For those of you now past age 47 who were born, reached maturity, and lived in the sociological wake of Leading-Edge Baby Boomers (b. 1946 to 1955), you may have felt slightly disenfranchised, culturally speaking. Maybe being shunned has even stirred deeper feelings of sibling rivalry.

Brent Green

If you were born between 1956 and 1964, coming of age in the 1980’s, you may be harboring unfathomable yearning feelings (a.k.a. jonesing), wondering when your birth cohort would ever receive its due—being noticed and catered to by major marketers and brands.

Well, jones no more.

Just in time for all the Super Bowl 46 brouhaha, Honda has launched a new TV ad squarely targeting devotees of culturally significant movies such as WarGames, The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire.

However, this time the brand-spanking new CR-V is the escape wagon for Matthew Broderick, reprising his legendary role as Ferris Bueller (as in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).

In this docudrama, Ferris has become Matthew, who calls his demanding boss to feign the flu so he can recapture a work day for himself, cruising around Southern California in a 2012 Honda CR-V (a bit pedestrian next to the 1961 Ferrari GT California featured in the movie—but still a practical set of yuppie wheels).

And so we follow Matthew reprising his bewildered character: being impulsive, zany and inane as he escapes the drudgery of his existence as an overworked and undervalued A-List Hollywood actor.

If you came of age in the 80’s and thought of Ferris and his reprobate costars as your kind of antiauthoritarian characters—not hippies but hip—then this ninety-second Super Bowl ad is just for you. Honda is aiming the newest rendition of its most successful SUV product ever built (with annual sales exceeding 200,000 units per year) directly at you: the Trailing-Edge Boomers, Cuspers, and/or Generation Jonesers.

Congratulations for finally achieving full status as “the demo,” no longer standing in the long shadow of your older brothers and sisters.

Your day has come, and it’s a day off.

Janet Blair Page, PhD

Despite the emphasis that our culture places on youth, life experience is a real asset when it comes to dating. Remember, you’re a baby boomer; this is your time. As a boomer, you should be blooming by now in at least one aspect of your life, even if it is just the wisdom to know that not every detail is a life or death affair. You’ve gained perspective and that will make you a great partner! Remember, as a boomer, there are no excuses for not having an edge on maturity and personal development.

Appearance can be a point of stress for boomers reentering the dating scene. Try to put a positive spin on it. If you’re a woman, think of all the great exercise and makeup tips available to you and how you’ve tested, discarded, or added to your personal care routine. You’ve got looking your best down to a science. The good news is that despite how well off you are or aren’t in the looks department, you’ve had plenty of time to pick up speed in what men want most — entertainment value.

A recent study about why men leave their wives showed it was less often for women who wereyounger, prettier, or sexier. They left for women who were more interesting. That’s right, women who were more interesting.

Many boomers tire of working at absolutely every area in their lives and are very attracted to opposites who can be their cohorts in fun — boomers with ideas and multiple topics who are capable of taking initiative and being adventurous. For babyboomers who may be slowing down professionally, this is especially true.

How to be an intriguing person and draw dates who could become mates? Here are some simple tips forkeeping your dating life a peak experience:

• Weed the garden — don’t keep dating anyone who doesn’t help you feel good about yourself. If you are being reasonably charming and the date isn’t … in fact the date isn’t not mate material and can’t make you laugh, by all means, quit, now. There are better dates ahead and deadwood just gets depressing.
• Stop shopping for love in all the wrong places — anything you’ve been trying for more than three months (except for online dating) with no return, you’ve got to give up. Repeating the same old thing hoping for a new outcome is one definition of crazy.
• Prince Charming, male or female, doesn’t make house calls. To have a dating life, you need a life. Self-assign this homework: go out at least three nights a week either with someone dateable or where there is potential for expanding your social network.
• Be a social marketer. Put the same initiative you would put into finding a job into romance. Be conscious of your self-presentation, know what you want, believe you deserve it, and be diligent in putting in the time. In love and work, apply Woody Allen’s advice— success is showing up.
• Show off — if you have a good body, exercise in public places, go to the beach, the gym, and hit the slopes, If you have a keen intellect and are up-to-date on current affairs, join a trivia team, take a political affairs class, volunteer for campaigns; if you have a lovely home, invite people over, offer it for events, and give a“share the wealth party” where the ticket for admission is your same-sex friends bringing dates they like very much but are not romantically interested in.
• Smile frequently. If you don’t know how, practice: start with furniture, cats and dogs, children, and then make your way up to full-blown adults.
• Make lingering eye contact with anyone you might be interested in meeting. Then look away and glance back again with a quick smile. Remember the lingering part. Count to ten. Women will glance and think they’ve communicated interest when in fact their eye contact was so brief, he will be positive he’s just been rejected.
• Date-dress all the time (yes, even when you are running errands) to help attract someone to date you.
• Have your body speak the language of openness. Uncross your arms. If at a bar, face into the room, not away from it. Open shoulders, uncrossed legs, with a full-face glance is a welcome. Add a head tilt and it’s an invitation.

Fake it ’till you make it — do work on self-improvement and expanding your spirituality, education, and health level but don’t wait to be perfect. A great confidant attitude covers many a flaw.

© 2012 Janet Blair Page, PhD author of Get Married This Year: 365 Days to “I Do”

When I was in third grade, my brother John and I watched a movie from a graveyard. The graveyard was behind St. Charles Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.

James Comey

We had both just served 40 hours “devotion” inside the church, a job that required us to kneel ramrod straight for an hour before the right side altar of St. Joseph. On the side altar was the Monstrance and in the Monstrance was a consecrated host. It was Holy Saturday, 1955. I was eight years old. My brother was ten. After our duty, he convinced me to sneak behind the church with our surplus and cassock tucked high so as not to rub against the dark tombstones. He wanted to try and glimpse the large screen at the Family Drive-In tucked away in a hollow down below us. It was a Saturday night, the drive-in was packed.

We couldn’t hear anything because each car had its own speaker mounted on its window frame. But it was a clear spring night, and I could see the entire screen from our vantage point. And I have never forgotten what I saw. A man with a beard and a scar down his face was lashed onto a great white whale. Men in long boats were attacking the whale, stabbing it with harpoons. The man lashed to the whale appeared to be waving, his one arm raising and falling. That night, tucked within the silent landscape of a spooky graveyard, I was watching Captain Ahab and Moby Dick in their dance of death.

I have never forgotten that image. Some years back, it became the opening scene of my coming-of-age novel, Uncommon Glory. Altar boys and drive-in movies and the joy and angst of that time period flowed out of my fingers into this story. Conscience and caring families and friendships found their way onto the pages. Rock-n-roll, slow dances, and coonskin caps bubbled up from my memory. Quirky teenagers and adults, murder, revenge, redemption, they all came together into this sad and funny story.

Two literary agents tried to sell the manuscript. There were no takers. Editors didn’t know what to make of it. Faith and hope were backbeats to the pulsating rhythms that moved through the chapters. There was a talking statue, a psycho altar boy, and a singer appearing on Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour — the ’50s version of American Idol. The book didn’t fit into a publishing niche.

Oprah featured a book a couple of years back on her TV show. I read the book, liked it, and then contacted the writer’s agent. The agent agreed to read Uncommon Glory but didn’t respond for the longest time. I finally called her.

“I was putting off talking to you because I’m at a loss,” she said.

“A loss?” I asked.

“A loss,” she said. “I love your writing and I love the story, but, for the life of me, I can’t think of a single editor that I can sell it to.”

When James Cameron was interviewed after releasing his highly successful film, Avatar, he said, “I came up with the script for this film in 1994, but it was not possible to make the film then. I had to wait for the technology to catch up before I could put it on the screen.”

With the new technology of ebooks and digital publishing, I am now able to finally release Uncommon Glory. Patience and persistence have driven me not to despair in trying to bring it to readers. Now, it has been released through Kindle Books (click here). And adding to my pride, my son Jim, a professional illustrator, designed and illustrated the cover.

It’s worth putting memories on paper … if they are uncommon, and might bring you glory.

Depending on how you look at it, this boomer has either crossed to the dark side or walked into the light.

Kathleen Norton

After some harrowing, hair-pulling experiences in front of the computer, which I decided not to shoot because it feels no pain anyway, I’ve got a new e-book. It’s called, “If 50 is the new 30, then 30 ain’t what it used to be!’’

Some of you are saying, “Say it isn’t so! Don’t tell us you made a book without paper! You traitor!’’

But some are saying, “Rock on!”

We boomers are at the point in our lives when we see fast change as either a turn-on or a turn-off.

I know boomers who live on “twitter,’’ and I know boomers who think cell phones are a passing fancy. The rest, like me, are somewhere in the middle.

I know that if I did not have a cell phone, I’d still be wandering around the big box store where my husband got lost two days ago. Or, as he tells it, I got lost and he had to track me down through subtle text messages like, “Where the #$%* did you go?’’

My big e-move forward started with a little tiny gesture.

Several speed-reading friends who used to collect many volumes each year got new e-readers like Kindles and iPads and fell in love with them. One of them said, “You should put your newspaper humor columns into an e-book.’’

I think she was trying to steer the conversation away from my bragging about my granddaughters and their amazing developmental achievements.

Whatever the reason, her comment got me thinking: “How hard could it be?”

Some of it wasn’t. I’ve been slogging away week after week in front of a computer for years, trying to come up with stuff to write. I was used to that.

The tough parts were these:

1. Wrapping my head around the idea of being the author-editor-publisher-everything-rolled-into-one.
2. Making the computer do what it is supposed to do (mine, for example, simply does not listen to shouted instructions).
3. Hiring people online to help with some stuff I couldn’t accomplish – people I will never meet in person and I have no clue where they live.

Somehow, I found a good crew in Donna, Maureen, and Rich (if those are their real names.)

But the hardest part of all were those last strokes on the keyboard that transported me into the world of e-publishing.
The momentous occasion went like this: Tap. Tap. Tap. You have a book.

It was not what I had dreamed years ago when I was curled up at the public library in Kearny, N.J., reading “Little Women’’ and vowing that some day I too would be a writer like “Jo.”

Of course, in my dream, I was wearing a bonnet and long skirts like hers.

The reality, though, was that on the big day, I was in pajamas. The e-book was on the screen, not in my hands. Still, some very cool possibilities lie ahead.

That is the world we live in today, boomers. I think it’s worth gambling. There’s room for old and new.
I hope you think so too.

Jay Hunter Morris knows that talent alone does not necessarily lead to success. And, it certainly will not land you in a starring role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. That takes a lot more work. And, as someone who can be called a late or young-baby boomer, he has worked for quite a while to make his dream come true.

“I’ve been surrounded by phenomenally talented people for years … people I admire, people who have mentored me,” he says.

He knows the competition. So, he works harder, pushing his natural talent farther and farther. Long, exhausting hours of rehearsal.

Opera tenor and baby boomer Jay Hunter Morris ... the genuine "Ziggy."

After years of determination and hard work, usually as a backup opera tenor, Jay is taking to the stage of The Met in the starring role of Siegfried in Richard Wagner‘s formidable opera, Götterdämmerung or Twilight of the Gods.

He is starring with soprano legend Deborah Voigt who plays Brünnhilde. The operatic performance is a staggering five hours long and is the conclusion of Wagner’s fabled, four-epic Ring Cycle about treachery, death, deception, mythical gods, magic swords, love, hate, dense forests with strange creatures and dragons.

Jay Hunter Morris: Beside himself in front of New York's Metropolitan Opera.

Jay got his big career break late in 2011. He was called in to replace the original tenor for “Siegfried,” who had become ill. Jay knew the part, and his performance at The Met in New York was spellbinding. Audiences – whether at The Met or watching HD telecasts around the world – were thrilled. Critics called his singing and acting, “A genuine triumph.”

Words like “genuine” and “authentic” are easily used to describe Jay Hunter Morris, whether watching him sing, perform or just visiting over dinner.

It has been a long road for Jay since growing up in Paris, Texas, where his father – who died when Jay was age 12 – was a Southern Baptist music minister, and his mother a church organist. But, the humble and real roots and dreams of his upbringing firmly ground him, even today.

We recently sat in a New York restaurant, bragging about our respective wives, children and personal things that matter most in our lives.

“My voice hurts, my brain hurts, my body hurts … I hurt all over,” he said, slumping in our booth at Lincoln. Why?! He has just finished another eight-hour day of rehearsing on stage with The Met’s orchestra and the other singers. But, all of his energy and sparkle returned when he talked about his actress-wife Meg and son, Cooper Jack. Grounding on what’s important to life and a shared knowing that pretension gets us nowhere.

I think that one of the many things that thrilled audiences about Jay’s performance of Siegfried – whether they watched in person at The Met in New York or in theaters globally on live HD television – was his believability, he accessibility. He brought the character to life. Most audiences had never seen or heard him before but his Siegfried was dramatic, exciting and the stuff of which makes for overnight legend.

Heck, I don’t care whether you enjoy opera or not, Jay’s “Ziggy” (as he calls his character) reminds me a little of Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” with his own style of sparkle, energy and thrilling voice. I also believe it’s only a matter of time before Jay Hunter Morris develops a crossover second career as motion picture star.

How does he muster the stamina for such a demanding operatic role?

“It’s storytelling,” Jay says. “I know this story so well … I’ve sung it so many times that when the stage lights come on and the orchestra begins, I just find myself in Ziggy and sing the story.” With a lot of passion, I might add.

Not since the late Luciano Pavarotti have I found a tenor’s voice so captivating, so rich, so passionate. On stage, he is all charisma. Similar to Pavarotti’s magic but all his own.

Tickets to be there at The Met to witness Götterdämmerung are sold out. But The Met’s live HD global telecast of Götterdämmerung is Saturday, February 11, and probably showing in a nearby movie theatre. It is something not to be missed.

Connect with Jay on Twitter: @JayHunterMorris

Marcia Barhydt

As far back probably as Year 1 in the workplace, there’s been a conflict between senior management and hot young cannibals new to corporate life. Traditionally, the older, more seasoned employees have been the ones to train new faces.

That was then and this… it seems… is now. Traditional roles are being reversed and we Boomers need to (in Ted Turner’s famous phrase) get on board or get out of the way.

In a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, this new premise was debated, investigated, and tossed around. And once this new concept is accepted, everybody wins.

The trend is most apparent in technology and social media, but encompasses other scenarios, like the advertising industry.

It turns out that this thinking was pioneered by JackWelch when he was a CEO of General Electric and had a 20-year-old mentor toteach him about surfing. Reverse mentoring also has evolved to include, for example, a 42-year-old exec at advertising icon Ogilvy & Mather who says his mentor is showing him how to perk up his humdrum tweets.

Of course, this younger generation doing the mentoring has already exploded to a global level thanks to Skype, videoconferencing and all kinds of virtual communications.

The lesson here is that Boomer execs, or really anyone in any position where younger workers can help, need to be open to and welcoming mentoring from co-workers who are younger than the exec’s own kids.

Now, we Boomers are no slouches when it comes to adapting and escalating our use of new technology. Think tablets, readers, and smartphones that do everything but make your coffee. Boomers are snapping up these new toys like it’s Christmas every day. We truly understand that we need to be on top of all this new technology. Okay, plus it’s fun, fun, fun.

Within many large companies where reverse mentoring is happening, the Boomer execs are wanting to get on board in a sort of “Hey, I want one too” kind of thinking.

Sure, there are hold-outs who cling desperately to the old regime and their old seniority way of thinking. But their numbers are diminishing every day.

We Boomers are once again showing that we’re easily capable of accepting change. No wait, we’re embracing it!

Why doesn’t this surprise me? It’s how we’ve been with every other stage of our lives. Why would we change now? Why would we balk at the idea of reverse mentoring?

Thanks Ted – we’re hearing you. We’re getting on board.

©2012 Marcia Barhydt

Click here for Marcia online.

If you are ever visiting Hawaii’s Big Island when one of its volcanos is erupting, there’s a chance you may see Mick Kalber in action. Mick – a baby boomer now in his early 60s – moved to Hawaii 30 years ago and reinvented his career from that of TV news photographer to the world’s leading “volcanographer,” a term he coined.

As a volcanographer, he has captured film and video images of volcanic eruptions on Hilo that we have seen on TV news, documentaries and motion pictures. It’s a far cry from his former life.

“I wanted an adventure. I had visited a friend on the big island and fell in love with the place and wanted to find another line of work,” he says.

While Hilo has no TV stations, it has volcanoes – active, incredible, picturesque and dangerous volcanos. Mick bought a video camera and started capturing spectacular images of eruption like no one had ever before seen … up close.

His luck began with the high-fountaining eruption of Kilauea – red-hot molten lava shooting 1,200 feet high. He was there to capture the action, and TV news stations were ready to pay for his video.

“I’d never seen anything remotely like that! The landscape looked like the moon … and here was incandescent liquid rock doing what rock is not supposed to do … jetting into the air nearly as high was any building in the world … the sight boggled the mind!

“That activity lasted less than a day … not long enough for other photographers to get to Hilo. But it occurred every three to four weeks, like clockwork. Thus began the last 30 years of my documenting the world’s most active volcano.

“The massive 2,000 degree eruption gave way to a fissure, the formation of a lava lake, which fed flows to the communities of Kapa`ahu and Kalapana, destroying several dozen houses in late 1986 and entering the ocean for the first time in ten years. I knew then I had a story to tell.”

That historic eruption of Kilauea led to Mick’s first documentary, “VolcanoScapes … Pele’s March to the Pacific.”

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Since then, his stock footage has appeared in the Hollywood movie, “Volcano,” TV commercials, and countless programs not only on TV news but The History Channel, Discovery and National Geographic. He found that the volcanos have given him a new and prosperous career. But, there have been dangers, too.

“I’ve had methane (gas formed by organic material that decomposes w/o oxygen) explosions go off under my feet. There are two types … one with a flame and one without. Fortunately the one that went up my pant leg had no flame. Scared the bejesus outta me though.

“I’ve melted countless pairs of shoes, tripod legs, video recorders … and have singed my eyebrows and hair any number of times. Burns on my arms and face have been minor … kind of like a mild sunburn.

“I do not wear protective clothing when shooting the lava flows. The main reason is that if it’s too hot for me to be there, it’s definitely too hot for my gear.

“Stood at the Pu`u `O`o Vent (active bent of the current eruption) and shot straight down into the throat … some 400 feet. I had to be right at the edge with crumbling cinders continually breaking off. To get there, I stepped over cracks a foot or more wide to stand somewhere I know will no longer exist at some point … but hopefully not while I’m standing there.

“Had I not been shooting, I probably wouldn’t have had the nerve to do it, but the camera functions kept me distracted from the dangers. And, I got shots of a 60 foot high undulating dome of lava unlike anything I’ve seen before or since. But for the longest time afterward I was thinking, What the hell was I doing up there!”

Mick says his greatest pleasure in documenting Kilauea is not making money from selling stock footage or DVDs but rather witnessing “one of nature’s most amazing spectacles, and to be able to share those sights and sounds with people around the world.”

After a divorce years ago, Mick also found another love in Hawaii – in 2001, he and his old friend Ann Whittemore married. And … as you might imagine, the ceremony was performed near the steaming ocean entry of volcano lava. “A very hot relationship,” he says with a smile. They live in Hilo, about 30 miles from Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and the Kilauea crater.

A career reinvented … passion and pleasure in his work … and finding the love of his life. Who said baby boomer years are not exciting?!

Check out Mick’s websites – VolcanoScapes.com and www.tropicalvisions.com.

Special thanks to Ann Kalber for use of her photos.

It was Christmas Day and there was a serene blanket of snow outside my living-room window, accompanied by dancing snowflakes. I was absolutely mesmerized by this simple beauty and how it could ignite a feeling of gratitude and hope. I retreated to the kitchen to start preparing for dinner, when all of a sudden I heard a loud thump outside my front door.

Wendy with her mother.

Given that it was Sunday, and Christmas, and everything was closed, even the people who deliver the grocery flyers should be off. So what could that be?

I opened the door and glanced down at something wrapped in plastic, already covered in snow. I reached down to pick up this mystery package and gasped. It was the 2012 Sears spring/summer catalogue!

I brought it in, feeling uncomfortable. I had been so enjoying the moment that was Christmas Day, and the sentiment and wishes that are meant to go along with it. Somehow this unexpected delivery that had managed to get into my house had also managed to get under my skin.

I was bothered by the timing. The yuletide log hadn’t even started to crackle and burn, and already I was supposed to be letting my thoughts turn from “visions of sugar plums,” from “six geese a-laying and seven swans a-swimming,” to me swimming in a lovely Size 7 ruffle-neck tankini top and tunnel-tie bottom, currently listed as 30 per cent off from the original price – wait; really?!

Why can’t we ever just enjoy being in the current moment?

Our daily existence is constantly being sped up. We have quick fixes, rapid service (except sometimes at fast food restaurants), instant messaging, speed dialing, speed dating, and meals on the go (that can necessitate popping fast-dissolving antacids). We are constantly being fast-tracked through life, through the seasons and now the holidays.

I wasn’t sure who or what I was more mad at. Maybe it was myself, for having forgotten to remove my name from the catalogue distribution list. But maybe it was time itself; maybe I was angry at how everything good seems to go by with such alacrity that you have no time to just slowly absorb it all before you are off and running to the next big thing.

It’s been ingrained in us to move on, to move forward, not to linger on the past. Even our grief process gets accelerated prematurely. When my dear mom passed away in September 2010, I could sense a certain consensus from others that I was to get back into the groove at work and socially and get on with my life. But all I really wanted to do was be sad and heal at my own pace.

This time of year brings back an avalanche of memories: times spent with my mom, my parents, my sister, nieces, family in general. I lost my dad in 2000 and felt then that my world would never be the same. Now, after losing my mom, I know it never will. This is my new reality.

Time is so fleeting, my mom always used to say. As we approach another New Year, all I want is to slow down the countdown. I want time to stand still. I want to hold on to precious memories and cherished moments spent with family and good friends, to completely immerse myself in the present and remind myself of what truly matters.

Now that’s a gift we all could afford to have and to share.

©2011 Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Photo by Cecil Brathwaite. www.cecilbrathwaite.com

It was the placing of so many live evergreen holiday wreaths with red ribbons that got me thinking yet again about Arlington National Cemetery. Word had gotten around the Washington, DC, area, and 15,000 volunteers showed up one weekend in early December to help place the wreaths that had arrived in twenty semi-tractor trailer trucks from Maine. 100,000 wreaths.

Photo by Cecil Brathwaite. www.cecilbrathwaite.com

My wife and I had driven by, and the sight of so many simple symbols of dignified remembrance … well, it was powerful.

Owner Morrill Worcester of Worcester Wreath Company in Harrington, Maine, started the tradition with 5,000 wreaths twenty years ago, and it caught on. This year though, there have never been so many wreaths at Arlington. Rows upon rows.

The sight of the wreaths brought me back to the Cemetery for a visit early on a cold December morning. Cecil Brathwaite, my friend and a respected photographer in Washington, accompanied me.

Arlington National Cemetery always seemed to have a connection in my life, growing up just a few miles away. My mother, sister, and I would watch 4th of July fireworks in Washington by spreading out a blanket on the cemetery hill. I found my love for bicycling on the twisting roads among the sea of headstones and ancient trees.

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As the world has changed over these many decades since I was a kid, the Cemetery has always remained sacred ground. Respectfully quiet. Voices always in whisper. Except during funerals. Then, the sounds of horse hooves, a firing party, calls to attention, a bugler. Followed by quiet again, or the flickering of the perpetual torch at President Kennedy’s grave site, or the sharp click of heels by a sentry at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Now, again, there are Maine holiday wreaths there, too.

What really struck me this visit was the number of military funerals. Cecil and I saw several, and he commented, quietly, that he would never photograph such a solemn and private moment of honoring the dead. It would be intrusive, it would not be right.

Arlington National Cemetery is much larger today than when I was a kid. It is sprawling southward towards the Pentagon. The need for more burial areas from more wars. More military honor guards, the constant sound of caissons, firing parties, Taps. More wreaths.

As I busily wrap the Chanukah gifts for my little grandchildren, I’m suddenly reminded of an event that took place many years ago when my own kids were young. There are inexplicable moments in our lives that seem to take on a mythical quality as the years go by, so that we wonder if they ever really happened. This is the story of one such mystifying event.

Helen Zegerman Schwimmer

It was a few days before Chanukah. I was driving home from the local mall, my trunk overflowing with games and toys for my three children, when the car suddenly slowed to a crawl. I nervously steered it on to the grassy shoulder of the highway and hit the emergency brake. The gas gauge registered empty.

This was back in the days before cell phones, so there was nothing to do but pop open the hood and wait, hoping a Good Samaritan or the highway police would eventually stop. But when the cars continued to whiz by I grew increasingly impatient and decided to hike to the nearest gas station that I had passed about a quarter of a mile back.

“My car ran out of gas on the parkway,” I sheepishly confessed to the gas station attendant.

“Can’t spare anybody right now,” he said. Instead, he offered to fill a two-gallon can halfway and I trudged back down the road, like the biblical Rebecca hauling her jug from the well. It wasn’t until I removed the cap from the can that I realized the spout was missing, so I had no way of pouring the oil into the tank.

As the sun started to sink, so did my spirits. Why me? Why today? Why here on this busy highway that was beginning to feel like a desolate stretch of desert? The answer would arrive shortly.

I watched a battered car pull off the road a few feet in front of me. While a child peered out from the rear window, a young woman emerged from the driver’s seat. She walked purposefully over to the trunk, opened it and removed an object, then turned and came towards me, smiling broadly.

“I bring this for you—you need this,” she said with a Hispanic accent as she offered me the tin can with a spout. Seeing the look of amazement on my face she explained, “I carry this for emergency.”

I had always assumed that angels commute via their wings. So I was totally unprepared for this modern-day version that drove up in a Chevy. I silently accepted the container, unscrewed the spout and poured the liquid from my can into hers and then into my tank. The whole procedure took only seconds.

“Thank you,” I murmured gratefully as I handed back the empty can. Before I could offer her any reward, she hurried back to her car and just as mysteriously as she had arrived, the stranger drove off with a wave.

I turned the ignition key, relieved to hear the familiar hum of the engine and steered my car back onto the highway. And just as the last ray of light left the sky I headed towards home, glowing from the gift that was worth so much more than the gasoline I had just received.

Follow Helen online … click here.