A Man of Miracles: A True Story of Hope

By Jr. Michael B Duffy

This is my personal journey to find the reality and relevance of miracles.  EVERY WORD IS TRUE! Through my journey, I have come to realize that the problem with miracles is that they sometimes need to be pointed out to us.  The miracles I write about are not really about me at all.  They are all about you, the reader

• Language: English
• Publisher: HOPE Publishing
• Release date: Apr 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732207523

Book preview

1

Heat Stroke

When I was eleven, my parents got divorced and I got tossed around a lot; both emotionally and physically. My dad had moved his new clan, which at least temporarily, include me, from Florida to Arizona, where my mom and brother were currently residing. I had no idea, as my father opened the door to our car and let in the blast furnace heat of Phoenix, that my stay in my father’s life was about to become permanently temporary.

My dad allowed me to stay with him and his new family unit for a few months to help him bridge his emotional crisis that he was going through with his new girlfriend Sue. Sue would soon become his wife and her two sons would soon be raised as my father’s children. Once peace reigned in his life again, my encouragement and emotional stability services would no longer be needed. With my paternal emotional support tenure coming to an end, my dad did what any loving, supportive father would do at such times; he sent me to live with my mother. I was banished to live with her and her new husband on the far side of this weird desert metropolis of Phoenix in Hotzona.

To my way of thinking at the time, the only good that was going to come from this heartbreak for me was that I would be once again reunited with my brother David. Taking care of my dad’s emotional needs had kept my mind pretty busy over the past three or four months. Thinking of being with my brother again was the only solace in my current status of having no say in my life.

The ride to my new home where I would be living with my mother, brother, and the stranger that was her new husband, after I had been cast out by my dad, was one punctuated with my silence and my mother’s incessant babbling about how much I was going to, love my new home. Mom went on and on about how beautiful and big her new husband Dan’s home was. She spoke of all the land surrounding the home including, a mountain in the backyard to climb! My mom described the home’s luxury swimming pool to me and she regaled loudly that I would have my own big private bedroom. When we got there, I was also to have access to a large bathroom that I would share only with my brother David. She exclaimed that my new bathroom was so big that my brother and I would have our own individual sinks! Mom even promised me that once I got settled in I could go to the furniture store and pick out my very own bedroom furniture! Wow! That was certainly at the top of the list of my eleven year old boy dreams. Not!

Truth be told, I was only half listening. No matter what my mother promised me, she could not give me the only thing that really mattered to me at that moment; my dad.

Eventually, mom pulled her car into the long expansive driveway at the front of Dan’s home. I really hated to admit it, but from the outside at least, that house was pretty cool looking. Of course, tough guy that I was trying to be, there was no way I was going to disclose that thought to anyone. My plan was that if I stayed acting miserable long enough, somebody might take pity on me and get me back to where I belonged, at my father’s side.

Dan’s home sat well back from the roadway on close to two acres of pristine high desert land. This homestead sat at the base of a weirdly named granite mound that was called, Mummy Mountain. It was said that if you looked in just a certain way at the mountain, you were supposed to be able to see the outline of an Egyptian mummy lying prostrate. I looked at the mountain from many directions, but was unable to locate the mummy. To my eleven year old eyes, all I saw was rocks, creosote bushes, cactus, lots of cactus, and a few scattered Palo Verde trees.

This new desert environment that was to now be my new home, absolutely confounded me. At times, it depressed me. This desert was so different from the lush green of Florida which had been my home for as long as I could remember. This new place was always hot, really hot, and there was never any real shade. The predominant trees in this new land were called, Palo Verde Trees. I laughed to myself, How can they call these things trees? They don’t have any leaves. They are so full of stickers you can’t climb them, and there is no way you can build a fort, or a tree house in one! This whole place is a joke! I just want to go back home to Florida and have everything be ‘normal’ again.

That last bit of thought process seems to flow through the core of most divorced kids at one time or another. We all just want normal again. That is usually a stretch too far for divorce’s most innocent victims once the fabric of a marriage has been torn in two. Nothing is ever normal again when hearts are broken. But normal is not always everything it has been cracked up to be. Most times, change ends up being better, as we look back from our view down the road a ways after the emotional or relational wrecks in our lives.

When I arrived at the front entry of this strange new desert home I felt as though I might be a visiting dignitary or a person of some great importance. There, standing at the door, apparently awaiting my arrival, were my brother David and a short, rotund man that must surely be my mother’s new husband Dan. Dan, was standing (almost at attention) near the front door. He smiled warmly as I approached him carrying my small bag of worldly possessions. My brother was actually beaming with apparent delight at seeing me again. He grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the cool air-conditioned comfort that beckoned from inside the widely open and utterly welcoming front door. I could feel the arms of stray breaths of cold air wafting outside and wrapping around me where these animated greetings were taking place. I couldn’t help myself; I wanted to go inside where it was cool. I was already starting to really hate that incessant desert heat!

Before I took two steps towards the front door and the oasis of frosty air that must surely lie within, my mother called to me to come and meet, Colonel Dan. My brother was yakking loudly and non-stop about all the things we could do here at our new home. He stated gleefully how neat it was going to be having his brother back to play with him again. With all the commotion coming from my brother, I barely heard the raspy voice that had been cultivated by years of unfiltered cigarette smoke and alcohol coming from behind David. It was Colonel Dan saying, Hello, and welcome home.

I looked full on at the man who was barely an inch taller than I was at the time. He had curly silver-grey hair cut very short, icy aquamarine blue eyes, and a very ruddy complexion highlighted by a pronounced gin bloom of crimson on his cheeks and nose. Colonel Dan, as both of us brothers had been instructed to call him, had a tummy the perfect shape, size, and firmness that could have easily earned him a lucrative career as a dynamite department store Santa Claus! I thought to myself, This must be the fabled World War II hero, ‘Colonel Dan,’ I had been told so much about on the drive to my new home. Colonel Dan was not too impressive a presence at first glance, but first impressions are not always, what they are cracked up to be.

Colonel Dan extended his hand to me and said, I hear you have had a rough time of it lately. I hope you will like it here with us. We really want you to be happy. Different from when my dad smiled at me, Colonel Dan’s smile went all the way up into his eyes. He seemed like a nice enough man, but how in the world could my mom have agreed to marry this old guy? Cripes! He looked like somebody’s grandpa!

With that exchange complete, mom ushered us all inside the house and immediately asked us what we wanted to eat for lunch. The house smelled good; really good! There was a light odor of cookies that had been baked earlier in the day still hanging in the air. There was also a stronger smell laying over that from what was probably a beef roast of some kind; with potatoes that had just reached the point of casting a warm cooking scent in the close vicinity of the kitchen. It all just came together to smell like, well, home.

Before the lunch preparations began, my mom and brother showed me around my new surroundings. It was a big house, even bigger than our home in Florida, which I had always thought of as huge! It was bright and airy with lots of windows and light colored carpet and tile floors throughout. There was strange looking furniture and odd artifacts all over the house, none of which looked familiar to me. I was trying to take in all the visual stimuli assaulting my senses as my mother and brother tried to tell me the stories surrounding the origins of the many curious furnishings in Colonel Dan’s home. I was starting to get a headache. It was a lot to take in so soon after being banished from my father’s world. I really just wanted to be left alone, but that would never do for my mother and brother.

At last, we arrived at what was being described as, my room. It was much bigger than any bedroom I had had, or even shared before. The current furniture was a bit formal, actually, old fashioned looking. Again, my mom reminded me that we would go bedroom furniture shopping right away. This was just temporary stuff Colonel Dan had in here until you picked out your own things, my mom said as she swept her hand as an invitation for me to imagine the possibilities. Truth is though, I didn’t want to imagine anything accept getting back to my dad’s house.

Mom told me that she would get lunch ready and then we could go out shopping for clothes, since I had none to wear, save for the ones currently on my back. She swished out of the room with such absolute joy about her that it was almost contagious. Almost! My brother David said, Come on, I’ll show you all the really cool stuff around this place. You are really gonna dig it here! I doubted that, but I followed my younger brother’s directions and allowed him to lead me outside where the Arizona blast furnace heat waited patiently for us.

David immediately pointed up the side of the mountain that had its beginnings in my new backyard and said, You see that road up there, as we both squinted through the thick optical lenses we were both forced to wear due to a shared condition of severe astigmatism. He said excitedly, That’s called Hummingbird Lane and it goes almost straight down from the top of the mountain! You can get going about a hundred miles an hour on your bike on that thing! I’ll take you up there one of these days and you can check it out! It is totally bitchin man!

David was the more adventurous of the two of us. Fact is, David was just plain crazy! The kid had either no fear, or no sense, depending on who was describing him. Because our father was either alternately beating, berating, humiliating, or ignoring him, David had grown up tougher and more self-reliant than I had. Later in life, this gruesome early childhood parenting technique imposed on my brother by our father would manifest itself in some pretty anti-social behavior, as well as some real adrenaline rush adventures. But at that moment, I just thought that mountain road and accompanying adventure being pointed out and planned for the two of us by David, was just plain scary. I also believed that my little brother was way braver than I was, and that certainly made me feel even worse about my current situation and myself.

Before I could become any more morose, our mom called us back into the house for lunch. It had been a while since I had had any good home cooking. My main meal fare over the last few months had been a variety of cold cereals (I had learned to hate Special K) and greasy cheeseburgers. A lunch, or any meal, cooked by my mom was surely going to be a treat. I felt my belly growl and rumble at the thought of food. I headed back for the house while he continued to banter about the bitchin ride we were going to have. He stated that this ride would commence the moment our mom bought me a bike to match his own Schwinn Super Deluxe Stingray bicycle, (Palomino gold with big front mono shock and banana seat complete with high back sissy bar, don’t you know).

Lunch was delicious! What was weird though, was that Colonel Dan had made it. While scarfing my meal in looping, only partially chewed gulps, my mom explained that Colonel Dan was considered an, International gourmet chef. She explained that during his many world travels, he had taken the time in each locale to learn regional cooking techniques and styles. I didn’t know about all that, but whatever it was that I was eating, it was incredibly good, and Colonel Dan had just scored his first set of positive points in my book!

Later that day, my mom did as she had promised and took me clothes shopping. She marveled at, how big I had gotten, as I tentatively tried on clothes. She was pretty good about letting her big boy have my own head when it came to my fashion choices. But there was one item of clothing that she insisted I acquire; the dreaded, Sun Suit!

When I had arrived at Colonel Dan’s home (Don’t call it my home; it is our home now, Colonel Dan would say each time one of us boys referred to the house as Colonel Dan’s), my visual image of The Colonel that will forever stick out in my mind, was The Colonel’s unique and unconventional choice of clothing. I had always thought of an Army Man as one who wore a cool suit with tons of medals and ribbons on it. Coming from that perspective, Colonel Dan was a total disappointment.

He was wearing, what was explained to me later by my giggling brother as a, Sun Suit! A Sun Suit was a matching outfit of sorts, which consisted of a pair of short shorts and a matching button-up shirt. The outside of the Sun Suit bore a wildly bright floral pattern consisting of outrageously loud colors and tropical shapes. The inside, or skin side, of the outfit had the consistency of a terry cloth towel. In a word, the affect was, well, hideous! After forty years of wearing a Combat Colonel’s Army monkey suit, Colonel Dan could not wait to get home each day and change into one of the innumerable Sun Suits he owned. To we brothers’ point of view, each ensemble was even more outrageously psychedelic in coloration than the previous day’s number had been. We boys would come to hate when our friends would come over for a visit and our stepfather would appear in his visually stimulating or repulsing ensemble of the day. He would strut out, appearing to all the world, as an overweight Santa in a Hawaiian floral print outfit from hell! He would then walk the catwalk of his castle, replete with terry cloth shorty-shorts (on a man no less), and would swish to the door to profusely welcome the other guests into the house. Even more horrifying to us boys, was our very own mother’s insistence that we too wear one of these fashion monstrosities on a regular basis!

On my first clothes shopping outing with my mom I tried to pick out the tamest Sun Suit I could find in the store. But as dull as it was in comparison to The Colonel’s choices, the one I ultimately chose for myself still hurt my eyes when I looked at my reflection in the mirror in the brightly neon lit changing room. My face, looking back at me in the mirror, beamed as vibrant red as was the predominant color of the orchid print on my new Sun Suit. When I finally built up the courage to slip out of the changing room I was met by my mother’s enthusiastic praise concerning my "amazing look in this dreaded clothing choice. I tried to balk at her insistence that I, turn around repeatedly like some sideshow freak in a crazy fashion show so that she could see, how it looks in the back. She persisted, and I finally acquiesced to her demands. I was sure that it looked as awful on me as it made me feel inside to wear it, but she bought it for me anyway. She even had the gall to ask me if I, would like to just wear it home?" I demurred, fearful that some innocent person’s retinas might be permanently scarred by looking at the suit for too long without the benefit of using exposed photographic film for proper eye protection. Can’t be too careful about such things!

Each day I would ask my mother if she had gotten my father’s phone number yet so that I could call him. Each day I was blessed with the same refrain from my mom, No honey, your dad is supposed to call me with it and I will give it to you as soon as he does. I was sure my mom was lying to me. Surely, she must know her own husband’s phone number (okay, ex husband’s phone number). What if there were an emergency and she needed to get in touch with him because one of his sons had cut off their arm with a chainsaw. Hey, it could happen! Then what? I reasoned that she just didn’t want me to be with my dad anymore. I was sure of that! She just wanted to hold me captive here in the Colonel Dan Prison, sentenced to wear my prison issue, and completely humiliating, Sun Suit!

There was only one thing left for me to do. If Mohamed would not come to me, or I wasn’t going to be allowed to at least speak to Mohamed, then running away to be with him was the only logical solution. So, I plotted my escape and my planned reunion with my dad. I knew it would take a miracle for me to make it the thirty plus miles to my dad’s apartment, especially in the heat of the hot August sun.

As a younger child, my mom had taken my brother and me to Sunday school every week. In Sunday school, I learned to have a bit more than a passing relationship with God and His son Jesus. I knew that back in the day God and Jesus did a bunch of miracles. Maybe they could still do some. So, in my halting childlike faith, I asked God for a miracle. I asked Him to get me safely "home" to my dad, through the furnace heat of the desert.

I decided to make my jail break early the next morning. The rest of the day dragged on at an agonizing pace, but eventually a safe time arrived wherein I could excuse myself from the rest of the family and say that I was going to bed without raising too much suspicion. My mother gave me a knowing look and said, I’m not surprised you are going to bed early tonight honey, since you had so much excitement with shopping and all today. Yeah, was all I could muster as a response.

When I got into my room and closed the door, I went through my mental checklist in preparation for my great escape: Note to mom that I was leaving? Check. Backpack with supplies? Check. Food? That turkey leg should still be good that I had ferreted away in my nightstand drawer for a possible nighttime snack earlier in the day? Check. Money? All one dollar, and seventy-eight cents of it. Check. Alarm set? Check. All ready to go? Double check.

When the alarm went off at four in the morning, as it was set to do, l sprang up and quickly stifled the ringing. Then I lay quietly listening to hear if the alarm had disturbed anyone else in the house enough for them to come investigate. After ten arduous minutes (I almost fell back to sleep again at minute number four) I gathered myself up and collected my things. I then placed my artfully crafted note onto my new desk in my bedroom where it would be easily seen. I gave my room and my backpack one last check and then I headed out into the pre-dawn stillness to begin my walk (escape) to what would most assuredly be my father’s welcoming and waiting arms. That was the miracle for which I had prayed.

Observation: When a kid is on a mission, he doesn’t get tired, he doesn’t get hungry, he is not afraid; in other words, he isn’t thinking logically at all! Some of us never outgrow this phenomenon…at least I never have.

I ate my now two-day-old unrefrigerated turkey leg with my first of two cans of Coke for breakfast. I did this around seven in the morning under a Palo Verde tree that provided almost no shade. I was sure the cops would be looking for me by nine, so I started taking a more surreptitious route to my proposed destination after that hour arrived. By noon on that hot August day, all of my food and my other can of Coke had been consumed. I had neglected to bring any water. Dehydration never entered my mind; I was on a mission!

By five that evening, I was really dragging as I entered the final half mile leg of my trek to my rightful place in my father’s life. I was positive this act of love would be more than enough to prove to any parent that their child needed and deserved to be with them. At least that was what I was hoping and counting on.

At almost six that evening, I arrived at my father’s abode, tired, thirsty, and with more than a little bit of an upset stomach. Probably nerves, or maybe the two-day old, unrefrigerated, turkey leg, I thought, as I at first tentatively, then with more authority, knocked on the door to my prize. Which was and always had been, my daddy’s approval and acceptance.

My father banged open the door and said, What are you doing here? Not exactly the warm greeting that I had envisioned, but it was a start. I ran away from mom’s house so that I could be with you, I said as the tears, those terribly unmanly little boy tears, started tumbling uncontrollably out of my eyes.

My dad didn’t even ask me into his house, or offer me a glass of water, or offer to let me use the bathroom, which I desperately needed to do at that moment. Instead, my father told me to wait outside and that he was going to call my mother to come get me. He said over his shoulder as he went into his place, I’m sure she is sick to death with worry about you.

Mike and Mark, my dad’s girlfriends spawn, made ugly faces through the screen door at me as I waited less than patiently for my father’s return. I wanted to plead my case to my obviously incorrectly judging father and hope to have my sentence mercifully commuted. My father returned to the door where I, his only true first-born son, sat waiting and hoping. He brushed his two wannabe-sons (Mike and Mark) out of his way with a gentle nudge and as he reached the doorway, he softly told them to go in the other room and play.

He looked down at me with an unkindly expression and said, Your mom is relieved that you are safe. She and Colonel Dan (saying The Colonel’s name made him involuntarily snicker) are on their way to pick you up. I groaned and begged my father to reconsider his banishment. Dad answered simply and coldly, No. I can’t have you here."

Sue, dad’s girlfriend, came to the screen door as nonchalant as you please. She acted as if an eleven-year-old kid running away from home and walking across the city in the middle of the August heat in Hotzona, with a belly full of decomposing turkey leg and effervescing Cokes, was an everyday occurrence! Sue, without emotion, said through the closed screen door, Oh hi Little Mike, (I no longer thought of myself as Little Mike). How’s it goin?" To me, that was not a real question.