Chicken Soup for the Soul Christmas Read Free Page B

villages he helped burn down, and the innocent women and children he saw die. And now, after all of these years, his nightmares kept recurring. He planned to retire in a few years and move to Florida because it was always sunny, and he wanted to show his girls the ocean. By the end of my last UPS week, TJ and I had become old friends. We’d talk and reminisce about a lot of things that happened in our lifetime—Vietnam, Woodstock, the assassination of President Kennedy, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix.
    On my last day, TJ and the other drivers bought me lunch at Captain Dee’s. The parking lot was filled with UPS trucks. I was the only woman, the only Yankee, and the only Jew—yet we had bonded, me and the boys in brown.
    TJ and I worked late that night. It was Christmas Eve, and we finished delivering the last of 223 packages. Our final stop was The Loveless Café, a funky but famous fried-chicken-with-biscuits-’n’-gravy restaurant out in the middle of nowhere. Right beside The Loveless Café was a small white trailer. An old, beat-up plaid couch with springs poking out rested on a pile of weeds, next to an old rusty washing machine. Inside, the trailer was filled with boxes and boxes of Loveless Café’s blackberry and strawberry jams, peach preserves, and country hams that had to be shipped out before Christmas. TJ and I loaded the boxes onto the truck in silence. There was sadness in the silence—the sadness that comes with saying goodbye. The day was over. TJ closed the back doors of the truck and went back inside the trailer to get the paperwork signed. I waited outside. I stood on the porch of that trailer and watched the most glorious red and gold sunset spill over The Loveless Café—and me and my brown UPS uniform. And, at that moment, I knew that whatever was next, whatever lay ahead, I was going to get through it just fine. Santa’s helper couldn’t have asked for a better gift than that.
    Loree Gold

It’s the Simple Things
    Ken and I have been a host family for Czech exchange students who come to study at Kansas State University for the past six or seven years. The students live on their own, but we are there to answer questions, show them around town when they arrive, and invite them to our home for dinner now and then. They lead busy lives, but we e-mail or phone to keep in touch.
    This year, we have two young women who are both majoring in the study of architecture. Jana and Klara attend university in Prague, but both come from smaller towns in the Czech Republic. They arrived in the United States the day after new airline regulations regarding what can be carried on and what must be checked went into effect. The day before they left home, their luggage had to be sorted out and rearranged to meet the new regulations. Then there was a paperwork snafu in New York when they went through immigration and customs.
    Before they knew what had happened, they were taken to a tiny room filled to overflowing with other immigrants who had problems of one kind or another. Most of the people in there were from Asian countries or the Arab world. These two tall, blonde girls huddled together in a corner, expecting the worst. Finally, the paperwork got sorted out, and they had to find a new flight to Kansas City since they’d missed their connecting flight with the delay. The customs officials in New York refused to help them, so they marched off to find the counter for their airline and managed to get on another flight with the help of a kind and helpful ticket agent.
    Meanwhile, we knew only that they had not arrived as originally scheduled. Once they knew what flight they would be on, they did call, and a full twenty-four hours beyond the expected time, they arrived at our door— desperately tired, longing for a shower, and hungry after traveling nearly two full days and nights. They spent their first week with us in our home while looking for housing and