FOURTEEN STEPS

Hal Manwaring

They say a cat has nine lives, and I am inclined 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 was 15, and we had a hard struggle to make a living. I had to wait until the early years of my marriage before I really began to enjoy my first life. But then 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 in San Carlos.

Life was a pleasant dream.

Then the dream ended and became one of those horrible nightmares that cause you to wake in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. I began to suffer from 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 healthy and optimistic, to a degree, because of 14 steps.

Crazy? Not at all.

Our home was a split-level affair with 14 steps leading up from the garage to the kitchen door. Those steps were my yardstick, my challenge to continue living. I felt that if me day arrived when I was unable to lift one foot up one step and then drag the other painfully after it—repeating the process 14 times 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 14 miserable steps leading up to the back door from his garage.

As I became older, I became more disillusioned and frustrated. I'm sure that my wife and friends had some unhappy times when I chose to talk about my philosophy of life. I believed that in this whole world I alone had been chosen to suffer. I had carried my cross now for nine years and probably would bear it for as long as I could climb those 14 steps.

Then on a dark night in August, 1971, I began my third life. It was raining when I started home that night, beating down hard on the car as I drove slowly down one of the less-traveled roads. Suddenly the steering wheel jumped in my hands as one of the tires burst with a bang. I fought the car to a stop and sat there as the terrible nature 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 drove slowly along until I came to the house; Lighted windows welcomed me as I pulled into the driveway and honked 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 easing a bit now, and I rolled down the window to watch. It seemed to me that they were awfully slow and I was beginning to become impatient. I heard the little girl's voice from the back of the car. "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 and low conversation from the 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 trunk lid, and then they were standing at my car window.

He was an old man, bent and slightly built. 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 is a bad night for car trouble, but you're all set now."

"Thanks," I said, "thanks. How much do I owe you?"

He shook his head. "Nothing. Cynthia told me you were on crutches. 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! Feeling with cold, wet fingers for bolts and tools in the dark—a darkness that for him would probably never end until death.

They changed a tire for me—changed it in the rain and wind, with me sitting in comfort in the car with my crutch. 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 within myself and find some disturbing traits.

I realized that I was filled to overflowing with self-pity, selfishness, and indifference to the needs of others.

I sat there and said a prayer. I prayed for strength, for a greater understanding, for keener awareness of my shortcomings.

I prayed for blessings upon the blind man and his granddaughter. Finally I drove away, shaken in mind, humbled in spirit.

I am trying now not only to climb 14 steps each day, but in my small way to help others. Someday, perhaps, I'll have the chance to help a blind man in equal difficulties—someone as blind as I had been.