Beyond breast cancer: #WhyIWrite

Today is National Day on Writing. The hashtag #WhyIWrite has people around the country sharing their stories about their way with words. Mine is a long story. Still, it’s mine.

Indulge me a bit, please.

I’d like to look beyond breast cancer. I’d like to talk about #WhyIWrite.

Today is National Day on Writing.

The day promoted by the National Council of Teachers of English recognizes the importance, joy and evolution of writing through a tweetup, using the hashtag #WhyIWrite. The day also celebrates events hosted by educators across the country.

If you’re a writer, if you enjoy good stories, if you have a few minutes to spare on a beautiful fall day, check out http://www.ncte.org/dayonwriting/involve, the website for the National Day on Writing. This link takes you to a section that encourages people to get involved, share their wit and words. Please do.

For me, Why I Write …

> I’m a pretty reserved person. Put a few bourbons in me, though, and that’s not necessarily the case. Still, on a daily basis before noon, I’m quiet, contemplative and observant. I don’t like to speak unless I’m spoken to. Writing lets me change that. I have a voice when I’m behind the keyboard. I can talk like a lady. I can swear like a sailor. I can even admit some of my deepest secrets with a bit of humor and behind-the-scenes honesty.

> When I was a child, I woke one Christmas morning to find a red and white plastic typewriter with a note pecked out and addressed to me. Santa Claus brought me a typewriter and he left a nice note. This BLEW my little blonde mind. I remember how I felt that morning, knowing Santa Claus cared enough to spend a few minutes wishing me well and encouraging me to put my own words to paper. My next typewriter was an electronic model my grandmother gifted me as I entered college. Personal computers were just starting to make a splash and I was still chained to a trusty typewriter. If I had my choice today, I would be pounding out my blog on sheets of white paper bound tightly to a roller, ribbon ink staining my fingers, using as much white correction fluid as I could stomach and quietly scanning these documents into the computer, onto my blog, readers being none the wiser.

> When I was a junior in high school, a language arts teacher charged my class with a creative writing assignment. From what I remember, there weren’t many parameters around the assignment. He wanted us to write a story the class could read and judge. For a few days, I thought about the assignment. I had a nugget of an idea and I started researching names for my main character. I no longer have that story but I wish I did. I was absent the day my class read the assignments. When I returned the next day, the teacher pulled me aside and said the class voted my story among the top two. The story was about a young man who fell in love with a much younger girl in the neighborhood. The man often played with the young girl and, on occasion, watched over her while the girl’s mother was busy at work. People in the neighborhood whispered about this man and the little girl. He did not care. The man gently brushed the girl’s hair. Carefully cooked her favorite foods. He doted on her, spoiled her. The man called the little girl, ‘Doll Baby.’ In the end, the little girl and her family moved away. The man was left with a black and white photograph and a small pink hairbrush.

I think the little girl’s nickname, ‘Doll Baby,’ the title of my story, freaked out my teacher. I explained how I came up with the story and the title. I said my grandfather always called me ‘Doll Baby.’ The teacher looked dumbfounded. I quickly continued this was simply a pet name from my loving grandfather to his first grandchild. He was entirely ‘grandfatherly’ to me. Always.

I will never forget how my classmates looked at me after they read that story. Some were a little shocked. Some who never talked to me before sought me out, wanted my suggestions for their writing. It was heady.

> In college, after failing miserably at my first course of study, sports medicine, I enjoyed a few semesters of English classes while casting about trying to find my way in life. One class introduced me to the brilliance of Flannery O’Connor. Another class, taught by a former poet laureate for the state of Colorado, again tapped into my creative writing ambitions. One assignment had me writing about the desolate landscape around Lander, Wyo., and The Wind River Indian Reservation. My brother and I often spent time in Lander and around The Res growing up. My aunt worked as a government liaison in the community.

My story focused on a white landowner and the Native American man who helped tend his land. I wrote about the coyotes that wailed into the night only breaking through the howling wind on occasion. I wrote about the colorful trout that swam in shallow pools and jumped into the air to snag mosquitos hovering above the bone-cold river. And, I wrote about the relationship the two men enjoyed. Both were crusty, cantankerous individuals. Still, they finished each other’s sentences. They knew how strong to make the coffee. They were fiercely devoted to each other. It wasn’t a ‘Brokeback Mountain’ kind of devotion. (I saw that movie decades later and smiled at the casual similarities.) Instead, it was the comradery shared by men who worked together for decades. In the end, the white landowner dies. His friend buries him on a hilltop so he can still watch over his land. He builds a makeshift headstone and leaves a note. The contents of the note are never revealed and I never said what happened to the Native American.

When the class critiqued my story, there were a few decent comments. Some nice words about the scenes I wrote. Then, a young man sitting across from me chimed in and said he thought the story was ‘trite’ and ‘corny.’ I smiled, nodded and thanked my classmates for their feedback. Afterward, the teacher saw me leaving. She smiled and shrugged. I will never forget that night in a lecture hall at Colorado State University. My first real brush with criticism of my work.

> Eventually, I landed in journalism, writing stories about the communities where I lived. My first beat was as a regional reporter for the college newspaper. I enjoyed getting out, away from campus and reporting on the city beyond the university. After college, I landed a job at my hometown newspaper, returning to the small Northern Colorado city where I grew up. In truth, I was a terrible reporter in those early days. I was tasked with covering a university in the community; weekend crime; health & wellness; and, religion. It was a broad beat for a beaten broad. However, during my time at this newspaper, I was fortunate to find my legs with a couple stories that stick with me. The first was a late-night barn fire that involved a large chicken coop, many dead birds and one scrappy hen a firefighter pulled to safety and tried to revive with a child’s oxygen mask. I still have the front page of that edition. The photo is glorious. The story was well received even though the hen did not pull through. The publisher even gave me a clap on the back for getting out to a late-night blaze with a photographer in tow. Another story that sticks with me from those early days was a feature about a man farming a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ plot. For decades, this man’s devout family had planted and rotated crops at the site. His first remark to me was something like, ‘There’s no better time of year than the spring. Everything is new, filled with promise.’ For some reason. that resonated with me. I was new to journalism. I was filled, I thought, with some promise.

Fast forward, my career in journalism took me to different states, covering everything from a group of young hoods associated with Sammy the Bull Gravano in a Phoenix suburb to a young boy scout accused of sexual assault who fled the country before facing charges to a pair of wayward moose far flung from home resting beneath giant shade trees along Colorado’s busy Interstate 25.

I was fortunate to work with amazing, brilliant, angry, obnoxious, glorious and gifted people during my time in newspapers. I left journalism after a corporate reorganization that soured my stomach. The day I left the newsroom, I stood with people I hired straight out of college and those more old and gray than me and I cried. I was sure it was the end of my writing life. It tore me apart to stand before the people I worked with, loved and feel so broken down. Little did I know the move would be important.

> When I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer 1.0 in 2013, I remember standing in a cold exam room, stretching my neck high so I didn’t have a double chin and snapping a selfie. I was about to have a biopsy and I thought this was an important moment to capture. When I look back at that photo, I remember exactly how I felt. I was cold. I was scared. And, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or curse. To find my way, I started researching breast cancer issues. I started writing about every indelicate and indiscreet moment with my cancer. When I look back, my words written as the Cancer Diva are helpful, I think. They are also difficult for me. I never expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer. I never expected to learn far more about this disease than I ever wanted to. I’m glad I did, though. In a strange way, this disease made me write again. I felt like myself again. Although I was sick, bald and barfy, I could put on my Cancer Diva persona and tell stories about the disease. I could try to help people understand a diagnosis or simply find help when they needed a service to clean their house. When my hair started to grow back after a year’s worth of chemo, I thought it was time for the Cancer Diva to exit stage left, quietly make her way to retirement.

After three years in remission, I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer 2.0. Cancer had made camp in my bra again and I was scared. I shut down.

My words about the disease were few and far between. Having this diagnosis after doctors, nurses, secretaries, family and friends told me I did everything right the first time was too much. The diagnosis wasn’t great, Stage 3C metastatic cancer. So, I pledged to get through treatment quietly. I didn’t want to write about how terrified I was. I didn’t want to burden people with the emotion that comes with meeting an estate planning attorney while supporting a post-surgery fluid drain. I didn’t want to dwell on how exhausted, angry and hurt I was.

Recently, however, I have started to feel like myself again. My words are coming more easily. I can, again, laugh about some of the absurdities of day-to-day life with cancer.

In my new blog, Twice Bitten, I try to talk about what I can remember from the past year of treatment. I try to put my words to use again.

If you’re still with me after all this, Thank You. Knowing there are people out in the world reading my words is Why I Write. Knowing that someday my words might help another person facing cancer is Why I Write.

Mostly, Why I Write is because it helps me parse, put into perspective and process what life throws my way. I feel fortunate to have people who no longer find my words ‘trite’ or ‘corny.’

Why I Write is because this woman behind the keyboard is my most flawed, fractured, honest self.