A Quiet Stranger by Lorna Czarnota

CopyrightCzarnota2009
No portion of this story may be duplicated in any form without permission from the author.

I remember when I was a young teen, I went someplace with my mom and she left her purse sitting on a table or in a shopping cart unattended.

I asked, “Aren’t you going to take your purse? Somebody might steal it.”

Her reply to me was “If somebody takes it, they needed it more than I do.”

We lived in a different time. We lived in a time when people seldom stole things they didn’t need. Oh yes, there have always been bandits but they almost never bothered everyday people. People who stole from folks like my family would have been so hungry they would perish without the food or their families so in need. As far as I can recall, nobody would have stolen from us just to feed a drug habit or because they wanted more “bling.” Times are different now and I don’t advocate anyone leaving belongings sitting around. It makes me sad to have to say so.

Once, when my Nana was a young woman she said she and her husband went to a conference in Boston. She was always a well-dressed woman and wore her usual high heels. While her husband went to the conference, she walked, toured and went shopping. The heels were hard on her feet so she stopped at a shoe store. According to Nana, she drove the salesman crazy as she tried almost every shoe they had. In the end, she found the perfect pair, but alas when going to pay for them, realized she had no money. The whole day had passed and she was so disappointed. But Nana also lived in a different time. Seeing her dilemma and disappointment, the owner of the store said, “You just wear those shoes and when you have time come back and pay for them.” Nana did just that. Now, this might happen in a small neighborhood store today, but Nana was a stranger in a strange city. That most likely would not happen today.

Both of these incidents and these wonderful women, my mom and my Nana, taught me a valuable lesson that I have carried with me into adulthood. As the saying goes “Be kind to strangers because you never know when you might be in the presence of angels.” I believe that. They are with us everywhere. The following is a story I wrote to honor this idea. My mother inspired it.

A Quiet Stranger by Lorna MacDonald Czarnota (In loving memory of Mom 1928-2009.)

Two sisters sat with their mending in their laps one late chill spring night. The small lantern and a meager fire in the hearth were their only sources of light and rain pummeled the roof of their tiny two-room house.

It had been three years since their father passed, an old man and well loved. Their mother had been gone almost as long as they had been alive; it seemed to them only yesterday.

Never having much in the way of wealth, the two had each other. They took in mending and laundry from the village at the foot of the mountain; a good long walk to travel with their finished work.

Suddenly the two were startled from their half sleep, the work of the day still heavy in their hands. It was a knock on the door.

“Who might call at such an hour?” asked the eldest.

“And in such a storm?” said the youngest.

Thinking that it must surely be an emergency for someone to be there under these conditions, but living alone in so far a place, the two went arm-in-arm to the door.

“Who is there?” asked the eldest. There was no reply, but another hard knock.

She opened the door slowly while her younger sister stood just behind her, gazing over her right shoulder.

As the door swung into the house, by the faint light of the lantern, the girls could just make out a cloaked tiny figure. A slight voice, no more than a hollow whisper issued from beneath the hood.

“It is cold and wet. A bed and something to eat?”

What could the two sisters do but allow this tiny being to enter from the rain? Just inside the door they stood as the visitor entered, never removing the hood but walking straight to the fireplace and holding out two small and wrinkled hands.

“Our father would have bade you welcome were he alive,” the older sister spoke with good intent.

“But you do not?” the hooded voice asked.

Now the youngest girl spoke up. “We do, but we have little to offer.”

“Only broth that is left from our last meal,” said the eldest.

Now, those old hands reached up and pulled back the hood to reveal a silver haired woman of ancient age. “Broth and the floor by your fire is enough.”

The girls motioned this strange woman to sit at the table and brought her broth. She sipped and slurped and drank the final drop of what was in the wooden bowl. As she did, her eyes widened in surprise for indeed while the small house was plain, the inside bottom of the bowl was elaborately carved.

“This is a lovely thing,” she said in the raspy voice of someone so aged.

Almost as quickly as she had finished the broth, at her words, the youngest sister grabbed the bowl from her hands, rinsed it and placed it back on the mantel where it was kept and said, “It was our mother’s. Father carved it with his own hands as a wedding gift. We cherish it greatly.”

“Indeed.” The visitor said. “And might I have a drink of water?”

The eldest sister picked up the pewter cup that sat beside the bowl and filled it, not with water but with a little warm wine. “Drink this. It will help with the cold.”

The old woman drank and remarked at the lovely cup. “Also your mother’s?”

The sisters nodded.

“And that book too?” the visitor asked pointing to the mantel with a boney finger.

The youngest sister took up the book, its binding broken and pages nearly falling out. She clutched it to her breast. “Yes. Mama always read us a story at bedtime from this book and we still read to each other.”

The old woman said nothing but nodding her understanding, rose and spread her cloak by the fireside to lie on the hard dirt floor. Before she could do so, the eldest sister brought a straw mat from their own bed.

“We had two. This at least should help.”

Still the stranger was quiet. She lay upon the mat, her cloak over her and soon fell asleep. The girls read softly as they always did and then tiptoed to their own room. The youngest, uncertain of their safety with a stranger in the house, pulled the bolt on their door.

The night passed quietly without so much as a breeze at the window. The sisters went to the main room to break their fast and feed their guest but already the old woman was gone, the mat neatly rolled, and the door closed snuggly.

“Not so much as thank you,” said the youngest girl with a look of disgust. She bent to stir a coal from beneath the ashes to make a fire to warm their water when her eyes froze at the empty mantel. She was silent in disbelief for a breath. “Gone! They are all gone! The cup, the bowl our book!”

Her sister joined her side looking as if they might have fallen onto the floor.

“That old crow has stolen them!” the youngest roared. “Why would she take them?”

Although her sister was as disappointed and perhaps even angered at the theft, she recalled their father’s words, “Perhaps she needed them more than we.”

“Nonetheless, it was wrong,” the youngest said.

“Wrong or not, our father would forget it.”

And so they did. Though the empty mantel stared at them and they missed their only treasures, those things that held their memories were but things after all. As time passed they once more found the memories and even recalled the many stories held within the book so that they told them rather than read each night as they prepared for bed. The old visitor had become a shadow, faint and distant when the snows of an early winter began to fall.

So far from the village and atop the mountain, it was not long for the snow to pile up beneath the windows of that house. What scraps of cloth remaining from their mending, the girls stuffed in the cracks to keep the wind at bay. And now the nights were long and their food was that which they had stored through the year in a root cellar. The fire at the hearth was used sparingly so that the woodpile would last all winter long. The lantern burned only when necessary and the girls burrowed beneath their quilts for warmth.

Late October and November passed slowly. December came and with it the promise of Christmas and remembrances of those they had lost over the years. The two sisters secretly made gifts for each other, out of whatever they could find; beautiful simple things by hand, with love and joyfully made. One was wrapped in an old piece of satin from someone’s dress the girls had shortened; another was wrapped in moss harvested in the fall from beneath the old apple tree on the hillside. The cold was now outside the house, and all the warmth of the Holiday upon them.

The sisters giggled and poked each other in the side as they made a warm breakfast on Christmas morning and tied ribbons in each other’s hair. It was at that moment of absolute joy that they heard a familiar knock upon the door. A hard knock, a knock they had heard on a chill spring night months ago.

The two froze at the sound and looked at each other. The youngest sister took her gifts and hid them, afraid that the old woman had returned to take the last of their joys. The oldest sister was reluctant to open the door but thought perhaps it was a neighbor from the distant village. They walked slowly to the door, even as another knocked resounded. It made them jump at its insistence.

“Who is there?” they called and as before there was no reply.

“It’s her,” the younger sister said placing her hand atop the others. “Don’t open it.”

The sunlight of the morning through a nearby window warmed their faces.

“Look out the window first.”

Understanding her sister’s concerns, the older girl did look out the window and much to her surprise found nobody standing at the door.

“Whoever it was, they are gone,” she said.

“What?” exclaimed the youngest and out of curiosity she threw the door open.

Her sister was right, there was no one there. In fact there were not even footprints leading to their door, but on the stoop there was a covered basket with a note attached to it.

The girls stepped out into the morning, looking left and right and confirming no footprints in sight anywhere. Surprised and curious they drew the basket into the house and placed it on the table. The youngest took the note.

“What does it say?” asked her sister looking over her shoulder to read with her.

“When I came to call and was in need you cared for me with the best and all of what you had. In my need and haste I took these things from you. I now return them as they were but changed in ways I trust will give you comfort.”

The girls gazed into the basket to find the cup and bowl their father had given to their mother as a wedding gift. The note said,

“This is a cup of never ending drink, never will you thirst. And this bowl is now a bowl of plenty, never will you hunger.”

But the book their mother had read to them was not inside the basket. Instead the sisters found a book of fine leather with beautiful gold leaf pages and a note that read,

“I could not save your book for I read it every night until the pages disappeared. I send you this book of the same stories and many more to warm your nights and make light your hearts.”

The note was simply signed “A Quiet Stranger.”

And as the stories say "They Lived Happily Ever After."

May this Holiday bring you the comfort of your labors and the knowledge that you will always find what you need, when you most need it. May your angels be abundant.
Merry Christmas!

Re-storying: Changing the course of your future through the story you tell about yourself.

Upon being sick recently, a dear friend made the suggestion to re-story my health. In other words, to tell myself I am healthy and whole. She was right of course, but re-storying is more than just positive thinking. It requires an in-depth look at the story we are telling, an understanding of what that story means, and enough imagination to change the course of that story toward a new ending. And, you must believe it will work.

A basic understanding of story structure, particularly of the hero’s journey tale is important too.

Story Structure

Story structure looks a lot like a roller coaster ride with a very gradual rise to the top and a steep quick run down the other side. Some stories will have many such rises and falls, each one getting smaller in size until a final episode wraps up the whole thing. But most stories can be looked at as one hill. The most level part at the beginning introduces setting, time, characters and sometimes a problem, although the depth of the problem unfolds gradually in the rise. More details become evident as we climb that hill, we receive a plot and foreshadowing of the climax.

When we hit the top of that hill, we pretty much know everyone and everything except a resolution. We now look over the top of the hill and see the steep drop before us and realize the full scope of the journey we have taken and the danger we face. It is here at the top that characters have their ah hah moment, the climax. Coming quickly down the other side of this hill we find answers, say a few hail Mary’s, hope for the best, and resolve the problem to come to an end that makes sense and is satisfying.

It is at the climax or hilltop that re-storying takes place at its fullest. By that I mean, we sometimes realize part way up that we need to do something and we may unknowingly put in to motion some change but until we have the journey behind us and all the information in it, we cannot effect that change. Using my illness as an example may be helpful. (You can insert almost any event that troubles your heart or physical health.)

Sample Story

I began to feel sick, the symptoms included a sore throat and lethargy. But was I sick? I couldn’t know. A sore throat might have been from the artificial heat in the car or my family’s homes. The lethargy could have been too much fun and turkey and not enough sleep. I was mindful but did not have enough information.

Let’s say I am a character in this story of my life. I am now standing at the base of that hill and beginning to climb the journey of the holiday weekend. As I move up the hill, the sore throat becomes post nasal, add to that sneezing and a runny nose. Now, we know the characters that have joined me. This is not a normal journey, something is wrong, a problem unfolds.

My story is about a once healthy happy person traveling to see family only to find she is sick. But we don’t know what awaits at the top of hill, we don’t know what the end of the story will be. Yet, it is human nature to start making guesses. I know that I have asthma and I work. So it is a natural conclusion that I will find an asthma attack and loss of work waiting on the other side of the hill. I get to the top and whoa, the drop is scarey.

Here at the top, I meet one last character in the story. A hero’s journey story always includes a mentor and in this case, the mentor is the friend who reminded me to re-story. She is the wise woman.

So what does it mean to re-story this story?

As previously mentioned, the conclusion is one of misery, asthma and lost work, therefore lost pay. Pretty dismal and not within my control. What if the story were to end differently? What are the options for this tale? I could die. I could make lots of other people miserable too. I could languish slowly. I could be miserable but get better. I could find a miracle cure. I could just keep moving toward the light and everything would be just fine, maybe a slight loss of pay but nothing too serious. See? Now there are many endings and many choices. This is empowering.

So story is not just the fairy tale or folk tale we tell ourselves or our children. Story is the everyday life we live. When that story isn’t taking the direction we hope for, the one that makes us happy and whole, we can re-story it. Will this solve all our problems to our satisfaction? Important to know that it will not, especially because we cannot control the behaviors of others. We are empowered only in our own choices. But the empowerment to change the course of our lives is there if we choose to accept it. Re-storying is a way to take back your future.