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The Dark Glass Windows | by
Stephie Goldfish
“For at present
we see in hazy outline by means of a metal mirror, but then it will be face to face.” — Apostle
Paul
Saturday night Dr. Power came
by to visit me, unexpectedly. It was odd because it was at such a late hour. This was the first time I had met him in person.
I was going to see him while Else was away and we had talked on the phone the day I was admitted to the hospital a week before.
He was the one that suggested I go to the emergency room and be checked, because from what I had told him it sounded like
I had an infection. So, I had never even made it to the appointment with him. I was grateful to him, because if it weren’t
for him returning my call that day, I would have died.
Dr. Power was an older man in his early sixty’s. He was stout, wore round glasses, had a round oval face with little
hair, and wore a Yarmulke. The room was unusually quiet this night. The other patients were not in the room, except for Lydia,
the elderly lady in a comatose state.
Dr. Power began asking me several questions. “Are
you hearing voices?” “No.” “What does it mean by, ‘People
who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’?” This statement made me laugh, and I looked down at my fingernails, and then I glanced out
the window where it overlooked the courtyard areas around the Annenberg building and other hospital buildings, and it hit
me. “Everyone basically lives
in a glass house, because what they do affects others and others see what you do, and we should not be hypocritical or judgmental
of others when our own lives are on display and others see our mistakes too,” I said. Dr. Power smiled as he was writing this down. He then said, “I am going to say three things, and then in a
few minutes I will ask you to repeat them back to me in the same order.” “OK!”
And, pausing after each word, he said, “Blue, Smith, chrysanthemums.” We continued talking about something else, but a few minutes later he asked me if I remembered
the words. I promptly trumpeted back,
“Blue: blue fingernails and lips; Smith: Sister Smith from the Kingdom Hall; chrysanthemums: I don’t celebrate
Christmas.” He wrote this down
too, and asked me how much longer the doctors were going to keep me in the hospital. He said that when I get released I could
come by his office. Dr. Power left. II. Early that bright sunny Sunday morning, I received a call from Brother John. He asked me
if I would like to listen to the Sunday public discourse and the Watchtower study again. I had not slept the night before.
I had been up all night contemplating the view outside my hospital room window. I had been studying what was behind the dark
glass windows. I had been seeing the faint shape of a tree with its bare limbs bloom to life through the shadowy glass windows. Now, this morning, I was distracted by the usual
hospital activities of my room so that I could not concentrate on the Sunday public discourse. Nurses were coming in to give
us our medicine, to take our vitals, and to draw some blood. A young nutritionist had come in with my breakfast of bananas
and white toast. A black lady from housekeeping was sweeping the floor, cleaning off our tables, and emptying the wastebaskets.
She was wearing a blue smock and she reminded me of my grandmother. I placed the phone down on the bed thinking: this is ridiculous,
trying to listen to a two-hour meeting over the phone in the hospital. Lydia, the elderly lady in a comatose state, had received visitors. They were possibly her
son and daughter-in-law. They asked me how she was doing. I told them that during the night when it was raining that I heard
Lydia say softly, “It’s raining.” I told them that I had gone over to her bed and held her hand and petted
her on her forehead and had said a silent prayer for her. The couple looked at me and nodded, like they couldn’t really
believe that their mother had spoken.
They smiled and said, “Thank you for watching over her.” After about a half hour they left. III. Dr.
Helper walked into the hospital room and walked over to Lydia and was examining her. The old, outdated hospital room was set
up with four beds and four patients. My bed was opposite the three other beds that crowded the room. Lydia and I had been
there the longest with two new patients: an older lady who had had both of her feet amputated at the ankle, and another woman
who had just arrived in the middle of the night. She wore black-rimmed glasses and seemed a little disoriented. The middle-aged
Eastern European woman with cancer and the young black girl named Alisha had already left. “How is she?” I asked Dr. Helper. “Pretty good for a woman her age,” he replied. And he smiled at me in understanding. I looked down at my fingernails and then I looked out the window, trying to figure out where
that shadowy reflection of a tree through the dark glass windows was. I had been watching it bloom the whole time I was in
the hospital. Each day I had been at the hospital I had gotten closer and closer to the tree by going into each hospital room.
I would come to the room, which was at the end of the hall and close to the nurse’s station, but something kept me from
going past the nurse’s station to the end of the hall to the room where I knew had the view to the tree I was excited
to see. Instead, I would go to the
other side of the nurse’s station, and back up the other side of the hall with hospital rooms that overlooked Madison
Avenue and The Projects. This day,
though, I was determined to reach the tree and had finally built up the courage to go to the last room at the end of the hall. So, I decided to go find the tree. I
walked past the room where the elderly black lady was that I had given my You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth book to
a few days earlier. I then walked
past the room where I had met Dorothy and Naomi.
Dorothy was a black senior citizen and she would roll her hair in pink plastic curlers like my mom. She reminded me of my
aunt Dorothy. Naomi was a young Spanish
girl with black short curly hair. She had showed me photos of her and this famous basketball player on the Los Angeles Lakers
team. Naomi reminded me of my sister’s friend whom my sister had fallen in love with when we first moved to New York.
While I had been in the hospital I had given Naomi one sock of each pair of black and white designer socks that my sister
had brought me from L.A. One sock was black and white striped and the other sock was white with different sized black circles
on it. I wanted Naomi to have something to remember me by.
This day I had the other half of the same socks on and I was wearing the gray Chicago Bulls sweat suit that Charles had bought
me, with a red bull on the front of it.
As I walked towards the nurse’s station I could see a lot of activity going on and no one seemed to notice me. I reached
the nurse’s station, and I hesitated for a moment.
I walked slowly past the nurse’s station and stood at the entrance of the door to the room. The door was halfway opened.
A sign on the door read, “Do Not Enter.” I couldn’t decide whether to go in or not. I looked around, and
slightly pressed on the door to go in.
At once I gasped. I was overwhelmed by the view. My heart filled with exhilaration by the view of the tree outside the window.
The tree was in full bloom now. It was so lustrous, and the bright sunlight was flickering through the leaves and sunlight
was dancing on the walls of the hospital room.
The patient I saw was alone in the room. He was in the bed next to the window with the view to the tree. He was a young man.
He was unshaven and looked awfully weak and frail. He was propped up and he had on an oxygen mask and was having trouble breathing.
Our eyes met and no words were spoken.
But his eyes said, “Come in, it’s OK.”
He wanted to share his view of the tree with me, like he had been waiting for me to find the tree. I walked into his room and stood at the end of his bed. We both
stared at the magnificent sight. Our eyes met again. I looked out his window and saw the beautifully blossomed tree face to
face. I looked back at him with strong
feelings of thankfulness. I wanted to go over to him and hold his hand, but something made me turn and run out of the room.
I ran past the nurses station and over to the opposite side of hospital rooms, past the weighing seat that I had been weighing
myself on all week long, and down the long hall to the lounge room where patients and their families could visit. I was out
of breath. I ran and jumped up onto one of the lounge chairs in the room, up onto the windowsill where the heating vent was
and I started crying and sobbing and couldn’t catch my breath. I stood on the windowsill and looked out the window onto
Madison Avenue. All of a sudden it
had gotten a little dark and began to rain. I looked across the street to the buildings of The Projects that had lifeless
dark windows. The lounge room was bright with sharp florescent light. A nurse had run in and sat down in one of the lounge
chairs. I touched the window and saw my reflection, as the windowpanes streamed with the drops of rain falling against them. Copyright 2005
Falling Asleep in Death | by Stephie Goldfish
Death was not new to me. In fact, I had already died at least three times before.
You wake up in a twinkling of an eye, into a new body, and continue the same life you were living, only with a more sober
outlook on trying to live a better and more fulfilled life. The first time I remember dying was when I was four and a half years old in
the operating room while having an operation to remove a hernia from my navel. The doctor that operated on me was a general
surgeon having operated on my mom’s bladder and my big older sister’s foot. So with the hernia it should have
been a very routine operation. I remember waiting in my hospital bed to be taken down to the OR, and when they came to take
me down I was not completely undressed. The young transporter said, “Wait, what do we have here? I see underwear.” He assisted me in
taking off my underwear, as my mom and big older sister laughed. I was wheeled out in a transporting bed to the elevator,
down to the OR. “It
will be just a few minutes and that little blue ball will be cut right off,” Dr. Wolffel said. “What could go wrong?” I
thought, especially with my mom waiting outside the operating room. Well, they say when you die, it’s easy. And it was, because I wasn’t
expecting it. So, when I woke up in the recovery room I was laughing and happy to see my mom, except the pain was too much
for such a young age. It took two nurses, a doctor, and my mom to hold me down while they gave me a shot of painkiller. I
bit a nurse’s hand. As I said, you wake up to a more sober outlook on life. I promised my mom and the doctor that I would not
go around carrying the neighbor’s kids from here on out. Another time I died was in fourth grade. It was on a hot spring day, during
recess. The teacher had all of us kids stand around in a circle to play a game. The teacher would pick a kid then that kid
would call out another kid’s name, and then you both had to run around the circle of kids and beat the other kid to
his or her place; whoever got to the other kid’s place first, won. So, this one big boy was called on and he, of course,
called out my name. “Run!”
everyone yelled. I
took off running around the circle of kids. I was not looking where I was running. “Bam!” The big kid hit me head-on in my forehead
with his big head. I collapsed to the grass. I woke up with a frantic teacher, my twin sister, and all the other kids over
top of me with the full bright sunlight in my eyes. I was taken to the nurse’s office, where the teacher and principal
tried to get hold of my mother, but couldn’t. I began to get a fever and aching in my body. I was told to stay in the
nurse’s office since school was close to ending. My twin sister and I walked home that day. Our mom was not at our trailer. Our brother was not
at his home either. My fever had gotten worse. I had to sleep, and we sat on the hot cement stairs and I fell asleep. Fortunately, an angel
across the road saw this taking place, and asked me and my sister if we both would like to come in and wait there until our
mother returned. We gladly accepted, and she gave us a cold drink and a snack. I laid down on her bed and went fast asleep. When I woke up, my twin
sister was sitting watching TV, doing homework, and talking to the angel. The angel said maybe we could go see if our mom
had gone to our brother’s house up the street. We went, and yes, she was there. “Mom, I got real sick at school, and they
tried to find you. You weren’t home and this lady let me sleep in her bed until I felt better.” “Oh, you’ll be alright,”
my mother said. “Really,
mom, I died,” I cried. Well, this time, too, I was brought back to a more sober outlook on life, and decided that I would keep my
head up from now on while running around the circles of life. I died, another time, out in California. We were in fifth grade. I remember
that it was a very smoggy day, because on a clear day my twin sister and I could stand on the train tracks and see all the
thirty miles to Los Angeles, with its gray skyscrapers. But, when the smog was over California, you couldn’t see five
miles to the San Gabriel Mountains from our school. Mrs. Brand took my class out to the track field. She told us to run around the track. I took
off running, and it was getting harder and harder. I couldn’t understand why. The other kids were going fast and were
already at the place we had started. I grabbed my throat and felt heavy breathing. The next thing I know Mrs. Brand and this
other kid that I liked was over top of me and yelling out my name. I looked up into the bright sunlight. “What is wrong with you? I am alive!"
I exclaimed. Mrs.
Brand let out a laugh of relief. And again, I picked myself up and walked back to the classroom. Mrs. Brand sent me home with a note to
my mom advising her to take me for a checkup. Mrs. Brand saw us in the Safeway supermarket a week or so later, and asked my
mom how I was doing. “Oh,
she is just fine,” she said. And I just thought these dying episodes were normal. There was this one time that I don’t remember dying, but all my family
witnessed me dying. This time must have been the very first time I died because I was only three months old. My family had
decided to move us all out to California, the first time, and we traveled by car. We stopped at a motel along the road in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. And from what my two older brothers and older sister and my mother tell me, I died. They said I turned
completely black and blue and my mother said I shriveled up. They called an ambulance and I was taken to the hospital, and
a genius of a doctor found what had caused my death episode. The doctor called it colic. Wow! Such a smart, and wise
doctor. Can you believe it was just colic! And I was revived and we headed on out to California. These dying episodes happened on a few
more occasions: one time in tenth grade while taking a bath I was getting out of the bathtub and the next
thing I knew I was lying flat stark naked in the bathtub. Nothing was ever said about these dying episodes, and they didn’t happen
for a while. I thought that they were over until in twelfth grade they sent a catheter in my groin and into my heart and found
a one-inch-in-diameter hole. Then I became more prone to these death episodes, but in a defying way. I was told I could die if I were
to get pregnant, that there was a 50/50 chance I would survive or the baby. I took the 50/50 chance, and it didn’t turn out
the way I expected. I was taken down those cold sterile halls that time into the operating room. They placed the oxygen mask
over me, and I knew what was coming—death—and I just let it happen. This time was different—the bright light
was the same as always—but this time I was over top of my body looking down at me and all the medical team needed for
my case. The
doctors said, “Hey, slow down, you can’t afford any more deaths.” “Why?” I asked, “Is it really true
that you only have nine?” So, I have woken up to a more sober outlook on life or rather on all the dying in this world. I was raised believing,
“You should not be afraid of death, that it is like falling asleep in death.” When she asked me, “What is it about
death you are afraid of?” I replied, “I am afraid of falling asleep in death.” And she said, “What a peaceful way to go!” These deaths happened
over and over until finally I realized that I had in fact not died at all. That my so called former deaths were just preparing
me for the eventual death all of us go through. I then wondered, “If what I thought was death is not death, then what is death?” Death is war in Iraq;
9/11 attack; Holocaust and genocide; earthquakes in Haiti and tsunamis in Asia; Cancer, AIDs, and starving children in Africa;
Hurricane Katrina; my niece Katrina’s tragic death; my great-niece Natasha’s senseless death; my nephew Jeffrey's
untimely death; the mental, emotional, and spiritual deaths of vibrant souls to breathing lifeless ones who sit and wait
for the real thing or one who can’t wait for the real thing and does it themselves. The doctor said, “As long as you are
breathing you’re alive!” And, so, I went down the halls laughing and happy. This was the most sensibleness I had heard in
all my life. Copyright
2010
A Three Ring Circus Clown | by Stephie Goldfish During the last half century, attendance at the Three Ring
Circus has declined so that professional clowns, like myself, have suffered over this phenomenon. It used to be that people
all over the country flocked to the Three Ring Circus for the excitement that mounts when clowns fly over forty feet in the
air on a trapeze without a net and are hanging by just their knees and, at just the right synchronized moment, release and
fall to be caught by another flying clown on the other side and, to the fans' relief, land unharmed smiling and waving to
everyone below. Almost a half a century ago, two babies
were born on a hot July Sunday at about nine o'clock in the morning. Their entrance into the world came with much fanfare
and expectation. Their mother was so happy to be having two more babies. She had already had three beautiful children, and
the news of two new babies on the way brought their mother much joy and brought her back to life. But after the babies were
born, when the babies were rolled in to see their mother, she was taken aback from their physical appearance. "They're
perfect little girls," Dr. Bozo said to the mother. However, the mother noticed that they were completely different from
each other. One was pink and red and the other was purple and blue, and would always cry. No matter what the mother did, she
never stopped crying. It hurt her so to look upon her baby
that would not stop crying, so that when she brought her home she painted a clown's smile around the poor baby's purple and
blue lips, so that even when the baby would cry everyone who looked at her would, instead, laugh. As the baby grew up, they noticed her nails got blue too, so they painted them bright red with white
polka dots. The baby didn't understand why everyone laughed
at her, because she was in so much pain and was hungry all the time. The mother tried everything to get the baby to stop crying,
so when the Three Ring Circus came to town she got the idea to take her baby to see all the clowns that lived and worked
in the circus to see if her baby would stop crying. Much to the mother's glee it worked. The baby stopped crying, and began
to laugh and laugh. When the clowns fell down, turned over, and did somersaults and everything, the baby would laugh and laugh.
But when the mother took the baby back home then the crying would begin again. So, the mother took the baby back to the circus and pleaded with the clowns to please take her baby, because
at the circus was the only time she would laugh and laugh. The
clowns, having fellow feeling for both the mother and baby, agreed to take the baby. And, so the baby grew up in the Three Ring Circus. The baby was quite happy at the prospect of spending the rest of her life in the Three Ring Circus, which
seemed the only natural place for such a baby to grow up in. She was ready to make a life in the circus where every day brought
about excitement and the unknown. And it really did make the baby happy to make others gaze in amusement. As the baby grew and grew she eventually learned all the skills of a true clown.
She learned to walk the tight rope, face the tigers and lions, and fly through the air on the trapeze. She became the most famous clown of all. And, thus, brought back the dying era of the
Three Ring Circus. Copyright July 31, 2009
The
Legend of the Stone | by Stephie Goldfish
I was in bad shape all the way around. I had lost everything I owned: my life's savings had been depleted; I had sold my brand
new furniture I had bought from Macy's for a meager eight hundred dollars; I had no more credit I could live on; my 2006 Nissan
Xterra had been repossessed; and I was on the verge of being evicted from my apartment. My health had also begun to go downhill,
because I wasn't able to buy my medicine; I had almost let my health insurance lapse; and I was neglecting to use my oxygen.
I had no social life and no love life. I had already been through my second divorce, and one crazy short-lived relationship,
and I was so desperate for some money one evening, I brought myself as low as one can go: I practically sold my soul to the
devil. I felt as if my life was worse than swine eating from the trough, I had sunk so low. So, the news about my inheritance came with such surprise, and I was hopeful once more.
The letter regarding my inheritance just said, "Stephanie, you've inherited a house and land and a stone." Wow!
This could not have happened at a better or worse time in my life. My mind raced with thoughts as to what the house and land
was like, how I imagined it to be. And, the stone mentioned in my letter captivated me. Could it possibly be a precious gemstone
that was handed down from my heritage? And, perhaps it would be worth lots of money. The letter also had the location of where
I could find my inheritance. So, I went on a journey searching for my inheritance. In my journey, I came to a region where there were beautifully designed homes and well-landscaped
yards. As I came closer to the place where the house and land and stone I was to inherit should be situated, I stopped and
I gasped. What I saw was far beyond what I imagined my inheritance to be. The house looked dilapidated and the front yard
was strewn with overgrown weeds, unkempt trees and shrubs. The house and land were very different than those they were surrounded
by, which seemed to have owners that really took care of them. The other homes were well lit up, not dark with broken windowpanes
like my inheritance. I went inside the house to look around, visiting each room, and then I went out to the back yard. I was
in shock. The back yard was much like the front yard, but right in the middle of the back yard was a very huge boulder-like
stone that apparently had been left there due to its burdensome size. The stone was almost as tall as the house itself. I
sat down in the yard and began to cry. The owner definitely had not properly cared for the house and land, and the results
were obvious. And, why it was abandoned was very troubling to me, since the house had some beauty to it, and with just the
right cultivation the land could be made into a garden of splendor.
Later that night, I meditated on what I should do with what I inherited. I could sell my inheritance and just take whatever
I was given. Or, I could keep my inheritance and create it into a picture-perfect home for myself. The decision was very clear,
yet I knew it would take hard work. So, I set my
heart and mind on what could be done in order to get the house into perfect order and harmony. I worked long, hard days and
nights on the house, dusting and cleaning every inch of every brick and tile and wood panel. I put new lights in the chandelier
that overhangs in the grand foyer. I cleaned every windowpane on the inside and outside. I painted the walls with fresh paint
so that I could hang up my most valuable assets, My Art. On every wall will hang some painting or picture that I created. As for the heavy, unmovable stone, it took a lot of effort, but little
by little I chiseled away at the huge stone in the back of the yard, because I had an idea to build a skillfully landscaped
pond and garden where I could come and just relax and look at its beauty and find solace. Each delicate piece of the stone I laid out meticulously. I toiled and labored until there
was a perfect small body of water that flowed over small pebbles, which produced a soothing sound to one's ears. I built a
small bridge that one could walk over and view the natural beauty of the pond. I planted various herbs and arranged plants
and flowers, which I cultivated and pruned until the garden was in full bloom. The herbs grown had healing powers, and the
scents and smells of the plants and flowers produced the most exquisite aromas.
My garden and home is now a source of peace and a place for reflection to think upon my future and upon my past. My home has
life and purpose in a perfect setting. I invite over my close family members, my neighbors and friends who were all there
through the hard work of creating this special unique environment. Most importantly, I protect my home and garden and let
only those whom I trust and love enjoy its delight. Copyright January 20,
2009
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