Often, when I sit down at my computer to write, my thoughts will start spilling over one another, trying to shove their way to the front of the line. Sometimes, just when I think I know what I’ll write on for the week, something will happen and I end up on a completely different subject instead.

This week, for instance, I was ready to write about this hilarious conversation I was part of last week when I got a call from my friend Becky, who is battling a rare form of cancer. Although we didn’t talk all that long, it was one of those conversations I couldn’t shake off. It stayed with me long after we hung up the phone.

There were things I thought I understood well, but when I tried to put my beliefs into words, my reasons sounded lame.

“I just keep wondering why,” Becky had said. “I feel like I’m being punished.”

“You aren’t being punished,” I said, trying to sound reassuring, although I said I could certainly understand how she might feel that way. It hasn’t been all that long since I felt punished myself. (more…)

I wondered if it would happen someday–if a man would be inspired to write a song about my daughter. I just never imagined it would happen so soon. Or that the man penning the song would be her stepfather. Or that the song would be sung to the tune of Hall & Oates 1980s hit, “Man Eater.” 

She’ll only eat what is ‘right.’

The insanely picky type. 

Nothing to do, but get cereal and po-or-or. 

Woe-oh, here she comes.

Watch out, Mom, she’ll spit it out.

Woe-oh, here she comes. 

She’s a bad eater.”

My husband’s frustration with Miss Picky’s rapidly changing list of likes and dislikes prompted Geoff to tape a sheet of paper to our refrigerator so he can better keep track of what she will and won’t eat. 

She’s not only a fussy eater, but a slow one as well. If left to her own devices, she’d still be playing with her food as it went through the various stages and colors of decomposition. Still, she’s not bad with fruit, she’s faithful with her vitamins, and she consumes so much milk she could use her own herd. But the picky-ness is so maddening there are few asylums we haven’t explored. 

In one recent article I read, Julie Lumeng, M.D., a developmental and behavioral pediatrician with the University of Michigan Health System wrote, “The more exposure a child has to a certain food, the more familiar it becomes to them, and the more they grow to like it. It typically takes about 10 exposures to a particular [food] item over several meals before a child will like the new food.” 

Since the only green vegetables on Celeste’s “approved” list were dill pickles, we chose green beans for our experiment. Every day for a week, green beans were put on her plate, and just like the good doctor predicted, Celeste soon started to like them. She liked how she could stack them, Lincoln Log style, into little square cabins. 

Years back, I tried awarding happy face stickers for trying new foods or eating healthy. That program evolved to awarding stickers that could later be traded for prizes. Which eventually evolved to flat-out offers of cash. Which, according to experts, is just about the worst thing you can do.

“Studies have shown that rewarding your child for eating a particular food will actually lead to a greater dislike of that food over time,” says Lumeng. 

(Thus far, Celeste continues to find new and creative uses for beans, none involving digestion.) 

Suggests the wise (and obviously childless) doctor, “A more positive use of food as an incentive would be rewarding them with healthier snacks like crackers-not desserts-for cleaning their room. Children learn to like the foods they receive in this way as a reward.” 

I’m not a doctor or anything, but if you tried this with most children, wouldn’t they simply learn not to clean their rooms? 

You put you socks in the hamper? Good girl! Here. Have a carrot.

In a nutshell, Celeste just doesn’t like food, which is hard for me to fathom. Food and I have had a passionate, albeit tumultuous, relationship for a great many years. 

Fortunately, we’ve come up with a plan that seems to be working. I’m going to share it with you now. You ready? Here it is. Do nothing. We continue buying the few healthy foods she does eat, but no more prodding her to try new things, no more saying “just one bite.” We’ve removed all the pressure and conflict from meals.

We’ve read that children shouldn’t be forced to eat anything they’re uncomfortable with; that parents should be patient and let their children discover new foods for themselves. So instead of trying to force her, we’ve been educating her about the connections between diet and diabetes. None of the information is couched as a threat, just simple cause and effect. Poor diet leads to poor health, maybe not right away, but sooner than you’d expect. 

It’s beginning to pay off. The other day, out of habit, I put a box of Little Debbie’s Brownies in our shopping cart. 

Celeste took them back out. “Let’s get pears instead.”  

My friend Chris Kuell sent me the story below about our mutual buddy, Becky Conrad (who I wrote about on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2007). We’ve all been deeply affected by Becky’s illness and her strength in fighting it. I thought his piece was so good I wanted to share it. 

 ==== 

I think it was in late 2000 when I heard about enablelink.com, an on-line magazine and store for visually impaired people and their families. They are now defunct, but early on, they paid fifty dollars for articles, and I sold them quite a few. For a while, I wrote a column called Blind Eye View, where I reviewed movies that our family saw, from a blind person’s perspective. A blind woman in West Virginia also wrote articles for enablelink, and it turned out, we had a mutual friend, Michelle Stainard. Michelle, who met Becky through an RP (retinitis pigmentosa) group, introduced us since we were the same age, were married with children, and both enjoyed writing. A friendship began.

Rebecca Conrad, or Becky, introduced me to the West Virginia Writer’s Roundtable, which allowed me to make dozens of writing friends, and definitely helped me to develop my fiction writing. Unfortunately, the group has lost some of its writing spirit, but it was a good group for a few years, and did allow me the opportunity to publish Mountain Voices, as well as giving me a certain fondness for the Mountaineer State and its proud, painful history.

Becky was born in West Virginia, and loves the state in ways that very few New Englanders could relate. Most West Virginians are very proud of their land, their coal mining history, and the almost libertarian philosophy that lives in the hills. She moved to Ohio as a youngster, and when she was in the hospital with kidney trouble as a kid, Becky was diagnosed with RP. She and her family were told that she would probably lose her sight gradually, starting around age 40, which is true for a lot of RP sufferers. But, Becky began to lose her sight at 17, and by her high school graduation, had lost nearly all of it. She married her one and only boyfriend, Bobby Conrad, who was a bluegrass musician, and they settled in Braxton County, on 26 acres of property nestled in the hills. I’m sure it’s peaceful and beautiful, but not exactly ideal for a blind person. Yet, Becky adapted, just as she’d always done.

Becky and I have been email friends for going on seven years now. She runs a family, has started a successful greenhouse business, taught herself how to use a computer for her writing, and has published many articles. She’s had pieces appear in three anthologies, and works diligently at revising and editing a novel. Her son Josh was born with a rare disease, Glycogen Storage Disease, or GSD, and Becky has become fairly expert on all the current treatments and research. She corresponds regularly with doctors, other parents, and really tries to keep up on what’s new to help Josh live a more normal life. His liver doesn’t work properly, and he has to consume loads of liquid cornstarch to keep from having low blood sugars. Twenty-four hours a day, there is a part of Becky that is worrying about Josh and if his blood sugar is okay.

Unlike some email acquaintances, over the years, we’ve remained friends. We read each other’s work, and Becky is one of only four people who have read my novel. We talk on the phone, and have grown closer as we’ve chatted about kids, being blind, families, and the entire gambit of stuff friends talk about.

On December 30, 2006, Becky apparently passed out and fell in her kitchen after pouring herself a bowl of cereal. Her husband and son found her some twenty-minutes later, and she had no memory of the incident. They rushed her to a local hospital, then on to Ruby Memorial, the West Virginia University hospital in Morgantown. After a couple of horrendous days of testing and a hole drilled into her skull for a biopsy, the doctors determined she had an inoperable brain lymphoma. Thankfully, the cancer hadn’t spread to any other parts of her body, but the diagnosis was still pretty grim. One doctor wanted to start chemotherapy right away, but Becky decided she needed to go home and be with her family to grieve for a few days before the shitstorm commenced. On Wednesday, January 3, she spent her 45th birthday at home with the people who are most important to her.

As of this writing, she is on the fourth day of chemo treatments in her first round of six treatments. She sounds good on the phone-not too sick, and generally optimistic and positive. The day before yesterday she met a guy with the same diagnosis who came in the hospital in a coma. Now he’s strolling the halls taking time to chat with people like Becky.

Of course, there isn’t a much tougher blow in life than being told you’ve got a brain tumor, and Becky has received a tremendous outpouring of affection from the many people who know her. One friend built her a web page, where she posts photographs, and there’s a blog so people can post messages for Becky. Folks have contributed money, books, prayers and a tremendous amount of support.

I read somewhere that American’s top fears are 1. Death 2. Cancer, and 3. Blindness. Becky has rung the bell on numbers two and three, and hopefully won’t encounter number one for years to come. I think there has been an awesome response because people know and care for Becky, and want to help her and her family during these trying times. But, also, her diagnosis tweaks that fear response in all our psyches. After all, if it can happen to her, it can happen to me. Our shared humanity dictates that we do something, because God forbid, what if it happened to me?

The first few days after Becky’s diagnosis, I could think of little else. I drifted, unfocused, and along the way I kept coming back to something that happened while Christine and I still lived in Burlington, Vermont.

A college town, Burlington always had a few parties going on at any time. One hot summer day in late August 1987, some kids were having a party downtown in a multi-story apartment building. As things heated up inside, somebody tried to open a window, only to find it wouldn’t stay up. So, they got the brilliant idea of propping the window up with a bowling ball. Anyone familiar with the theorems of the late, great, Professor Max Murphy can predict what happened next.

As the party grew in intensity, a lone female pedestrian waited outside a local deli below, oblivious to the 16-pound bowling ball accelerating at 32 feet per second that was soon to change her life forever.

And, that’s just the way life is. We build fences, regularly put money in our retirement accounts, get childhood vaccines, see our dentist and primary care physician regularly, never jaywalk or drive more than 5 miles per hour over the posted speed limit, take yoga classes and practice mindfulness to reduce stress. We try all our life to build up protections, to guard against our enemies, real and perceived. But, there’s no way to avoid that falling bowling ball, or that Titlist in your brain if that is what the universe has

in store for you. The idea that we have control is just an illusion. All we can do is decide how we react when it’s our head that’s in the ball’s path.

In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl determined that the single most important factor in deciding who survived and who perished in the concentration camps was the belief that one still had an important purpose in life. Becky still has plenty to live for. First and foremost, her son and husband rely on her to be the glue and stabilizing force that keeps the family together. Becky has made arrangements for Josh to be seen by the country’s most prestigious GSD doctor in Florida, and I know how determined she is to be there with him. She has a sister, parents, a nephew, and hundreds of people who are in her corner, rooting as hard as we can. She has an unfinished novel that she’s been working on for years, and she will see it in print some day.

Despite receiving what should have been a fatal blow when a bowling ball fell on her head, Louisa Murray not only survived, but went on to graduate from medical school. The human spirit is strong, and despite the sometimes tremendous odds against us, we survive. I’ve hugged my wife and kids every single day since the bad news, held them in my grasp for a few extra seconds, and savored the feeling. Becky’s diagnosis has certainly raised my consciousness about the frailty of life, and I don’t imagine I’m alone in this new awareness. Becky’s story has something for all of us, and I am certain of one thing- she always delivers a happy ending.

It’s amazing how much can change in less than a week.

When talking to my good friend, Becky Conrad, a few days before New Years, she mentioned how good she was feeling since she was finally getting some sleep. Much like me, Becky’s had sleep trouble for years, so a week of good sleep was nothing short of a miracle.

“Maybe this is finally going to be my year,” she said.

Luck hasn’t been something Becky’s often experienced. Her early childhood years were marked by frequent hospital stays for a blood and kidney disorder, then at age 9, she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a deterioration of the retina. Her doctor said it would eventually cause her to go blind, but predicted that wouldn’t happen until she reached middle age. Instead, it happened while she was still in her teens. By the time she was a graduated from high school, she was totally blind.

But blindness didn’t stop Becky from pursuing a normal life. When she was 26, she married her long-time boyfriend, Bobby. A year and a day later, they had their son, Josh.

Who was born with glycogen storage disease.

Instead of complaining about their bad luck, Becky talked of how lucky they’d been that he’d been diagnosed before it was too late.

Over the years that I’ve known her, Becky’s had more bad luck than good, yet she continues to keep on plugging away. A few years ago, she started her own greenhouse behind her Burnsville home. If you visit that greenhouse, she can tell from the location of your voice what type of plants you are facing, then with her encyclopedic knowledge of plants, she can tell you what each plant requires in order to flourish.

Becky didn’t let blindness stop her from pursuing another one of her passions—writing. After receiving a computer with reader capabilities that allowed her not only to write but to edit her work, there’s been no stopping Becky. She has numerous publishing credits, including the prestigious Artist Fellowship she won for Nonfiction from the W.Va. Commission on the Arts in 2003.

She’s a hard-working, admirable woman. She just isn’t lucky.

On Saturday morning, Dec. 30, Becky collapsed in her kitchen. She was taken to the hospital in Braxton County, then transferred the next day to Ruby in Morgantown for further testing of the mass they’d found in her brain.

Geoff, Celeste and I were in Morgantown that weekend, so we ran over to see her. Aside from the bruises from all the drawn blood and IVs, Becky was the picture of health. She hadn’t had any of the typical signs of cancer. Surely that couldn’t be it.

But on New Years Day, her biopsy confirmed the worst. Lymphoma of the brain. She was released on Wednesday, her 45th birthday, sent home to rest for a few days before she’d begin round after round of chemotherapy. Twenty-four hours a day, five days at a time.

“The doctors told me the cancer has probably only been there a month,” Becky told me on the phone. “So I guess I’m lucky they caught it so early.”

I love her determination, how she’s approaching this as simply something she has to do. I love how she’s excited about the laptop computer some friends and I are trying to get her so she can work on her book while she’s stuck in the hospital. I love how she’s resolved to prove the doctors wrong about her not being able to work in her greenhouse this spring.

And I love how people who’ve never even met Becky in person, who know her only from her internet posts on the West Virginia Writers Roundtable, are scrambling to help. How they’re calling to see what they can do, how they can donate. One even built a website (http://www.beckyconrad.8m.com/) so family and friends can go there for updates.

Becky says she’s lucky to have so many friends, but I don’t think that’s luck. It’s what she deserves.

 I probably shouldn’t admit this about myself, since I know it isn’t polite, but I love to eavesdrop.

I don’t go out and make a deliberate effort to do it, but sometimes — especially with those talking on cell phones — it’s hard to avoid. Usually I’ll be sitting alone in a crowded restaurant when some particularly intriguing little phrase will waft over from an adjoining booth. Before I know it, I’m totally sucked into the conversation. I’ll stop chewing — stop breathing — afraid of missing the pinnacle of what’s being said when there’s no polite way to get them to repeat. 

But what’s nearly as bad is to be sitting all alone and overhear something so funny you can’t help but laugh. Especially when you’re someone who tends to laugh easily. And loudly. 

So I’d like to give a tip of my hat to those five witty diners at T.G.I. Fridays, who I had the benefit of sitting near recently. 

Said one of the men, “I was driving to work when this thought crossed my mind …” 

Interrupted another, “I bet it had a long, lonely trip.” 

Later on, I heard the lone woman say, “He’s the kind of guy you’d use as a blueprint for building an idiot. I mean, everyone has a right to be stupid once in a while, but isn’t he abusing the privilege?” 

Their waiter even joined in their shtick; saying [unnamed] was so ugly that when she “walked in the room, the mice jumped on chairs.” 

On New Year’s Eve, we attended a party hosted by my in-laws at their home in Morgantown. It was there that I happened to overhear one distinguished-looking gentleman telling another, “I’d really love to help you out. Which way did you come in?” 

I lurked near him for a while, hoping to catch another good line, but it wasn’t until much later when he himself was preparing to go that I heard him say, “I’d like to leave you with this one last thought … but I’m fairly certain you’d have nowhere to put it.” 

The insultee seemed completely unaware he’d been stung, which made the line even funnier.

While talking with a friend who was attending the party, I mentioned the high-quality insults I’d overheard.

She said, “You know, you don’t seem to be yourself tonight. I noticed the improvement immediately.” 

Turns out she too is an insult aficionado, and the day after the party, she e-mailed a collection of classic insults to me. 

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.” — Groucho Marx 

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” — Oscar Wilde 

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” — Paul Keating 

“She looks like something that would dine on its young.” — Dorothy Parker 

“He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” — Forrest Tucker 

“I feel so miserable without you, it’s almost like having you here.” — Stephen Bishop 

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address?” — Mark Twain 

I like the timeless, intellectual feel of the insults from the past. There’s a classiness to them that makes their bite a bit better than most of what I hear — or overhear — now.