Cushioned by soft green grass, gazing up at the dimming sky, I watched and waited. There it was! "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might! Have this wish I wish tonight!"

Through stars, birthday candles, dandelions, Santa, and wishbones, we express our earnest desires, wishing they come true. Since its inception in1980, Make A Wish America has touched the lives of thousands of ill children by miraculously fulfilling their wishes.

We all have a story. Oddly enough, only a handful of people in this world know all the details that make up the colorful reality of our lives. I often wonder, as I brush shoulders with the woman next to me at the deli counter, what is happening in the hearts of strangers that I bump into all day long. I'll think to myself, "Is this woman, who also has a liking for peppered turkey, a woman of great wisdom?

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet." This is the question asked by Juliet in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (II,ii,1-2.)  But for Kathy Deringer, legally changing her family name-Deringer was a random name she found in a phone book-was her declaration that she was no longer the child of brutally abusive parents.

At around midnight on a mid-April evening, a young mother/business woman coddled her three-week-old son close to her. Sometimes he nursed, but mostly he lay uncomfortably in her arms.  By daybreak, Jane Jude knew something was not right with her second child. Moms and experts know very well about "mother's instinct." It is a well-documented phenomenon where a mom can either sense, or know, when something is amiss with her child, even when no one else can.

Imagine your marriage gone sour. Condescending remarks make you begin to feel like a worthless human being. Add to that physical abuse-often begging medical treatment-but you don't dare go because the police will get involved, and your husband has threatened you with your life if you "tell." You are trying to hold it all together for the sake of your children and looking good to your community. You have tried to leave before, but the stalking and harassment threats are so scary.