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The Way HomeLee Stringer, The New York Times
That first Christmas in Grand Central Terminal, I felt a certain eagerness. I figured I wasn't so down on my luck that I couldn't give the day a fair chance.
I'd heard rumors of benevolence on Christmases past: a Samaritan with a wont for dishing out C-notes to the poor; the season's propensity for placing this or that valuable in your path; sudden acts of kindness from the most unlikely folks. So most of us had our eyes and ears figuratively cocked for a sign that, yes, there was a Santa Claus.
But as soon as I stirred, I noticed my shoes were gone. Someone not content to wait on the hand of Providence had made a gift of them to himself. Hungry, I slap-footed my way upstairs and slipped inside an idling train. I soon found an abandoned cooler, its contents -- beer, chicken and pastry -- still cold. I ate, drank and hoisted a heartfelt toast to Providence.
I even began to see my stolen shoes as a good thing. My mother was expecting me for Christmas dinner. She lived about 45 minutes north of New York City, and we had talked collect over the phone.
With my brother and father dead, our clan had been whittled down to the two of us. The thought of sitting across that lonely table sent a shiver through my bones. But worse was the prospect of showing up empty-handed. <br><br> The last thing I needed this Christmas was shame. I called collect again, told my mother I had no shoes, that there was no way I could make it.
The day unwound in loud silence. Thoughts of my mother, who had bad eyes and didn't get around too well anymore, haunted me. A different kind of shame drove me back to the phone.
But no one was answering, the operator said.
I threaded my way back to the waiting room -- past gift-laden travelers in thick winter coats, past eager, wide-eyed children. Sitting down on a bench, I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, my mother was standing there, a pair of my old sneakers in her hand.
"Merry Christmas," she said.
The Awakening
Pauline Arrillaga, The Associated Press
The call came just before Christmas. "I've got something to tell you," Cindy White Bull Boyer's grandmother said. Boyer sensed the news was about her mother.
Memories flashed before her like snapshots in a photo album: a girl sleeping in a hospital bathroom as her mother lay motionless, eyes open but unseeing; a brother and sister embracing a limp body, their hugs unreturned; a husband and father numbing his grief with alcohol.
As Boyer hung up the phone, her husband asked, "What's wrong?"
For the first time in 16 years, everything was right.
"My mom's awake," Boyer said, and the tears began to fall.
Boyer was ten when it happened. A tomboy who hated the Brownies and ballet, she participated in both because that's what her mother wanted.
"I was stuck to her all the time," Boyer recalls, "like gum on her shoe."
The White Bulls lived on five acres of New Mexico prairie, just outside Albuquerque. Boyer's father, Mark, was a computer operator. Her mom, Patricia White Bull -- called Happi because of her disposition -- was a natural beauty with shiny ebony hair and a luminous smile. She was content to handcraft Native American jewelry at home, and everywhere Happi went, her children, Cindy and Jesse, three, and Floris, one, usually were in tow.
Happi's fourth child was due, and a Caesarean had been scheduled. Boyer recalled the warm June morning her mother said goodbye. "I'll see you tomorrow. I love you."
For the White Bull family, however, "tomorrow" was cruelly denied. Happi gave birth to a healthy son, Mark, Jr. But during recovery, the young mother suddenly went into cardiac arrest. Doctors were unable to revive her before brain damage occurred. Happi White Bull, age 27, lapsed into a coma-like state.
The doctors told Mark there was no hope. Still, he waited three years for some sign of change. Then, in despair, he obtained a divorce and moved on.
Happi languished in neurological limbo for a decade and a half, alive but not living. As Christmas 1999 approached, a cold and flu bug was working its way through the Las Palomas Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Dr. Elliot Marcus prescribed amantadine, a flu drug sometimes used to stimulate people with Parkinson's disease or brain injuries.
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