The Winning Goody Two Shoes Contest Essay

Guitar Lady by Leslie T Wake

It could be any child. Today it's 7 year old Austin. He's huddled beneath his sheets in a makeshift tent wearing a Superman cape over his hospital Bert and Ernie pajamas. He pokes his head out and takes me in with his pales blue eyes, then looks away, making me want to follow his gaze back to before__before he was diagnosed.

"Hey, big guy, want to help me make some music?" The air is thick with nausea and heat as I put down my wicker basket full of kid friendly instruments and my beat up guitar. Austin stays under his tent. I plop down on his bed, lean in close and start peeling an orange. He sits up and takes a piece, sucks the juice then moves the seeds inside his mouth before spitting them out hard with a p'tooey into my hand. He giggles and suddenly the dingy green room feels cozy.

Juice drips down his chin. I teach him simple songs and finger plays and we both laugh as we shake the bells and hokey pokey around his hospital bed. His small hand flies to my tambourine and he shakes it hard against his bony thigh. Circling around the room, we sing, "boom, boom ain't it great to be crazy...boom,boom..."

His oncologist enters, calm and steady, and immediately I feel a pulling in my stomach. I hit the wrong chord and stumble over words. "Shake it faster, Austin shake it harder", and he does, as the sleeve of my lab coat brushes his fragile arms tattooed with delicate blue veins. His doctor reaches into my basket and grabs three bean bags and begins to juggle-badly-making us both laugh. When I gather my things, I see that Austin is focused on something.

"Hey dude, you can have it," and I hand him my tambourine. His breath sweeps over my face as he stands on his bed, spreads his thin arms out and gives me a hug. "Bye bye Guitar Lady." This young super hero is ten times stronger than me.

I stop at the end of the hall. The pervasive dense hospital smell presses against me as I enter room 212. There's sourness buried in these smells. Travis is jaundiced, bloated and bald...and 9 years old. His nurse, her mouth tightened, leans over him with a prepared syringe. "Noooooooo," he yells. His eyes jump with tears and his hands are curled in tight fists.

"Hey, help me play a song, ok?" He's flailing so much that I climb into his bed, and pin him down with my leg. We bump elbows. Gently I take his fingers and close them around the neck of my guitar and help him strum the strings as if it can somehow steady him in his frightening new world that is so sideways and out of balance.

"Ya gotta sing if the spirit says sing...ya gotta sing if the spirit says sing..." His nurse, echoes along unembarrassed by her off key. I look at Travis and nod my head. He smiles, rolls his wet eyes, and briefly forgets about the weight of his disease.

I am the Guitar Lady. This is what I have to give. When I play for them, I feel like I can make their hospital walls throb with life. For a brief moment the kids and I are glued together by our banging and bittersweet sounds. Sometimes they get lost in a song and their illness is no longer central in the room.

Across the hall, a little girl, age 5 lies comatose in a crib. The fluorescent light mutes her delicate, luminous skin. Chelsea's head is shaved so that the shunts can adhere to her fragile scalp. Her eyes are open, but she sees nothing. She's surrounded by family photos and untouched coloring books. I pluck the strings gently - 'hush a bye, don't you cry,..." and watch the slow even movement of her chest and her small out-flung listless arms. Soft, like a whisper, I sing, "twinkle, twinkle, little star." Her monitor blinks like a neon sign. I leave her room, pretending that my voice floats behind like a ribbon through her silent room.

"Hours later, still haunted by her eyes, my phone rings. "We had to call you. Chelsea is singing twinkle, twinkle even though she's not responding to any other stimuli."

My arms broke out in goose-bumps. Then I felt something even weirder. It was as if molecules had shifted inside my body and I felt something inside my heart open up. I wanted to rush back to the hospital, lower the crib bars, and put my head against Chelsea's beating heart. Each time I leave the hospital, pieces of the children stay with me like shrapnel. Their scents and echoes sit beside me in the open spaces of my car as I drive home. I honor the communion we share.

Runners-up

Water for Life by Bill Asenjo, PhD

Willis Miller believes in fate. Near death with a heart attack at age 50, he vowed to spend the rest of his life doing good in the world if he survived.

Now 87, Miller can take satisfaction in the decades of good created through his non-profit organization, Water for Life. Miller spent all the money he saved as a successful water well driller to provide and maintain hundreds of water wells for the poor in Haiti, many of whom walked over 5 miles for a bucket of dirty water. "If you don't have clean water," Miller said, "you don't have anything."

Water for Life provides clean water for over 200,000 people a day in Haiti. Clean water not only improves health, but crop production and living conditions as well.

While recovering from his heart attack, Miller met a man one day who asked him what he did for a living. "I told him I was a water well driller, " Miller said. "This man started telling me about how bad it was in Haiti, how a Haitian mission had a water well that no one could fix."

For the next seven years Miller gave his time and expertise to large organizations such as World Vision and Compassion International. He remembers how the people reacted when he came to drill a well for them. "People just mobbed me and cried," he said.

The large organizations didn't service the wells once they were drilled. "It just didn't work out," Miller said. "I drilled over 40 wells for them, but today none of them are working."

Miller became so frustrated he was ready to return to his home in rural Iowa. But a friend decided he would rent out his farmland and give Miller the money so that he could continue his good works in Haiti. "We started with nothing," Miller said, "but today Water for Life has a budget of over $500,000 and has more than 300 working wells in Haiti." Water for Life trains Haitians to service the wells. A single well provides clean water for about 500 people and 250 livestock.

Water for Life also built two irrigation systems, a church and a primary school in Haiti. Before the irrigations systems were put in, Miller said, crops baked in the sun and yielded little edible food. "They used to get a bushel of corn. Now they get a roomful of corn," Miller said.

Although he retired about 7 years ago, Miller remains involved in the operation of Water for Life from his home in Kalona, Iowa. His son, Leon, now president of Water for Life, spends much of his time in Haiti conducting most of the work, Miller said. "I feel I've accomplished what I set out to do, " he said. Seeing the living conditions in Haiti change dramatically has been one of Miller's greatest rewards.

Miller said, "Mothers would tell me their babies once had worms up to 3 feet long, but not any more." Then he smiled, "That just thrilled my soul."