Treasury of Joy & Inspiration (6 page)

Letter in the Wallet

By Arnold Fine

September 1985

from
The Jewish Press

I
t was
a freezing day, a few years ago, when I stumbled on a wallet in the street. There was no identification inside. Just three dollars and a crumpled letter that looked as if it had been carried around for years.

The only thing legible on the torn envelope was the return address. I opened the letter and saw that it had been written in 1924—almost 60 years ago. I read it carefully, hoping to find some clue to the identity of the wallet's owner.

It was a “Dear John” letter. The writer, in a delicate script, told the recipient, whose name was
­
Michael, that her mother forbade her to see him again. Nevertheless, she would always love him. It was signed, Hannah.

It was a beautiful letter. But there was no way, beyond the name Michael, to identify the owner. So I called information to see if the operator could help.

“Operator, this is an unusual request. I'm trying to find the owner of a wallet I found. Is there any way you could tell me the phone number for an address that was on a letter in the wallet?”

The operator gave me her supervisor, who said there was a phone listed at the address but that she could not give me that number. However, she would call and explain the situation. Then, if the party wanted to talk, she would connect me. I waited a minute, and she came back on the line. “I have a woman who will speak with you.”

I asked the woman if she knew a Hannah.

“Oh, of course! We bought this house from
­
Hannah's family.”

“Would you know where they could be located now?” I asked.

“Hannah had to place her mother in a nursing home years ago. Maybe the home could help you track down the daughter.”

The woman gave me the name of the nursing home. I called and found out that Hannah's mother had died. The woman I spoke with gave me an
­
address where she thought Hannah could be reached.

I phoned. The woman who answered explained that Hannah herself was now living in a nursing home. She gave me the number. I called and was told, “Yes, Hannah is with us.”

I asked if I could stop by to see her. It was almost 10:00 p.m. The director said that Hannah might be asleep. “But if you want to take a chance, maybe she's in the dayroom watching television.”

The director and a guard greeted me at the door of the nursing home. We went up to the third floor and saw the nurse, who told us that Hannah was indeed watching TV.

We entered the dayroom. Hannah was a sweet, silver-
­
haired old-timer with a warm smile and friendly eyes. I told her about the wallet and showed her the letter. The second she saw it, she took a deep breath. “Young man,” she said, “this letter was the last contact I had with Michael.” She looked away, then said pensively, “I loved him very much. But I was only 16, and my mother felt I was too young. He was so handsome. You know, like Sean Connery, the actor.”

We both laughed. The director then left us alone. “Yes, Michael Goldstein was his name. If you find him, tell him I still think of him often. I never did marry,” she said, smiling through tears that welled up in her eyes. “I guess no one ever matched up to Michael. . . .”

I thanked Hannah, said good-bye, and took the elevator to the first floor. As I stood at the door, the guard asked, “Was she able to help you?”

I told him she had given me a lead. “At least I have a last name. But I probably won't pursue it further for a while.” I explained that I had spent almost the whole day trying to find the wallet's owner.

While we talked, I pulled out the brown-leather case with its red-lanyard lacing and showed it to the guard. He looked at it and said, “Hey, I'd know that anywhere. That's Mr. Goldstein's. He's always
losing it. I found it in the hall at least three times.”

“Who's Mr. Goldstein?” I asked.

“He's one of the old-timers on the eighth floor. That's Mike Goldstein's wallet, for sure. He goes out for a walk quite often.”

I thanked the guard and ran back to the director's office to tell him what the guard had said. He accompanied me to the eighth floor. I prayed that Mr. Goldstein would be up.

“I think he's still in the dayroom,” the nurse said. “He likes to read at night. . . . A darling man.”

We went to the only room that had lights on, and there was a man reading a book. The director asked him if he had lost his wallet.

Michael Goldstein looked up, felt his back pocket, and then said, “Goodness, it
is
missing.”

“This kind gentleman found a wallet. Could it be yours?”

The second he saw it, he smiled with relief. “Yes,” he said, “that's it. Must have dropped it this afternoon. I want to give you a reward.”

“Oh, no thank you,” I said. “But I have to tell you something. I read the letter in the hope of finding out who owned the wallet.”

The smile on his face disappeared. “You read that letter?”

“Not only did I read it, I think I know where
­
Hannah is.”

He grew pale. “Hannah? You know where she is? How is she? Is she still as pretty as she was?”

I hesitated.

“Please tell me!” Michael urged.

“She's fine, and just as pretty as when you knew her.”

“Could you tell me where she is? I want to call her tomorrow.” He grabbed my hand and said, “You know something? When that letter came, my life ended. I never married. I guess I've always loved her.”

“Michael,” I said. “Come with me.”

The three of us took the elevator to the third floor. We walked toward the dayroom where Hannah was sitting, still watching TV. The director went over to her.

“Hannah,” he said softly. “Do you know this man?” Michael and I stood waiting in the doorway.

She adjusted her glasses, looked for a moment, but didn't say a word.

“Hannah, it's Michael. Michael Goldstein. Do you remember?”

“Michael? Michael? It's you!”

He walked slowly to her side. She stood, and they embraced. The two of them sat on a couch, held hands and started to talk. The director and I walked out, both of us crying.

“See how the good Lord works,” I said philosophically. “If it's meant to be, it will be.”

Three weeks later, I got a call from the director, who asked, “Can you break away on Sunday to attend a wedding?”

He didn't wait for an answer. “Yup, Michael and Hannah are going to tie the knot!”

It was a lovely wedding, with all the people at the nursing home joining in the celebration.
­
Hannah wore a beige dress and looked beautiful. Michael wore a dark-blue suit and stood tall. The home gave them their own room, and if you ever wanted to see a 76-year-old bride and a 78-year-old groom acting like two teenagers, you had to see this couple.

A perfect ending for a love affair that had lasted nearly 60 years.

Christopher Reeve's Decision

By Christopher Reeve

July 1998

condensed From
Still Me

O
n memorial
Day weekend, 1995, my world changed forever. I was competing in an equestrian event in Virginia when my horse, Buck, decided to put on the brakes just before the third jump.

When he stopped suddenly, momentum carried me over the top of his head. My hands got entangled in the bridle, and I couldn't get an arm free to break my fall. All six-feet-four-inches and 215 pounds of me landed headfirst. Within seconds I was paralyzed from the neck down and fighting for air like a drowning person.

I woke up five days later in the intensive-care unit at the University of Virginia hospital. Dr. John Jane, head of neurosurgery at the hospital, said I had broken the top two cervical vertebrae and that I was extremely lucky to have survived. He told my wife, Dana, and me that I might never be able to breathe on my own again. But my head was intact, and my brain stem—so close to the site of the injury—appeared unharmed.

Dr. Jane said my skull would have to be reconnected to my spinal column. He wasn't sure if the operation would be successful, or even if I could survive.

Suddenly it dawned on me that I was going to be a huge burden to everybody, that I had ruined my life and everybody else's.
Why not die,
I thought miserably,
and save everyone a lot of trouble?

As family and friends visited, my spirits were on a roller-coaster ride. I would feel so grateful when someone came a long way to cheer me up. But the time would come when everybody had to leave, and I'd lie there and stare at the wall, stare at the future, stare in disbelief.

When I would finally fall asleep, I'd be whole again, making love to Dana, riding or acting in a play. Then I'd wake up and realize that I could no longer do any of that; I was just taking up space.

One day Dana came into the room and stood beside me. I could not talk because of the ventilator. But as we made eye contact, I mouthed the words, “Maybe we should let me go.”

Dana started crying. “I am only going to say this once,” she said. “I will support whatever you want to do because this is your life and your decision. But I want you to know that I'll be with you for the long haul, no matter what.”

Then she added the words that saved my life: “You're still you. And I love you.”

I can't drift away from this,
I began to realize.
I don't want to leave.

A crisis
like my accident doesn't change a marriage; it brings out what is truly there. It intensifies but does not transform it. Dana rescued me when I was lying in Virginia with a broken body, but that was really the second time. The first time was the night we met.

It was June 1987, and a long-term relationship of mine had ended. I was determined to be alone and focus on my work. Since childhood I had developed the belief that a few isolated moments of happiness were the best you could hope for in relationships. I didn't want to risk too much because I was certain that disappointment would follow.

Then one night I went to a cabaret with friends, and Dana Morosini stepped onstage. She wore an off-the-shoulder dress and sang “The Music That Makes Me Dance.” I went down hook, line and sinker.

Afterward I went backstage and introduced myself. At the time, I was an established film actor. You wouldn't think I'd have a problem with a simple conversation with a woman. But when I offered her a ride to the party we were all going to, she said, “No thanks, I have my own car.” All I could say was “Oh.” I dragged myself out to my old pickup truck, trying to plan my next move.

Later I tried again. We talked for a solid hour. I have no idea what we talked about. Everything seemed to evaporate around us. I thought to myself,
I don't want to make a mistake and ruin this.

We started dating in a very old-fashioned way. I got to know Dana's parents, and we developed an easy rapport. And Dana was instantly comfortable with my two children, Matthew and Alexandra. It filled me with joy.

Dana and I were married in April 1992. Three years later came my accident and Dana's words in the hospital room: “You're still you.”

I mouthed, “This goes way beyond the marriage vows—‘in sickness and in health.' ” She said, “I know.” I knew then and there that she was going to be with me forever. We had become a family.

As the
operation drew closer, I became more frightened, knowing I had only a 50-50 chance of surviving. I lay frozen much of the time, thinking dark thoughts.

My biggest fear had to do with breathing. I couldn't take a single breath on my own, and the ventilator connections didn't always hold. I would lie there at three in the morning in fear of a pop-off, when the hose just comes off the ventilator. After you've missed two breaths, an alarm sounds. You hope someone will come quickly. The feeling of helplessness was hard to take.

One very bleak day the door to my room flew open and in hurried a squat fellow in a surgical gown and glasses, speaking with a Russian accent. He said he was my proctologist and had to examine me immediately.

My first thought was that they must be giving me way too many drugs. But it was my old friend, comedian Robin Williams. For the first time since the accident, I laughed.

My three-year-old, Will, also gave me hope. One day he was on the floor playing when he suddenly looked up and said, “Mommy, Daddy can't move his arms anymore.”

“That's right,” Dana said. “Daddy can't move his arms.”

“And Daddy can't run around anymore,” Will continued.

“That's right; he can't.”

Then he paused, screwed up his face in concentration and burst out happily, “But he can still smile.”

On June 5 I had my operation. It was a success. My doctor predicted that with time I ought to be able to get off the respirator and breathe on my own.

Three weeks later I moved to the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, New Jersey. The worst days there were when Bill Carroll, the respiratory therapist, would test my vital capacity, a measure of how much air I could move on my own. I was failing miserably. To even consider weaning yourself off the ventilator, you need a vital capacity of about 750 c.c.'s, but I could hardly move the needle above zero.

At about this time I had to decide if I would attend the annual fund-raising dinner of the Creative Coalition, an organization of people in the arts. The dinner was scheduled for October 16 at the Pierre Hotel in New York City. I felt obligated to go, especially because Robin Williams was to be honored for his charitable work.

Still, I worried about making the trip into Manhattan. It would be the first time I would be in public since my accident in May. Would my muscles go into a spasm as they often did? Would I have a pop-off?

Dana and I talked it over and decided that the psychological advantages of going outweighed the physical risks. We dusted off my tuxedo, and on the afternoon
of the 16th, I braced myself for the unknown.

For nearly five months I'd been cruising in a wheelchair at three miles an hour. Now I was strapped in the back of a van driving into the city at 55 miles an hour. As we hit bumps and potholes, my neck froze with tension, and my body was racked with spasms. Once at the hotel, I was quickly transferred to a suite with a hospital bed to rest. The whole experience was more intense than I had anticipated.

At last it was time for me to present Robin with his award. For a split second I wished a genie could make me disappear. As I was pushed onto the stage, though, I looked out to see 700 people on their feet, cheering. The ovation went on for more than five minutes.

From that moment on, the evening was transformed into a celebration of friendship. Later, as we bounced through the Lincoln Tunnel back to New Jersey, I was so excited I hardly noticed the rough ride. Back at Kessler, Dana produced a bottle of chardonnay, and we toasted a milestone in my new life. I'd made it!

I made
up my mind—I wanted to breathe on my own again.

On November 2 Bill Carroll, two doctors and a physical therapist brought in the breathing equipment, took me off the ventilator and asked me to take ten breaths.

Lying on my back, I was gasping, my eyes rolling up in my head. With each attempt I was only able to draw in an average of 50 c.c.'s. But at least I had moved the dial.

The next day I told myself over and over that I was going home soon, and imagined my chest as a huge bellows that I could open and close at will. I took the ten breaths, and my average was 450 c.c.'s.
Now we're getting somewhere,
I thought.

The following day my average was 560 c.c.'s. A cheer broke out. “I've never seen progress like that,” Carroll said. “You're going to get off this thing.”

After that I practiced every day. I went from seven minutes off the ventilator to 12 minutes to 15. Just before I left Kessler, I gave it everything I had and breathed for 30 minutes on my own.

I'm happy
that I decided to keep living, and so are those who are close to me. On Thanksgiving, 1995, I went home to spend the day with my family for the first time since the accident. When I saw our home again, I wept as Dana held me. At the dinner table each of us spoke a few words about what we were thankful for.

Will said simply, “Dad.”

Life in These United States

When our
last child moved out, my wife encouraged me to join Big Brothers. I was matched with a 13-year-old named Alex. Our first outing was to the library, where we ran into his friend.

“Who's he?” the friend asked Alex, pointing to me.

“My Big Brother, Randall.”

The boy looked at me, then back at Alex. “Dude, how old is your mother?”
Randall Martin

“Information Please”

By Paul Villiard

June 1966

W
hen I
was quite young my family had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I remember well the polished oak case fastened to the wall on the lower stair landing. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box. I even remember the number—105. I was too little to reach the telephone, but used to listen with fascination when my mother talked to it. Once she lifted me up to speak to my father, who was away on business. Magic!

Then I discovered that somewhere inside that wonderful device lived an amazing person—her name was “Information Please” and there was nothing she did not know. My mother could ask her for anybody's number; when our clock ran down, Information Please immediately supplied the correct time.

My first personal experience with this genie-in-the-receiver came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible, but there didn't seem to be much use crying because there was no one home to offer sympathy. I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway. The telephone! Quickly I ran for the footstool in the parlor and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver and held it to my ear. “Information Please,” I said into the mouthpiece just above my head. A click or two, and a small, clear voice spoke into my ear. “Information.”

“I hurt my
fing
errrr—
” I wailed into the phone. The tears came readily enough, now that I had an audience.

“Isn't your mother home?” came the question.

“Nobody's home but me,” I blubbered.

“Are you bleeding?”

“No,” I replied. “I hit it with the hammer and it hurts.”

“Can you open your icebox?” she asked. I said I could. “Then chip off a little piece of ice and hold it on your finger. That will stop the hurt. Be careful when you use the ice pick,” she admonished. “And don't cry. You'll be all right.”

After that, I called Information Please for everything. I asked her for help with my geography and she told me where Philadelphia was, and the Orinoco—the most romantic river I was going to explore when I grew up. She helped me with my arithmetic, and she told me that my pet chipmunk—I had caught him in the park just the day before—would eat fruit and nuts.

And there was the time that Petey, our pet canary, died. I called Information Please and told her the sad story. She listened, then she said the usual things grown-ups say to soothe a child. But I was unconsoled: Why was it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to whole families, only to end up as a heap of feathers, feet up, on the bottom of a cage?

She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, “Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in.”

Somehow I felt better.

Another day I was at the telephone. “Information,” said the now familiar voice.

“How do you spell fix?” I asked.

“Fix something? F-i-x.”

At that instant my sister, who took unholy joy in scaring me, jumped off the stairs at me with a banshee shriek—
“Yaaaaaaaaaa!”
I fell off the stool, pulling the receiver out of the box by its roots. We were both terrified—Information Please was no longer there, and I was not at all sure that I hadn't hurt her when I pulled the receiver out.

Minutes later there was a man on the porch. “I'm a telephone repairman,” he said. “I was working down the street and the operator sad there might be some trouble at this number.” He reached for the receiver in my hand. “What happened?”

I told him.

“Well, we can fix that in a minute or two.” He opened the telephone box, exposing a maze of wires and coils, and fiddled for a while with the end of the receiver cord, tightening things with a small screwdriver. He jiggled the hook up and down a few times, then spoke into the phone. “Hi, this is Peter. Everything's under control at 105. The kid's sister scared him and he pulled the cord out of the box.”

He hung up, smiled, gave me a pat on the head and walked out the door.

All this
took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. Then, when I was nine years old, we moved across the country to Boston—and I missed my mentor acutely. Information Please belonged in that old wooden box back home, and I somehow never thought of trying the tall, skinny new phone that sat on a small table in the hall.

Yet, as I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me; often in moments of doubt and perplexity I would recall the serene sense of security I had when I knew that I could call Information Please and get the right answer. I appreciated now how very patient, understanding and kind she was to have wasted her time on a little boy.

A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down at Seattle. I had about half an hour between plane connections, and I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now, happily mellowed by marriage and motherhood. Then, really without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown operator and said, “Information Please.”

Miraculously, I heard again the small, clear voice I knew so well: “Information.”

I hadn't planned this, but I heard myself saying, “Could you tell me, please, how to spell the word ‘fix'?”

There was a long pause. Then came the softly spoken answer. “I guess,” said Information Please, “that your finger must have healed by now.”

I laughed. “So it's really still you,” I said. “I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during all that time . . .”

“I wonder,” she replied, “if you know how much you meant to
me?
I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls. Silly, wasn't it?”

It didn't seem silly, but I didn't say so. Instead, I told her how often I had thought of her over the years, and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister after the first semester was over.

“Please do. Just ask for Sally.”

“Good-bye, Sally.” It sounded strange for Information Please to have a name. “If I run into any chipmunks, I'll tell them to eat fruit and nuts.”

“Do that,” she said. “And I expect one of these days you'll be off for the Orinoco. Well, good-bye.”

Just three
months later I was back again at the Seattle airport. A different voice answered, “Information,” and I asked for Sally.

“Are you a friend?”

“Yes,” I said. “An old friend.”

“Then I'm sorry to have to tell you. Sally had only been working part-time in the last few years because she was ill. She died five weeks ago.” But before I could hang up, she said, “Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Villiard?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down.”

“What was it?” I asked, almost knowing in advance what it would be.

“Here it is, I'll read it—‘Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He'll know what I mean.' ”

I thanked her and hung up. I
did
know what Sally meant.