April 4 – Keep Looking Through the Windshield

by Cathy Scibelli

Don’t let your rearview mirror be bigger than your windshield.

Anyone attempting to navigate through the rough terrain of a serious or chronic illness will understand that quote in a second. It is so tempting to keep looking in that rearview mirror because the view back there very often is so much more pleasant than what seems to lie ahead. It’s like coming back from a vacation in some tropical resort where everything was sunny, you felt great, and any worries you had in your everyday life were forgotten for a time. You look at the photos of your trip and say, “What I wouldn’t give to be back there again!”

But that quote is right–we can’t let our rearview mirror be bigger than our windshield because that only leads us into a detour where we bump along complaining and pitying ourselves and failing to see some of the great sights that lie ahead and the possibilities that can open up if we focus on the future and stop whining about the life we left behind in that rearview mirror.

In my personal experience, I’ve found the cancer highway is filled with ruts and potholes and dark tunnels. But along the route I’ve also picked up some “hitchhikers” who have turned out to be really fun and inspiring friends. I’ve discovered “new” cousins who I never had the chance to get to know when I was busy speeding along in my life at 100 miles per hour. Now that I’ve slowed down, I see a lot of sights I never noticed.

If I pay attention to what lies ahead, I often discover new avenues for my writing and new opportunities to share my passion for World’s Fair history. I admit that it’s not easy to keep looking ahead and sometimes it’s scary to wonder where the road will end. But it’s still better to keep looking through the windshield than to live regretting what you can never go back to.

Cathy Scibelli is a writer who enjoys exploring new avenues where she can use her experiences of living with metastatic breast cancer to inspire others to continue to “look ahead” with anticipation and not fear.

February 20 – A Big Red Bird is all that Remains of My Past

by Pat Bean

“It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.” — Barbara Kingsolver

Today, I hung all memories from the past on my wall.

The year was 1978 when I found myself single with two of my five children still left to support. It wasn’t an easy time, especially that first month when I had to borrow money to pay rent. Although there have been many difficult times since that day, as there are for all who occupy this planet, my life from this point forward only got better and better.

I spent the next 26 years finishing up a 37-year career in journalism, following it–and twice where my heart led me to go.

My career took me to the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas, for three years, then to Ogden, Utah, as features editor for the Standard-Examiner. I stayed for three years here before love took me to Las Vegas for eight months that included a stint working for the Las Vegas Sun.

When love betrayed me, I took myself away from the neon lights to Twin Falls, Idaho, where I stayed for two years as regional editor for the Times-News. It was then back to Ogden, where my former newspaper offered me a job as assistant city editor.

In 1987, I answered my heart once again and moved to Erda, Utah, and undertook a daily 56-mile commute to my job in Ogden. But in 1989, I moved back to Ogden alone, and happily stayed there until 2004, at which time I sold my home and bought my RV, Gypsy Lee.

With few exceptions, everything I owned was either packed into my 22-foot home on the road, sold or given away. The exceptions, mostly books, were eventually stored at my youngest daughter’s home here in Tucson, where I recently moved into a small apartment after almost nine years spent living on the road exploring America from sea to shining sea.

Sunday, my daughter brought me a few of those bins. And this morning, I hung the only remaining possession that remained from 1978 on the wall of my apartment.

As I stood back and looked at this simple sketch of a cardinal, which belonged to my grandmother, whom I adored and whom died when I was only ten years old, tears came into my eyes

The colored-pencil drawing, which even for a while accompanied me in my RV travels, held a lifetime of memories. It is the only thing I own that connects me to my past. As a person who prefers to look forward not backward, I have no regrets that there is nothing else.

But my heart tells me that this red bird may be the most precious thing I own today.

Pat Bean, who thinks of herself as a wondering-wanderer, is a former journalist who lived in an RV for almost nine years and recently moved into a third-floor apartment in Tucson. Her passions are writing, reading, hiking, birds, art, family and her canine companion, Pepper.

October 19 – A Wake-Up Call

by Ardine Martinelli

The skies are a clear blue as we snorkel off the Kona coast. What a leisurely day of pure pleasure, being on the ocean, spotting spinning dolphins, hammerhead sharks, and a great humpback whale. Mother nature offers us so many gifts to feed our souls. It’s hard to remember she can also be a treacherous, dangerous, howling force.

After a wonderful day, we return to our condo on the South tip of the Big Island, Hawaii. Saturated with sun and astounding beauty, we went to be early to rest and restore for another day. I am awakened from a deep sleep with pounding on the door and someone calling, “Get up, this is a Tsunami alert, you must evacuate in two hours”. Stumbling to the door he tells me, “Plan on being gone a couple of days, take medication, water, plane tickets, etc.”.

I wake my friend, telling her we have to pack and be out within two hours. Like me, she’s a little fuzzy, but we get ourselves in gear and begin packing up the car. There is no time for fear; we just start packing so we can get to higher ground. Luckily we thought to take pillows, blankets, and some food.

We were told to go north to a small town with a community center. Arriving in town we filled up with gas and were directed to the community center. My image of emergency shelters was what I’d seen on TV. Cots lined up, a table with coffee, rolls, etc. and someone coordinating the center. Not here.

Several cars were already gathered in the parking lot, and all were congregated on the steps of the center. This is where we learned of the massive earthquake that hit Japan. We had no TV or radio at the center to keep us updated, so Lorie and I went to the car to sleep. We slept fitfully until about six. With no news, we took a long walk through the small town, scoping out any restaurant for breakfast.

The prominent feeling I had then and still have is one of deep gratitude. We had a car to get us to safety, and to sleep in. Inconvenient, sure, but we were safe at all times. It was a tiny window to see what happens in an emergency. People cooperated and helped one another. We were a small community so we didn’t face the long lines for gas and bathrooms that those in Kona experienced. All we did was pack up, move to higher ground, and sleep in our car. We were back in our condos by noon the next day, enjoying the rest of our vacation, but with a different consciousness. This experience brought the reality of how fast life can change. This was a wake up call. I don’t want to forget how fragile life can be and how swiftly it can change.

Ardine lives in Tacoma, WA where she is a Spiritual Director and retreat leader. Her interests include: gardening, hiking, reading, traveling, and good conversation with friends. She has been a member of Story Circle Network for four years and loves the incentive and inspiration it continues to give her to write.

July 20 – A Beautiful Cornea

by Mary Jo Doig

The nurse places my IV, explains what will happen, and wraps me in two warm blankets. The anesthesiologist follows, telling me he’s giving me Rohypnol, the drug Michael Jackson used. I raise my eyebrows, “But I’m going to have a better outcome, right?”

He chuckles. “Yes, you are,” explaining, “you go under swiftly but you quickly become conscious again. I’ll use this when the doctor gives you an eye injection to numb it.”

“Okay,” I say.

He leaves, then Dr. O arrives, smiling, a blue cap covering her dark hair. “Good morning, how are you feeling this morning?”

“I’m fine and so ready for this,” I say happily.

She questions me about any illness symptoms that could prohibit our plan and finds none. I ask about the donated cornea. She smiles joyfully and says, “It’s a beautiful cornea.”

What moving words. Tears fill my eyes as I ask how I can thank the donor’s family. She replies, “I can give you the donor bank address, and you can send a letter that they’ll forward to the family, who may or may not contact you.”

“That’s what I’ll do,” I say.

She nods, and within minutes I am in the OR at the University of Virginia surrounded by a professional team.

Eight months ago I had routine cataract surgery that exacerbated my dormant corneal disease, Fuchs Dystrophy. My then-doctor counseled I might have complications. I did. Since then I had viewed my world through a cornea seemingly covered with waxed paper. It was my worst nightmare: I was visually impaired.

Weeks slipped by as I retired from my career, moved two counties away, and found new medical providers. Dr. O–Leslie Olsakovsky–is highly regarded in my state and, after we consulted, I felt deep confidence in her ability; also the intelligence and compassion she emanated.

Now, awake for nearly all the forty-minute surgery, I listen to her efficient interactions with her team. I ask an occasional question, articulating with difficulty due to anesthesia, and she answers. Sometimes I feel pressure and, sensing this, she asks the anesthesiologist for a slight increase. Soon she is done.

I recover for an hour and John takes me home, where I lay supine for 24 hours so the cornea will well-adhere. Lying on my back becomes a deep discipline and, frequently during that long vigil, I silently convey gratitude to my donor for our sacred bond.

The following morning, Dr. O looks into my eye and says, “It looks beautiful. You are doing very well and you can anticipate a dramatic change in your vision during the next twenty-four hours when the air bubble dissolves. “

This morning, 50 hours post-surgery, I cover my left eye and look out at my world. For the first time in eight months the brilliant blue sky, the lush greens of trees and grass, the lemon yellow of my favorite day lilies–all are exquisitely clear.

Dearest donor, we see these miracles together now. You are forever part of me and I, you. Thank you. 

Mary Jo Doig is an avid reader, writer, editor, and aspiring blogger. She lives in a small, eclectic town in Albemarle County, Virginia where she has an exquisite view from her writing room window.

July 18 – Magic Mike and Me

by Carol Ziel

The Gravois Bluffs Great Escape Movie theater promised a night of raunchy male entertainment. I’m nearly sixty-five years old, haven’t dated for five years, and decided that reacquainting myself with the male anatomy was an attractive proposition. The movie was “Magic Mike” and it plunged me back into my adventurous past.  Like Alice, I fell into the rabbit hole where I found memories of my wild self.

Suffice it to say that I was a late bloomer. The shackles of Catholic training and a convent past stayed intact until my mid-twenties.  I usually looked for myself in all the wrong places–first the Peace Corps, the army, and then the USO.  However when I found strip clubs and other party places I knew I had finally come home.

I remember the first time I saw a stripper dance.  It was as if the Red Sea had parted and the scales had fallen from my eyes. I looked around and recognized my tribe in the drinkers and dancers, in the crazy colors and mist machines, and mostly in their frenetic freedom. For the first time I was truly alive feeling that I actually belonged somewhere. I stood at the bottom of that stage , gazing at the dancer with the thirst of someone who had been wandering in the desert for a lifetime. The burial clothes I was born in no longer bound me hand and foot . I emerged into my future life.

Like the character, Mike, I entered that lifestyle in innocence.  What we both saw was the wild abandon and freedom to be yourself: perfect bodies, perfectly present. No shyness or excuses for being anything but who we were. Embracing our sexuality like the sun embraces the summer sky.  Strutting our cosmic stuff.  We were butterflies exploding out of cocoons; every dance was Fourth of July.

However, like sunbursts, meteors and other blazing things we extinguished ourselves in the heat of passions.  We were both Ithacus flying too close to the sun and melting into deepest darkness.  We both found that all that glitters is not gold.

There is a paradox here. What we saw was true–the ownership of raw energy, and manifestation of exuberant sexuality was real, but that is only part of the story. The price one must pay to stoke the furnace of desire, to feed the beast of libido is heavy.  Like Alice we went through the looking-glass, but what we found eventually was a shadow life full of empty promises. We both became shadow people.

Thirty five years later I sat in a dark theater contemplating the past, I mourned for the loss of the dream, and what I lost reaching for the dream.  I have no regrets now that I am on the other side. I travel with a different tribe now, and the most “blaze” I get is gardening in July. But, I am grateful for that time and place, and what I learned. It’s part of who I am.

Carol Ziel is a sixty-four year old grandmother, gardener, mental health professional and grateful member of Story Circle Network.

December 20 – Christmas: a burden of the heart?

by Teresa Schreiber Werth

Sometimes Christmas feels like a burden of the heart. After the turkey carcass has been boiled, the bones picked and the soup is gone, I find myself crawling sheepishly into December, dreading all that must be done, missing family and friends that are gone and those I love who live far away. I don’t want to be a scrooge but the feelings overwhelm me and I am trapped…until “the Spirit of Christmas” finds a crack in my armor seeps in and saves me from myself. This year was no different.

I was “humbugging” along right on schedule, having rationalized and accepted that there would be minimal holiday decorations at our house this year. No Christmas tree? OK with me. I wasn’t at all happy with myself but I recognized the situation as normal (for me) and seemingly hopeless.

I had gone out to perform my weekly volunteer duties at Reach Out Radio where I read national and international news on our local PBS station, for the blind and visually impaired. As I was driving down our street, almost home, I could see from two houses away, that the Christmas tree was up and fully lit, in our living room. Bless the man that married me! I didn’t ask why he’d done it or how he knew that I couldn’t but, when I saw our tree, all beautiful and bright, the shiver I felt must have been the Spirit of Christmas seeping in. Close to tears, I came in the house and stood there, amazed and thankful. I actually felt as if I had to decorate it right then, and we did. I asked my husband to hang the evergreen garland around the front door and he did even better, stringing it with Christmas lights.

He got up in the closet and handed me the holiday Folkstone figures I have enjoyed collecting. I went to work on the mantel, then the entryway, the hexagonal window. Retrieving my six little button trees from the attic, I placed one in every room. What had seemed impossible a short time before was suddenly exciting and satisfying. The process of decking the halls had fixed my spirit.

I don’t want to spoil the magic by dissecting it, but I can’t help notice that finding the Christmas spirit had nothing to do with buying or wrapping, malls or catalogs, lists or sales. It was about someone performing a simple act of love. I recognized it instantly.

Perhaps Christmas seems like a heavy burden because we long for the impossible–a holiday like the ones we cherish in our memory, Christmases when we were younger and more innocent, when times were simpler and merriment seemed more attainable. Maybe we set ourselves up for disappointment by failing to live in the present, to recognize all the blessings around us in this time and place. All I know is Christmas is coming and I am ready.

Teresa Werth writes because she must. Ever since kindergarten, she has written poems, stories, songs and plays. Writing and revising words give her great joy A retired communications professional, she celebrates life daily, keeps busy making memories.

August 5 – Silent Gifts

by Mary Jo Doig

“Everybody’s forgotten about us down here,” the chunky young man said to me, his brown eyes sad. “I didn’t want to hurt my back working in the coal mines and wind up disabled with no insurance.” We sat in the dental triage tent at a Remote Area Medical mission in Wise, Virginia, one of the poorest parts of our state. For three days, more than 1700 volunteers gathered from all over to donate free medical, dental, and vision skills to thousands of uninsured men, women, and children.

For most of my time there, which started at 5:30 am on Friday and ended about noon on Sunday, I was a “runner,” charged with the compassionate handover of each patient from their current station to their next. My cherished friend John and I were taking dental triage patients to hygiene, fillings, or extraction stations, then passing them on to the next person for their care.

It was the brief walk I took with each patient that I remember most. I would ask their name and give them mine, shake their hand, and look into each pair of eyes. Most smiled as I said I was here for the first time, then asked if this was their first time. Some were returnees who come annually for this, the only possibility for their care; others were first-timers, like John and me.

“I’ve been blown away with what I’m seeing happen here,” I’d say, my
heart filled with emotion. Most responded with an enthusiastic, “Yes, it’s wonderful what people are doing for us here,” then look at me and say, “Thank you.”

Tears well as I remember saying softly, “Please know it’s an honor for me to be here.”

John and I didn’t know what to expect when we decided we would go. We just wanted to go. Now, in hindsight, we are still awed by certain memories, like the young, very pregnant mother of four, there to get her decayed-to-the-gumline teeth removed. She’d traveled here, then made an unexpected visit to the hospital when she thought her water had broken. Fortunately it hadn’t for, if she’d been admitted to the hospital, she would have needed to wait until next year for her much-needed care.

I remember so many faces and stories. Nor will I soon forget hearing RAMs founder, Stan Brock, tell us the night before the event opened that he hoped one day the people in our country would not need these services so he could take RAM to more third-world countries.

It will take time for me to emotionally process what happened last weekend. Yet what was so unexpected and welcomed, was the deepest sense of us all being one large group of humanity–those who gave and those who received–and how we each gave overt as well as silent, unspoken gifts to each other.

There was also the humbling reminder that how, in the flash of a moment in time or fate, we could all so easily change places.

Mary Jo Doig is a life-writer, editor, reader, gardener, knitter, and quilter whose day job is coordinating a volunteer dental program at the Rockbridge Area Free Clinic in Lexington, VA.

May 3 – A Window Opened

by Ruth Hetrick

It started as an ordinary day. Can I possibly explain how magnificent that is? It has been almost two years since I have enjoyed an ordinary day, for every day I have awakened, not knowing who I would be. Would I be lost, fearful, powerless, exhausted, lonely, sick, confused and worried?

Those are just some of the words that described me, a woman trying desperately to recover from being an “accidental addict” to a prescription drug given to me many years ago for anxiety due to a serious health crisis. Now, after almost a year of being drug-free and suffering horrible withdrawal symptoms, existing
through a life that I no longer recognized, becoming a negative, sad, frightened version of myself, I awoke to an “ordinary day!”

No longer shaking all over, I lay there for a while. There was no heavy darkness weighing down my brain, no fear that some unknown horror was going to descend upon me, no body jerking, no anxiety, nausea or crying.

No, this day I was not lost to myself. I felt normal, just as the people in my internet support group had told me would happen.  They told me a window would open and give me a glimpse of normalcy and then I would know that the “real me” was still there. Two year is a long time to be “lost” from yourself and I
had doubted that my brain and central nervous system would ever heal and that I would get my life back. I had prayed every day to just be “me” and to have an ordinary day where I would not be afraid to take a shower, get off the sofa, go grocery shopping, cook a pot of soup, make a bed or a phone call or step
outside, just to do things that most people take for granted.

Today, what started out as an ordinary day has turned into an extraordinary day for me. I am no longer lost; I am found and I am—oh, so gratefully—finally going forward with my life!

Ruth is a married sixty-five year old woman with two grown children who lives in Pennsylvania. She finds herself, at this stage of life, fighting for her life since becoming an “accidental addict” to a drug she did not know was addictive. As she says, “I WILL WIN!”.

April 22 – A Bit of Magic

by Linda Austin

The familiar song of the cell phone alarm forced my eyes open to a dull gloom washing into the bedroom. Another rainy day, the fourth in a row. I lay in bed thinking of what was ahead: fix a school lunch for my daughter, clean the house, visit Mom in the nursing home. I wondered what home-made dinner treat I could cook for her to tempt her appetite as lately she had no interest in eating.

I rose from bed to wake my daughter, dressed, then headed downstairs to start the day. After my husband left to drop our daughter off at school on his way to work, I headed for the front door to fetch the newspaper and check out the weather.

The weight of my mother’s deteriorating condition was on my mind. Drops of rain spattered my face as I stepped outside and looked at the pale gray ceiling above me. On the sidewalk along the street, the newspaper lay limp in its plastic wrap. I headed back to the house with it, ignoring the scatterings of rain that played like a preview of the coming main event. Stepping up onto the front porch, I paused to look down. There, plastered on the doormat, lay a bit of magic—a damp, red feather. My spirits rose at this little miracle, and floated upwards into the gray clouds.

Linda Austin wrote Cherry Blossoms in Twilight, a memoir of her mother’s childhood in Japan around WWII. She encourages others to write the stories of their lives via her blog, Cherry Blossom Memories. Her website is http://www.moonbridgebooks.com and her blog is http://moonbridgeblog.blogspot.com.

April 20–Appreciating Freedom As We Witness Opression

by Marlene Samuels

Several months ago I participated in a thirty-day gratitude challenge initiated on FaceBook by a close friend – not exactly the most original of ideas. Numerous sites had posed similar gratitude challenges at the time. But it did get me thinking about gratitude on a regular daily basis–both the concept and the reality. Every single day, for an entire month, those of us who agreed to sign on took one challenge: “write about something for which you’re grateful today but that’s different from the gratitude you wrote about yesterday.”

Gratitude–so what exactly is that? Within the context of our complex, high stress, western life styles, too many Americans take for granted the most obvious – albeit intangible, gifts of our lives. Yes, it very well may be cliché to say, “I’m grateful for living in a free country,” or “I’m thankful for my health,” especially when, during our conscious hours, we’re bombarded with messages that prioritize material acquisitions.

During my gratitude challenge, writing about a different gratitude each day became progressively more challenging – a total surprise to me. Suddenly, one day mid-challenge, I really got it! I grasped how much we assume our freedom is a basic human right, an entitlement, simply just a part of being alive. Few Americans have grown up without it.

The first week, the posts were overwhelmingly trite and superficial. One participant was grateful that the car dealer had his new car on time, another for an Aruba vacation, a third for having won a bet with his wife. But as the gratitude challenge calendar clicked forward, war and unrest erupted across the Middle East. And during the remainder of our gratitude challenge, it seemed that all our posts evolved – thankfully! Gone were the materialistic pitches. Expressions of gratitude for living in a free country began to dominate the screen. Each post – while different from those posted the prior day as required by the rules – elaborated upon gratitude for freedom. Amazingly, it seemed there was no end to the ways in which we can be grateful for the freedoms we tend to take so much for granted.

I’m an independent sociologist and writer and teach research methodology to non-fiction writers. I’m completing a short story collection, have published essays, short stories and food articles. I’m co-host of www.expendableedibles.com and www.expendableedibles.com/blog. Contact me through my writer’s website, www.marlenesamuels.com.