Topic: This year's topic focuses on courage. Here are some wise words to help you get started:

1. Seren's Serenity Prayer, by Marlene Samuels, Chicago IL (FIRST PRIZE!)
2. Rats and Roses, by Susan Flemr, Fairfield Bay AR
3. Dancing to the End of the Song, by Nancilynn Saylor, Austin TX
4. Arbitrary Violence, Determined Courage, by Stephanie Dalley, Forestville CA

We know you will enjoy these stories as much as we do. Congratulations to our four winners! And look for an announcement of our next competition in June, 2011.

"What a waste!" my mother complained. "I rinse the dishes, load, then unload. I could have just washed them and be done with it!" Her rant focused upon the dishwasher my father presented her -a Mother's Day surprise. Yet, when life's difficulties intervened, her true self emerged: a pragmatist and survivor possessing boundless courage. Her diminutive size belied the stamina and cunning that lurked inside. To her clients, she was an elegant woman possessed of quick humor and remarkable dressmaking talent.

Three days before she died, my mother, Seren Tuvel, gave me the only knick-knack she ever displayed at her dressmaking salon. She was slipping away from me, perched on the divide between life and death, frail as a fledgling swallow encountering its first breeze. Her gift: a wooden box painted to resemble an antiqued book. Within its covers, a poignant message was printed in flowing script upon a background of Renaissance angels.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." The Serenity Prayer (Reinhold Niebuhr)

Growing up, I heard tales of Seren's courage from her old European friends, recounted with great relish at holiday gatherings, weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. There also was incredible courage I witnessed as her daughter. A single theme ran like a raging river through her life -moral strength manifest as intense courage.

Three decades have passed since my mother died. I now comprehend the significance of The Serenity Prayer in her life. It gradually worked its way into mine. Seren was, by anyone's standards, remarkably courageous and determined—a woman whose influence upon me surfaces when life's challenges stump me.

My mother embraced courage as her life's philosophy. "Live courageously. No matter what, trust heart. What you know to be the truth will feed courage. Otherwise, how can you live with yourself?"

It was her mantra - one she recited to me during my teens and into my stressful twenties, a decade filled with career dilemmas, graduate school challenges and perplexing romances.

I sat on her hospital bed. There were so many unanswered questions I had about my mother. I was 33, newly married. She was 65. "Mom, when the Nazis rounded up Jews in Bucharest," I asked, "many Jews converted to Catholicism, so why didn't you? It might have saved you from being sent to the camps."

Her response was unemotional, clear-cut even and her Romanian accent imparted an exotic quality to her voice. "You live your beliefs because you must live with your conscience. Now I'm asking you; if I'd become a Catholic, I'd have been a dishonest Jew and a dishonest Catholic. What would be left in my soul?"

Seren grew up deep within the Carpathian Mountains before World War II. Her father, Avraham, managed a lumber mill, the only local business other than farming. Her family was among the twenty Jewish ones in the remote village. That statistic rendered her vulnerable and conspicuous.

Even as a girl, she was determined and courageous. During the daily two-mile hike home from their Catholic school, Seren protected her two younger sisters from impending danger. One day, bullying peasant boys launched anti-Semitic taunts, along with mud rockets and stones. Seren stunned them all. Retaliating with her own bombardment of rocks collected along the way, she chased down the largest boy, unleashing upon him her full fury. Their walks became uneventful.

An intellectually gifted student, Seren went loggerheads with her pious, old-fashioned father. Each discussion about her educational goals yielded his customary retort. "No daughter of mine will leave home except with a husband. Enough, end of discussion!"Avraham resumed reading his German newspaper.

"But papa, there's a regional scholarship contest. The student with the highest scores wins a full scholarship to Gymnasium! I want to try, please?" She persisted. She was fourteen years old. "Papa, please?"

"Seren, forget this foolishness! What girl needs university to have children, to cook, to sew? Concentrate on finding a good husband."

Against her father's wishes, her mother as her collaborator, Seren secretly entered the competition. It was the third decade of the twentieth century. With anti-Semitism and pogroms rampant throughout Eastern Europe and fearing reprisals, only five Jewish children arrived for exams - Seren the only girl.

The following Sabbath, her large family gathered for breakfast after synagogue. Seren burst into the expansive kitchen, letter in hand. "Papa, Papa, look! I won the scholarship to school in Bucharest!"

Avraham slammed his cup on the table, bellowing, "I forbid you to go! You'd have to live away in a dormitory among non-Jews. You think you can hide what you are? I say you won't go!"

"I will go!" Seren was the only child who ever challenged Avraham.

"You defy me? I won't have it. If you go, don't come home!" And she went.

My mother's goal vanished shortly after classes began. Her temper erupting as her teacher issued anti-Semitic remarks, she lobbed her ink bottle at his head and promptly withdrew from school. But she refused to admit defeat to her father by returning home. Instead she traveled to Bucharest. Disembarking the train in unfamiliar territory, Seren went shop to shop searching for a dressmaking apprenticeship. She was hired that day and her life changed forever.

Seren's educational failure led her to a talent that became the basis for her future. Her new skills positioned her to survive in the ghetto by finding work. It was the mechanism by which she survived the war—succeeding in keeping one of her sisters and two close friends alive, and ensuring her group's usefulness in Dachau. In post-war Germany few survivors found work but she did. Immigrating to Canada with her husband and new baby—a distant foreign land where she knew no one, had no job, spoke no English, she again proved courageous.

Her courage to change course and challenge social conventions proved indispensible over her entire life. Her journey spanned Nazi occupied Europe, Dachau concentration camp, years in post-war Germany, and in her meeting my father. As a skilled worker, she gained entry to Canada—a haven for Holocaust survivors. Seren's courage led to financial stability and finally, to our family gaining USA immigration visas.

By her own admission, my mother failed her educational endeavors yet succeeded her quest for independence while saving numerous lives. For those dependent on her, Seren's courage was the difference between life and death. During difficult times, I still ask, "What would Seren do?" or "If she were here, what would she suggest?"

Before my mother slid out of life, her rabbi asked, "Do you regret anything you did during the war? You know so many survivors do."

"Not one thing!" She replied. "I lived more life than I'd ever imagined. You know, I made a good life from nothing that was left after the war. To me, it's exactlyt like taking a plain piece of fabric and making it into a beautiful suit. The most important thing I did? I kept my courage and lived morally at a time when so many others abandoned all values."

Seren Tuvel, my mother, was an embodiment of courage!

About the author:
Marlene Samuels earned her M.A. and Ph.D. at University of Chicago in the Social Sciences. She's an independent sociologist and writer whose interests include adoption issues, the changing American family, and regrets and subsequent decisions during life's key transition points. When not researching or writing sociology, she focuses on creative non-fiction, memoir, and teaching research methodology courses for writers of non-fiction.

Presently, she's working on a collection of short stories. In addition to her writing, Marlene is co-host of a culinary website and its associated blog.

For Margaret (Maggie) Johnson

Nothing frightened me more than the sound of a scurrying rat in a darkened apartment hallway, as I picked my way over worn carpeting or uneven flooring. Under my breath I'd curse the negligent landlord who failed to replace light bulbs, and I'd force myself to move forward. Often I couldn't do it and would hurry back toward the entrance and the light.

When I failed in my first attempt to enter a building, I knew I would eventually have to reenter. My work as a visiting nurse in one of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods forced me there. Living behind one of the apartment doors inside would be a patient who needed my care. However, the rats, admittedly the size of squirrels, had grown in my mind's eye with each harrowing confrontation. They were becoming obstacles to my work. I despised the power they were gaining over me as my phobia grew.

In one such rat-infested building I visited Maggie Johnson. Bedridden with terminal cancer, she had raised her three children alone after her husband died in a factory accident. The apartment had been the family home for years. Maggie told me, "My daughter Evie said, 'Mama, just come and live with us now.'" Maggie refused. "I want Evie to enjoy these years with her husband and children without me as a burden," she said. She looked forward to their visits and especially enjoyed her grandchildren.

I knew my visits three times a week to assist her with her bath, oversee her medication, and provide other nursing care were also important times for her. Those visits became important to me as well. Maggie had rich stories to share—colorful tales of her childhood in Mississippi and her travels to "Yankee territory," as she referred to Chicago.

By the time I began visiting her, Maggie moved very little, her arms and legs impossibly thin, the muscles atrophied from disuse. Her cheeks were sunken and her black skin stretched tightly over the bones in her tiny body. She ate small amounts and frequently said that food wasn't necessary, as she would be dying soon. I didn't try to deny her innate sense of life's approaching end.

The three-room apartment had bare wood floors and only a few pieces of furniture. Maggie had given the rest to Evie. "I'm so happy they have some use for what George and I liked," she told me. It was apparent she took pride in what remained—her single bed, her nightstand with a lamp, one dresser, a kitchen table and four chairs, and pictures of family members on the walls. Her daughter carefully dusted each item every week.

Bright white starched curtains hung on the window beside the bed. "I placed my bed right here so I could watch the maple tree," she told me one day. "That tree is one of the beautiful things George and I didn't have in Mississippi. The seasons." From her white cotton gown, sheets and spread, to the gray floors and furniture, to the black iron bed frame, she looked to that vibrant green tree for lively contrast.

One day, as I prepared to change the catheter that drained the urine from her bladder, she casually told me a rat had finally eaten through the wall in her kitchen three days before and was now loose in the place. Though just beginning a delicate procedure requiring my utmost concentration, I wanted to run from the apartment.

As I attempted to concentrate on my task and keep up a lively conversation to distract Maggie from any discomfort, I kept hearing "loose in the place" over and over in my mind. My heart raced and my hands perspired and shook in the sterile gloves. My knees were rubber.

"The city housing guys are supposed to bring a trap big enough to catch the rat later today sometime. I'll really be glad." Maggie laughed as she reassured herself with this bit of information. But it wasn't doing much to reassure me.

"I've been pretty scared of that rat," she said. "Scared that he might just decide to climb up in this bed here and bite me. I can't run anywhere to get away from him, you know." I glanced up to find her staring through her thin bent knees, directly at me. She used every bit of effort to raise her head off the pillow so that our eyes could meet. I knew she could sense my fear.

"Take a deep breath, Maggie," I advised, and she complied. I breathed in with her and gently inserted the catheter. We exhaled together and she laid her head back against the pillow, but only momentarily.

"Look right over there on that dresser," she said, lifting her head. "See those silk roses that my friends brought in a beautiful vase? My daughter put a dish of poison on that dresser beside the vase. It's supposed to kill rats. Well, it doesn't work. The rat eats it like candy and nothing happens."

Done with the procedure, I started to straighten up when Maggie blurted out, "Look, Nurse Sue! The rat is eating there now! Go ahead . . . look!" I turned toward the dresser. A large gray rat sat on his haunches munching poison feed from a cereal bowl.

I felt dizzy. My heart raced faster. Maggie giggled. "Bet you didn't think you'd get this kind of entertainment today, did you?"

"No, I didn't," I managed to whisper.

Then she spoke words I remember always. "Nurse Sue. When we look over there right now we can focus on that rat, or we can focus on those roses—gifts of love—behind him. We've got to look past the fear to get to the love sometimes. When it's dark at night and I can hear that thing scratching and chewing, that's when I focus on the roses, on the love. Then the fear goes away and I can breathe again."

She lowered her head back into the pillow and reached out for my hand. "I think when you come back that old rat will be trapped, but I know you'll come anyway, won't you?"

About the author:
At age thirteen, Susan Flemr felt called to be a pastor, but her denomination did not allow women to be ordained at that time. Before she was able to do so, at age fifty-eight, she worked in a variety of vocations: visiting nurse, school health nurse, and hospital chaplain in Chicago and several cities in Iowa. Recently retired, Susan spends time writing personal essays and enjoys volunteering in community theater. She and her husband Bill live in Fairfield Bay, Arkansas. They have two grown sons.

When I was 23
a new Mom with a
young toddler and an infant
fresh born,
strange things began to happen with my body.

Actually, strange things began to happen
a few years earlier
but I ignored them-
or found a way to
explain them away.
When you live in a downtown
Ft.Worth commune
and weird things happen,
You sort of
just go with-the-flow.

My feet would go to sleep
taking soon
my legs
and hips with them.
Nothing is worse than having part of you asleep
and the rest of you wondering
what the hell is going on?
I would walk the streets of
Cow town, night after night
no feeling, apart from numbness,
in my lower extremities.

Another year or so
later on,
they, the misbehaving legs, started to twitch
followed quickly by what I called
"the cattle prod"
that zipped briefly
up my back and twitched my
entire self...zap "it" got me!

The next year new oddities!
When I would wake up in the morning
Get out of the bed and fall flat on my face
on the floor
Now, not just numbness
But none-ness
No feeling in my legs!
The inability to get up
And fear of what was happening
Kept me still
So as not to wake my sleeping son
Thankfully, that only occurred a
handful of times
Brushed away
because I must be strong...
Must be fatigue from working
11-7 shift and then being Mommy
in the morning
to my golden boy who had
slept all night with the sitter
or grandparents
while I explored hospital work
The ER- where all the excitement happened
in a Texas college town.
Not a nurse
But finally working in a hospital
and no needles involved
in my typewriter.
OK.
occasional numbness and none-ness
accompanied by the twitching
electric shock events.

Through it all, I remained
the queen of
denial...
Fabulous!
Now I am pregnant again!

The excitement of expecting
drove all the nagging
numb, tingling, jittering and twitching
to some faraway file, deep in my brain's
hard drive
and there it all remained for
a blissful eight months.
One morning
while holding my precious
new auburn haired son,
feeding him his bottle,
I noticed that my arm
was "going to sleep"
all tingly and strangely
suggestive of those
leg annoyances of the earlier years.
Oh great...the arm brought with it
Shoulder tingling,
Visual anomalies and
then, the electric shock returned.
The denial ended replaced by
trips to doctors.
Tests and more tests ensued;
more needles and sticks
than I could ever have imagined.
Uh oh!
We think we see something in your eyes!!
Into the hospital you go...
They waved my brain
and they tapped my spine
They said
"You have MS"
I said" so what"
There is no cure...
What does that mean?

"You will never dance at your children's weddings...."
They cleverly avoided words like" crippled and wheelchair."
(I discovered those things much later on my own.)

First I cried and then I laughed,
and laughed and laughed:
"I have danced my entire life
and slipped and tripped into lakes and
rivers from Alaska to Texas and
exotic foreign countries.
When I leave this place this morning
I could get hit by a bus!!"

It is all in your attitude I decided!

I raised and married off my sons
and never passed up a chance
to dance!
When I was 45
I danced at my parent's 50th wedding celebration.

I danced on the seashore
with my forever Romeo
just three years ago this past Fall.

About the author:
Nancilynn Saylor grew up in an Air Force family of seven living in many states and several foreign countries. She settled in Texas and moved to the Central Texas area in 1976.She raised 2 sons and helped raise a step-son. While always an avid reader and private poetess, She resumed writing after taking The Artist's Way Course; a gift to her after the death of her oldest son. She works full-time as a Patient Advocate in a large medical system and lives with her Romeo and two small dogs in Austin, where they garden when the weather permits and enjoy their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Where to start? If this story was a film, I could see the scenes as they appear and fade. Maybe I can paint the scenes with language, so you'll see them, too.

I open my eyes to bright lights, lots of noise, and Nurse Ratchet standing over me, checking my IV. I sense in a moment that she is not one bit soft or compassionate; her eyes avoid mine. At the end of the stretcher, I sense someone else. Squinting, I see the biggest barrel of a policeman I have ever seen, notepad in his hands, scribbling something. He, too, avoids direct eye contact with me. Why? What is this?

I surrender to darkness. I am trapped—the car door won't open. I try desperately to grab the sawed-off stub of the door lock, the jagged edges ripping into my fingers. But it's too late. He is out of the car, and yanks the door open, catches me by the back of my neck as I try to escape.

Now I'm in my apartment. There's a policewoman here to take photos of my bruises. This takes several hours: shot after shot of my exposed breasts, legs, buttocks, and face. As bad as I looked in the hospital three days ago, I now look worse, as if someone had painted my body black and blue.

I come to awareness screaming, unsure if I'm having another nightmare, or if it's the pain I'm experiencing as the nurses try to pull out the gravel embedded in my face, my head, my chest. God, make them stop! It is enough!

I beg him, "Please, take my jewelry, my purse, my money." I tell him, "I will do anything, but please don't hurt me," as his foot comes up to viciously kick me in the chest. He is only pleased by violence, and more violence.

My angel (she would laugh if she knew I called her that) steps around the curtain in the ER. Her experienced eyes observe the nurses attacking my body with their tweezers, laughing as they compete for who can collect the most gravel, and the two police officers looming over me in the tiny cubicle. "Out." she says to everyone. My angel Marie is a retired sea captain, now a Victim's Advocate. They all leave, finally.

That abandoned lot—how did we get here? He kicks, punches, pummels, and drags me across broken concrete, dirt and gravel. I raised up and tried to run—so many times—only to be slammed down again.

Marie looks anything but soft and gentle; but she's the one who finally holds my hand, makes eye contact, and tells me what happened. Her soft voice tells how I've come to be here, that a night watchman in a factory nearby heard me screaming when he came out for a smoke break. He called the police, and within minutes, lights and sirens brought officers from two districts to that place of pain and terror. She tells me that my assailant was so compelled by his violence that he never stopped beating me until the cops tackled him.

I am being released from the hospital. Marie will transport me, and friends will stay with me. The police are holding my purse and its contents for evidence. "I cannot go home. I am afraid he will find me and kill me this time. I cannot go home. The police have my keys—they say they are evidence..."

We are in the courtroom. Marie picked me up this morning. We had to stop on the way so I could throw up my breakfast on the sidewalk. "I cannot go into that courtroom and face him." Marie says in her soft, strong, quiet lion's voice, "yes, we can".

We do this often. We go back and forth to court. Twice, his lawyers quit. The photos of my face alone are quite compelling—and how could you possibly represent that man? I want to quit, too. I cannot do this. It is too hard. It is too much. The detectives have found two other women who have been assaulted by him, but it is my testimony they need. I know that if I don't testify, he will kill the next one he attacks. I hang on.

Now it is nine months later, and we are once again in court. I sit on the bench waiting. My back hurts, as it often does in a woman's final days of pregnancy. But this is his sentencing date; he will go away now, and I will never see him again. I can't miss this court date. The child too will go; I have struggled with this decision for some time. This heartbreak doesn't ever seem to end for me. I know the adoptive family will be good to him—I don't know if I could be.

I am against the idea of therapy; why would I want to relive that horrible nightmare? I know for sure I can't do it. But as the days go by, I realize I really can't not do it. The trauma specialist gently works with me week after painful week. Slowly I begin to find my way back. For so long there was no hope, but now...I find hope again.

Its four years later and I start work with Marie, I've been to the Junior College and taken some classes, I have passion for this work. Marie mentors me, and I become a Court Advocate for women who are victims of violent crime. I learn how the court system works, how to do a good interview, how to get a restraining order. What I think to myself is that I get to help put the bad guys away. I work for years I worked with women and children who have been victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. I serve on panels with local law enforcement, to help improve the responses to 911 calls made by those victims.

I learn a lot. I feel good about what I do. It feels like a gift now instead of a curse, this ability to hold a woman's hand, look into her eyes and say "I understand". I am telling her the truth. I really understand. I have transformed the violence I survived into compassion.

About the author:
Stephanie Dalley has been living amongst the redwoods in Northern California, for the past 20 years, prior to that she was born and raised in New York and New Jersey. Ms. Dalley has worked with women and children who have been victims of violence, as a victim advocate. The passion she puts into each case working with each client, she now puts into her writing.