Friends

June 19, 2003

In THE TEMPEST (Act V, Sc. i), Miranda, who has been reared without human contact other than her father, Prospero, and who, following the shipwreck, falls in love with Ferdinand, declares:

“O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in’t.”

Prospero, whose experience has been of betrayal by friends and associates, responds cynically,

“’Tis new to thee.”

When we consider genocides, the lying and distortions of governments, greed for oil or fame, surely Prospero was correct. When one looks at politics, financial swindles, some CEOs whose greed is beyond sensible comprehension, how can we dispute Prospero?

And yet, I had an experience last week that strengthened my faith that there are “goodly creatures.”

I was in the home of the Newtons in Hubbard, Oregon, where my daughter, Janet, is suffering from the effects of A.L.S. She cannot talk, swallow, or walk. Thus she is dependent not only on the alert, loving, devoted care of her husband, Ron, and her daughter, Christina, and son Ian, but also from at least a dozen women friends in the area who care enough to help so Ron can get a little relief and tend somewhat to his law practice. Other members of our extended family – sister, brothers, sisters-in-law, others have traveled to Oregon to help in all ways possible.

In addition, Janet depends on certain life-sustaining equipment, powered by electricity. Ron came to my room about 2 a.m. to provide me with a flashlight. The power was out. He went out seeking the cause of the outage. Down the road he came upon a utility crew replacing a pole which had been rammed by a colliding pick-up truck.

When Ron explained how much the power was needed, one of the crew said he had a generator on the truck; and would follow Ron home and leave the generator there until power was restored.

The power was soon restored, but Ron realized that they needed a generator as a stand-by if other power outages occurred. So he called Jim, a friend, who knew something about generators to find out what features were important, what makes were superior, how much generators cost and other details.

Jim replied that he had an extra generator and would bring it over. Within a half-hour, Jim delivered the generator fully fueled and ready for instant use if the need should arise.

I met Jim and his wife, Marion, who is one of the dozen women ready to help Janet as the need arises.

O. Henry once wrote a pungent short story, “Friends in San Rosario,” but friends in Hubbard/Canby are real, not fictional. Miranda was correct,

“O brave new world
That has such people in’t.”

I intend to write next about the many terrible happenings of man’s inhumanity to man, but Miranda experienced “goodly creatures” and so do we.

THANKS BE.