我现在不仅每天爬１４级台阶, 还尽量给人一些小小的帮助。或许有一天, 我会给一个坐在车里像我一样在心灵上有盲点的人换轮胎。

 

Fourteen Steps

 

They say a cat has nine lives, and I am inclined1) to think that possible since I am now living my third life and I’m not even a cat. My first life began on a clear, cold day in November 1904, when I arrived as the sixth of eight children of a farming family. My father died when I was１５, and we had a hard struggle to make a living. As the children grew up, they married, leaving only one sister and myself to support and care for Mother, who became paralyzed2) in her last years and died while still in her 60s. My sister married soon after, and I followed her example within the year.

 

This was when I began to enjoy my first life. I was very happy, in excellent health, and quite a good athlete. My wife and I became the parents of two lovely girls. I had a good job in San Jose and a beautiful home up the peninsula3) in San Carlos. Life was a pleasant dream. Then the dream ended. I became afflicted with a slowly progressive disease of the motor nerves, affecting first my right arm and leg, and then my other side. Thus began my second life. . .

 

In spite of my disease I still drove to and from work each day, with the aid of special equipment installed in my car. And I managed to keep my health and optimism, to a degree, because of 14 steps.

 

Crazy？Not at all. Our home was a split-level affair with １４steps leading up from the garage4) to the kitchen door. Those steps were a gauge5) of life. They were my yardstick, my challenge to continue living. I felt that if the day arrived when I was unable to lift one foot up one step and then drag the other painfully after it――repeating the process １４times until, utterly spent, I would be through――I could then admit defeat and lie down and die. So I kept on working, kept on climbing those steps. And time passed. The girls went to college and were happily married, and my wife and I were alone in our beautiful home with the 14 steps.

 

You might think that here walked a man of courage and strength. Not so. Here hobbled a bitterly disillusioned cripple, a man who held on to his sanity and his wife and his home and his job because of １４miserable steps leading up to the back door from his garage. As I became older, I became more disillusioned6) and frustrated.

 

Then on a dark night in August, 1971, I began my third life. It was raining when I started home that night；gusty winds and slashing rain beat down on the car as I drove slowly down one of the less-traveled roads. Suddenly the steering wheel jerked in my hands and the car swerved violently to the right. In the same instant I heard the dreaded bang of a blowout. I fought the car to stop on the rain-slick shoulder of the road and sat there as the enormity of the situation swept over me. It was impossible for me to change that tire.Utterly impossible.A thought that a passing motorist might stop was dismissed at once. Why should anyone？I knew I wouldn’t. Then I remembered that a short distance up a little side road was a house. I started the engine and thumped slowly along, keeping well over on the shoulder until I came to the dirt road, where I turned in--thankfully. Lighted windows welcomed me to the house and I pulled into the driveway and honked7) the horn.

 

The door opened and a little girl stood there, peering at me. I rolled down the window and called out that I had a flat and needed someone to change it for me because I had a crutch and couldn’t do it myself. She went into the house and a moment later came out bundled in raincoat and hat, followed by a man who called a cheerful greeting. I sat there comfortable and dry, and felt a bit sorry for the man and the little girl working so hard in the storm. Well, I would pay them for it. The rain seemed to be slackening a bit now, and I rolled down the window all the way to watch. It seemed to me that they were awfully slow and I was beginning to become impatient. I heard the clank of metal from the back of the car and the little girl’s voice came clearly to me. “Here’s the jack-handle, Grandpa. ”She was answered by the murmur of the man’s lower voice and the slow tilting of the car as it was jacked up. There followed a long interval of noises, jolts and low conversation from t he back of the car, but finally it was done. I felt the car bump as the jack was removed, and I heard the slam of the truck lid, and then they were standing at my car window.

 

He was an old man, stooped and frail-looking under his slicker. The little girl was about eight or ten, I judged, with a merry face and a wide smile as she looked up at me. He said, “This a bad night for car trouble, but you’re all set now. ”“Thanks, ”I said. “How much do I owe you？”He shook his head. “Nothing. Cynthia told me you were a cripple--on crutches8). Glad to be of help. I know you’d do the same for me. There’s no charge, friend. ”I held out a five-dollar bill. “No.I like to pay my way. ”He made no effort to take it and the little girl stepped closer to the window and said quietly, “Grandpa can’t see it. ”

 

In the next few frozen seconds the shame and horror of that moment penetrated and I was sick with an intensity I had never felt before. A blind man and a child.Fumbling, feeling with cold, wet fingers for bolts and tools in the dark--a darkness that for him would probably never end until death. I don’t remember how long I sat there after they said good night and left me, but it was long enough for me to search deep with in myself and find some disturbing traits9). I realized t hat I was filled to over-flowing with self-pity, selfishness, indifference to the needs of others and thoughtlessness. I sat there and said a prayer.

 

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them：for this is the law and the prophets. ”To me now, months later, this scriptural10) admonition is more than just a passage in the Bible. It is a way of life, one that I am trying to follow. It isn’t always easy. Sometimes it is frustrating, sometimes expensive in both time and money, but the value is there. I am trying now not only to climb １４steps each day, but in my small way to help others. Someday, perhaps, I will change a tire for a blind man in a car――someone as blind as I had been.

 

by Hal Manwaring