October 3 – Fall

by Melissa Dallago

Spring is commonly associated with a time of rebirth and renewal; a time of the robins returning to the trees and blossoming flowers. Fall is considered to be a time of harvesting the bounty and preparing for the coming winter. I do not ascribe to these sentiments of fall and spring. On the contrary, I consider fall to be a time of resurgence and rejuvenation, but then again, I am a fall baby born into this glorious season.

When fall arrives my spirit feels stronger; a sense of purpose enters my step. Fall is my time of year for being thankful for the joys in my life, a la Thanksgiving, but also of planting seeds for my future endeavors. Much like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon during springtime, I erupt from mine and burst forth onto the world during the fall.

I love my autumn colored clothes coming out of the closet for the cooler weather. I adore wearing my favorite boots for the first time in the year. I love the dry, cinnamon smell of the red and orange leaves. I especially enjoy celebrating Halloween with its black cats, witches and monsters. I start planning my costume months before, much like an early Christmas shopper. I wait in anticipation for the haunted houses to open so I can get the crap scared out of me. I also love Thanksgiving and my mom’s homemade cooking.

I relish in fall; embracing everything about it. So while others are turning their thoughts to the fast approaching winter, I dance through the falling leaves in my favorite boots, drinking hot apple cider, and giggling with the ghosts; celebrating my time of rebirth and renewal.

“My name is Melissa Dallago, and I live in Safety Harbor, Florida. I am a member of the Internet Chapter as well. I’m an aspiring writer and I am hoping to improve and grow in my writing.”

July 11 – Good Morning

by Andrea Savee

Tomorrow, my brain will be both bombarded and caressed and sections that have been asleep for forty-three years will wake up. My perception of the world, and maybe myself in it, will change, without me taking a drug, staring at a wall for a week, or having a near death experience.

I feel giddy and special. Like it’s the night before the biggest birthday party of my life. A party with one whopping $5600 gift to myself of Danish technology: hearing aids.

My childhood ears were ravaged by chronic infections. Surgical and pharmaceutical interventions–a steady dose of prescription strength Sudafed and Actifed, tonsil and adenoidectomies, drainage tubes, and finally a tympanoplasty — couldn’t prevent severe damage to the ossicular chain, that trio of articulating bones we learned about in elementary school: the hammer, anvil, and stirrup. By age nine, I’d lost considerable hearing in my right ear and was nearly deaf in my left.

Somehow, I’ve spent four decades never even considering hearing aids or the surgery that I’ve learned could restore my hearing to normal. Seeming to naturally embody the phrase It is what it is, I adjusted. In school, I sat up front. In work and play, I reflexively positioned myself to the left of someone I wanted to hear. I watched the mouth of the person speaking more than I did their eyes.

Tomorrow, I’ll immerse myself in a surround sound scenario that will reportedly rock my world as the brain scrambles to sort it all out. Alicia, the audiologist, warns me that as the upper registers of my hearing range flood with information, I may be distressed by the simplest sounds of living. Dishes clanking. Keys jangling. Freddie Mercury.

But there will be soothing sounds, too, as the lower registers open up and round things out. The hooting desert owl. Eggs boiling in the covered pot. The cat purring from the far end of the couch. I can hardly wait for someone to whisper in my ear.

And being buttressed on both sides now by the sounds of the world will bring clarity. No more mistaking the dribbling hose for chirping birds. The whirring motor several lawns away for bees humming in the trees overhead.

After my initial workup, the otologist asked me with a softened voice how I’ve managed all my life. I was touched by her tenderness. She asked if I’d grown up in a small town without access to good medical care. I hadn’t. In fact, my dad was a doctor. What ifs swirled around the exam room and around the question of why I hadn’t been treated with antibiotics. My later Google search suggests that whether and when to treat children with antibiotics is still the judgment call my parents made back in the 60s.

The child who lost access to half her world when the left side dropped away doesn’t need what ifs. She just needs hearing aids. The ReSound Alera 961 to be precise. I like the sound of that.

Andrea lives in California with her Queen-loving husband, and their cat, Chico.

October 1 — A Daughters Birthday

by Linda Hoye

October 1, 1978 at 11:24am.

“Push! Come on, you can do it! Keep pushing! Look down here at the mirror; the baby is coming!” The delivery room nurse urges me to look toward the mirror positioned at the end of the bed.

“I can’t see! I don’t have my glasses on.” Why didn’t someone tell me that I’d need my glasses?

I give one more push with everything that is left in me and feel my baby slip from my body.

“It’s a girl!”

They lay her on my chest, and I look into the eyes of a beautiful, dark-haired, baby.  Laurinda is crying, red-faced, and obviously distressed at being so suddenly removed from the quiet and safety of the womb. The delivery room with its bright lights and hurried voices must be overwhelming to one accustomed to the silence of the pre-birth world. As her tiny fist grasps my finger my world shifts and my identity changes. I am now a mother.

Laurinda is, as my mom says, a “good baby”. She is happy, healthy, rarely fussy, a good eater, and an easy baby to care for. She’s perfect in my eyes. I delight in watching her grow and change and seeing her personality emerge. One day her imagination sparks an idea and she takes my face in her hands and looks me straight in the eye.

“You’re the big lion and I’m the little lion.” She tells me very seriously. I am not exactly sure what she is trying to tell me.

Fast forward sixteen years.

These terrible teenage years seem to last an eternity. She seeks to establish her own identity and, in doing so, wrestles against anything and everything that smacks of “family”. Our relationship is strained during these years when she strives to be the opposite of me in every way. Her brother teases her sometimes by telling her she is “just like Mom”. It is the insult of insults to her.

Fast forward fifteen more years.

Now my baby has a baby of her own and it blesses my heart to see her care for her own daughter. Laurinda is traditional, preferring books and building blocks to video games and electronic toys. She’s a teacher, gently introducing letters, numbers, colors, and new ideas in the course of everyday life. She’s committed to her daughter’s health and has a definite policy about what she can and can’t consume.

The relationship between Laurinda and I has changed, grown, and deepened over the years. It is one of the greatest blessings in my life that I can call my daughter my friend.  The other day I was thinking about the scene in the movie The Lion King where Rafiki holds up his cub Simba, and I was reminded of my young daughter’s curious comment about me being the big lion and her being the little lion. It seems appropriate that today I symbolically stand in the place of Rafiki and hold up Laurinda. I’m proud of her and she has brought more joy into my life than I could ever have imagined on that October morning thirty-three years ago.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

I am a full-time HR Business Analyst and a part-time writer currently on a memoir about my quest as an adoptee to find healing from deep and unrecognized grief. I nourish my muse with the taste of caramel frappuchinos, the scent of  Yankee Candles, the sound of quiet classical music, the vision of Mrs. Potato Head and Gumby and Pokey on the corner of my desk, and the feeling of my smallest Yorkie on my lap. I live in Washington state with my husband and our two doted-upon Yorkshire Terriers. When I’m not writing or working, I have the most fun spending time back in Canada with my husband, our children, and our two brilliant grandchildren. Learn more at: A Slice of Life Writing

September 27 — Celebration

by Cathy Scibelli

Today I’m celebrating the good news I received–my MRI was “normal,” making me officially a two-year breast cancer survivor. The two year mark is an arbitrary one, but nonetheless it’s certainly comforting when they tell you that your odds of surviving long term just increased a few notches.

So how to celebrate? The first reaction to news like this is always to feel as if I want to dance on the moon and shout the news from the mountaintops.

Everyone I mention my good news to tells me things like “You should go out to a fancy dinner,” or “why don’t you take a really special vacation?” or “buy yourself something great.” But an odd thing happens after you’ve been through a life-threatening battle with disease, or at least in my case it happened. The most ordinary things that I used to take for granted become the very things that feel special and celebratory.

It’s like winning the lottery to hear that you’ve just beaten the odds and been given the opportunity to enjoy the fall (my favorite season) without another doctor appointment or scary test until after Thanksgiving. Suddenly, I can feel “normal,” joining the rest of the world picking out my Halloween pumpkins and buying decorations, enjoying long walks in the cooler weather watching the fall foliage emerge. I can look forward to the Pumpkin Fest at my cousins’ Sugar Shack where I can get plenty of warm hugs and hot cider. Then I can come home to my cozy apartment, do some fall cleaning and redecorating, work on my blog and writing class, and continue participating in the women’s writing and breast cancer groups I’ve joined.

Don’t get me wrong, I do still have bigger goals on my Bucket List. One day I’d like to go out to San Francisco and see some of the sites my father told me stories about seeing when he was there while in the Army. I’d like to visit relatives in Tennessee and then attend the Story Circle conference in Texas next April. I think about one day moving to the country and buying a little place where we can have a garden.

But right now it just feels great to wake up in the morning and look forward to a “normal” day. Because when you feel as if every day is a gift and where you are in your life is a place surrounded by loving friends and family, that’s really all you need to have a celebration.

Cathy Scibelli is a freelance writer and breast cancer survivor whose life has been immensely enriched by joining Story Circle Network. She blogs at http://iconicmuse.blogspot.com