Day by Day: The Chronicles of a Hard of Hearing Reporter

Looking Both Ways

167  Looking Both Ways During our lives we need to find time to travel on brief journeys into our past. I believe in living in the present, yet occasionally opening that old photo album showing where we have been can be therapeutic. Working on this book is like opening my personal journal—which I have never kept. My columns ended up being my journal as I wrote about my past, present and future. Re-typing the columns, sometimes I found errors. But I also found that my thinking and coping with life’s curves has evolved. Those times were often difficult and painful but I got through them—often with the help of friends and family. When I became a copy desk typist at SNP and later a reporter, my mind opened like never before. When I first walked into SNP to meet Cliff Wilshire while I was still a guest columnist, I felt I had come to a place I knew years ago. Cliff asked me if I was disappointed in what I saw. I still remember my answer, “I had no expectations so I could not be disappointed.” Maybe that is how my life has been and will continue to be—no real expectations. Some may think that is setting the bar too low, but I disagree. I think it is not setting the bar anywhere, thus allowing anything to happen, surprises and disappointments alike. I don’t mean we should be careless, but I try not to have preconceived notions , and I walk into new experiences with a positive and open mind. Now my hearing has been restored, I can walk into a new adventure knowing I will at least understand what is happening around me. This feels like walking into a room filled with friends. Butterfly Moments Can Come at Any Age June 6, 2001 I know how a butterfly must feel when it first breaks out of its cocoon and spreads its wings. I must have been 8 or 9 years old when a monarch butterfly landed on my tennis shoe and slowly spread its wings, showing its vibrant colors. Fully expecting it to take flight, I held my breath. It stayed on my shoe. I remember looking around so I could find someone to share the moment with, but I was the sole witness of what I considered miraculous. I doubt the word miraculous popped into my young brain. More likely it was something like “special” or “Wow” that occurred to me. So special was this moment that some 40 years later, I still can remember I was in the alley behind and between the Minors’ and Bagleys’ homes. Houses took on the name and personalities of the owners in old Westerville in the ’50s. At least to me they did. I stood watching the butterfly, wondering what it meant that it stayed on my shoe so long. Did the butterfly like me? Had it chosen me? Remember , I was young. Time passed slowly on that hot summer day and I didn’t move for fear the butterfly would take flight. Enjoying the company, I remember talking to it. People who know me realize it doesn’t take much for me to begin talking. Of course, eventually it did fly away and I pedaled my lavender and blue bicycle that my Dad had put together for me from old bike parts, home as fast as I could. I ran into our old house yelling for my mom, so I could share my butterfly experience with her. I think it was difficult for her to have to tell me that the butterfly had just freed itself from a cocoon, and it only had paused to dry its wings. But I knew it had chosen me to share its special moment of freedom. 168 Day by Day Often we spend a lifetime binding ourselves into a self-made cocoon . I am not sure why this is often a human condition. We look, speak and act as society dictates, often losing our sense of self and thus losing true freedom. Thoughts occur to me at what might seem like odd times—in the car driving, in the shower and in dreams. Those all are times when I cannot act on the idea without great inconvenience. While driving to interview a man running for public office...