Free Chicken Soup for Every Mom's Soul by Jack Canfield Page A

less than one minute to get the keys from my ignition, this kind stranger spent over an hour with us, taking the concept of Roadside Assistance to a whole new level.
    It’s been five years since Cole’s head surgery. Sometimes, Cole’s red hair parts so that I can see the thick scar that crisscrosses his head; otherwise there are no visual reminders of his surgery.
    Yet there are things unseen. The way I feel toward Cole is difficult to describe—it’s as though our hearts had been bound together during that surgery.
    Recently at the park, a Guatemalan woman asked me about the scar. She said, “The angels came into him while his head was open.” I don’t know if I believe that, but the thought makes me feel better.
    My younger son, Ry, fell from his bed one night when he was two years old and had to have stitches on his chin. I was with him as the nurses at the emergency room held him down while the doctor stitched. He clutched my hand and screamed, and it reminded me of Cole’s surgery.
    The room started to spin, and I was having trouble breathing. One of the nurses yelled, “Mom going down! Mom going down!” The next thing I knew, there was a wet towel on the back of my neck, and I was being instructed to put my head between my legs.
    Going through these difficult things with my children doesn’t end—whether it’s watching them get stitches or seeing them be teased by other children. My heart is constantly being ripped in unexpected ways, despite both children, ultimately, doing fine. The hard times usually end up bringing us closer together.
    Now four years old, Ry likes his scar. He points to it all the time. The other day, Cole complained that he didn’t have a scar to show off like Ry.
    “Yes, you do honey, I said, “Remember, you have that big zigzag scar that goes from ear to ear?”
    “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I guess I forgot.”
    I’m glad that he’s forgotten about the scar, and I hope all the trauma behind it—as long as he remembers the love we forged going through it together.
    Victoria Patterson

A Misfortune—Not a Tragedy
    A lone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
    Helen Keller
    I was an ecstatically happy thirteen-year-old riding home for dinner on my new birthday present—a Fleet bicycle made by Schwinn, and it was a dandy. It even had a spring knee-action suspension in front. Better yet, it was the only one of its kind in the neighborhood.
    I polished its blue and white frame and fenders to a shiny brightness that could be seen for blocks away. I had been on cloud nine ever since I received it as a gift a few days before. One’s first bike is a milestone in any child’s life. Like any thirteen-year-old boy there was only one thing on my mind as I pedaled home around four-thirty that afternoon—dinner.
    I skidded my bike up to the front porch in a spectacular wheelie and bounded up the steps. As I ran through the hallway toward the kitchen I began to wonder. I didn’t smell any tantalizing aroma coming from Mom’s spic-and-span kitchen. Oh well, I thought, smiling to myself, maybe we are having cold cuts with pork and beans —my summer favorite.
    I opened the swinging doors to the kitchen expecting to hear, “Jimmy, wash your hands and help me set the table.” Instead, my young eyes focused on my mother, ghostly white, lying in a crumpled heap on the kitchen floor— blood oozing from a deep wound on her forehead. I tried to rouse her but to no avail. All I got were moans. Beginning to cry, I knelt beside her quiet form on the floor and asked soberly, “Mom, are you okay?” She answered in an almost unintelligible whisper, “Please help me, Jimmy.”
    Realizing we were alone, like most children would do, I ran to the phone. This was 1944 and there was no such thing as 911, only the operator’s friendly voice asking, “Number please.” I blurted out my grandmother’s phone number between sobs and said, “It’s an emergency, operator, please hurry.”
    I