Right before Thanksgiving, we were sitting at the kitchen table going over the mountain of expenses we faced, not knowing how we were going to come up with the money to pay the bills not covered by insurance. We were looking at a $1,000 bill for an ambulance ride to Mount Nittany Medical Center. Then the doorbell rang, and I went to answer.
“Tom Whitehead?” the visitor asked.
“Yes, that’s me,” I said.
“You don’t know me, but everyone at my church has been following along on your family’s blog, and we all pray every week for Emily,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you from all of us. We feel every prayer. And when it’s hard for us, we think of all of you pulling for us, even people we don’t know, and we’re grateful.”
“We had a fund-raiser for you,” he said. “It’s not much, but it’s something.”
I took the envelope from the stranger and then I took his hand. “Tell everyone at your church how grateful we are to you. Please keep Emily in your prayers.”
“You know we will,” he said.
I took the envelope back to the kitchen table and laid the money out between me and Kari: ten one-hundred-dollar bills, exactly what we needed to pay for the ambulance.
“There’s something to this,” I said to Kari with a grin.
From this, of course, I took hope. How could we fail with so much goodwill and generosity on our side?
From this Kari took urgency. “We don’t know what’s coming, Tom,” she said. “We have to live right now, every minute. We need to show Emily as much of the world as we can.”
“I think we’re doing okay.”
“Every child should see New York City at Christmas.”
“New York City! I hate big cities.”
“You’ve never been there,” Kari said. “How do you know?”
“I don’t have to go there to know. From everything I’ve heard, I wouldn’t like it and it wouldn’t like me.”
“This is not for you; it’s for Emily,” Kari said, and that was a fair point.
“OK,” I agreed. “Let’s make a plan to go.”
Just before New Year’s Day, we headed out of Philipsburg toward New York City and the Algonquin Hotel on West Forty-Fourth Street. I was dreading it. I didn’t want to fight our way through those dense streets, past the hard-faced buildings, through the rude and noisy crowds. For Kari and Emily to have a beautiful visit, I would have to keep this attitude to myself. Little did I know how quickly the people of the City of New York would change my mind.
Becky’s family lives right outside New York City in New Jersey, and when she heard we were making our maiden voyage east, she insisted that we stop by to meet her parents, Michael and Natasha. I was especially interested in meeting Becky’s so-called Soviet father. Becky’s family had emigrated from Russia in the 1980s with only a suitcase and $200, and from that built their American dream. Her dad had made a good living in real estate and her mom worked behind the Red Door at the Elizabeth Arden salon in Manhattan. All this American prosperity had not changed Michael’s Russian-style fatherhood.
The stories Becky told of tangling with her father were hilarious. When Michael bought Becky a car, he was upset that she was playing the radio so loud she would not be able to hear honks or emergency vehicles coming up behind her. And while she promised him she’d turn the volume down, he could still hear her coming down the street. One day Becky jumped into the car and jabbed at the radio to find her father had removed it. She was furious! She still was mad at her dad when she told that story.
There was a reason Becky and Emily were friends, despite their age difference. Neither one like to be told no. They both liked to be in charge. When Becky told these stories, I saw Emily and me when she got to high school. I could see a touch of Becky in Emily’s defiance and her smarts.
The next morning, when we pulled up in front of the Algonquin, a crew of porters swarmed around the SUV and unloaded all our bags. As we walked to the front desk to check in, Emily spied Matilda, the hotel’s resident cat, laid out like a queen on her chaise lounge. Matilda sure ruled the lobby from there. She was plump from all the treats she received from everyone who passed by. Her body was grayish white with darker-gray fur on her face and legs and snow-white paws. Emily crouched to pet Matilda on the head, grinning as the cat swiveled her head around to receive Emily’s touch. What a great beginning to our visit. Every time we passed through the hotel Emily was looking to see what Matilda was up to.
We were really stretching our money to take this trip, which meant our room was small, a big motivation to get us out into the street. Becky met us at the hotel, a bit worried about how this family of country bumpkins would handle life in the big city. It had snowed heavily the night before we arrived, and the city workers had piled the snow high at the edge of the sidewalk.
Kari had bundled Emily up carefully in multiple layers. She looked snug in the wheelchair we had borrowed for the trip because Emily’s legs were still weak and she had a hard time walking very far. From the moment we turned east on Forty-Fourth Street I felt all my negative opinions about New York City start to slip away. We didn’t have to fight our way through the streets. The crowds gently parted before Emily’s wheelchair and closed back up behind us as soon as we passed. Every time we came to a corner, hands reached out from the crowd to help lift Emily’s wheelchair safely onto the sidewalk
