A Soulful Journey

“Someone interviewed me recently and wanted to know if I saved ideas so that I could be assured of at least one column a week. “I don’t save anything so that pockets are empty at the end of the week.   So is my refrigerator, so is my gas tank, so is my file of ideas.   I tried out the best lines on God and come the next week I bargain, whimper, make promises, cower and throw myself on the mercy of the Almighty for just three more columns in exchange for cleaning my oven. “I don’t get to this point overnight.   I come from a family of savers who were sired by poverty, raised in the Depression, worshiped on the altar of self-denial. “Throughout the years I have seen a fair number of my family who have died leaving candles that have never been lit, appliances that never got out of the box, wines that were saved for something special, and new sofas shrouded in chenille bedspreads.   It gets to be a habit; after a while you have dreams that you hide away for the days w...

In Erma Bombeck’s I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to go to Boise: Children Surviving Cancer she tells powerful tales of children’s abilities to cut through “what might have been” and go directly to “what is now.” Bert was a five-year-old suffering from neuroblastoma. His favorite thing to do was draw. When Bert was asked, “Are you going to be an artist when you grow up?” he answered, “I am an artist.” Elsewhere, Bombeck poses the question to us all, “What good does it do if they cure the body but the person inside dies?”