I Need a Hero
Heroes give and expect nothing in return.
She sat there sipping her wine and listening. The more outgoing women around her laughed and talked, telling stories of their week’s adventures. Missy smiled and nodded, giggling occasionally.
I too listen more than I talk. I sat in the overstuffed chair of our Book Club’s hostess’s house, running my hand over the soft corduroy, feeling the ridges of the material between my fingers.
The wine was sweet on my tongue and I could feel the warmness of the alcohol spreading through my body. Amanda, my outgoing next-door neighbor, was regaling us with stories of her foray into the online dating world.
The room was loud as the other women hooted and teased, their voices jostling and bumping one another. I smiled and listened, but my eyes kept sliding over to gaze at Missy. She seemed as if she had something she wanted to say.
Getting a chance to speak was not always easy with this group. So many larger-than-life personalities made it hard for the quieter voices to join in.
I knew that I had heard Missy try to say something. I looked over at her, cheering her on in my mind. You can do it, girl. Jump in. Speak up!
Finally, after several attempts, clearing of her throat, her finger in the air trying to catch someone’s attention, she was successful and all eyes turned to her. She had the floor. We waited to hear her story.
Meeting Missy
I met Missy the first week we moved to town. She had shown up on our front step with a plate of cookies, a neighborhood directory, and a big smile on her face. My husband and I stood out on the steps and talked to her for at least an hour, enjoying her friendliness and exuberance in welcoming us to the neighborhood.
After that day, we would see her walking her dogs. She would always smile and wave, and we would make small talk if we passed one another on the street.
As time passed, I became closer friends with some of the other neighbors. Missy would be at most neighborhood functions and we would smile and say hello to each other. But the louder voices, the bigger personalities, began to dominate (as bigger personalities often do).
Without realizing it, I was being dazzled by the beautiful women who sparkled and glittered. Missy. in her TJ Maxx tops and skorts and hair color that appeared to come out of a box, seemed inconsequential, and dull.
I still listened when she spoke and told stories, but with only one ear, while my other ear tried to hear the conversations going on next to me between the sparkly women. I wanted to sparkle too.
One evening, I went with my husband and children to a little restaurant in the Italian section of our city. It was a 25-minute drive to the area and the wait at the restaurant was almost an hour. Once we were finally seated at our table, we saw that Missy was sitting just four tables away.
I looked away, not really wanting to go talk to her. It was Friday night and had been a long work week. I just wanted to have a glass of wine and relax.
But after we ordered, I saw that Missy was headed our way. She was going to walk right past our table so there was no way that I could avoid saying hello. As she got within a few feet of us, I raised my hand and waved at her.
Her smile spread across her face, and the thought crossed my mind that she didn’t have much of a chin and she reminded me of a turtle. I scolded myself for such a thought and smiled back at her. Missy stopped and introduced us to her grandchildren who were with her.
“These are the neighbors I was telling you about, ” she said to them with a tone to her voice that said we were special.
I felt guilty. I had been about to ignore her and here she was beaming as she shared us with her family. I was a clown, a wannabe, who had gotten caught up in the social scene of my new neighborhood, wanting so desperately to be one of the in-crowd, one of the beautiful people.
After chatting for several minutes, we said goodbye to Missy and her grandkids and continued with our meal. But Missy stayed on my mind that night and for the rest of the weekend.
The next Tuesday, my book club met. As I sat and waited for Missy to talk, I thought about her life. She had had only one child, a little boy, who had struggled through adolescence and young adulthood.
Michael had been a shy child who had a hard time making friends, wanting to play piano and draw cartoons while the other boys were outside throwing a football or shooting basketball. As the years progressed and Michael entered middle school, his loneliness became more profound, and he withdrew.
One terrible day, she told me, she found drugs in his bedroom. Of course, he denied that the drugs were his or that he had any kind of problem. But, she told me, a sniggling feeling told her that he was not being true.
In high school it became clear that Michael was using drugs. Convincing him to get help, Missy sent him to a rehabilitation facility hundreds of miles away. He stayed for six months, finished the program, returned home, and went back to doing drugs.
Years passed and Michael was an addict. He had relationships with women, children with some of them, found jobs, got his life on the right path, lost jobs, resumed his drug addiction, and the pattern repeated and repeated.
One spring morning, Michael was found dead in his apartment. A burglary, the media said. A break-in, the police told Missy and her husband.
But Missy knew better. She knew that Michael had spent time with criminals and other unsavory people. She knew that his death was of his own making.
She was left to pick up the pieces, the shards, of Michael’s sad, lonely life.
Two of those pieces were his children, her grandchildren, both teenagers at the time of their dad’s death, both living with mothers who had their own demons which kept them from being the mothers that their children needed.
Amber and Nicholas moved in with Missy and her husband. Missy told me one afternoon that she was raising teenagers again, and it was as hard the second time as it had been the first.
Finding a Hero
That was three years ago, and the kids still live with Missy. They have both finished high school and are now in community college. Amber is studying to be an ultrasound technician and Nicholas wants to go into business. Thanks to Missy, there is a light at the end of their long, often dark, tunnel.
As I sat in the warm, cozy living room of my friend’s house at our monthly book club meeting, and listened to Missy talk about her grandkids, the word “hero” jumped into my mind.
I so wanted to tell her, “You are a hero. Not just to those kids that you are loving and raising, but to me, and many others. You are showing me how to live, how to forge ahead, push through all the sludge, no matter how messy it gets, no matter how messy you get, and keep going.”
Life is too short to give up.
My kids love the movie Guardians of the Galaxy. I cannot even tell you how many times we have watched it. The heroes, the Guardians, are powerful and brave.
Their leader, played by Chris Pratt, is handsome, quick-witted and charming. You want him to win; you want him to find happiness; you want him to find love. And you know he will, not just because it is a movie, but because he is a hero and heroes always triumph.
In real life heroes don’t usually look or talk like Chris Pratt. They may be quiet and struggle to jump into a conversation. They may lack a chin and resemble a middle-aged turtle. They may wear last year’s fashion from a discount store. But none of that matters.
A hero doesn’t need to be beautiful to be a hero. A hero doesn’t even have to be perfect. Heroes can make mistakes and fall many times. Sometimes, heroes fail.
My grandmother and grandfather were my heroes. They brought our family to a new land and gave their future generations a chance at a life they would never have had otherwise.
Walking into their house on Sunday evenings, olive oil tickling my nose, beckoning me to the kitchen where eggplant and spicy peppers were frying in the dented, scarred skillet Grandma brought from Italy, my grandma would be at the table, her knuckles as big as walnuts, kneading dough for taralli and bread for the week.
Her food was not fancy; it was peasant food, the same dishes cooked many times over. But in this land, no one was going hungry ever again.
Real Heroes
My grandparents never knew they were heroes. Heroes rarely do. That is part of what makes a hero a hero. They struggle, they fall, they get back up and they go on. And they do for those who either cannot, or have not yet learned how.
That is the beauty of a hero. It is not the beauty of a Chris Pratt face or body. It is the beauty that comes from doing for others no matter how hard it makes life.
My grandmother’s face was lined with deep wrinkles from a lifetime of being out in the sun and the wind. She never wore sunscreen or makeup. She was not beautiful.
But when I think of her face now, twenty years after her death, my mind sees her smile, hears her voice calling me “tesoro,” and remembers her arms around me. And I think to myself, there is beauty- a beauty not created by man or God- a beauty inherent in loving.
As cliché as it may sound, love is always the answer. To everything. Heroes do what they do not from obligation or duty, but from love.
Giving of oneself is the greatest love. Heroes give. They expect nothing in return. They do what they do out of love.
It is the greatest gift and the purest beauty.
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