There are angels among us

Tricia Somers, 45, was diagnosed with a serious illness last year. In March, she found out it was terminal. The single mother's biggest concern was her son Wesley, and who would take care of him after she died.

"He's the only thing I got and I have to leave him," she said. "It's really hard, and I feel bad that I am doing that to him but he says, 'Mommy it is not your fault.' "

Somers' options were limited. Her parents passed away years ago; her brother told her he didn't see a child in his life, and her ex-husband has not been a constant in Wesley's life.

She was devastated until a nurse, also named Tricia, walked into her room at Pinnacle Health's Community General Campus in Harrisburg.

"She seemed like an angel. She came in and I just felt this overwhelming comfort, like a warm blanket around me," Somers said. "It was strange. I never had that feeling before and I thought she is going to take care of me. She is the one."

Tricia Seaman has been a registered nurse at PinnacleHealth's Community General campus for 14 years and works in the oncology area.

It was late one night when Seaman walked into the room at the hospital to say good night to Somers that she got the shock of her life. They'd only known each other two weeks, but Somers blurted out, "'If I die can you take my son?' I figured she thinks I am crazy, but I knew it's what I had to do," Somers said.

Seaman told Somers she'd take the request back to her family. Somers didn't know the Seaman family was already trying to adopt a son. They just didn't expect it to happen this way.

"Sometimes God has a plan for our lives," Seaman said. "Sometimes we think we know what that plan is, but we really don't."

Although Seaman's husband was shocked by the request, he was open to the idea of helping a woman he never met.

"In 20 years I've never had occasion not to trust my wife's heart," Dan Seaman said. "When she called I said, 'We've got to figure out a way to make this happen.' "

After much thought, the family decided they would take care of Wesley when his mother passed, but that's not all.  They also invited both Somers and Wesley to move in with them.  Otherwise, Somers would spend her final days in a nursing home, apart from her son. 

"They wanted us to be together, and to go through the journey with me," Somers said.

The two families have become one, and are building memories together.

"It is a privilege to be able to walk with her on this journey," Tricia Seaman said. "We're going to be able to utilize this as we raise Wesley. His past is not a mystery to us. We've learned the traditions that are special to them and can still do things that mean a lot to him."

As for Wesley, the once "only child" now has three sisters and a brother. "I didn't have anybody until now except Mommy," he said. "I'm happy to have a brother!" His new sisters all welcomed Somers as a second Mom.

"I'm just hanging in there and holding on," Somers said. "I'm at peace. I know Wesley will be taken care of. I just hope I can be here as long as I can be here."

To donate to the Seaman-Somers Family Fund please send a check to the First National Bank of Mifflintown: Delaware Office,  24021 Rt. 333,  Thompsontown, Pa. 17094

God made her do it

Mesannie Wilkins was 63 and lived a hard life in Minot, Maine. She was ill and her doctor told her she might live two or three more years if she rested. She had no one to care for her, and was about to lose her house. So she asked God what to do. He told her to go to California. To be sure she heard the Lord right, she flipped a coin. Heads she'd go. Tails she'd stay. It came up heads over and over and over, so she bought a tired summer camp horse, saddled up and started for California with her dog on a long leash. She had $32 in cash. "I go forth as a tramp of fate among strangers," she said, but instead of strangers she found friends.

"I figured I could rest in the saddle," she recalled, but parts of the trip were grueling and dangerous. Sixteen months and 7,000 miles later, she reached the Pacific Ocean. Along the way, she was feted by several state governors, sketched by Andrew Wyeth, and even appeared on the Art Linkletter show. When her horse died before the end of her journey, Linkletter bought her a new one. She also declined a marriage proposal from a western goat farmer.

Her health improved as she rode, and after reaching California she wrote a book about her journey called Last of the Saddle Tramps. If it's not in your library, it's available online. It will cheer your heart to see how a sick woman finds health while blessing others from coast to coast.

The brightest night in 1965

I was working late at The Christian Science Monitor on November 9, 1965. At 5:21 p.m. my selectric typewriter quit humming. A second later, overhead lights flickered off, leaving only emergency bulbs in stairways. I called my parents a few miles away. Their power was off too. Was it a city-wide blackout? When we turned on our transistor radios, we heard the power was off from Ontario to Manhattan.

It was rush hour. Thousands of Bostonians (including Charlie) were riding home on the MTA when subway trains slowly rolled to a stop in pitch dark tunnels. Others were trapped between floors in darkened elevators. Hospital operating rooms went dark. Television stations went off the air. Fortunately the weather was clear, and Boston was lit by a full hunter's moon and a thousand stars we'd never seen before.

Since it was impossible to work, I grabbed my coat and walked downtown. Without any traffic lights, traffic was gridlocked. Nobody was going anywhere, until students began pouring out of fraternity houses and took over major intersections, directing traffic by hand. They coordinated their signals from block to block, and cars began moving smoothly again. I noticed signs in darkened restaurants that said FREE COFFEE and FREE DESSERTS.  Executives in Gucci shoes stood on the sidewalk enjoying free Jo with street people and gypsy children. One vagrant ask for a quarter and guy in a Brooks Brothers suit gave him a fiver.

I returned to my apartment after witnessing hours of human kindness. We learned later there was very little crime during the blackout. Instead, people helped each other. Nobody knew power would return in 13 hours, but I hoped Reddy Kilowatt would go missing for a week. Without electricity, we were all in the same boat -- all brothers. You had to be there. Here's how one resident of New York City described it.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMaT0JSAU1A

Is there a way to heal hurt feelings?

Back in the late '60s I went through a heartbreaking divorce. After returning to my parents' home in Boston and getting a new job, I decided to take a two-week religion course and interviewed several potential teachers. To each I posed the same question. Is there a way to heal hurt feelings?

The teacher whose class I joined offered an answer that worked. He asked if I was familiar with the popular TV commercial for Colgate toothpaste? It claims Colgate has a secret ingredient called Gardol, which forms an invisible shield around teeth to prevent decay. If you'd like to see the commercial, here it is. youtube.com/watch?v=I4uTXpGqMZQ

He said love is like a Gardol shield. When we activate our love, it forms a spiritual shield that prevents sadness or disappointment or resentment from hurting us. You have to brush your teeth to activate the Gardol shield, and you have to love ACTIVELY to protect yourself from hurt feelings. Saying,"I don't hate her (or him)" won't activate the shield. Being indifferent and bragging, "I have no feelings about her (or him) either way," won't work. Only living love brings protection -- love expressed.

From then on, when ever I sent my ex- a legal document or a check, I always enclosed a kind note which was heartfelt. Pretty soon I felt like the guy in the commercial. Hurt feelings couldn't reach me. Years later, I found this verse by poet Max Dunaway which explained why.

Sorrow is selfish, but Love will make

The burdened breast forget its woe.

Remember, dear, the heart cannot break

If it is allowed to overflow.

Why does the lamb love Mary so?

On our first date, Evelyn and I dined at Longfellow's Wayside Inn in Sudbury, MA. Open as Howe's Tavern in 1661, it's the oldest hostelry in the United States. By 1860, Harvard professors vacationed there, and one of them, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was inspired to write "Tales of the Wayside Inn." The tavern almost closed in 1923, until Henry Ford restored and renamed it as an example of colonial Americana. On a slight hill nearby, he built the New England-style Martha-Mary chapel, honoring his mother and mother-in-law. It's used only for weddings, and if a reception follows at the inn, the couple ride in a "carriage with fringe on top." 

We visited the area often as our girls grew up. It was fun watching wedding parties spill from the white-steepled chapel onto the emerald green lawn, and sometimes we saw the bride and groom in their carriage! But our favorite haunt was a small, one-room school house Ford moved to the churchyard from Sterling, MA. Research convinced him it was the school where Mary had a little lamb. Built in 1798, it served as a school until 1856. It was a dirty garage when he had it dismantled and restored near the inn. He found the original school master's desk and chair, and furnished the room with period pieces. It's open each summer for tours. One desk is marked, "Mary sat here." Our girls sat there too.

The nursery rhyme is based on fact. Mary Sawyer (1806-1859) was growing up on a farm when two lambs were born in her barn. One died, and the other was not expected to live, so she asked to care for it in the house. She nursed it all day, and sat up all night with it, feeding it catnip tea. Gradually it improved, but it thought Mary was its mother. It would follow her anywhere if she called it.

One day her brother suggested they take the lamb to school. They arrived before the teacher and placed the lamb under Mary's seat, wrapped in a shawl. It was not noticed until Mary walked to the blackboard to recite and it walked behind her. Everyone laughed except the teacher, who demanded the lamb be taken outside. Of course it stayed by the door, waiting to walk Mary home. 

A 12-year-old scholar named John Roulstone visited school that day. The incident touched him deeply, and afterward he gave Mary a slip of paper with the original verses of the poem. Eventually the poem became famous as part of McGuffey's Reader. Do you remember it? 
     

Redstone School, 1983

"Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. It followed her to school one day which was against the rule; it made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school. And so the teacher turned it out; but still it lingered near and waited patiently about, 'til Mary did appear. 'Why does the lamb love Mary so,' the eager children cry. 'Why Mary loves the lamb, you know,' the teacher did reply."

The genuine leather chair

(This article appeared in The Christian Science Monitor in 1967)

The rough, clean smell of saddle soap blended with the odor of aged leather on my father's old chair. The creases in the leather were like wrinkles of a loved face -- memories of smiles.

The smell of new leather remained on that chair for weeks. When it first came to our house, its brass tacks shown brightly against the green cowhide upholstery. Now they're rubbed to a mottled brown and yellow.

Dad taught me the special care a leather chair needed. Never jump into it thoughtlessly, or put dirty shoes on the handsome ottoman that stood before it. "Always remember it's a genuine leather chair," he said.

The chair, in my off-campus Boston apartment.

But it was really his special chair. Returning home from work each day, he'd sink into it with his paper, and return to it again after supper for a quiet evening. If he read me story before I went to bed, the chair could hold both of us.

One summer, when I'd grown a little bigger, I flopped into the chair too heavily and split the cushion seam wide open. Dad used a special needle to make firm stitches in the worn leather, securing the seam with a new thread.

When I left home for college, my student budget was too small to include much furniture so Dad offered a remedy, claiming, "we really don't need that old chair around the house anymore." When I protested it was "his chair," he told me I'd love it just as much as he did. "Remember, it demands care in exchange for the comfort it gives," he said. "If you take care of it, it will seem ageless, because it's genuine."

When I showed the old chair to my new wife a few years later, we looked at its tired upholstery as we thought about our new home. "How much longer shall we keep it?" she asked.

"As long as we need it, I guess. Dad said it's almost ageless, because it's genuine."

"What a lovely thought," she reflected. "That's just the way Dads are too."

Samuel H. Horn, 1905-1970

The Bible and the telescope

Some say the Bible is like a telescope. It's nice to know when and where each part was built, and be able to name all the parts. But we look through a telescope to make the stars more visible.

Similarly, we look through the Bible to make God more visible. We uncap the Bible's lens by answering this question. "What if all I had today was what I thanked God for yesterday?"