More Than Words: Stories of Hope (8 page)

Dear Reader,

One of the greatest pleasures of my life was doing this story for Harlequin, especially in the company of other such gifted authors. My contribution, “The Greatest Gift,” tells the story of Sue Cobley, a big-hearted, generous, compassionate woman who put her own troubles aside to do something for people she considered in worse straits than she was herself. It lifts the heart to see how one person can make such a huge difference in the world, just by putting other people first.

In our busy and hectic lives, sometimes we fail to think about people who need help. It is more than an obligation to help people in need, it is one of the greatest joys in life. Sue Cobley inspired me to get more involved with programs that do good in our communities. I hope that her story will inspire you, too. You don’t have to be a millionaire to change the world. You just have to have the desire. Thanks, Sue Cobley, for the wonderful things you have done for others. And the example you have set for us all.

F
ew would deny that Deb Fruend is busy. When she’s not putting in eight-hour days as an adaptive physical education instructor for the Special School District of St. Louis County, she’s spending evenings on the basketball court, soccer field and even the bowling alley running TASK—Team Activities for Special Kids.

But ask Deb what drives her to burn the midnight oil and she barely misses a beat.

“The kids,” she says simply. “It’s the look in kids’ eyes when they accomplish something they haven’t been able to do before. It’s the look in their eyes when they know someone believes in them.”

Yet when Deb first launched TASK back in 1996, she was also thinking of the parents. Sitting in on education meetings with parents of special needs kids, she kept hearing the same refrain.

“My child doesn’t have anywhere to play a sport,” the clearly frustrated parents would say.

Finally Deb decided to do something about it. She formed an instructional T-ball league specifically for special needs kids who were itching to be athletes like their brothers, sisters and friends.

“When we started we had one little sport. It was just a bunch of kids on a church field. We’ve come a long way,” she says.

That’s no exaggeration. Today TASK offers twelve sports to special needs kids in the St. Louis area—basketball, bowling, coach-pitch softball, dance, floor hockey, golf, soccer, softball, swimming, T-ball, tennis and volleyball. More than 200 volunteers, from teachers to physical therapists and speech and language pathologists, work with over 800 kids to help them with anything from how to do the butterfly stroke to learning how to play as a team. Each sport focuses on learning and practicing athletic and interpersonal skills, with an emphasis on teamwork and good sportsmanship.

Sports are often tailored to match the abilities of players. For instance, in modified softball, batters are allowed five strikes instead of three. Swimming classes include one called “terrified of water” for children who have an extreme reaction to water and do not like to swim.

The kids’ needs run the gamut from visual impairment to learning disabilities, mental disabilities, Down syndrome, behavioral concerns and autism. No child is ever turned away.
With such a wide range of abilities, not to mention ages, it’s no wonder Deb has her work cut out for her, matching the right kids with each team. But, says Deb, playing a sport is more about developing self-worth and accepting others than it is about playing to win.

“I wanted to create a league atmosphere so the kids could feel good about themselves. I wanted them to say, ‘My sister has a game this weekend. Well, I’ve got a game this Saturday, too,’” she says.

Building esteem

TASK is about helping kids feel they belong. Before Deb’s work with the organization, parents often complained that their children were struggling out on the field or on the court. Other parents were yelling at the child because he didn’t seem to be listening to the coach. The other kids yelled at him because he wasn’t running fast enough.

TASK has a motto: we build self-esteem, self-esteem builds confidence, confidence builds skill.

And that is exactly what seems to happen, says Deb, a firm believer in the benefits gained from team activities, including the development of self-esteem, physical coordination, cooperation skills and other critical life skills.

“If the kids feel good about themselves they’re going to try
harder. If they try harder they’re going to do better,” she maintains.

Kids who are part of TASK also build esteem by developing relationship skills. Many become close friends away from the league, sometimes driving an hour to visit each other at home or watch a movie together. These children probably never would have met if it had not been for TASK.

To help these relationships grow, TASK has branched out to create a Kids’ Club and Social Club so the children can find new buddies and socialize. Then there’s also TASK Summer Camp, a week-long program offered to kids with special physical and mental concerns. The campers enjoy what other camp kids have always taken for granted: assembling crafts, taking a dip, bike riding and making new friends.

“It’s amazing to me how excited a child can get whenever they’ve accomplished something and they feel they are part of a team. What does belonging mean to a special needs child?” Deb asks. “Everything. Absolutely everything.”

The parents also become good friends while watching their kids score goals or learn to bowl.

Off the field

While TASK athletes certainly learn skills that come in handy while dribbling a ball or passing the puck to a teammate, Deb
says many of the more important skills are transferred to everyday life.

One of her favorite stories revolves around a boy who is adamant that he call her “Miss Fruend” while in school and “Deb” during TASK events. One afternoon he ran up to her in the school’s hallway. He was beaming.

“Miss Fruend! I just came in from recess and I scored three soccer goals,” he said.

“You did?” Deb asked.

“Yes, and I was picked fourth,” the boy answered. “Last year they didn’t pick me at all.”

Then her student turned, looked up at Deb and simply said, “Thanks.”

Deb says she’s lucky to be a teacher to some of her TASK kids. She can see the benefits of the program spilling out into recess, during phys-ed classes and even at home. Some parents claim that since joining TASK, their kids have become more responsible, doing their chores more often because they know they can accomplish a goal if they try. When kids believe in themselves, their confidence blooms, and Deb couldn’t be happier.

“That’s what we stand to do—help these kids be the best that they can be. They get knocked down a lot, but this is a way for them to shine. That’s what keeps me going,” says Deb.

Not surprisingly, it all comes back to the kids.

For more information visit www.tasksports.org or write to Team Activities for Special Kids, 11139 South Towne Square, Suite D, St. Louis, MO 63123.

H
ERE
C
OME THE
H
EROES

The hallmarks of
New York Times
and
USA TODAY
bestselling author Kasey Michaels’ writing are humor, romance and happy endings. She is the author of over 100 books and has received a trio of coveted starred reviews from
Publishers Weekly
. She is also a recipient of a RITA
^®
Award from Romance Writers of America, a Waldenbooks and BookRak Bestseller Award, and many awards from
RT Book Reviews
magazine, including a Career Achievement Award for her Regency-era historical romances. Kasey and her husband live in Pennsylvania. Each summer her entire family volunteers with the golf tournament her son founded to benefit the Gift of Life Donor Program of Philadelphia. Monies raised contribute to the costs of transporting the youngest members of Team Philadelphia to the annual Transplant Olympics.

T
he fourth house down from the corner and on the east side of Redbud Lane looked very much like the other houses in the small, rural Pennsylvania development, except that maybe the cars in the driveway were a few years older than those of the neighbors, and the trim around the windows could probably use a fresh coat of paint. Otherwise, there were no real outward signs that for the past several years life had been a financial struggle for the Finnegans.

Inside the three-bedroom ranch house, the television set might be older, the couches in the family room more broken than broken-in, the second mortgage a little larger, but the Finnegans didn’t care. They’d been in a battle—a rough one and a long one—and they’d come out winners. Charlie was still with them.

Unfortunately, tension was also in residence in the white brick house on Redbud Lane; it had moved in when Charlie got sick, seemed to like the place, and now was reluctant to leave.

“Charlie, please slow down,” Laura Finnegan said as her son shoved another forkful of roast beef into his mouth. The family was sitting around the kitchen table, the afternoon sun streaming in through the large window overlooking a fenced backyard that sported its own home plate and makeshift baseball diamond. “We’ve still got plenty of time.”

“Do I have to go, Mom? I don’t understand why I have to go.” Nine-year-old Sarah Finnegan, with her father’s sandy hair and his stubborn streak, too, had strong opinions on the subject of being dragged along to baseball practice every night for the past two weeks, none of them good. “I’ll bet I could stay at Brenda’s house. Her mom won’t mind. She almost never minds.”

“Oh, honey, I know. But not tonight.” Laura tried to pretend she wasn’t planning to use her own daughter as a buffer if things got too bad—Jake was always careful not to go ballistic around the kids. Then again, she also was less likely to let her emotions control her mouth and, yes, her tears, if she knew the kids were within earshot. After all, in the past couple of years she and Jake had both had a lot of practice in hiding their emotions, their fears, their anger when the terror had threatened to devour them.

To some, they’d survived their ordeal and should just be
grateful and move on. But the Finnegan family couldn’t do that. Nothing was the same now, and they had changed, too. They could only move on, carrying all the baggage that had been heaped on them, do their best to learn to live with that baggage. Memories. Fears. Uncertainty. And, yes, tension. Always, always that tension that hung around, refusing to leave, that feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Like tonight. Tonight wasn’t going to be pretty. Tonight both she and Jake knew what was coming, even if one didn’t want to admit it and the other didn’t want to have to watch it. When was enough enough? When did it become too much? And, damn it all anyway, why wouldn’t it just, please,
stop?

“Ah, come on, Mom.
Please?
”

“Sarah, honey, I said no. We’re all going to be there tonight to root Charlie on, right?”

“Can’t I root now, and stay home and play video games with Brenda?” Sarah pulled a face, looking very much like her father, which was usually a good thing for her. That look tended to wrap Laura around her little finger. But not tonight.

“We’re all going, Sarah. For moral support.” As she spoke, Laura looked across the dinner table at her husband, trying to signal him with her raised eyebrows:
This isn’t going to be good. You know it, I know it. Say something!

Jake didn’t seem to be getting the message or, if he had gotten it, was ignoring it. “You’ve got second base cold, Charlie,
don’t sweat it. If not first team, then second. I know the bat’s been a bit of a problem, but we’ll work on that.”

Laura shut her eyes. Why did she always have to be the bad guy? When did Dad and Mom turn into Good Cop, Bad Cop? “Charlie, you do realize that the coach is going to cut at least six players tonight, right? I want you to be prepared…just in case everything doesn’t go the way we hope.”
Life isn’t always fair, my sweet baby boy. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. The luck of the draw is just that and, oh yeah, Coach Billig is a card-carrying jerk
. She didn’t say any of that as she looked at her earnest fourteen-year-old son. But she thought it.

Charlie lived for baseball. He also lived because he’d had a kidney transplant six months ago. He was healthy now, after years of not being so healthy, but a kidney transplant wasn’t a magic bullet. It didn’t make everything all right again, turn back the clock so Charlie could start over and be on an equal footing with the world.

He was small because children without kidney function don’t grow, and Charlie had a lot of catching up to do. He was fourteen, but he looked ten. He’d begun to grow now, sure, but he was already fourteen, and he was running out of “growing time.” Soon Sarah would be taller than her older brother. He was smart, eager, and had more guts than almost anyone else on the planet…but he could not stand toe to toe,
physically, with other boys his age, especially other boys his age trying out for the local summer baseball team.

But that was the way the deal worked; teams were divided into age groups. Not ability groups. Not common-sense groups. Age groups. So what if two of the kids already topped six feet and her kid still hadn’t hit five feet? So what if Charlie could stand behind the wide-body catcher and disappear?

What had Coach Billig said the first time he saw Charlie? As if Laura would ever forget: “Second base, huh? Does the kid want to play second base, or
be
it?”

And then he’d laughed at his own joke. The bastard.

No, Laura wasn’t holding out much hope that Charlie would make the team.

But not Jake. Not the optimist. He thought it was great that Charlie walked nearly every time he was up at bat during practices because the pitchers couldn’t locate his small strike zone. He thought Billig would see the advantage there, put Charlie in when the bases were loaded and assure the team of a run. Jake would take any crumb, cling to any hope, so that his boy could be on the team. Good old Jake, always the cheerleader, the optimist who never saw the blow coming until he was flat on his back with another disappointment.

It was enough to make Laura hide out in the shower so nobody would hear her when she cried. Or cursed. Why could she watch, dry-eyed and resolute, as Charlie was put through
painful tests, then fall apart now, when he was healthy again, just because some thoughtless moron decided it would be fun to get a laugh at her son’s expense?

The world was upside down…she was upside down…

“Laura, are you going to finish that, or what?” Jake asked, and Laura realized she’d been holding a forkful of salad halfway between her plate and her mouth, probably for a full minute or more.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, putting down the fork, her appetite gone. “Just let me rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, and I’ll be ready to go. Sarah, finish your broccoli. What time is practice? Six?”

“I’ll take care of the dishes, hon.” Jake was already on his way to the sink with his plate, pausing only to rub Charlie’s mop of dark red curls. “And it’s five-thirty, Laura, not six, so we’ve really got to move.
Women
,” he added in that special husband voice men acquire the moment they say
I do
. “Right, Slugger?”

“Right, Dad,” Charlie said, shoveling one last bite of mashed potatoes into his mouth, then following his father to the sink. “I have to be early, maybe get in a little more batting practice before the last tryout. I think you’re right, Dad. If I just step up a little in the box, I can…”

Laura tuned them both out and left them to rinse the dishes as she ran upstairs to change her sneakers. Maybe, if she was extremely lucky, she’d trip on the stairs, sprain her ankle and not
have to go to the ball field at all. But that would be chickening out, and Charlie never chickened out, so neither could she.

In ten minutes they were in Jake’s car, heading for the Harley Memorial Playground, named after a young boy who had lost his battle with leukemia twenty years earlier, a young boy who had loved baseball.
You’d think people would take a hint and remember that,
Laura always thought when she sat on the grassy hill during practice, watching Charlie do his best to impress Coach Billig.

“I don’t need this, Mom,” Charlie complained once they arrived at the field. He was dancing in place as Laura strapped the homemade protector around his waist and let the Velcro secure it. Charlie’s new kidney was in the front of his body, not shielded by his skeletal structure, and a fastball to the gut could be real trouble. Laura tried to be upbeat, but there was a part of her that still wanted Charlie protected at all times…even if he did look as if he was hiding a pillow under his T-shirt.

“Humor me,” Laura said, as she always did, then resisted the urge to grab her son close, beg him to duck if he saw a ball coming his way.

Once Charlie had his bat and glove and was running down the grassy slope to the ball field, and Sarah had found a playmate to run up and down the hill with her, Laura turned on Jake. She’d planned to be tactful, but plans like that rarely
worked out. Not when they’d been left to simmer too long. “You have to stop building him up for a fall, Jake. Billig doesn’t want him. He wants to win. That’s all he cares about, winning. Not the kids. Not our kid.”

Jake smiled at her, that dumb, melting smile that still had the power to weaken her knees. “I pulled Billig aside and talked to him, Laura, after last night’s practice, after you and Sarah left for the mall. I explained to him about Charlie, why he’s shorter than the other kids, and maybe not quite as fast. But I told him what Charlie lacks in size, he makes up for in heart, in determination, and he’ll get better as the season moves on. Billig understood, he really did.”

“Oh, Jake.” Laura rolled her eyes. “I don’t know who’s going to be more disappointed tonight, Charlie, or you.”

Jake wasn’t smiling now. “Why do you always have to be such a damn pessimist, Laura?”

“I don’t know, Jake. Why do you always have to be such a damn optimist? Charlie’s different. He’s ours, we love him, but he can’t compete with other kids his age, not on the ball field. It’s just not possible.” She lowered her eyes for a moment, and then said what she didn’t want to say. “He could get hurt.”

“Ah! And now we have it, don’t we? Charlie could get hurt. Laura, we can’t wrap the kid in cotton wool. We didn’t work this hard to get him well and then only allow him to live half a life. It’s not fair, damn it!”

Quick tears stung behind Laura’s eyes, and she just as quickly blinked them away. “I wish it had never happened, too, Jake. I wish he were still our perfect little boy. But he’s not. He’s special. That doesn’t mean we can’t be proud of him.”

“I
am
proud of him, Laura. He’s my son. I couldn’t have done what he did, fight the way he fought. And I’m not going to let him down now, you understand? He’s going to play baseball, and if this is the only team in town,
this
is damn well where he’s going to play baseball.” He shoved his fists into his pants pockets. “I’m going to go get a soda. You want one?”

Laura shook her head and watched as Jake walked away, putting a little space between them, which was probably a good thing. It was all so hard for Jake, and always had been. His own son, and Jake couldn’t help him, couldn’t stop bad things from happening to him. Laura couldn’t either, but at least she was the one who’d stayed with Charlie at the hospital, had performed dialysis on him three times a week. Jake hadn’t had that hands-on involvement in his care, so he’d stepped into the role of cheerleader, always doing something to take Charlie’s mind off the pain, the problems, the fears.

And all the while screaming silently inside, angry with the world and God and himself, because he couldn’t do more to help his son. Jake just wanted them to be a normal family again. He wanted to forget the scary years, and she didn’t blame him. But if every family taking care of a chronically ill
or disabled child needed an optimist, it probably also needed a pessimist, someone who worried, someone who planned ahead, someone who kept them all grounded.

Or at least that’s what she’d read in one of those ridiculous self-help books that are so great in theory but not always so terrific in practice.

She’d read so many books, tried so many things, and couldn’t beat out of her head the worst thing she’d read…that the majority of parents who have a seriously ill or impaired child are divorced; the deck is stacked against them.

Laura and Jake had, she believed, pretty much avoided the more obvious pitfalls while Charlie was so sick. They’d been too busy fighting the problem, solving the problem. But now? Now that Charlie was okay? Now they had to learn to live with something that was so much better—so very much better—but was still not the life or the dreams they’d had before Charlie got sick.

And it wasn’t easy.

“I figured you really did want one,” Jake said, holding out a soda for her, and then bending to kiss her cheek. “Sorry, I was being a jerk.”

“I love you, too,” Laura said, going up on tiptoe to return his kiss. “And I will think positive on this. I promise.”

“No, you won’t,” Jake teased, ruffling her dark copper curls just as he’d done earlier to Charlie. “You worry better than anyone I know, and you’re really good at it. But just ease off
this one time, okay? Charlie’s going to get some bumps and bruises, but he’ll be fine. He’ll prove himself.”

“Does that mean I have your permission to close my eyes when he comes up to bat and Richie the Giant Killer tries to—what did you call it last night?—back him up with his curveball?” Laura asked, smiling.

“Permission granted…you wuss.” Jake hugged her close against his side. “Uh-oh, here comes Billig, and he’s carrying a piece of paper.” He dropped his arm to his side. “What the hell? He’s going to make the cuts
before
practice? How can he do that? He has to give Charlie another chance to—damn it!”