Big hugs for fantastic kindergarten teacher

With Patty Bein in Village Commons gift shop

The world has it back-asswards by rewarding multi-millionaires who do crappy things and not rewarding teachers who shape children in their formative years. I thought of this when I bumped into Pat Bein – Mrs. Bein – who had all three of my kids in kindergarten in a sweet little school, The Horizon School (no longer in existence) in South Hadley Falls.

Of course I had something to do with my kids turning out as great as they are, as of course did their father, but I wasn't exaggerating when I told her that my kids are who they are because of her. We were shopping at the Village Commons in the Arts Unlimited Gift Gallery, where most items (except the earrings I wanted to buy, insert frowny face) were 20 percent off during the annual Village Commons Days. We gave each other a big hug and talked for a few minutes. I showed her photos and she said their grownup selves looked just like their kindergarten selves! She remembered how worried I was when I left Ben for the first time and he cried his little heart out as I went to work. I called her as soon as I got to the newspaper, and she said he had stopped crying right away. She made me feel confident that they were in good hands. I did the glasses on, glasses off, photo in the middle of the displays at the store. At this point, my honey turned to leave. The store owner said he had lasted longer than most.

Glasses off

Meanwhile, Thanksgiving seems in the distant past, but I forgot to write that our little gathering of Joe, Katie and Jim went well. When I learned that it would be just us three, I felt forlorn. Then I sat back and thought about how silly it is that Thanksgiving is supposed to be big. In this post for Blood-cancer.com, I wrote about how Thanksgiving with my former husband is easier than it was during our married days when he got annoyed with the mess that my mother and I made in the kitchen.

I wrote, "It is easy to lose perspective when you’re as far “out” as I am. But periodically I remind myself to read what I wrote on my blog when I relapsed for the second time: 'I have been crying a lot, picturing myself at the end of the road. Thinking I won’t see my children finish growing up, won’t see my grandchildren.' So what if I don’t see them on a certain day? I’m thankful that the generosity of my bone marrow donor made my predictions wrong on the dark relapse day."

By the way, the post was dated Dec. 25, 2008, and I gave it the headline, "Downhill all the Way."
Those were the days that people commented directly on the blog rather than on Facebook after I share. Twenty-five people commented. Two of them have died. One of them is my friend Patricia, aka PJ, my doppleganger until she wasn't. She wrote, "Adding my support to all the comments here. I wish I could do more than sit on the sidelines watching as you deal with this. Even though I can literally picture where you are (you could be in my old room), I can't imagine what you're feeling. It's all too much, and just wrong."

I really miss my friends PJ and Ann and our little sisterhood of leukemia survivors. We all knew what the other was going through, and we could sometimes even joke about it.

But I have digressed, as usual.

Oh, by the way, circling back, I'm sure that Jim, my then-editor, wasn't the first one to say back-asswards instead of ass backwards, but I first heard it from him during my cub reporter days at the Holyoke T-T, and I thought it was so clever and it has stuck in my head.

When you fall in love with your editor

Back in the day

When I tell people I fell in love with my husband-to-be’s editing back at my first newspaper job at the old Transcript-Telegram, they think it’s a joke. Well it’s a kinda sorta joke.

I tell them I loved what he did with my words. I say it in a funny voice so they know it’s a joke. But partially true. Because in any area where you wish to excel, there can be some falling in love with the person you emulate. By that measure you can fall in love with a lot of people who are experts at the things you want to do better. Tennis coaches, yoga teachers, etc. Of course you’re not going to MARRY them all or want to marry them, though I did it in this particular case, resulting in three fabulous children.

There is nothing better for a writer than to have an editor who knows how to ask the right questions, how to make you delve a little deeper and find that extra nuance while at the same time making sure you resist the temptation to over explain and indulge in long-windedness. Like I really just did in that sentence, using over explain and long winded, which mean the same thing, but since this is a blog post I’m going to indulge.

I bring this up because I had the best experience working with Rebecca Hudson, the espnW editor for my essay about how tennis helped me recover from leukemia. When I wrote that I loved tennis, she asked me to delve deeper into why I love tennis. I really had to think about it.

It’s not always easy to explain why you like or dislike something.

When I reviewed plays, I sometimes wished I could say, “I liked it,” or, “It was boring,” or “It was a lot of fun.” Of course that would leave a lot of blank space. I had to explain why I thought this or that. A good way to go about it was to look at all the details — the setting, the costumes, the performers’ mannerisms ­, inflections ­— and describe them. In doing so I would give a picture of the play so that readers could see it for themselves and wouldn’t have to judge based on my opinion. And in describing the play, I would feel my own opinion begin to emerge.

So what about tennis do I love? The memories of my father at Atlantic Beach, but also the feeling that you get when you hit the sweet spot. I had gotten the memory part but had to dig deeper for the feeling the ball on the racquet part. Golfers probably feel the same way, or anyone else getting the passing perfect moment in a sport.

Becky also was great because as we went back and forth on it many times, she accepted my changes and suggested hers with good humor. I had to cover a lot of ground, starting with my AML diagnosis in 2003 up until today through the lens of tennis. At first it was way too long, so she suggested cutting out the early part by linking to my New York Times essay. I lived the writing of the Espn story for a couple of months in between doing other things. Occasionally I woke up in the middle of the night or early in the morning with something I needed to add or change, and she was always right there with me.

People have written about the interesting difference in tone when you text with varying punctuation, and the same applies for emails. For example, OK! means great; while OK (no punctuation) sounds either neutral or wishy-washy and OK. (period) Sounds angry.

My kids used to tell me when I started texting that I sounded angry all the time because I never used an exclamation point!

Even though most of us don’t use exclamation points in our formal writing, using them in texts and emails can be a good thing. I bring this up because Becky used them a lot when I sent her new versions, responding with OK! Or Got it! So I didn’t feel like she was angry or annoyed with a gazillion edits!