"Where's Jamie?" screamed my cousin Lee Ann. "Oh my God, where is Jamie?" I thought, as we were standing in the pool at my parents' house. The question about my five-year-old son's momentary disappearance sent shock waves through my body.

The entire pool has a safety ledge around the inside of it and gently slopes to a deep end of only four feet. It was very common for us to let the younger children splash their afternoons away in Grandma's pool while we stood beside them and got totally soaked with their enthusiasm and the water.

On that scary afternoon when Lee Ann yelled, it seems that Jamie had been walking near the safety ledge and slid down into the deeper part. We had taken our eyes off him for only a plit second, and then he was gone! I quickly spotted him and reached down to pull him up.

As I yanked him up, he came out kicking and screaming, crying and fearful, and yelling that he wanted to get out. My guilt wanted to take him out and grant him his wish, but my fatherly instincts told me to stay in the pool with him. Both of us were shaking as I talked to him and reassured him that water can be scary and we must respect it. I held him close as we gently walked around the pool. After a couple of minutes he said he wasn't afraid anymore and he started to splash around again.

I was feeling guilty and sorry for myself for being such a bad father. "Good fathers don't let their sons almost drown," I was telling myself. Just at the height of my personal pity party. Lee Ann walked by and said, "You are a terrific dad and I really admire the way you handled that. He will never be afraid of the water again!"

Lee Ann saved two lives that day. She saved my son's life when she yelled "Where's Jamie!" and she saved my life, as a father! She took me from pity to pride with her nurturing comment. It's amazing what can happen when you look at yourself through someone's else's eyes.

By Barry Spilchuk from A Cup Of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Barry Spilchuk.

The nursing aides for the 89-year-old man planned a surprise party for him. This active and alert retired doctor had his leg amputated two years ago. It had bee a struggle to adjust to living his life with only one leg, spending most of his time in a wheelchair.

Family, friends and volunteers filled the brightly decorated room. He looked at the group and signeled a sweet six-year-old girl, the grandchild of one of his aides, to come over to him. He reached out and put his arm around her. He introduced her and announced, "She is my mascot!" He went on to tell the froup assembled that he would never forget the first time she visited. She came in, looked at him and his folded up pants leg in the sheelchair, and in her charming voice asked, "Where is your prosthesis?" He was astounded she knew the word. She showed him her prosthesis and tild him her story. When she was three years old, a man broke into her home, killed her 17-month-old brother and, with a machete, cut off her leg.

He said this young girl taught him not to complain and to be grateful for the 88 years during which he had two legs. They share a very special bond. She feels proud that she was able to help a very old man. He has a very special smile for the young girl who walks with joyful and energetic steps, the prosthesis removing all barriers from her path.

By Hedy J. Dalin from A Cup Of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor hansen & Barry Spilchuk.

I nicknamed him Big B; he was my older brother. We were total opposites and drove each other crazy, but we also shared much, creating and unbreakable bond between us. We both know what it was like to beleive that nothing we did, no matter how hard we tried, felt like it was good enough. Everyone who knew Big B adored him. He had a huge heart and beleived in everyone else's goodness-except his own.

Big B tutored hundreds of kids who had been labeled by society as stupid, lazy, undisciplined or mentally challenged. My brother saw within them an ability to make a difference. He himself had a learning disability; it was his secret. Together he and his students knew what it felt like to be different in a world that had yet to understand.

In the last year of Big B's life he had another challenge to face, his absolute refusal to beleive he was worthly of love. Big B was a beacon of light to all he touched and everybody knew it-everyone but him.

I was determined to prove to him that he was worthly of love. As cancer revaged his body for the sixth and last time, he finally allowed me to enter his world of pain and confusion. During the last weeks of his life, only 80 pounds remained of his once 190-pound frame. His eyelids would not close, he was too weak to blink and his voice was a whisper. All I could do was hold him in my arms and love him. All he could do was accept it.

Big B was pampered around the clock and he came to love that. When he was too weak to talk, he would tap his fingers to motion me to hold his hand. My brother finally knew how to ask for and receive love! Decades of fights, misunderstandings and the helplessness of each feeling the other was unreachable had vanished. In the end, he totally surrendered to the wisdom of a higher power to help him understand the strange concept of self-love.

During one of our last conversations he secretly whispered to me "I really am loved, aren't I?" It was the missing piece to his life's puzzle. He finally realized that he had the right to be loved.

By Paula Petrovic from A Cup Of Chicken Soup for the Soul. Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Barry Spilchuk