Youhanna Ghaifan

It's  fourth period, and Youhanna Ghaifan strides through the door of my classroom.

"How's my favorite teacher?" His big grin stretches from one ear to the other. However, I'm onto him. He greets every one of his teachers the same way.  But I still like it.

In those moments before the bell rings, Youhanna hangs over the desks of his buddies. They trade barbs and tease each other about the all important subject of girls.

"Yep," Youhanna rises.  He is six feet three inches tall, 240 pounds, and one of only two black students in the classroom.  But Youhanna isn't just black.  He is very black. His presence takes over the room. "I call a different lady every night," he brags to his friends.  "They don't pick up, but I call."  His huge laugh fills the space.

Youhanna is one of my very best senior literature students - and one of my very favorites. He's come a long way since he was an eighth grade student here at Grand Island Central Catholic. I remember the day four years ago, his first day in my class.  He informs me he hates English class and that he has only come to GICC to be near his best friend, Harry Heidelk.

He lays it all on the line. "I play football and basketball. I don't like to read or write.  I could get really tired of stuff and leave."

It seems to be a challenge.

"Don't worry," I say.  "We'll probably get tired of you first."

His eyes narrow.  "What's that supposed to mean?" he says defiantly.

But I ignore him.

As if to prove a point, he refuses to do much at all in my English class. Halfway through the semester Doris Rempe, the school counselor, summons Youhanna's teachers to a meeting. He is failing nearly all his classes. Doris asks for our observations.

"He wants to leave," I say.  "I think we should let him."

I am ashamed now for giving up so easily.  Bill Gavers, however, GICC's long time boys' basketball coach at the time, will not give up. "I'll be responsible for him," he says.  "Let's give the kid another chance." Bill, of course, sees Youhanna's potential as an athlete.  But he also genuinely cares for him.

I don't know what Gavers says to him, but Youhanna's attitude changes. His grades improve dramatically, and he works very hard - especially at his reading which has always been difficult for him. In ninth grade English the next year, we study To Kill a Mockingbird. It takes Youhanna longer than any other kid to read it, but he is absorbed and finishes it cover to cover. The plight of Tom Robinson, an innocent black man accused of raping a white girl, troubles him. Youhanna may fill his world with football and basketball, but he is no stranger to suffering, and he remembers his other life in Sudan.

Before he is six years old, he and his family will have escaped from Sudan as refugees. Youhanna understands they would not have survived otherwise. His father, Ibraham Gebra, is determined to flee from Sudan with his wife, Nafisa Toto, and their young children. A religious war has claimed the lives of two million Christians, including the brothers and sisters of Youhanna's mother and father. His mother, as a young girl, is taken prisoner.  One terrible day, she witnesses the murder of her own sister, also a prisoner. Just as she herself is at the point of execution, another prisoner, a man, helps her to escape.

Youhanna is five-years-old when he and his family flee to Egypt, a temporary safe haven for Christian refugees like themselves. His father tells him they will go to America and that Youhanna must always be grateful to God for sparing all their lives.

Of that other life, Youhanna remembers running barefoot outside with his brother and sisters.  He remembers packs of wild dogs who chase him up a tree until he cries for his mother. He remembers his father's determination to escape the country.

"My dad is always hard on me and always has been," Youhanna tells me. "It's his way or the highway.  I don't always like it. But if he wasn't so tough and doing things his way, we wouldn't have survived."

Youhanna, as a small child arriving in the U.S., learns the English language quickly.  His parents still struggle, but there is no trace of an accent in the speech of Youhanna or any of his siblings who are all enrolled in the Grand Island School system.  Youhanna and his younger brother Younan attend Central Catholic while his sisters Hannah, Lucy and Habila attend Grand Island Public.  Youhanna settles in at GICC, becomes a celebrated athlete in three sports, and very much enjoys the attention it brings. But the fact that he is black in a small Nebraska town presents difficult challenges.

He is a freshman starting on Bill Gavers' Crusader basketball team.  One night, the team travels to a small town some miles away.  During the game, big Youhanna grabs a rebound and unintentionally elbows an opposing teammate. The opposing fans, however, jeer.  The "N" word escapes.  Others take it up lashing out at Youhanna.

Youhanna himself is unaware of the mounting rage on the other side of the gym.  He is utterly focused on his game. When his shocked teammates tell him about it later, he is hurt but silent.

 I see him in school two days later. "I'm so sorry, Youhanna."

He shrugs.  "It's okay.  No big deal."

I stare at him.  "It is a big deal," I say.  "You have every right to be upset about it."

He looks at the floor.  "If I got upset every time I heard that word," he says, "I'd have to be mad every day.  And I just can't," he shakes his head.  "I can't be mad every day."

His classmates rally around him.  The ugliness of human nature has been an eye opener for them, too.  In his safe world at GICC, Youhanna can forget about the angry sting of racism.  But his success as an athlete sometimes causes him to forget his Sudanese roots, as well.

By the time he is a junior, Youhanna is getting noticed. He is a household name in Grand Island, and colleges all across the country are courting him.  A defensive end on the Crusader football team, Youhanna is not unaware of his great talent nor of the mounting interest.  It is a lot for a boy of 16 to handle, and he begins to use his power. He discovers the ease of charming adoring girls.

In American Literature class, I assign an essay. Youhanna turns in a paper.  It is written in a careful feminine hand.  I slap it back on his desk.

"Seriously?" I say angrily.  "You're trying to be THAT guy?"

He looks up, bewildered.  "What guy?"

"C'mon, Youhanna," I snort. "You want to be the guy who gets silly, needy girls to do your homework for you.Will you have girls do your laundry, too, when you get to college?"

He is outraged.  "I am not gonna be that guy!"

I lose my temper.  "You are that guy!"

We are both upset and steer clear of each other for the next few days.  He turns in a new essay, and I am pleased to see he has written it himself. Nevertheless, I fear for Youhanna - that he will forget who he is and the great sacrifices that have been made on his behalf.

Just as school starts this year, Youhanna's senior year, the University of Wyoming offers him a football scholarship - a full ride. I try to be happy for him, but I know Youhanna hasn't worked hard in English class for a full year.  His grades are barely passing. Will he blow this great opportunity and become that particular kind of college football player I despise?

But he works.  And he works hard. He devours Catcher in the Rye and loves our discussions on A Separate Peace. I wait for old habits to return, but all semester he continues to work diligently and checks his grades often. In my husband's history class, he is engaged and questioning.

"Youhanna!" my husband John claps him on the back. "You've earned your man card, Son!"

He radiates a new kind of confidence, not just because of his athletic abilities but because of his scholastic success, too.

"What in God's name happened over the summer?" I ask.

He shrugs. "I grew up."

The scholarship offer, he confides, was a test.  "I guess I just want to start working for myself.  I have to start somewhere, and I have to decide what kind of person I want to be."

And, he's decided, he wants to be a good one.

Youhanna has finally come to terms with the life his parents have given him. Their example has been soul changing. Employed at Swifts and Company, his mother works the day shift, and his father works nights.  His father, Youhanna says, has seen only three of his athletic events in the four years Youhanna has been at Central Catholic.

"I understand that," Youhanna says.  "He wants the best for our family, and he has to work."

His mother, on the other hand, is at every game. She doesn't understand either football or basketball very well, and Youhanna carefully explains the rules and strategies to her.  She doesn't speak much English, but Youhanna says he can hear her in the stands during his basketball games.

"If I miss my first free throw, I can hear her yelling, 'You can do it, Boy!' "  He grins.

Youhanna loves his parents very much. "They've always been there for me."

He is especially protective of his mother.  "If I ever hear my younger brothers or sisters yell at her, I tell them, 'Don't you EVER yell at her!' I just love her so much."

Someday, if he ever makes it big, he hopes to give his mother and father a better life.  He understands, he says, that he owes everything to them.

But in the meantime, he is a 17-year-old boy who enjoys high school
. At Grand Island Central Catholic, Youhanna is enormously popular. He's having the time of his life. But he's looking ahead.

I think of a television interview with Youhanna right after he is awarded his scholarship.  When asked what he'd like to be when he grows up, Youhanna replies in his native language - "Whatever God wants me to be."

I don't know what God will ask him to do.  But I know Youhanna will answer the call with his own unique brand of humor, energy and zest.  He will make his parents, coaches, friends and teachers proud one day.

He makes us proud now.

John Howard

I was a young teacher at Grand Island Central Catholic back in 1983.

One day, a month before school started, our principal Hugh Brandon called me to his office.

John and Cathy Howard - our wedding day - August 4th, 1984.

"Would you look at this?" he flipped through an application on his desk and feigned surprise.  "Here's a young fellow called John Howard who's applied for the history job.  Let's see," Hugh studied the application carefully. "He's 29-years-old, single, and, oh!"  He looked up innocently.  "He's 6 feet 8."  His eyes twinkled.  "Should I hire him?"

He was messing with me, pure and simple.  I was a 28-year-old single female. And I was 6 feet 1 inch tall.

"I don't care if he's a serial killer," I said.  "Hire him."

Fortunately, John Howard was not a serial killer.  He was, however, insane.

Mr. Howard drove up the circle drive at Central Catholic that first day of school in a tiny blue Volkswagen Rabbit which appeared to have been constructed by engineers around his body. One long arm hung lazily out the tiny window with knuckles that nearly grazed the street.

John Howard was a school sensation, and not only because of his looming stature.  He taught the Industrial Revolution wearing a giant fake nose and glasses.  He pulled rubber chickens out of his desk.  And one morning, late for class, he tried to scare his students by explosively leaping through the door.  But when you're 6 feet 8, you shouldn't leap explosively through anything.  Slamming his head against the door jamb, he nearly knocked himself out.

But I liked him.  And by the time we were married a year later with the entire school in attendance, I loved him.

We've been married a long time now, and every day he makes me laugh.  Except for the days I have stomach flu, a migraine headache, or I'm so mad I could scratch his eyes out.  His wildly bizarre humor, though, took some getting used to the first year we were married.

I had just been ready to nod off one night when he startled me out of sleep.  "What do you think about couple swapping?" he asked out of the blue.

I snorted.  "Oh, I'm all for it."

He sat up.  "So that's sarcasm?  You don't approve?"

I laughed and ignored him, turning over to sleep.

"I see," he said abruptly, jumping out of bed.

He walked briskly to the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and punched a few numbers.

"Roger?" I heard him address the name of a man I completely detested.  "Yeah, I guess it's off.  Break the news to Ardelle."

He's just as insane with the kids at school.

"Women are the root of all the world's problems!" he bellows at the girls in his American History class.

"Did I ever tell you I hate children?" he roars at the eighth graders.

I remember walking into his classroom to see him standing over poor little Amy Nguyen who giggled helplessly in her desk.

"Can't you be just a little afraid?" he screamed at her.

"Oh Mr. Howard," she smiled coyly at him.  "I could never be afraid of you."

Graduates return to us after a couple of years.  "Mr. Howard," they tell me earnestly, time and time again, "is the best teacher I ever had. He really prepared me for college."

I wait politely for them to tell me that diagramming sentences in my English class changed their lives.

They never do.

John's forged special bonds with his cross country and track runners through the years.  In the school's ancient very-used Handi-Van, one of Central Catholic's archaic modes of transportation purchased second hand from Goodwill, he drives his athletes out to the country to run on pasture roads.

One fall afternoon, disgusted that they had run poorly and lost their focus, he lined them all up across a dirt road before firing up the Handi-Van.

"I'm sorry it's come to this," he shouted out the window, gunning the engine.  "But I have to run you over."

One girl laughed so hard, she collapsed helplessly on the dirt road.

The kids are scared to death of him when they first enter middle school as sixth graders, but by the time they graduate, they know him well.  His very loud bark, they understand, is much worse than his bite.

A couple of years ago, Alli Masat, one of John's runners, was visibly upset in my English class.  I asked her to stay after the bell and made her tell me what the trouble was.  Her much loved grandmother, she cried shakily, had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.

"I have to tell Mr. Howard!" she hiccuped.  I assured her that if she needed to miss track practice, I would tell him for her.  "It's not that," she shook her head.  "It's just that - well - he's like my dad!" she sobbed.

He's been a great dad to our own two boys, Kenny and Tommy.  They, better than anyone, understand his humor.  They also understand he's always there.  He cooked huge meals for those two gargantuan boys before every football and basketball game, counseled them with his good, gentle wisdom, and spent plenty of time yelling at them when they didn't always toe the line.

And he's been just as good to me.  I remember how he spent three nights on a tiny, pull-out bed in a hospital room in Omaha with me after my double mastectomy.  His familiar snore was such a comfort.  When the nurse removed my bandages for the first time to examine my chest, he leaned over to look and said, "Looks good, Cath."

How can you not love a man like that?

We don't always understand each other.  It annoys me that he's so blunt with door to door salesmen.  He, in turn, is irritated by my inability to have short conversations with anyone on the bike path.

I think he should be more concerned about the after life, and he thinks I should try to give up my obsession for control.

Worst of all, no matter how much I've begged or pleaded, he refuses to let me have a dog.

"It would be cruel.  We're not here all day to take care of it," he reminds me with logical good sense.

"That's fine," I say mutinously.  "I'll get my dog the minute you pass away."

What we do understand, however, is that we can't finagle this life without each other.

         John and Cathy on vacation with our boys at Hermosa Beach, California, summer 2014.

"Don't you know," he's said to me many, many times, "that I'd do anything for you?"

He would, too.

And that's a good thing to remember - especially today - the day of our 30th anniversary.

This past week, he reminded me that he's lived just as long with me as without me.  And I've lived a little longer with him than without.  He's 60, and I'm 59.  For this last year of my 50's, I will introduce myself as a trophy wife.  It's not bad either.  I've had the poor slob eating out of my hand for 30 years now.

He's given me two nice, funny, tall boys, a happy home, and the steady confidence of knowing that as long as he's around, I'll always be okay.  Turns out he's given me every single thing I ever wanted or hoped for in this life.  And more.

Everything except a dog.

Joe Brown

My brother Joe is the only one in this world besides me who remembers the clown who came to life in the basement.

Joe was four and I was five when we lived on Vrain Street, and Mick and Rick were mere toddlers.

One day, Dad, who worked for Sealtest Dairy, lugged home a life sized mechanical clown his company had used for an advertising promotion.

Joe and Stef Brown - July 4th, 2014.

"The promotion's over, and I figured the kids would like it!" he explained to my wary-eyed mother, as he excitedly plugged the clown into the basement wall.  With electrical juice swarming through its veins, the clown jumped to life and suddenly lurched side to side as if casing every nook and cranny of the basement.  Its garish red mouth moved silently. Dad beamed.

"Won't this be fun, Kids?"

We were terrified.  Worst of all, the basement was our playground. In the days to come, the clown, observing us quietly from its shadowy corner, ruined the basement for us forever.

Joe and I suffered the same nightmare.  We'd be playing in the basement as usual when the clown, of its own accord, suddenly sprang to life and inched its terrifying way toward us.  Shrieking, we'd pound up the stairs wailing for our mother, only to discover the door at the top of the stairs was locked.  Behind us, the clown made its slow, steady progress up the stairs, step by deadly step. I don't know about Joe, but I always woke at this point scaring my parents to death with my screams.

When it became clear that none of us would ever again venture to the basement, Dad realized his mistake and called a junk dealer to cart the clown away.  Joe and I stood outdoors in our jackets the day the clown was loaded up in the rear of a big rickety truck wobbling precariously as it was trundled away.  But Joe swears before the truck rumbled down the street, the clown turned to fix him with a penetrating gaze.

As close as Joe and I were when we were small and sharing the same nightmare about a phantom clown, we felt like stark opposites as we entered the throes of adolescence. Joe was exceptionally handsome with his blonde hair and my dad's blue, blue eyes.  If that wasn't enough, he was a particularly graceful and talented athlete.

"Joe's one of those lucky kids who skipped right over the awkward adolescent phase," I overheard my mother laugh to my aunt one day.  I had never once heard her say this about me, and I strongly suspected I was in the middle of a very awkward phase even as she spoke.  Maybe a permanent one.

In high school, I remember a girl in Joe's class who struck up a friendship with me hoping that I'd get her in good with my brother.  "You're so lucky," she breathed.  "You get to live in the very same house as Joe Brown!"

I snorted.  That girl would have lasted five minutes at our house.  The first time Joe shoved a pair of his underwear over her head or Mick pinned her down on the floor to spit pickle juice in her mouth, she'd take off like a bat out of hell.

As smart and athletic and handsome as Joe was, however, he didn't always have it easy.  My dad was hard on all my brothers, but he was hardest on Joe.  Dad parented the way he had been parented.

At one of Joe's basketball games, Dad leaned over to whisper to my mother, "Joe is the most gifted athlete I've ever seen."  Sadly, I doubt he ever told Joe.  But by the time our lovely mother had died and Dad had raised the second half of their ten kids alone, he had mellowed considerably.  Just before he passed away, he and Joe resolved a lot of their differences.

I see a lot of my dad in Joe now.  Dad, with almost super human strength, put aside his own grief after Mom died to bolster us up and make us feel safe.  He was one of the strongest, kindest, bravest men I ever knew.

Joe is just like him.

He is a private man, like Dad, and sometimes he'll look long and thoughtfully at the ceiling before he responds to your question or makes a smart alec crack.  Just like Dad.

A smart and savvy businessman, Joe's given me good advice. He put me in contact with all the right people to sell our house and even loaned John and me every stick of furniture he owned to dress the place to sell.  He even offered to help us paint.  "We'll all help!"he reassured me.  "Pick a day, and we'll be over."

That's Joe.  "We're family," he says.  "This is what we do for each other."  It's exactly what Dad would have said.

The only time I ever saw Joe's strong, calm demeanor crack was when his 22-year-old son Gavin nearly died on the operating table three years ago. Joe and his wife Stef agonized for 12 hours in the waiting room pressing nurses for news of Gavin.  "They won't tell us what's happening," he said over the phone, and for the first time in my life, I heard my brother stifle a sob.

Gavin survived, but a year later Joe suffered a heart attack - his second.

"You better come to the hospital fast," my brother Tom called all of us.  "Joe's coded."

All the way to the hospital I prayed, gripping the steering wheel, and prepared myself to hear the news that my brother was gone.  But those good doctors revived him with the paddles and brought him back to us.  When we were able to see him, we marveled that he was alert and able to talk to us.

"Something happened in there," he said to all of us as we crowded around his hospital gurney.  "Something great."  We looked quickly at each other.  Had he seen Mom and Dad?  The big light?  Nothing like that, he explained a few weeks later during a family pizza gathering at my sister Deb's. Joe's never painted glowing narratives of anything, and he didn't tell us much about this experience.  He remembered the emergency physicians frantically working, and then he was gone - in another place.  He didn't see anything much or meet long lost relatives.  "But I was somewhere else," he told us, and the feeling of joy and peace and well being was blissful. It didn't last long - less than a minute. The emergency crew started his heart again quickly, and suddenly Joe was back again in the middle of hospital chaos. At a loss to describe it, he shook his head.

That was all he ever said about the experience.  But I  know he's thought about it.  Especially now.

A few weeks ago, after a trip to the doctor to check out some troubling symptoms, my handsome brother was diagnosed with cancer of the bladder.  It was a shock for both Joe and Stef, and it was a few days before either one of them could talk to us.  But finally, Joe called, upbeat as usual and refusing to betray his fear.

"It's an aggressive tumor that's spread into the muscle of the bladder," he said, when I pressed for details. An MRI scheduled in another week would reveal whether it had spread to other organs in his body.  In the meantime, he said, both he and Stef planned to be at our brother Tom's with the rest of us for our annual fourth of July family celebration, and he didn't want anybody hovering over him.  "I just want to be a normal guy and enjoy Independence Day," he said firmly.

I promised and alerted all my family members who were desperate to hear the news.  "No hovering," I said. "I gave him our word."

I knew what it cost Joe to make that call, and his courage put me to shame.  I remembered the day years ago when I curled up in bed waiting for the pathology report for a lump that turned out to be benign. Paralyzed by fear, I could hardly speak to anyone, even my husband. Joe, on the other hand, was facing his fear and planning to celebrate the 4th of July with all his family in attendance. My younger brother was teaching me how to be brave.

On July 4th, we inhaled burgers and enjoyed unseasonably cool weather.  There was volleyball and a bean bag toss, and we laughed and ate and drank.  Not once did we bring up medical issues or the stressful MRI scheduled in a few days.  But we couldn't take our eyes off Joe who seemed just as cheerful and happy as he always did.

Our sister Terri emailed us.  "Let's say a nine day Novena for Joe!"

Like the good Catholics we are, we said the Novena and prayed fervently for Joe. I watched for reassuring signs.  I'm a big believer in heavenly signs.  When my husband drew me to the bedroom window to see a flaming red Cardinal squawking on a tree branch just feet away, I tucked it away and was comforted.  My sisters reported seeing white Cadillacs - the same brand and model as Dad used to drive.  It was always a reassuring symbol to us that Dad was close by.  We hoped and prayed and waited to hear from Joe.

On the day of the MRI, I was jumpy.  We all were.

"Have you heard anything?" my siblings and I called and texted back and forth.  At three in the afternoon, I could stand it no longer.

"What's the news?" I texted Joe's wife Stef.

Finally she called.  "It hasn't spread!"

It was all I wanted to hear.  Immediately, I alerted my brothers and sisters.

"Thank God!" Carry texted back.

"Thank you, Jesus!" Terri exclaimed.

"Praise God!" my stepmother Kris wrote.

You would have thought it was a religious revival.  We don't usually invoke the name of our good Lord quite so enthusiastically in our text messages, but it seemed the only proper expression for our relief and gratitude.

Joe's journey has only begun.  He will lose his bladder, and life will be very different.  But I know my brother. He's strong and brave, and he'll adapt.  He always has.  He puts one foot in front of the other and does what needs to be done.  Just like Dad.

In the meantime, he has a gorgeous wife who adores him, kids who are devoted to him, and a whole dysfunctional family of siblings that can't do without him. We love him so much, and we refuse to let anything happen to him.

It turns out I need him more than I ever realized. Joe might be 57-years-old, but he's still my little brother.

And he's the only other person on this planet besides me who remembers the clown that came to life in the basement.

Ruth Howard

My mother-in-law, Ruth Howard, has suffered years of abuse at the hands of her children.

Those seven Howard kids are smart-alecky mockers, every one of them, and they've never let their poor mother forget a single mistake she's ever made.

Ruth Howard with granddaughter Laura Turner at Ruth's 90th birthday party.

I know all about it.  I married one of them.  John, like his siblings, has a memory like a steel trap.

"Do you have to remember every ridiculous thing I've ever said?" I hissed, when he once reminded me of the time I'd vowed never to be the mother who screamed at her kids in the grocery store.

Multiply that misery by seven, and you begin to understand what life has been for my mother-in-law.

There's the story, for instance, of her disdain for the women in her town succumbing to the charm of radio personality Cactus Jack Reedus who, with his traveling microphone, would accost women in Gordon's Supermarket.

"LUCILLE PLUNKETT!" he'd leap out from behind the produce aisle to startle an unsuspecting housewife.  "Why do YOU shop at Gordon's?"

And over the radio air waves of Greeley, Colorado, every one of those women responded in like.

"I LOVE THE WIDE VARIETY AND LOW, LOW PRICES!"

Every time she heard it, Ruth would roll her eyes hugely.  "Those stupid, stupid women!" she'd groan.  "They're like sheep!"

One day, John and his brother were driving home from school listening to the radio when Jack Reedus attacked his next innocent victim.

"RUTH HOWARD!  Why do YOU shop at Gordon's?"

John and Tom nearly swerved off the road.  Recovering, they listened intently to their own mother's nervous voice clearly enunciating, "I LOVE THE WIDE VARIETY AND LOW, LOW PRICES!"

At Gordon's, with the damning microphone pressed close to her face, Ruth clapped her hand over her mouth.  But it was too late.  In that moment, she understood with stunning clarity that life was forever over as she knew it.

Then there was the broken clock that Ruth took to the repair shop but somehow never got around to picking up.  "I've got to get that clock!" she muttered to herself again and again as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months.

When I met my mother-in-law three years later, she was still talking about that broken clock. So was her smart-mouthed youngest daughter who perfected an uncanny imitation of her mother.  "And tomorrow, by God," Mary would wag her finger exactly in the manner of her mother, "I'm picking up my clock!"

As the youngest, Mary was a little hurt that the newspaper announcement of her birth was the only one of her siblings' not to be carefully pasted into the family photo album.  But she was, after all, the seventh child. Ruth, quite frankly, was just a little tired of clipping birth announcements.

Mary, growing up, often assumed her martyred expression.  "I guess I'm just not important enough for a birth announcement," she complained one time too many when she was 12 or 13.

"Oh, all right!" her mother snapped.  Grabbing the photo album from the lap of her astonished daughter, Ruth furiously scribbled with a number 2 pencil, "To Mr. and Mrs. William Howard, a daughter, Dec. 14th, 1961."

It remains in the photo album to this day.

To Ruth's credit, she laughs at the way her children mock her.  In fact, when the Cactus Jack Reedus in Gordon's Supermarket story or the penciled-in birth announcement comes up at family gatherings, she laughs 'til she cries. When you're 90-years-old, you learn to look at your failings with a certain tolerance - even amusement. They don't amount to much, really.  Not when you're Ruth Howard, anyway.

Her memories sustain her.  A young school teacher from the San Luis Valley in Colorado, she remembers meeting her husband Bill Howard, a Greeley farmer, for the first time.

"He was so good with little kids," she remembers.  "I loved that about him."

They married and raised seven of their own on their Eastern Colorado farm.  Ruth survived the agony of watching her oldest son drafted into the Viet Nam war and the numerous hail storms that wiped out their crops.  She introduced her children to fine music and books and made sure every one of them understood the importance of a college education.  After 50 years of marriage, she lost her beloved Bill to cancer and sold the family farm.  She's suffered a stroke, diabetes, a broken hip, battled her way back from pneumonia this last winter, and now resides in an assisted living facility in Loveland, Colorado.  With the recent death of her sister-in-law Lucille, she's now lost every sibling and friend she ever grew up with. Life didn't quite follow the smooth path she'd planned.  It doesn't for any of us.

But my mother-in-law is determined to make the best of it.  "I refuse to be unhappy!" she says with firm resolve. To that end, she reads good books, is extremely lucky at Black Jack, and loves the Denver Broncos.

"Sometimes," she confides to my husband John, another of the Denver Bronco faithful, "I have to turn the tv off."  She shakes her head sorrowfully.  "What on earth was Peyton Manning thinking in the third quarter of that game?"

This last June, all Ruth's kids from Colorado, Nebraska and Montana gathered in the small, pleasant courtyard of her nursing home to celebrate her 90th birthday.  Her oldest son Jim grilled brats and burgers, and Ruth settled into a glider swing in the shade of the patio with her walker nearby.

Her nieces and nephews came, some of whom I'd never met in my 30 years married into the Howard family.  Her grandchildren arrived, too, and one by one, each of those some 50 people in attendance sat next to the guest of honor, a quintessential grandmother with her fluff of white hair and sweet smile, to gently push the glider back and forth and savor their memories of the special atmosphere that Ruth Howard always managed to create around those she loved.

Her nieces and nephews remembered the Sunday baseball games on the farm and the meals Aunt Ruth heaped on the table afterwards that made you feel you'd died and gone to Heaven.

Her grandkids remembered the books she'd  read to them, the Easter egg hunts on the old farm, and the Halloween pumpkins they'd carved with Grandma.

Several residents from the home meandered out to the gathering to inspect this big crowd - all there for Ruth Howard.  They shook their heads in wonder.  How had one small, white haired old woman attracted the attention of this sprawling group of laughing, happy people?  And according to house rules, not a drop of alcohol in sight.

A gentle old resident, struggling with the confusion of dementia, nevertheless enjoyed the great throng of people singing "Happy Birthday" to her friend Ruth.  But with vague uncertainty, she turned to the tall man beside her and asked, for the fourth time, who he was.

"I'm Ruth's son," he said just as politely as the three times before.

"Oh, Ruth!" she remembered her friend on the glider.  "So many people here!" She squinted up in the sun at the man.  "She must be a very special person, your mother."

My husband John nodded. He thought of Jack Reedus and failed crops and a broken clock that never came home.

And he remembered a hot day in July nearly 14 years ago when his car broke down in Sterling, Colorado, with his wife and two little boys sweltering in the heat.  He followed his very first instinct.  He called his mother.  

She'd driven like a bat out of hell the 90 miles to Sterling to rescue her family. He'd remembered his 75-year-old mother pulling up in the parking lot of the convenience store where they'd all waited with hot, frayed tempers.  She'd pulled herself out of her car, limped through the door, and laughed with the pure pleasure of seeing them.

"Well, there you all are!"       

And just like that, everything was all right.

"Yeah," he smiled at the sweet old lady waiting patiently for the reply to a question she'd probably already forgotten.. "As a matter of fact, we couldn't get along without her."