Defining Moments

    Since becoming a StoryKeeper I’ve found something. Every one of us has defining moments in our life, an event or experiences of such physical or emotional intensity that it has a profound impact on the nature and direction of our life.

    Moments such as these cause us to: draw on strengths we never knew we had, walk tall with pride, leap for joy or wallow in grief. Each of these experiences changes us in ways not readily apparent. They color the way we see and experience everything from that point forward.

    All of our greatest successes and our greatest failures are merely two sides of the same coin. Our successes can be lost and our failings made profitable. It’s all a function of choice. We can move forward with our lives or get stuck in the mire.

    Understanding, reviewing, and sharing these defining moments can be a catalyst for profound change and new understanding.

    I had occasion to meet an elderly man a few months back and had the opportunity to hear his defining moment. It was one of those situations where the story was far different than I would have ever guessed it to be.

    The reason I bring this up is recently, here in Phoenix, on the local news stations they showed a human interest story. The story was of a peculiar old man with a long and rather straggly beard, long, suspender shorts and wearing a bright red hard hat. The story had little to do with his attire but rather with his home and property.

    He lives in a small trailer on a small lot, next to his daughter and son-in-law in a slightly larger trailer and lot. The item of media interest though was what he had done to his home. I say he lives in a trailer though I am not sure I ever saw it because on every square inch of his home and property were toys.

    Toys, thousands of toys, model planes hanging from the trees, every plush, stuffed toy I’ve ever seen, meticulously organized with teddy bears, elephants and giraffes, all grouped by size and specie. There were dolls and doll houses, toy train sets, nativity scenes, Christmas decorations, toy trucks, cars, boats and even toy fire-engines. Far too many to even try to take in.

    Though the display grew over 40 years, the local media, had just discovered him, and in their typical, sound-bite driven superficiality, they asked him about the display. He replied, “Everyday is Christmas”. They dubbed him “The Christmas Man”.

    Five minutes, and done. The story of an aged, local eccentric was told.

    My experience with him was quite different from that told on the small screen. I discovered him a few months earlier while taking my 13 year old daughter to a baby-sitting job. Driving by and seeing the display, I just had to stop. Digital camera in hand, I wanted to get a couple of photos to show my wife as my description would fall short.

    Before I could get a second shot I was approached by the home-owner and was expecting to be shooed away. He told me I needed to move my truck because his neighbor would complain. Apparently many people stop and do just what I was doing. He then just came right out and asked me if I thought he was crazy. I told him that I have seen stranger things in my life, but that this was pretty impressive. “It must have taken you more than a few days to collect all these toys.” To which he replied, “40 years.”

    He went on to explain, that to him, everyday was like Christmas. When I asked him why, he told me the following story.

    He told me that when he was a young man, he had joined the Army near the end of WWII and by the time Korea had come around he had risen to the rank of Sergeant. His squad was assigned a recon mission deep into a North Korean controlled area on a cold December day. Later that same day they were ambushed. A fire fight ensued that lasted for hours, finishing only when all on both sides had died, spare himself and a young Navajo man from Arizona. Both he and the younger man were themselves wounded. He, with gunshot wounds to both legs preventing him from being able to walk back to their own lines. The young Navajo was wounded in the arm by a shot that would have killed the sergeant had it not been taken by the younger man.

    Knowing they could not stay there, the young man lifted the sergeant on his back and carried him for three days, hiding much of the time and moving with great difficulty through deepening snow. During this time they shared with each other stories of their families and things they would do when and if they got home. As the morning of the third day came, they realized it was Christmas day.

    Exhausted, cold and hungry, they wished each other a Merry Christmas. The young man told his sergeant that despite the circumstances, he appreciated the friendship he had found and the time they had shared and wished that every day could be Christmas. With that said, the young man died. The sergeant, unable to move and unwilling to leave his friend’s side was captured and lived the rest of the war as a POW.

    Later, when released, brought home and rehabilitated at a veteran’s hospital, the sergeant wanted to go to Arizona to meet, thank and tell the parents of the young man how their son had lost his life while saving his. He arrived in Arizona to find that both parents of his friend had themselves died only a week earlier in a tragic auto accident.

    He settled here in Mesa, married, they had a daughter and his wife died while she was still young. He never re-married.  Raising his daughter and celebrating one Christmas, he paused to give thanks for all the blessings he had received and all the Christmas’s he’d enjoyed. He thought back to that defining moment in his life when another man gave his life that he might live.

    He decided then and there that to honor the memory of that friend, his wife and others he had lost in the course of his life, he would strive to make every day like Christmas.

    Not knowing what else to say, I shook his hand and thanked him for his sacrifice and service to our country, his story and his compassion.

Defining Moments, we all have them, sharing them allows us to really know, and understand one another and ourselves.