by Paulette Callen

Perhaps it was the implausible drama; the extreme contrast from dark to light, warm to cold, death to life; the inexplicability of it and the impossibility of describing the depth and nature of my experience, but I never told anyone about it — this tiny event that unfolded as a gift from and a glimpse into a universe that is essentially loving.  That’s how it felt at the time.  And still does.

To understand my enchantment, for that is what it was, one has to understand my feeling for dogs.  Unless we hurt them and warp their natures, turning them insane — to either aggression or fearfulness — dogs are possessed of all the goodness and joy and altruism that humans only ever aspire to.  I think dogs are the angels among us.  I have experienced first-hand their intelligence, compassion, intuition; their living-in-the-moment joy, their loyalty, and devotion.

The place is Bristol, South Dakota; the time, January during the three-day blizzard of 2012.  I am staying in the nursing home where my mother is struggling to die.  The nurses called me to come back from my home in New York.  She is unresponsive, they told me.  But she isn’t.  She bats their hands away if they so much as try to moisten her lips.  She doesn’t want to be touched.  I don’t know if she knows I’m here.  I do know that she wouldn’t care if she did.  Her room is dark and foul with the rankness of her dying breaths.  Her eyes are completely black from renal failure. I’ve never seen her so thin.  I’ve never seen her without her teeth. The person in the bed looks nothing like my mother.  

In my first novel, I wrote a scene where Gustie, after sitting at the bedside of a dying loved one for days, ventures out and loses her way in a blizzard.  She is guided home by deer —phantoms, the spirits of deer that no longer exist in that time and place.

The blizzard ends. I go outside for my first walk since I began her deathbed vigil.  The sky is sapphire blue over a landscape of brilliant, sparkling white, unbroken snow.  I’m numb and feel disconnected from ordinary life.

I blink in the unmitigated brightness of snow and sun and sky, which seem to reflect each other, exponentially intensifying the brilliance of each.  Shimmering white, ethereal white, a whiteness not possible in the city, a whiteness that bespeaks beginning-of-the-world purity and cleanness stretches as far as I can see — a considerable distance as there is little to break the view.  Bristol is a thriving community, population 341.  The nursing home perches on a small rise at the edge of town, and in a town this small, you are never far from wide open spaces. Only the sidewalk around the nursing home has been shoveled, and only a small area in the parking lot has been cleared.  Suddenly, as if materializing out of the light itself, in the distance appears a dark spot that, as it gets closer, takes the shape of a brown dog, laughing mouth, flapping tongue, bounding through the snow.  Barreling straight toward me. A young Hershey lab.  He is warm, as though cold and snow do not touch him.  He leaps around me and up, resting his paws on my shoulders and I embrace him; swept into his luminous eyes, I return his smile.  And then, out of the same ether appears a black dog, leaping joyously through the snow.  He is older, more filled out, but also warm and sleek.  His dark eyes are large and lustrous, and I feel seen.  My first thought is Are you real?

They clearly are friends and play with each other and with me, and even as I play with them and pet them and allow them to leap up on me, I am not sure that they are real dogs.  I’m feeling like the character in the novel of my own creation.

When their exuberance carries them off, bounding through the snow and out of my sight, I realize that my face is near frozen and I should go inside.  A lady in a wheelchair parked by the window greets me: “I thought they were going to knock you down!” and then I know they were flesh and blood.  When I ask one of the nurses who lives in Bristol about them, she tells me they are strays.  Hunters often abandon their dogs here, she says.  A woman feeds them and takes them in out of the cold.

They were not spirit dogs but dogs with spirit, the spirit of generous joy and friendship and delight in being alive.  I’d never seen them before. I never saw them again.  They came to me at just that moment as a gift.  Nothing and no one living or dead could have refreshed me, comforted me, as they did.

Not the nursing home chaplain, a kind woman who came into the room the day before, sat down (uninvited) and asked if she could pray with me.  The asking was in such a way as to make me believe that she needed it, and I said “You can pray for my mother if you wish.”  It is not for me to deny others their prayers, their comfort, but in my mind I screamed, If God answered prayer, do you think my mother would be lying here like this, rasping out every breath, for days and days?  (Why does God have to be begged and cajoled into doing the right thing, anyway?  And when he doesn’t, why do we let him off the hook?)  So, the chaplain prayed.  I did not.  I fancied that she left, puzzled or pitying. 

Had my mother’s death been peaceful, serene, like the deaths described in all the books I’d read on dying, or like I’d heard others describe the last moments of their loved ones (“she saw the Lord,” “he saw the light”), I’d have maybe murmured a prayer, but it wasn’t.  Her dying was hard to the last second. She died with a snarl on her lips and black eyes that seemed to see the minions of hell coming for her.  The nurse said, “This is often the case with Alzheimer’s patients.”  I see.  Then dying is wholly dependent on the dying person’s state of mind.  There is nothing objective at work here?

The nurses left me as soon as they had pronounced her dead.  I tried to close her eyes.  They would not close.  Even this! I thought.  She had never allowed me to do anything for her.  Even this.  I tried again and then left them for the undertaker or someone with pennies in their pocket.

What did the dogs do that the chaplain could not?  They gave me the experience of joy, connection, beauty, fun — not just the wish for the promise of it.  They showed me the other side of the nature of things.  The sad side, the darker side I’d been living, in that dark, rank, room, and that is the nature of things — everything dies.  Even stars.  But the flip side is that what lives can live in joy.  Asking the question, Where’s God in all this? and trying to answer it, does not increase our happiness.  Playing in the snow with a couple of dogs does.

This true story is in a small anthology that no one has heard of, let alone read, called “Epiphany” published in 2015.

Paulette Callen has returned to her home state of South Dakota in retirement, after 30+ years in New York City. Varying degrees of culture shock in both directions — but always, the space she returned to has been made home by a dog.

December 15, 2020                             Volume 5: Issue 3

Late is the hour.

Matthew said it like this:

“Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”    -Matthew 24:42-44

Paul wrote:

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.”   -2 Timothy 3:1-5

And, as if we couldn’t already see all these things, Jesus himself said:

 “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven. But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name.” – Luke 21:10-12

We’re not there, yet.  At least not in the United States.  But we’re getting close.  Jesus goes on to tell us that, “This will be your opportunity to bear witness. Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.”

Late is the hour.

Stand ready.

And behold the power of the Lord.

by Greg Feezell

I can’t say “She’s in heaven.”
I can’t say “She’s not in heaven.”

Only this:

“Yesterday, I saw the snow falling.”

Greg Feezell has taught elementary and middle school in the United States and Japan. Born in California, he now lives in Yokohama, Japan, where he teaches reading, writing and poetry to middle school students. He is a jazz enthusiast whose dreams of writing a poem like Paul Motian on the drum kit. Greg eschews social media, don’t bother looking him up.

August 1, 2020                                            Volume 5: Issue 2

The Sacred in the Ordinary. That is our mission. That is what we seek to identify and to publish when we do find it. That is the path we set out upon and have tried to follow wherever it may lead.

Sometimes, the path surprises us. But we still follow it.

I do not always agree with everything that is written by our authors. I believe in the uniqueness of Jesus of Nazareth and hold firmly to the belief that He is the one and only Way to restore ourselves to a relationship with God the Father.

Still, when I first came up with the idea of this journal, I spoke with a colleague. She said, “You’re not going to limit it to Christians only, are you?”

I said, “No.” I would open the journal to other viewpoints as well as long as they held to the mission: to show the Sacred in the Ordinary.

One voice can be simple and pure. Many voices screaming at each other is a cacophony, an ugly torrent of sound. We’ve seen enough of that lately. But many voices singing together make a sound like no other. That is so even when not every voice is powerful. Together, they become a triumphal chorus.

One of the rejection letters we use most states that the writing was fine but we are unable to identify what part of the submission reflects the Sacred in the Ordinary.

Give us the Sacred. Show us how it is embodied in the Ordinary.

That’s a simple as it gets, folks.

by Victoria Bastedo 

I just thought you might like to know that I’ve arrived. I’m a Spelunker. I should know better than this, but when eleven of us campers went to the Ape Caves, near Mount St. Helens in Washington State, I chose to go with the chirpy crowd of gung-ho’s, rather than with the cautious crowd of ‘I’d-rather-survive’ types. That sedate group had a nice and interesting tour where they learned things about lava caves and boy’s and girl’s clubs.

I had a journey that still replays itself when I lay down to sleep at night. I remember it well as we waved ‘bye, bye,’ to the happy foursome going on the other tour. There was one sign that said; “Upper cave ½ mile”, as you entered the tube we were destined for, and another small sign that said; “Difficult Walking”.

A slender type of ‘let’s-jog-up-Mt-Si-for-a-refreshing-morning-jaunt-and-then-climb-an-ice-wall-with-a-pick-axe-later-this-afternoon,’ person wrote this sign. This super-fit, lean and spider-like spelunker conceded some might consider the terrain inside the ape cave to be ‘difficult walking’. Now that, as far as warning signs go, is just not nice. ‘Terrifying-Example-of-Many-Ways-to-Break-Your-Limbs-Deep-Within-a-Lava-Tube-Where-No-Rescue-Party-Could-Possibly-Reach-You,’ would be closer to the mark. But there I was.

Following my sister Alisa and our skinny friend Karyn, yet again. The fact that Karyn’s mom, a woman in her seventies, came with us too doesn’t change things. Karyn’s mother is a small woman. Friendly passerby, not to mention Karyn, could pick her up and pull her places.

I tried not to complain as I traversed and crawled on toe-tip and flat-hands like Gollum up and over, near the ceiling, or sliding off edges of boulders on my backside while my shorts rode up. Small comments like, “You know, Karyn, there’s a miniscule part of me that’s enjoying this,” was all I said.

After an hour and a half, I knew that ‘1/2 mile’ sign was a lie. (It was too. 1 ½ was what it was supposed to say. A cruel hand had blackened out the ‘1’ sometime past.)

When we reached the eight-foot wall I knew that here was an obstacle I couldn’t traverse, and not just because I was terrified. I really couldn’t. My arms aren’t strong enough to lift my weight. There was some kind of foothold five-feet-up, about the size of a pimple, but I knew that even if I got my foot up that high, I couldn’t haul myself up from it. Wiry, 115 lb. Karyn was at the top willing to pull me, but that was laughable.

My friendly comments changed. A nice man was stood there, offering to help me also. According to Karyn, here are a few of my verbal highlights. “I weigh more than that man!” “If I try to climb that wall, everyone will get a smell of my armpits!”

While the other members of my party figured out how to climb the sheer wall, I tucked away into a corner. I told God, “I can’t.” I told Him this in a very whiny tone. “You know I’d be willing to try something, Lord,” I said. “I’d take my courage in hand! But I really can’t! I don’t have the strength or the ability! You’ll have to get me out of this one! I don’t know what to do!”

After I prayed, I had the inner strength to walk up to the wall and try. And that’s when the miracle happened. Two new men appeared. They were lean, and spider-like. They had on sporty clothes of black spandex, and on their upper arms were bold, white crosses. They said they were guides. One of the men showed me where to put my feet and my hands and I vaulted and huffed and those three men and Karyn got me up that thing.

I said, first, “I hate this whole experience.” And then, feeling impolite and grateful, “But I love all you people.” The two guides disappeared in the other direction. Please note, this is a lava tube. When passerby go off in the opposite direction, you can’t encounter them again without notice.

After the 8-foot-wall, I was reassured by the “that’s-the-hardest-part” messages I kept hearing. We went on. But to my dismay we eventually reached a second, impossible hurdle. This involved launching up over your head while making your body into an L-shaped, bent straw. I was far too rounded to achieve anything like the shape of a pencil, which bent pliably in the center. I knew I couldn’t climb this either. I stood there and wondered when the end of this hell-of-a-cave would be arrived at. I tried not to whine. I thought for one moment of turning back and going down the eight-foot wall.

That determined me. No way was I returning to that joyride. But I still couldn’t get over this new hurdle. I reached up my hand and my prayers to the One who listens. And guess what? From out of nowhere appeared those same two men, the ones who said they were guides. How did they get there when they had gone the opposite direction before? In all of this trip we’d been taking in the dark of these tubes, we hadn’t run into a single other person twice. But all I knew was that these two guides came both times only at the exact second that I needed them. They showed me how to do maneuver the L-bend, and they pushed me up that one too. Once I clung, up high near the ceiling and looking down, those guides disappeared, again in the opposite direction.

I praised God a lot in those ape caves. (And, especially when we got out.) I was an overweight, out-of-shape Grandma, wandering into a bad dream of an experience like a child. So, I knew God had my back, and I believe those two guys, if I have to spell it out, were angels. It took us nearly four hours to go that 1 and a 1/2 miles of ‘Difficult Walking’. I think I slowed the others in my party down. But I’d accomplished, with some special help, a physical exercise I didn’t know I was still capable of. I had an adventure I wasn’t looking for. And, I knew I had arrived. No longer was I a shy unathletic person reading about super-fit rock-climbers but never being one myself. I’ve graduated. I’m an official Spelunker!

Victoria Bastedo is a grandparent and a Christian. She works at her local library shelving books. She lives in the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys the incredible beauty that surrounds her. Living in a land of ‘gentle rivers’, makes her feel like a hobbit. (She says she has other similarities to hobbits, too.)

by Adrienne Christian

Once I was headed to kill myself.
It was on a Friday.
Thursday I’d tried with Hennessy and pills but had been unsuccessful.
Now I’d use a fool-proof method — train tracks.

The reason was not an unusual reason — Mother Things. And, long-term unemployment and the things that came with it — eviction, repossession. Creditors. Laughter from people excited to see you and all your shit out on the lawn. You as entertainment. You try to sit on all your shit simultaneously, so folks with trucks don’t ride by and pick it up and sell it.

I left no note. Nothing to say. And if I’d had something to say, I would have said it to who — the family members who’d said, “” You’re 18; you’re grown; you can’t live with me without a job.”

I didn’t pray.  What I did do though was smoke my last little roach, have a drink, and play with myself. The only things on earth that made me feel good. I also slept. I went to bed at 9 pm so I’d wake up and catch the morning train. I kept dreaming of my cousin Angelo.

The next morning, Friday, I’m walking to suicide when I hear someone calling my name. It’s Angie (Angelo) calling me back to tell me, “Hey cuz, I had the craziest dream about you last night. I dreamed God came to me and talked to me about you. He said ‘Don’t kill yourself. He loves you.’” Bizarre, right? Stay with me. It gets even crazier…

Three months earlier I was in my mother’s basement with a toothache so bad I would’ve carved it out with a nail file. I took five pills, Excedrin. I knew that was too many, but I was in excruciating pain — the kind you get from never having had health insurance. As I lay there hoping for sleep to come quickly, a little devil came to pay me a visit. We struggled and fought. He was really trying to murder me. Me, a 22-year old girl. The only thing that made it let me up — it had me pinned — is when I started yelling, “Jesus help me.” At the sound of the word “Jesus” the little devil man let me go, and hauled ass off my bed. I remember the way it jumped. It was a long jump, its legs spread like Henri Cartier Bresson’s photo from Porto. That is why later, in July, when I got ready to walk into my death with pills, I couldn’t — because I’d remembered that that little coke-can-sized demon had come the night I’d taken too many pills.

The demon was bad, but life was worse — Yes, Thursday afternoon I’d thought, “I can’t do this.” But by Thursday night I was like, “I have to.” And it was that night that I’d kept dreaming about Angie.

Here’s what I think happened — I think God, or Gods, went before me. God(s) knew I would kill myself with pills in July, so He/She/It/They sent the devil and the toothache in April. It was an excellent plan. It kept me from the pills. And when I got the idea about the train, God(s) went and talked with Angie.

It’s worth mentioning that I’m not a Christian. As a woman, given what the Bible says about women, it would be absurd for me to subscribe to that doctrine. So, I don’t tell this story to prosletyze. What I want you to know though is that God(s) are real, even if Christianity is misogynist shit. And if you’re one of those incomplete-thinking individuals who believes only selfish, weak people commit suicide, you are wrong.

Adrienne Christian is a poet & writer, and fine art photographer. Her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry, CALYX, phoebe, Prairie Schooner, The Los Angeles Review as The Editor’s Choice, and others. She is the author of two poetry collections, 12023 Woodmont Avenue (Willow Books, 2013) and A Proper Lover (Main Street Rag, 2017). She is a fellow of both Cave Canem and Callaloo Writing Residencies. In 2007, she won the University of Michigan’s Five Under Ten Young Alumni Award. In 2016, she was a finalist for the Rita Dove International Poetry Award. She earned her PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska.

by Paul Burnham

Today I’m a full-time bicycle mechanic, on a brief break from riding cross-country with friends. This isn’t my day job or even my passion. But today I volunteer in a bike shop that stokes my desire to fix things. And this is no ordinary bike shop. It’s more of a blossoming garden of generosity. For those who see bike ownership beyond their reach, this shop plants the germ of hope.

Sure, the shop owners sell bikes. But they do more than this; they support a community where a person can build a bike for no cash out-of-pocket. Add some sweat equity to your own bike project and several hours to help others with theirs, and you’ll leave the shop with a custom bike, built from salvaged parts. Recycled. Free-cycled.

A sun-bleached sign at the entrance states that all are welcome. I feel it. The shop manager offers a smile and a nod as we pass through the door, into this temple of bicycle revivals. He’s been expecting us, this procession of cyclists seeking refuge during a mid-summer pilgrimage.

He thanks us for showing up today, and his thanks feels reverent, sincere. Though we are the ones thankful to be out of the sun and wind, away from veering trucks, to have this interval of rest and respite. He’ll put us to work, no doubt. He’ll exact many hours from the dozen of us. But this is nourishing work, energizing. We violate the inviolate laws of thermodynamics; we expend energy, yet we have more than we brought with us. Here in this shop, energy is not conserved. It is shared and multiplied.

Three bikes are already on repair stands, in varying states of disassembly. Or assembly. I can’t tell which direction they are going. Other repair stands are empty, awaiting the mechanic’s touch. Or the shaman’s. The manager guides us through the open shop. The floor is of soft, weathered wood planks, marred and stained by heavier implements. Not bikes. This floor appears to have served another industry prior to its redemption to bike-making.  

This wood floor reflects the mid-morning sunlight onto the ceiling and walls, casting a warm, ochre light that illuminates my hands and my friends. One friend quietly touches the tire-less rear wheel of a suspended bike, sending the wheel turning, clicking. I follow the round reflector, jammed in the spokes, in its revolution. The wheel slows until there is not enough momentum to bring the reflector around and over the top. She bumps it again, as though it were a skinny Buddhist prayer wheel. This is our meditation. Today, fixing bikes for strangers is the rite that expiates sins of a self-centered life on the road. Today, we are born anew as bike mechanics.

The spinning wheel slows and the clicking fades again. The shop manager instructs us on shop safety and how to navigate the many bins and crates and buckets of reclaimed bike parts.

This is my third day with these new-made friends. Two days ago I met them at a campground in St. Regis, Montana, just a few miles from the Idaho border. They are cycling across the United States, and their trajectory has brought them close to my own home. Like a brilliant comet, passing close to the Earth only once in a century, they are passing within view, and I intend to witness at least part of the rare event. I brought my bike to ride with them for one day.

This ad hoc peloton is assembled from members of the Jewish community from around the country. They started in Seattle, Washington, eleven days ago; nine days of riding, one day of Shabbat in Spokane, and one day of bike-mechanics here in Missoula. Yesterday I joined them on their journey from the small mountain town of St. Regis (population: 319) to the relative metropolis of Missoula (population: 69,000). Ninety miles through rolling mountain prairies and river valleys. We followed the Clark Fork and Flathead Rivers. We rode along the National Bison Range, and for most of our day was crossed ancestral lands of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. I joined this community of cyclists for this leg only. I didn’t start with the Pacific Ocean at my back, and I won’t finish, in eight weeks, looking out to the Atlantic.

The dozen or so people in this group are either Jewish or have established deep roots in this community. I’m not Jewish, though I share with them a long collective memory. And I’m not here because I suddenly have an interest in Judaism, or even in cross-country cycling. Rather, my own sister has joined this cross-country fellowship, and she is riding within a hundred miles of my home. This is why I have taken, if not an entire summer, at least a couple days to renew the sacred community of family.

Two days ago I was welcomed as a friend into a group of cyclists who had recently become friends themselves. I shared in their quotidian chores of setting up a field kitchen, preparing dinner, and washing and storing plates and dishes and silverware for the next day.

These friends have made various levels of commitment to kosher observance, and there were varying degrees of kosher-ness in the several food choices. I tried them all. Neither my palate nor my cultural and religious senses alerted me to the variations in how these foods were prepared; I simply sensed I was partaking in a first sacrament with my recently-adopted Jewish brothers and sisters.

We recounted stories during dinner. They shared jokes that left them laughing uncontrollably, and that left me slightly disoriented at a cultural and religious frontier. But I felt their warmth, and I recognized kindness and compassion in those who have adopted me during this brief reunion. I see now that spiritual inroads reach easily across the cultural and religious divide.

I haven’t seen my sister for a year and a half. She lives in Connecticut, twenty-five hundred miles from my home in Montana, as the bike wheel roles. Our paths converge during holidays or when we both happen to visit our parents during the same week of summer. Then our paths diverge again for a year or two. We go back to our own communities; we pursue our own interests. This is how we find each other—from year to year, for a day here and a week there. Like Jacob’s children, we have left a common home, but we find our way back together. We separate, always with the hope of crossing paths again soon. And not only a hope, but an intent; an intent to find each other, a desire to observe the traditions of our parents’ home, to commemorate an earlier time, when we were not separated by months and years, but only by hours or days.

When we meet this time, I find we are not so changed. Yes, our lives look different in many ways; our own families and friends and occupations vary as the subtle shades of leaves of the same tree vary. Yet our roots are nourished from the same source. Our own family’s diaspora has strewn us across the country, but our divergence is not permanent; we still find our way back to each other. Our time away has created diversity in our family. And unity. We discover our common capacities have grown, not diminished, because of our diversity.

While my sister and I cycled along mountain roads yesterday, making our way to Missoula, I considered this group I had joined. Belief figures largely for me here; there is no question I am different from this group. But only as different, I suspect, as the individuals in this group are from one another.

Yesterday we joined to ride the same road. And today, we continue in the same direction, laboring side by side in this community bike shop. I’ve joined them before; I wandered through the wilderness with them and with Moses for forty years; I cheered with them when Elijah had his smackdown with the priests of Baal; I sat with them to hear Isaiah teach of fasting and generosity; I hoped beyond hope with them for David, for Jonathan, for their covenant of friendship.

Then, two thousand years ago, our paths diverged. Their path remained true to the Temple and the Law, while mine followed a rebel from Nazareth. But today our paths converge, again, in a bike shop in Missoula, Montana.

The shop manager leads us to the various repair stations. Two by two we will fix and build these bikes. We take wrench and screwdriver in hand.

One of my new friends begins humming, and another joins him from across the room. I don’t recognize the tune, but it feels like a light shining through my skin, into my heart. Like the jokes and stories I heard on the night before last, at the camp in St. Regis, this tune they are humming now is their own, from their own culture and spirituality.

I wonder for a moment if the meaning is rooted in a religion I don’t fully understand. No matter. I look around the room. My sister is here. Other sisters and brothers of mine are scattered around the room, already working. We are not here for religion. Our work is bigger than that. We are here to build bikes for strangers, to make things right again.

This piece was previously published May 2018 in DASH Literary Journal, California State University, Fullerton.

Paul Burnham is a civil engineer by day and a river rat or powder hound by night.

by Ashley Kaufman

It is amazing when you hear a miraculous story over and over again how ordinary it becomes. It is like a song that is played repetitively on the radio – you can’t wait to hear it, but then it is requested constantly so it doesn’t seem quite as special anymore.  I cannot count the number of times I have heard about my birth. It was told to me so many times that I almost believe I was there to experience the whole thing as an observer!

I was born premature, a 23-week, one pound eleven ounce baby girl who was thirteen inches in length. I was no bigger than a Barbie doll. My father’s wedding ring slid the whole way up my arm to my shoulder. A baby, who was predicted to die the same day she was born, but didn’t.

My early arrival began in the emergency room at the Carlisle Hospital. I was not able to breathe on my own so doctors – who were unprepared for my arrival – began trying to resuscitate me. A respiratory therapist who happened to be picking up his paycheck was able to rig up a primitive system to help me breathe. The doctors then worked to stabilize my condition and later that night I was transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Harrisburg Hospital.

In the beginning, any hour I survived was a miracle. My parents and relatives received hourly updates on my condition. The first 24 hours would determine my fate. Luckily, I was strong enough to stay alive; however, I had many setbacks along the way. My right lung collapsed and then the left, then my intestines ruptured. I had four operations the first week of my life.

Just about the time things were improving, I would have another setback. They also determined that I could go blind. My eyes were operated on to save my sight, but the doctors weren’t very hopeful. My family was informed of all the problems I might have. They were told that premature babies usually develop: cystic fibrosis, intellectual disabilities, spina bifida, blindness and attention deficit disorders.  My family believed that I would lead a normal life; they never gave up hope that I would beat the odds.

I remained in the NICU from July 25^th until November 20^th. I was sent home with more equipment than soldiers take into battle. I had monitors to keep an eye on my heart rate, my pulse rate, and to ensure I was breathing.  I was home for 10 days before something terrible went wrong. It was late evening and I was asleep in my crib. My cat, Rascal, went nuts! He kept meowing at my door until my parents were ready to strangle him. He actually saved my life. I had begun to turn blue from not being able to breathe. My parents immediately took me back to Harrisburg Hospital. I was only 8% oxygenated out of 100%. I stopped breathing three times that night and almost died. Of all the battles I had fought this would be the toughest. I was transferred the next day to Hershey Medical Center, where I remained until December 24 when I finally came home to stay.

When I think of all the events that happened when I was born, I feel so grateful. I am happy to be alive. I never take anything in my life for granted. I believe I am here for a particular reason. I never developed any of the terrible diseases that could have occurred. My only disability is being legally blind. I don’t view it as a disability but as an ability. I was made this way for a reason.

My world was shaped by many coincidences that went my way: the respiratory therapist picking up his paycheck, my family praying and always believing, Rascal the cat saving my life (afterward, he was taken care of better than any person I know!), and my ability to overcome the odds.  Sometimes people feel sorry for me because of my poor vision. I want to shout, “Don’t feel sorry for me, I am the luckiest person alive!” I have been blessed with many gifts, so I will continue to work hard, never give up, and always believe in miracles!

Ashley E. Kauffman is from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and is employed as a teacher with Each Child Matters. She has enjoyed writing since she used her imagination to bring her first story to life in second grade. Ashley received her B.A. in English and her M.Ed. in Children’s Literature through Penn State University. She is an avid collector of vinyl records, Golden Books, and vintage typewriters. Ashley is legally blind and considers herself to be a differently-abled person who has spent her life envisioning the world with the turn of each page.