When my mom and I were packing for my spinal cord surgery in St. Louis, I remember asking her what she was nervous about.

One of her worries, she said, was that we were flying a thousand miles across the country to a state where we had never been—to a state where we knew no one and had no family. We would be alone.

We didn’t know yet about James and Ms. Brenda.

James was quiet and Ms. Brenda was spirited, but both were long-time staff members at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel where we were staying, and both radiated kindness and warmth.

And when they heard why we were there, both offered to pray for me.

They didn’t offer in the way that some people do—if you’re a reader with a visible disability yourself, maybe you know what I’m talking about. They weren’t at all like the folks who stop you in the middle of your grocery shopping and stare at you with pity in their eyes. No—James and Ms. Brenda just wanted us to know we were not alone.

On the morning of my surgery, when my mom and I climbed into the van to go to Children’s Hospital, Ms. Brenda came running out of the hotel, waving her arms and calling for the shuttle to stop. She slid open the shuttle door to the row where I was sitting, wrapped her arms around me, bowed her head, and again she began to pray.

She wanted to give me one last hug, one last prayer before I walked through those hospital doors.

Whenever I have returned to St. Louis for treatment, I look for James and Ms. Brenda—two strangers who became family when we needed them most.

Sometimes locals will ask us where we’re staying, and when we tell them that we’re at the Chase Park Plaza, their eyes light up in recognition.

“Oh yes,” they say. “That’s a beautiful hotel.”

“It is,” I reply. But I’m not thinking about the fancy on-site restaurants or the hotel movie theater.

I am thinking of James,
and I am thinking of Ms. Brenda,
and I can’t imagine a more beautiful place.