What got me through that horrible time, and the almost four years of treatments and surgeries that followed, was the love of my personal friends, and the faculty and students' at Bessie Carmichael School. In that bleak October, those children who barely knew me, showered me with their love. Thanks to their teachers, they took the time to handcraft cards that they sent to me every time I had to go in for yet another operation. I became a classroom volunteer in order to teach students. But it was those students who taught me.
Time is love.
The columnist Sidney Harris said that people who are always in a hurry, who have no time for anything except the most important matters, fail to understand the nature and needs of love. Our motives may be good, but our reasoning is faulty. No amount of material goods can substitute for time spent with those who need us. There are no presents as important as presence. I began my remarks by saying that this program not only touched my life, it transformed it.