Page 8 - Mateo and the Gift of Presence audio flip book Ch 1-2

Mateo and the Gift of Presence

“If you do well in school this year,” Mrs. Hatfield
pointed out, “your parents said they’d take you to Disneyland.”
This kind of promise would have thrilled most chil-
dren, but Mateo didn’t even blink an eye.
“I have my whole life to go to Disneyland,” he answered
(while twiddling with his pencil-sword). “I’m in no hurry.”

“I wish he would have come with an owner’s manual,”
his mother sighed one Saturday afternoon, a few weeks after
Mateo’s tenth birthday. “Instead, he came wrapped in a blue
blanket with an encouraging smile from a nurse. Our coffee
grinder came with more instructions!”
“It’s so true, Evelyn,” Mateo’s father replied, heading
out the door to the bank. He’d reluctantly agreed, once again,
to send a 100 dollars to his younger brother Alonzo, and he
wasn’t happy about it. “Thank goodness we have nothing

scheduled for Mateo today. I’m worn out from trying to make
him cooperate.”
Evelyn was a photographer and was working on a
big project, so she disappeared into the family room with her
camera and computer while Alex cycled over to a friend’s house.
Meanwhile, Mateo was upstairs in his bedroom, alone, and
doing (you guessed it) nothing. In point-of-fact, he was lying

on his bed, staring at the ceiling, and daydreaming that he was
living on a star.
“I’d have to wear a fireproof suit, of course,” he thought,
“or I’d burn up.”
And it was just then, as he was fashioning the special-
order Kevlar suit in his mind, that he first saw the crack.

6