In a new year with meanness and cruelty on the news every day, there are counter forces at work. Here is my favorite Pay-It-Forward story so far for 2019. It involves my lovely friend Eva Zimmerman, who agreed to let me to share it. Eva and her husband, Noah Schreck, welcomed their first child, daughter Zahra, into the world last spring. But the exuberant joy they were having was interrupted by Noah’s diagnosis of colon cancer, requiring surgery in December.
On January 2, Eva posted this story (lightly edited here) on Facebook.
“Noah is home! He has a lot more healing and resting (and eating) to do to get back to his old self and Zahra is being super helpful by screaming and screeching at a newly-discovered ear piercing volume, constantly. We’ll readjust and recalibrate and make this work. We’re thankful to be together.
“We are so fortunate to have so much support. Meals waiting on the porch, welcome signs and ice cream delivered, childcare, and just the love and prayer that we’ve felt this entire time… Thank you, all.
“As I was leaving the hospital with all of Noah’s belongings, taking everything to the car to load it and go pick him up in the patient loading zone, I stood watching a beautiful young black couple comforting each other as they were waiting for the parking lot elevator. The elevator opened, she entered, he motioned for me to go ahead of him, he held the door open for me. As we stood there, heading to the same parking lot floor, he wished me a Happy New Year. I told him that it truly was a Happy New Year, that I was taking my husband home today after almost two weeks in the hospital.
“The woman said, ‘Our son will be here for the next two weeks.’ I told her I hoped he’d be home soon, healthy. She said, ‘Hoping for soon and cancer-free.’ I told her, ‘My husband is leaving today, cancer-free.’ She said, ‘This is why he’s here, they are doing surgery to remove his cancer.’ I told her that this is exactly why my husband has been here, they got it, they got the cancer, and he’s leaving today cancer-free. She and I held hands and I said, ‘I’m sending the blessing to you all now. It’s with you now.’ As we walked to our cars, she told her husband of the chills that went through her and simultaneously, they went through me.
Though incredibly hard, we’ve been protected through this, because of you all. I gave that protection and blessing back to another family just as we left. It was a moment I’ll never forget. I don’t know their name. But as I write this, I’m watching Noah sleep next to me, and I’m thinking of them, envisioning their son home safe, soon and cancer-free.”
Take that, meanness.
“Welcome to the family!” chirped my new Inbox message. It was filled with so many little hearts and emojis I initially felt I must have been adopted into some friendly group sharing my religious or philosophical leanings. Its presentation, which would have been entirely fitting for such an invitation, was overwhelming in its warm-fuzziness.
There are more watchband choices out there than lipstick shades. But I persevered. On about page 43 I found a band identical to the highway-robbery-priced one, clicked off my $12.99 and hit Send. That, apparently, granted me entrance into the family.
Facebook now knows. Every company related to watchbands now knows. You will be so bombarded with watchband-related ads in between posts from your real life Facebook friends you may find yourself saying, one day, “What the heck, maybe I should order that power cord; my power cord is frayed . . .” Resist that urge. Go to Walgreen’s and buy it; they already know everything about you from all those Club Card purchases anyway.
But we should at least have world peace.
I wrote about all this once long ago, on the late lamented news aggregate site True/Slant, and the vitriol that landed upon my page in response made me very glad that my T/S readers didn’t know where I lived. I mean, it was if the NRA had put out a worldwide hit on me. I’m now counting on the belief that most of my current readers are kinder and gentler – since you can sure find out where I live if you don’t already know. And I’m satisfied that most of my angry T/S readers long ago quit following this blog. We’ll see.
When I was a child of about 12 someone broke into our home – well, nobody locked their doors in Ashland, VA in 1945 so he probably just opened the door and walked in – and made his way to the second-floor bedroom of my oldest sister Jane, who let out a mighty scream. The intruder left multiple hand prints on the newly painted walls as he swiftly descended the stairs (and left by another door.) But by the time the Richmond police arrived they pronounced the fingerprints too dim to be of use, so our nocturnal visitor was never identified. My family (4 girls + parents) that night morphed from 6 people in five beds to 6 people in two beds – Jane in between my mother and father; the other three of us in one double bed. (It took us several weeks to expand back into our individual beds.) The next day, our father bought a gun. It went to reside on a shelf in the closet of our parents’ bedroom. We all knew where it was; once or twice my sister Mimi and I stood on a lower shelf and looked at it. But instead of making us feel safer and protected, the thing created more fear. Despite all his stories about working on somebody’s ranch in Texas as a boy, my sisters and I (and our mother, I regret to report) feared our father’s probable ineptitude with a gun more than we feared another intruder. We had belatedly also begun to lock the doors. All five of us – mother + 4 daughters – also feared the fearsome instrument on the closet shelf more than we feared anyone who might be confronted by it. Overruled by us all, my father soon (I think it took less than a couple of weeks) took the gun back to wherever it came from.
You need to swagger manfully around with a pistol on your hip? Fine. Swagger somewhere else – like, on a shooting range. Just stay out of my Starbucks. All I want is to drink my latte in gun-free peace.
A bout with breast cancer intervened to mess up my training, but I got back on track at least enough to finish the half, feeling absolutely confident I could’ve kept right on going. (Although probably not for another 11 or 12 miles.) And then. One day in Paris, having inched past 80 with no further temptations into distance running, the ominous stairs challenge sneaked up on me. I had only recently moved, at the time, out of a 4-story house in which I was constantly zipping from laundry (ground level) to studio (4th floor) with nary a care. Thinking it would be fun to trip up the circular staircase to the top of Notre Dame right before closing time, I got about 30 steps and decided to let the rest of the group go ahead. More slowly, I climbed another 20 or 30 steps before my little heart said, “I don’t think so.” This would’ve been less embarrassing were not the Notre Dame lookout designed as one way Up, straight across, and one way Down the other side. Luckily for me the concessionaires were just closing up shop and let me follow them down the Up staircase, which is why I did not have to spend the night locked inside the cold stone walls of Notre Dame.
I have, therefore, been happily anticipating a Business Class flight from San Francisco to Boston, and thence to Lisbon for an end-of-life conference where I recently presented a paper. (I try to drop that phrase wherever possible: “presenting a paper at a conference in Lisbon.” More on that extraordinary conference soon.)
Today emerged a pristine corner, utterly cabinet/clutter free.