STORIES:

Marcus’s Marks - By Keith H. Miller

Love and Water - By Emily Sue Harvey

Couch Potato - By Angel Callahan

The Perfect Gift - By Emily Sue Harvey

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Marcus’s Marks
By Keith H. Miller

I should be used to these lonely times, I thought, breathing Charleston’s balmy sea air. Here I sit in my own company, embraced by the best comforts of the natural world, yet a longing, unnamed, stirred restlessly in the wailing silence.

Bobbi, my wife, should be with me. My love of music had brought me out to the lush gardens of Charleston’s Middleton Place, where I regularly played classical guitar at dinnertime, but it was the care of our autistic son, Marcus, that kept my Bobbi from me that evening. I fought down a niggle of resentment and focused on the moment’s serenity.

I could feel the moment and it was beautiful. Gray moss, weaving and tangled, swayed lightly in the warm, spring breeze. Overhead, an old oak twisted long solemn arms out towards the banks of the Ashley. The smell of fresh grass, wintered mold, and humus vied against salt-tainted air as sunlight intermittently gave way to high clouds, white and towering. Quiet and alone I sat, my soul meditating while my body sensually experienced southern majesty.

Soon, others would arrive—couples scattering over the meadow leading up to the old plantation––families, friends and lovers lounging on their pallets. An orchestra would entertain during the sharing of wine, food and fellowship. A grand evening for all. Again, I grappled with irony, then, as before, turned from it.Restless for purpose I stood and cast my gaze towards the river.

A heron waded gracefully among the reeds. It, too, is alone…a creature of beauty rarely beheld or truly appreciated as it deserved.

 These lonely moments were all too familiar to me. Friendship eluded our family in the light of Marcus’s obvious disorder. Would-be friends shunned the awkwardness of trying to ignore our son’s shocking symptoms. They found speaking kindly of us easier than speaking kindly with us. Family outings became rare as Marcus’s unpredictable and alarming outbursts grew commonplace. The time for making memories together gave way to frequent isolation and despair.

It had not always been so.

As a small child, Marcus was beautiful, his face flawless with large, sky-blue eyes and blonde hair that captured sunlight, giving him an angelic aura. Despite his appearance, we knew he was different. By his first birthday, while other parents shared little milestone stories, Bobbi and I would glance at each other knowingly. No words, no loving gazes or smiles. Marcus simply moved in his own world.

We took it all in stride then. Sure, he was different, but life went on.

In the summer of 1994, that all began to change. Military orders arrived for me to report to a small West Texas base. This would be our first major move in Marcus’s five years and change was his worst nightmare.

This child, once our little angel, now raged, ripped doors from their hinges and damaged walls in baffling fits of tantrum. His fierceness and strength astonished us.

Once, during an episode, I became so frustrated that I yelled at him and, in a misguided attempt at discipline, forced him into the shower and shampooed his hair. Because of his fear of this, we were always gentle with him, but not this time.

I felt like the lowest of vermin. Rather than giving him comfort and love, I’d betrayed him with further torment. I took his stiff, unresponsive little body in my arms and prayed fervently, Oh God, please help me learn to be the father he needs.

For a time it seemed that we might prevail, that somehow we would magically have our normal, simple, beautiful life. We joined a church that appeared to understand. Soon, we had friends over for dinner and game night from time to time. A real social life was like a huge slice of Heaven.

Truth was, we were ignoring our son’s sleepless nights and declining health, thinking perhaps that by doing so, it would go away. Marcus would sit on his horse and rock himself in his room for hours and merely nap for 20 minutes at a time if that. By eight years old he was gaunt, restless and troubled. Eventually, he became too much for the church’s childcare workers to handle.

When they asked us not to bring him to church anymore, we were devastated. We stopped attending, hoping that our absence might prompt someone to reach out to us. It never happened. Our leave-taking simply made it easier for them. It hurt.

With medication, Marcus regained his health. His bones slowly fleshed out and he slept through the night. But the Autism disorder intensified. Hygiene became a paramount struggle while the unspoken strain of a non-reciprocal relationship with him cast us into more of a custodial role than a loving, parental role.

Such incidents sowed anew the seeds of quiet resentment. I grew to resent the isolation, my failure to remain noble through it all, and privately, in my own heart, I resented Marcus for his own inability to show love.

My dreams for him now lay in smoldering ashes. I only hoped that someday, somehow I’d have my life back. As time went on, I became much less apt to discuss him or his disorder with my wife or anyone else. I was weary of the subject and hopeless that anything would ever change.

Then, like a sudden thunderbolt, a matter of life and death forced me to reassess my own feelings, priorities and faith.

One spring afternoon, alone with Marcus, I noticed an eerie silence as I sat at my computer console. Surely he’s into something. I ventured down the hall, half expecting to see him in his room with breakfast cereal scattered all over the floor. Instead, he lay soundly sleeping—breathing heavily under a tightly wrapped blanket. I thought little of it and was returning to my computer when I saw it.

My blood coursed cold with impending doom.

The empty medicine bottle on the counter, just that morning, was filled with 30 adult-strength tablets of powerful prescription allergy medication. Just one of these tablets is strong enough to make a grown man drowsy. I shuddered as I thought of his peril. I dashed down the hall to see if my fears were valid. He barely roused as I probed his mouth. Sure enough, crushed, blue powder coated his teeth. Bobbi had gone to the supermarket. This can’t be happening…no car!

Near panic, I arranged for a neighbor to take us the ten miles to the emergency room. As I enlightened them, the ER staff tried in vain to mask the gravity of the situation. When vomit-inducing activated charcoal failed to yield measurable results, Marcus was hooked to IV support with intensive monitoring. Though lethargic, he was surprisingly strong as he fought against his bindings. Bobbi arrived, distraught. I could hardly bring myself to communicate the full scope of his prognosis.

Marcus lay there exhausted from his struggle. I gazed at his beautiful face and despaired. I had considered this precious boy a burden. God forgive me! I was swamped withguilt.

I closed my eyes against tears and stood there long moments, swooped back in time to when he was small, bombarded by visions of the little marks—smudges and scratches his tiny fingers made all over the house, touching, touching, feeling myriad textures and surfaces. I called them Marcus’s marks. How precious they were then. God had shown me their beauty.

Is it too late? I took Marcus’s limp hand in mine and squeezed.

Lord, help me. Please help me. Immediately, I recalled the story of a father long ago who approached Jesus and asked Him to heal his son, who had such violent seizures he would throw himself into the fire. That father was defeated. Just like me. And like me, the father, no doubt, had known years of pain and disappointment over his son’s illness. Like mine, his faith was jaded. When Jesus confronted his doubt, the humbled father then asked Jesus to help him believe. I felt a kindred spirit with this father from so long ago. I not only needed Jesus to help Marcus, I also needed Him to help me.

Several hours passed remarkably without incident, so I returned home briefly for coffee and a change of clothes before assuming my all-night bedside vigil. With heavy heart I emptied the day old coffee into the sink. Then that I noticed something strange—something wonderfully odd. My breath caught with aching anticipation.

There in the trap, clumped together, lay a curious, but definable blue mass. A rush of emotion swept over me like warm rain against cold glass. I wept and laughed aloud as I counted the soggy pills 27, 28…29. I can only assume that after tasting the bitterness of one pill, the little fellow tossed the rest toward the drain apparently deciding that nothing that awful should be ingested by anyone. The joy I felt quickly grew into an indescribable gratitude––gratitude for finally understanding what I was given and by grace allowed to keep.

God doesn’t always answer prayers in a way that we would fashion. As it turns out, it wasn’t Marcus who needed saving that day. It was his father, who couldn’t divine a burden from a blessing. On the verge of losing Marcus, I found him, and found me. Beauty is as God makes it. None of us is meant to live according to our own will, and I’ve been blessed with a most wonderful teacher and son. I was made to be so much more, just as Marcus already is so much more than I ever realized.

God is answering my prayer. He is using my son to teach me that a life made up of my own designs will yield nothing but an inexplicable longing––an isolation far greater than I knew on the quiet banks of the Ashley. I look at Marcus, and I am changed. His hair is now a little less blonde and a little more disheveled, and his eyes are ever blue and distant, but now I can better see him the way my Heavenly Father sees me. He is a creature of rare beauty who has given me a purpose I am only now, by the grace of God, beginning to understand.

Mama died just days before my eleventh birthday and my destiny careened dramatically from snuggly to loose-ended. Overnight, my childhood vanished. Within months, Dad met Dot at work and began seeing her regularly. A year later, they married.
So much. So quickly. Another woman moving into our house stirred anew my still-fresh memories of Mama. At the same time, uninitiated Dot inherited a brood of three children, ages five, eight, and eleven.

When alone, I listened to an old recording of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and I was convinced that Mama sang those words to me from the other side. Yet, in moments of grief, I wondered, how can she walk with me? After all, she was on the other side.

My child’s heart keened for a mother’s touch.

“Do you want the kids to call you ‘Mama’?” Dad asked Dot one day.

Something in me wanted her to say yes.
Dot looked troubled for long moments, and then said, “No. That wouldn’t be right.”

The no felt like a physical blow. Blood’s thicker’n water, came my Grandma’s favorite litany. I’d not, until that very moment, grasped its meaning. My stepmother’s answer seemed proof that blood was thicker, that I was merely Daddy’s “baggage.” Proof that, to her––despite the fact that she introduced me as “my daughter”––I was biologically not. I was of the water. So I distanced myself.

My sulky aloofness hid a deep, deep need for acceptance. Yet, no matter how churlish I became, Dot never hurt me with harsh words. Ours was, in those trying days, a quiet, bewildered quest for harmony. After all, we were stuck with each other. She had no more choice than I did.

I visited Mama’s grave every chance I got, to talk things over with her. I never carried flowers because fresh arrangements always nestled lovingly against the headstone, put there, no doubt, by Daddy.
Then, in my fourteenth year, I came in from school one day and saw him: my newborn baby brother, Michael. I hovered over the bassinet, gently stroking the velvety skin as tiny fingers grasped mine and drew them to the little mouth. I dissolved into pure, maternal mush. Dot, still in her hospital housecoat, stood beside me.

In that moment, our gazes locked in wonder. “Can I hold him?”

She lifted him and placed him in my arms.

In a heartbeat, that tiny bundle snapped us together.

 “Like your new coat?” Dot asked that Christmas as I pulled the beautiful pimento-red topper from the gift package and tried it over my new wool sweater and skirt.

In short months, Dot had become my best friend.

At Grandma’s house one Sunday, I overheard her tell my Aunt Annie Mary,“I told James I didn’t think it was right to force the kids call me ‘Mama.’ Irene will always be ‘Mama’ to them. That’s only right.”

So that’s why she’d said ‘no’.

Or was it? Blood’s thicker’n water. Was Grandma right? Was that always true in matters pertaining to familial loyalty? I shrugged uneasily, telling myself it didn’t matter anyway.

In coming years, Dot embraced my husband, Lee, as “son,” soothed me through three childbirths, and afterward spent full weeks with me, caring and seeing to my family’s needs. Intermittent with these events, she birthed three of her own, giving me two brothers and a sister. How special our children felt, growing up together, sharing unforgettable holidays like siblings.

In 1974, Lee and I lived two hundred miles away in Marion, South Carolina when a tragic accident claimed our eleven-year-old Angie. By nightfall, Dot was there, holding me. She was utterly heartbroken.

I moved bleakly through the funeral’s aftermath, secretly wanting to die. Every Friday evening, I dully watched Dot’s little VW pull into my driveway. “Daddy can’t come. He has to work,” she said. After leaving work, she drove four hours nonstop to be with me each weekend, a trek that continued for three long months.

During those visits, she walked with me to the cemetery, held my hand, and wept with me. If I didn’t feel like talking, she was quiet. If I talked, she listened. She wasso there that, when I despaired, she single-handedly shouldered my anguish. Soon, I waited at the door on Fridays. Slowly, life seeped into me again.

In 1992, Dad’s sudden auto accident death yanked the earth from beneath me and I lapsed into shock, inconsolable. My first reaction was I need Dot...my family.

Then, for the first time since adolescence, a cold, irrational fear blasted me with the force of TNT. Dad, my genetic link, was gone. I’d grown so secure with the Daddy and Dot alliance through the years that I’d simply taken family––solidarity––for granted. Now with Dad’s abrupt departure, the chasm he left loomed murky and frightening.

Had Dad, I wondered, been the glue? Did glue equate genetic, after all? Terrifying thoughts spiraled through my mind as Lee drove me to join relatives. Will I lose my family? The peril of that jolted me to the core.

Blood’s thicker’n water.

If Grandma felt that way, couldn’t Dot feel that way, too, just a little bit?

The small child inside my adult body wailed and howled forlornly. It was in this frame of mind that I entered Dot’s house after the accident.

Dot’s house. Not Daddy and Dot’s house anymore.

Will Daddy’s void change her? She loved me, yes, but suddenly, I felt keenly DNA-stripped, the stepchild of folklore. A sea of familiar faces filled the den. Yet, standing in the midst of them all, eyes streaming tears, I felt utterly alone.

 “Susie!” Dot’s voice rang out and through a blur. I watched her sail like a porpoise to me. “I’m so sorry about Daddy, honey,” she murmured, and gathered me into her arms.

Terror scattered like startled ravens.

What she said next took my breath. She looked me in the eye and said gently, “He’s with your mama now.”

I snuffled and gazed into her kind face. “He always put flowers on Mama’s grave––”

She looked puzzled, then smiled sadly. “No, honey, he didn’t put the flowers on her grave.”

 “Then who––”

She looked a mite uncomfortable for long moments. Then she leveled her gaze with mine. “I did.”
 “You?” I asked, astonished. “All those years?” She nodded, and then wrapped me in her arms again.
Truth smacked me broadside. Blood is part water. Grandma just didn’t get it.

With love blending them, you can’t tell one from the other.

 “Isn’t it time I started calling you ‘Mom’?” I asked Dot recently. She smiled and blushed. Then I thought I saw tears spring into her eyes.

 “Know what I think?” I said, putting my arms around her. “I think Mama’s looking down at us from Heaven, rejoicing that you’ve taken such good care of us, doing all the things she’d have done if she’d been here. I think she’s saying, ‘go ahead, Susie––call her ‘mom’.”

I hesitated, suddenly uncertain. “Is that okay?”

In a choked voice, she replied, “I would consider it an honor.”

Mama’s song to me was true: I do not walk alone.

Mom walks with me.

Couch Potato
By Angel Callahan

While being unemployed, I think I have found my purpose in life, my passion, my one true love (other than my refrigerator). Most of you would call it the Couch Potato Syndrome. Call it what you will. I call it the always-entertained, always-informed Lair of Angel.

I have all the things I love in my little haven. Digital TV, remote in one hand, laptop in the other. I am entertained and informed in my room. Why leave? Delivery food is the best but now and again, I do venture out to get the foods that best compliment my shows. Gummi Worms for “Meerkat Manor,” bananas for “Orangutan Island,” you get the picture.

My life is great. I’m always the first to know of a national tragedy. If the color goes from orange to red-orange, you can bet I’m the first to know. Two strokes of my laptop and I know if the alert was simply a hoax or to take shelter.

You know that most of the people who fall under this “couch potato” category sit on a couch with a remote control eating a bag of chips (this is my theory of where the “potato” in “couch potato” came from). But not me! I believe that I have taken this lifestyle to a new, more productive, creative level. Call me revolutionary, or a visionary of sorts, but I believe that if the couch potatoes of today follow my example, we could rid society of the stereotype they have fallen victim to. It would be a politically correct ethnic cleansing of sorts.

Now, the CP is notorious for sitting in their mom’s living room or basement. I believe we have to move this trend up a bit. Set higher goals. For example, I moved upstairs in my parents’ house. Believe it or not, this is an important strategy. As an adult living at home with his/her parents, the goal is to be disturbed as little as possible and the parents of adults are less likely to climb stairs. I think this has something to do with arthritis but I also heard rumors that they are deathly afraid of breaking hips. I have not looked into this further.

Once you have your secluded area, the goal is to have everything you need so you need to leave as little as possible. Just to give you a visual here of the type of space you’re going for, think hi-def bachelor pad/loft. More New York loft in size (I’m talking about your first apartment in New York with four roommates, not a Tribeca loft). Anything over 10’ x 12’ is good. Mine is actually 14’ x 18’ but I sleep in my area. Refer back to the principle of leaving as little as a possible.

Now if your bed is comfy enough, you can rid yourself of that couch scenario all together. My bed doubles as a sitting area in an Indian-Guru Style. You know those fluffy mattress toppers that make your bed soft as a cloud? I have three. One on top of the other. A minimum of ten down pillows is a must to convert your sleeping area to sitting. Ten pillows gives you unlimited arranging. Pile them behind you to sit straight up with one under your arm for an armrest. There’s another piling system that allows you to be half-up and half-down, another to prop up on one side on your elbow. As you can see, the variations are endless. I’m considering a coffee table book with pictures of all the different positions.

I chose a Queen-size bed due to space needed for my laptop and office necessities needed for…well, I don’t know really what for but there are scissors (mostly for opening food), pens, highlighters, sticky notes, stationery (doesn’t everybody e-mail?). You get the picture––my miniature office. I actually refer to my laptop as my “partner” mostly because he gets the other half of my bed along with the office supplies.

The absolute most important part of this room/area, as any ex-CP would argue, is the TV. It is imperative that the TV (HD, flat screen) can be seen from all parts of the bed/office area. Technology is important in my Lair. Without it what would it be? A room. So, along with the TV there must also be the DVD player, the VHS just in case, and the all important DVR.

All remotes reside on my side of the bed/office/working area. I keep a small table beside my bed. Some would call it a nightstand but I call it my drafting table. Now here’s where my situation with my partner is different from all the others. My partner gives me complete control of the remote control. Most partners fight over the remote but my partner’s cool about it. I don’t tell most people this but he could (he doesn’t) dial into the network from his server (he doesn’t) and over-ride my channel selection at anytime––but he doesn’t.

So see, these few changes have taken me from a slacker to an almost renter with a working partner and office space. I’m no longer a CP. And with a few small changes, you can be off the couch and into a sleek, modern, information highway cruising pad above your parents. Don’t let anyone call you a Couch Potato again. And who knows, the CP’s of today could be tomorrow’s Silicon Valley. Bill Gates was probably living with his mom when he created Microsoft.

The Perfect Gift
By Emily Sue Harvey

I looked at my desk calendar and groaned. I'd missed the deadline to ship promised fresh South Carolina peaches to two of my northern friends. The late fruit slices I now sampled were hard and nearly tasteless. Illness had prevented me from carrying through during peak peach season and I felt terrible.

I've always felt that a promise is a promise. I would have to send something else to compensate. That's just me.

An idea struck as I sat at my computer. On my desk sat a lovely framed cross-stitch sampler inscribed, Through the storm…You do not walk alone. On the sampler, beautiful yellow blossoms, strung with lush greenery, meandered about a simple cross. Overhead, two doves soared. The scene's peacefulness reached deep inside me.

Perfect.

Bennie, a friend whose ministry is this needlepoint artwork, had presented one to me. President Bush's framed replica sits in the Oval Office. Tiger Woods and his mother both have one, along with many others who are equally blessed.

For me, its impact was profound. I immediately felt this would fit my friend Peter's situation, since he'd recently weathered a difficult divorce. Even the most brave-hearted need encouragement at such times.

But what about Lou? Other than the recent exodus of his precious college-bound daughter, he seemed okay with life. A little lonely perhaps, missing her. But would such a message fit? Heck, I didn't want to send a gift that would come across as maudlin or melodramatic. 

Send the sampler urged a voice deep inside me. I pushed it aside.

For a couple of days, I struggled with the decision. Maybe I should send Lou something safer, more generic. Yet something kept nudging me to just send it. It was so persistent that I resolutely packaged both framed samplers, mailed them, and got on with life.

Three days passed and I sat down to check my e-mail. One was from Lou. “Thank you” said the subject box. He'd received the gift. Uncertainty gripped me as I hastened to read further.

“Dear Emily Sue…Your sampler arrived today and it could not have come at a more appropriate time. My elderly mother died last night and receiving this package was like a little message from God saying that everything will be okay. I appreciate it deeply. Best, Lou.”

Peace, like warm honey, flowed through me.

And I knew.

Walking in obedience––even when it seems wrong––is always right.