisible hand was guiding us along the way.

For example, we searched for more than a year for Phyllis Volkens, the author of “A Goodnight Kiss,” to get her permission to use her story. We finally located a distant cousin, who told us that Phyllis and her husband had moved to Iowa, where they were living only miles from Jennifer and Marci! More remarkable, however, was the response of Phyllis’s husband, Stanley, when we called. He told us how happy he was we had found them. They had been
Chicken Soup for the Soul
fans for years, but Phyllis had only about one week to live. He couldn’t wait to tell her that she would be part of our book; he later told us how much it meant to her. She died two days later.

Women who sent us their stories told us repeatedly how grateful they were for the opportunity to write them down. They said that even if their stories were not included in our book, they were happy just to have expressed them. In doing so, they felt cleansed and renewed.

Because of this book we, too, are changed people. We see more clearly what’s really important in life. We appreciate more deeply the human experience. And we live more fully in the moment.

Women bring such beautiful gifts to the world through their openness, compassion and wisdom. Our deepest desire is that each time you read these stories, you will come away with a greater appreciation for yourselves and for each other—as we all did.

As one of the women who wrote to us, Mary Michalica, so beautifully said:

All women go through periods in their lives when numerous demands are placed on them— family, work, spouse, ex-spouse, children, stepchildren, parents.

It is important, indeed necessary, to step back and re-evaluate one’s priorities, to reflect on one’s mission in life. For it is only in nurturing one’s soul that one can nurture, take care of another. Sometimes, one must say, “Stop! Listen to me. I have a story to tell.”

So from our hearts to yours, we offer you
Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul.
May you experience the miracles of love and inspiration when you read this book. May it touch your heart and move your spirit.

1
ON LOVE

T
he best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller

Reprinted with permission from Dave Carpenter.

The White Gardenia

Every year on my birthday, from the time I turned 12, one white gardenia was delivered anonymously to me at my house. There was never a card or note, and calls to the florist were in vain because the purchase was always made in cash. After a while, I stopped trying to discover the identity of the sender. I just delighted in the beauty and heady perfume of that one magical, perfect white flower nestled in folds of soft pink tissue paper.

But I never stopped imagining who the sender might be. Some of my happiest moments were spent in day dreams about someone wonderful and exciting, but too shy or eccentric to make known his or her identity. In my teen years, it was fun to speculate that the sender might be a boy I had a crush on, or even someone I didn’t know who had noticed me.

My mother often contributed to my speculations. She’d ask me if there was someone for whom I had done a special kindness, who might be showing appreciation anony mously. She reminded me of the times when I’d been riding my bike and our neighbor drove up with her car full of groceries and children. I always helped her unload the car and made sure the children didn’t run into the road. Or maybe the mystery sender was the old man across the street. I often retrieved his mail during the winter, so he wouldn’t have to venture down his icy steps.

My mother did her best to foster my imagination about the gardenia. She wanted her children to be creative. She also wanted us to feel cherished and loved, not just by her, but by the world at large.

When I was 17, a boy broke my heart. The night he called for the last time, I cried myself to sleep. When I awoke in the morning, there was a message scribbled on my mirror in red lipstick: “Heartily know, when half-gods go, the gods arrive.” I thought about that quotation from Emerson for a long time, and I left it where my mother had written it until my heart healed. When I finally went for the glass cleaner, my mother knew that everything was all right again.

But there were some hurts my mother couldn’t heal. A month before my high school graduation, my father died suddenly of a heart attack. My feelings ranged from simple grief to abandonment, fear, distrust and overwhelming anger that my dad was missing some of the most important events in my life. I became completely uninterested in my upcoming graduation, the senior-class play and the prom—events that I had worked on and looked forward to. I even considered staying home to attend college instead of going away as I had planned because it felt safer.

My mother, in the midst of her own grief, wouldn’t hear of me missing out on any of these things. The day before my father died, she and I had gone shopping for a prom dress and had found a spectacular one—yards and yards of dotted Swiss in red, white and blue. Wearing it made me feel like Scarlett O’Hara. But it was the wrong size, and when my father died the next day, I forgot all about the dress.

My mother didn’t. The day before the prom, I found that dress waiting for me—in the right size. It was draped majestically over the living room sofa, presented to me artistically and lovingly. I may not have cared about having a new dress, but my mother did.

She cared how we children felt about ourselves. She imbued us with a sense of the magic in the world, and she gave us the ability to see beauty even in the face of adversity.

In truth, my mother wanted her children to see them selves much like the gardenia—lovely, strong, perfect, with an aura of magic and perhaps a bit of mystery.

My mother died when I was 22, only 10 days after I was married. That was the year the gardenias stopped coming.

Marsha Arons

Words from the Heart

T
he bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Most people need to hear those “three little words.” Once in a while, they hear them just in time.

I met Connie the day she was admitted to the hospice ward, where I worked as a volunteer. Her husband, Bill, stood nervously nearby as she was transferred from the gurney to the hospital bed. Although Connie was in the final stages of her fight against cancer, she was alert and cheerful. We got her settled in. I finished marking her name on all the hospital supplies she would be using, then asked if she needed anything.

“Oh yes,” she said, “would you please show me how to use the TV? I enjoy the soaps so much and I don’t want to get behind on what’s happening.” Connie was a romantic. She loved soap operas, romance novels and movies with a good love story. As we became acquainted, she confided how frustrating it was to be married 32 years to a man who often called her “a silly woman.”

“Oh, I know Bill loves me,” she said, “but he has never been one to say he loves me, or send cards to me.” She sighed and looked out the window at the trees in the courtyard. “I’d give anything if he’d say ‘I love you,’ but it’s just not in his nature.”

Bill visited Connie every day. In the beginning, he sat next to the bed while she watched the soaps. Later, when she began sleeping more, he paced up and down the hall way outside her room. Soon, when she no longer watched television and had fewer waking moments, I began spending more of my volunteer time with Bill.

He talked about having worked as a carpenter and how he liked to go fishing. He and Connie had no children, but they’d been enjoying retirement by traveling, until Connie got sick. Bill could not express his feelings about the fact that his wife was dying.

One day, over coffee in the cafeteria, I got him on the subject of women and how we need romance in our lives; how we love to get sentimental cards and love letters.

“Do you tell Connie you love her?” I asked (knowing his answer), and he looked at me as if I was crazy.

“I don’t have to,” he said. “She
knows
I do!”

“I’m sure she knows,” I said, reaching over and touching his hands—rough, carpenter’s hands that were gripping the cup as if it were the only thing he had to hang onto—”but she needs to
hear
it, Bill. She needs to hear what she has meant to you all these years. Please think about it.”

We walked back to Connie’s room. Bill disappeared inside, and I left to visit another patient. Later, I saw Bill sitting by the bed. He was holding Connie’s hand as she slept. The date was February 12.

Two days later I walked down the hospice ward at noon. There stood Bill, leaning up against the wall in the hallway, staring at the floor. I already knew from the head nurse that Connie had died at 11 A.M.

When Bill saw me, he allowed himself to come into my arms for a long hug. His face was wet with tears and he was trembling. Finally, he leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath.

“I have to say something,” he said. “I have to say how good I feel about telling her.” He stopped to blow his nose. “I thought a lot about what you said, and this morning I told her how much I loved her...and loved being married to her. You shoulda seen her smile!”

I went into the room to say my own good-bye to Connie. There, on the bedside table, was a large Valentine card from Bill. You know, the sentimental kind that says, “To my wonderful wife...I love you.”

Bobbie Lippman

Mama’s Soup Pot

There are too many treasures in life we take for granted, the worth of which we don’t fully realize until they’re pointed out to us in some unexpected way. So it was with Mama’s soup pot.

I can still see it sitting on the stove in all its chipped white-and-blue-enameled glory, its contents bubbling, steam rising as if from an active volcano. When I entered the back porch, the aroma was not only mouthwatering but reassuring. Whether Mama was standing over the pot stirring with a long wooden spoon or not, I knew I was home.

There was no recipe for her minestrone soup. It was always a work in progress. It had been so since her girlhood in the Piemonte mountains of northern Italy, where she learned its secret from her nonna (grandma), who had inherited it from generations of nonnas.

For our large immigrant family, Mama’s soup guaran teed we would never go hungry. It was a simmering symbol of security. Its recipe was created spontaneously from what was in the kitchen. And we could judge the state of our family economy by its contents. A thick brew with tomatoes, pasta, beans, carrots, celery, onion, corn and meat indicated things were going well with the Buscaglias. A watery soup denoted meager times. And never was food thrown out. That was a sin against God. Everything ended up in the minestrone pot.

Its preparation was sacred to Mama. To her, cooking was a celebration of God’s providence. Each potato, each shred of chicken was placed in the pot with grateful thanks. I think of Mama whenever I read Proverbs: “She gets up while it is still dark; she provides food for her family. . . Her children arise, and call her blessed.”

At one time, however, Mama’s soup pot became a source of embarrassment to me, for I feared it would cost me a new friend I had made at school. Sol was a thin, dark-haired boy, and an unusual pal for me because his father was a doctor and they lived in the best part of town. Often Sol invited me to his home for dinner. The family had a cook in a white uniform who worked in a kitchen of gleaming chrome and shining utensils. The food was good, but I found it bland, lacking the heartiness of my home fare served from flame-blackened pots. Moreover, the atmosphere matched the food. Everything was so formal. Sol’s mother and father were polite, but conversation around the table was stilted and subdued. And no one hugged! The closest I saw Sol get to his father was a handshake.

In our family, warm hugs were a constant—men, women, boys and girls—and if you didn’t kiss your mother, she demanded: “Whatsa matter, you sick?”