I know exactly where I was and what I was doing 30 years ago. I was having my first baby at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia. I wouldn’t let my husband leave the room and had guaranteed I would hunt him down and kill him if he fainted, as he hinted he might. Smart guy, he stayed conscious.

How lucky we were that day — and for the next three decades. Our gorgeous 8-pound, 2-ounce baby has grown into a beautiful, warm, brilliant and caring young woman. She’s both my daughter and my friend, and I am so proud of her.

In fact, I would say she’s the most perfect child ever — but her younger brother is equally wonderful. My husband and I are so fortunate.

Happy 30th birthday, darlin’. I’ll be seeing you soon.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read a related post on mothers and daughters

I walked in my first Race for the Cure in Dallas in 1996.

By then, my hair was growing back dark and a little wavy after chemo. I met my new friends, fellow breast cancer survivors, and we walked together. We wore Komen T-shirts and hats and plastered ourselves with signs about other friends — either “in honor of” or “in memory of.”

At the end of the race, we gathered close to North Park Mall. (Malls and shopping are important in Dallas. I knew a woman whose mother was buried in an adjacent cemetery, overlooking North Park Mall and its big Neiman-Marcus store. Neiman’s had always been her mother’s favorite place in the world, my friend said, and she was sure her mother rested happily there.)

That day was beautiful and cloudless and inspiring. It happened at that time, early in my cancer survivorship, when I found safety and power in the sheer numbers of other survivors. Together, sweaty and enthusiastic and loud, we were tough and strong and gutsy. It would take more than a malignant bunch of rogue terrorist cells to defeat us.

I didn’t appreciate, then, how wily and relentless cancer was, how it positioned itself like a sharpshooter on the nearby cemetery hill, picking off this survivor, then another, then another. How it turned the “in honor of” tributes into “in memory of,” how so many parade bystanders became participants in later years. There was no safety in our numbers — just the illusion of safety.

Instead, I watched the stage as a group of survivors in pink caps danced and sang to “I Can See Clearly Now” — a song I would never listen to again in quite the same way. One woman, in cap and T-shirt, sang looking up at the blue sky with tears streaming down her cheeks.

A few years passed and we moved to Austin. The only Race for the Cure march I walked in must have been in ’98 or ’99. I went with my friend, Martha, whose cancer was temporarily in remission, and my daughter, who was in high school then.

Along the way, my daughter spoke to another girl from her high school. The girl’s mother had also had breast cancer, my daughter said. I asked how she was doing and my daughter muttered something in a low voice I couldn’t hear. Later, I asked again about her friend’s mother and she told me the mother had died.

More years passed. Martha died, as did most of the other members of my support group. But Komen flourished, spreading pink ribbons everywhere, from professional football teams’ uniforms to the lapels of millions of jackets to cosmetics, perfumes, big buttons. Every October, I came to feel, promised a national outbreak of ribbons, big smiles and determined mass perkiness.

Some of my survivor friends — like Cancer Bitch – loathed Komen for its corporate ties, relentless branding and failure to focus on cancer prevention. I was more guardedly neutral, but disliked the foundation’s simplistic insistence that early detection would always save lives. In the meantime, treatments improved somewhat and more women were diagnosed with early stages of cancer that might never threaten their lives. But 40,000 women a year still died from breast cancer in this country, as marches grew larger and millions of dollars flowed into research.

You know the rest of the story. Komen withdrew its funding of mammograms at Planned Parenthood earlier this week. Then, after a firestorm of controversy, it backed down and reinstated funding. This is a foundation that recognizes a PR and financial debacle when it happens.

So, we’re back to the status quo — except we’re not. Because of right-wing politics, an organization dedicated to women’s health was willing to ignore the needs of poor women, until it became too uncomfortable to continue.

You can’t forget something you know, can you? It’s like a cancer diagnosis, marking you forever. It’s like hearing “I Can See Clearly Now” in a different way and never being able to go back to your original interpretation.

Speaking for myself, I’ve marched in my last Komen march and given the group my last dime. I can see clearly now and I’m not about to forget.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)
Read a related post, your bumper sticker and your attitude offend me

I have been thinking about Sir Winston Churchill and The National Lampoon recently.

I think of the two simultaneously because one of the best pieces the NL ever did was on Churchill. It took all the stories about him that featured witty ripostes and exchanged the witticisms for vulgarities.

So, for example, the famous story about Churchill and Lady Astor, in which she says if he were her husband, she’d poison his coffee, and he replies if she were his wife, he’d drink it. In the NL version, he responds, “If you were my wife, I’d beat the shit out of you.”

Similarly, the famous hand gesture of V for victory becomes a one-finger salute. And Churchill’s correspondence with George Bernard Shaw (“Here are two tickets to my play. Bring a friend if you have one,” then, “Coming to your second performance, if you have one”) ends differently. “You and your play can go fuck yourselves,” the NL Churchill replies.

Well, you get the picture. The point is, I have days — many, many days, to be precise — when I realize my dreams of Churchillian wit inevitably plummet into my real-life behavior that resembles only the NL version of Churchill.

It happened again recently. Here was the problem. I got a new iPhone, but my husband didn’t.

That was because he’d gotten a new one several months ago and I hadn’t. So I was overdue, my iPhone repeatedly died on me, it was Christmas, what the heck.

I liked the new phone and all that. I mean, it was fine. It worked. Big deal. When it comes to technology, I am not an emotional person.

But my husband kept hanging over me and my new phone, like metal filings over a magnet.

“Do you know about Siri?” he asked.

Of course I knew about Siri. Everybody in the universe knows about Siri, that disembodied iPhone voice with the highest IQ in history who can tell you anything you need to know. Ho-hum, wake me up when you say something interesting.

“Yeah,” I said.

So, he grabbed my phone and started asking Siri all kinds of questions about the weather, even though all you had to do was open the door and walk outside to find out.

“This is just unbelievable,” he said.

I nodded noncommittally and we exchanged one of those you’re crazy and I’ll never understand you glances that pass occasionally between men and women, usually after a dramatic new haircut has gone unnoticed or a Three Stooges movie doesn’t elicit wild laughter. You know, one of those over-the-insurmountable chasm looks.

“Maybe it’s a chick thing,” I said, “but I don’t like machines talking to me.”

“That’s sad,” he said.

A few weeks passed and I forgot all about Siri and didn’t miss her at all. I had lots of other important things going on, even if I can’t remember what they were. Important!

As usual, my husband and I ended up on a Saturday morning careening toward starvation, with an empty refrigerator staring back at us and no restaurant prospects in mind. I grabbed my iPhone and went to Yelp.

“Why don’t you ask Siri?” my husband said, going into his high-tech heebie-jeebies.

Jesus. Like I needed a technology coach. I grudgingly put my phone to my ear and asked about restaurants. Siri didn’t say a thing. Bitch.

“You’re doing it wrong,” my husband said.

He grabbed my phone and I started screaming. Leave me alone! Stop hanging over me and my fucking iPhone! I hate Siri! I have low-blood sugar! If I don’t eat soon, I’m going to be dangerous!

“Siri, why is Ruth so angry?” my husband asked.

“Shut up, Siri! It’s none of your goddamned business!”

Later, after we’d eaten lunch, he told me Siri had referred him to a number of websites about a person named Ruth being angry, but she hadn’t really been terribly helpful. This was because, I pointed out, Siri had been the problem in the first place.

After that, I realized that I wasn’t doomed to be the National Lampoon version of Winston Churchill; I was doomed to be the National Lampoon version of myself. Truth is, I don’t have another version — and, by the way, Siri can go fuck herself.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read one of my favorite posts on going all power-to-the-people every time I fly coach

I began to sniff and sneeze. Sometimes, I coughed. My husband said my voice sounded “weird.”

It was a cold, I decided. I made a halfhearted attempt to find Kleenex. Nothing doing, nada. We are not the kind of family who stocks Kleenex, although we usually have a fair supply of toilet paper. Fortunately, though, we do have lots of paper napkins in pastel colors.

It’s hard to maintain your dignity while you are constantly blowing your nose into a series of damp, lime-colored paper napkins, but I gave it my best shot. I am Scots-Irish, I am tough, I don’t whine more than is absolutely necessary. That’s what made this country great: People who don’t whine about colds.

The days pass, the humid lime-colored napkins are everywhere, clinging to the floor, to the bottom of my socks as I pad drearily from room to room. My husband, being a smart guy, leaves town for some talk in Ohio. When he departs, he is sniffling, too.

“You sound horrible,” my friend Melissa says when I postpone lunch.

“I have a cold,” I say.

“It doesn’t sound like a cold,” Melissa says. “It sounds like cedar fever. Everybody has cedar fever right now. You should be taking Allegra — ”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Get the time release capsules. Allegra! You got that?”

“Yeah,” I say.

I am nothing if not malleable when I’m sick. I rally to comb my hair, get dressed and drive to a pharmacy. I haven’t been out of the condo in three days. For someone with a cold or cedar fever, a virtual recluse with a lime paper napkin habit, a drugstore is a wondrous place. I am out in the world again!

I buy Allegra, after consulting with the young woman behind the counter. “You’re, like, the third person I’ve dealt with today with this problem,” she says. “You sound just like the rest of them.”

“How do I know if I have a cold or cedar fever?” I ask.

“Same difference,” she says.

I go home and start popping Allegra. I am always happier when I’m developing an expensive new drug habit. Every little capsule gives me a bit of hope.

“What do you mean you’re taking Allegra?” my friend Betsy wants to know when we take our weekly walk.

“I have cedar fever,” I say.

“You do not!” Betsy’s voice rises to a soft bellow. “You have lived here how many years — ”

“Sixteen — ”

” — sixteen years and you’ve never had cedar fever before! I’ve never heard you complain about cedar fever! You have a cold. That’s all. A cold!”

We continue our walk, swapping stories about politics and people we know and people we don’t know. We are both disgusted by Republicans; we always agree on that.

I pop Allegra, I move on to light-blue napkins, my husband comes back from Ohio. Two friends tell me that, since I’m not running a fever, I definitely do not have a cold. My husband says that diagnosis is swill. He says he’s felt much better since his trip. Maybe I should go to Ohio, too.

All this advice and this mucus make me philosophical. I recall that, when I was younger, I used to think pregnant women were weird. I didn’t understand, till I got pregnant myself, that this isn’t true. Pregnant women aren’t weird at all. It’s just that their pregnancy excites everybody else and makes everyone around them weird.

Similarly, getting a cold or cedar fever. Since I am Scots-Irish and I don’t complain, I am not weird or boring. It’s just that everyone around me is driving me crazy. Next time I get sick, I’m keeping it a secret.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read one of my favorite posts about the neti pot blues

When I grew up in the 1950s, everything was clear. Men and women were very different creatures. Women cleaned the house and watched soap operas and cried. Men worked and watched sports and had no emotions (unless their team won a big game or something).

Everything changed in the ’70s. Your sex didn’t matter, really! Men and women were all the same, apart from an anatomical curlicue here and there. They had just been acculturated into thinking they were different. As usual, society was to blame.

About that time, women learned they were oppressed and stopped shaving their legs for a while. But men were oppressed, too! some bright guy opined. They were tired of working and being strong and manly all the time. To compensate, they started wearing leisure suits and gold neckchains and choking up on a regular basis.

(Do you understand now why the 70s were one of the least appetizing decades on record? How many women truly yearned for a man who cried more than they did and asked to borrow their jewelry?)

Thirty, 40 years later, we are so enlightened about the differences between the sexes that we now call them genders, instead. Soap operas are gone and everybody gets to hug and men can can cry sometimes, assuming they are Republicans and like to start wars.

Anyway, we may not have regressed to the 1950s, but sometimes I do have a startling realization that my parents’ generation got a few things right when it came to men and women. Namely, when I see two of the main men in my life — that would be my husband and son — go into one of their A Man’s Gotta Do What a Man’s Got to Do moments, I could close my eyes and it’s 1955 again.

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. You know what I’m talking about. The male’s jaw tightens, his eyes narrow, his stance is on alert. The more dire the circumstances, the more ridiculous or outrageous the cause, the more he won’t be argued with. The more any woman wails, the more righteous his cause and implacable his desire. He rebuffs any arguments that what he’s planning to do is:

1) stupid;

2) not worth doing by any competent, sane human being;

3) hazardous;

4) did I mention stupid enough times?

No. Mention any of these complaints and his jaw gets tighter, his eyes slittier, his ears completely deaf.

A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!  Just think about it. If we didn’t have this cultural ethos, we wouldn’t have had the bloodbath at the Alamo or John Wayne movies or shock-and-awe in Iraq or violent video games or professional football.

I thought about all of that recently, when it was cold and wet and windy. The perfect day to stay indoors, I thought. How wrong, how very female I was. That day, it turned out, the men had to do what the men had to do — and what the men had to do was play golf.

Raining, freezing cold, stupid, miserable, ridiculous, golf? Were they crazy?

As a veteran of the battle of the sexes/genders of the ’50s, the ’70s, and the 21st century, I knew what I had to do. Sometimes, what a woman’s gotta do is keep her mouth shut and bide her time.

The road to I told you so can be long, but oh, so rewarding. Generations of female forbearers have taught me that.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Please! Read about a few of those delicious I Told You So moments.

So, in September, my husband and I gave a talk together about our experiences with breast cancer. It’s here.

When we were putting the talk together, he complained that I got all the great lines You know what? He was right. Mea culpa and all that.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read one of my favorite posts about the decision to get scalped

Overnight, our gym is mobbed and bulging. That’s because the January people are here.

They are bright-eyed, eager and determined. This year — 2012! — they are going to change. They will lose weight, gain muscle, increase lung capacity. They will pound the treadmills, raise the weights, fling themselves into warrior two position.

Here and there, among the teeming crowd of January enthusiasts, you will see the rest of us. We were here in December and we’ll be here in February — assuming the January people don’t drive us nuts.

We’re not as enthusiastic as the January people. We’re really kind of, well, resigned.  We know our body-mass index is as good as it’s ever going to be (which isn’t that great, frankly.)

We don’t get high from exercise. We just know that if we keep showing up, we’ll slow the deterioration a little.

But don’t tell that to the January people. They look exalted under their sheen of sweat. Their ears are iPodded and their clothes are colorful and coordinated. They are excited because 2012 is their year, which is why they have prepaid a deluxe year-long membership at the gym.

All their zest and determination will last, well, a couple of weeks. Then, gradually, you’ll begin to see the changes. The exuberant light in their eyes will die slowly — or suddenly. The pounds will cling stubbornly in all the wrong places.

In the cold winter light, they will see the gym for what it really is: a place of sweat and drudgery that smells kind of funky.

By late February, the January people will have thinned out. The rest of us will go back to normal, pleased to have more room, relieved not to be swamped by such rampant, ultimately tragic enthusiasm.

Only a few January people will last into the summer. By then, they will have exchange their fervent passion for grim determination. Their workout clothes will be wrinkled and sweat-stained.

In December of 2012, you will find yourself chatting with somebody at the gym who rolls her eyes and says she’s heard horror stories about the hordes of January people. As you agree, you look at her more closely. You realize she’s one of the few January ’12 people who persisted. But how did she get this cynical, this beaten, this badly dressed so quickly?

“Don’t worry,” you tell her. “They’re almost always gone by February.”

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Read one of my favorite posts about communication skills of the long-married

Years ago, I read a story I loved about the journalist and columnist Russell Baker and his childhood shyness. He’d once tried to sell magazine subscriptions going door-to-door.

Over and over, he barely got through his halting, apologetic spiel (“Well, I don’t suppose you’d like to buy a subscription to the Saturday Evening Post, would you?”), before a door slammed in his face and he trudged on to the next house.

I could identify. Some of the worst memories of my life involve my feeble attempts to sell Girl Scout cookies door-to-door. You’re either born a salesperson or you’re not. I was not.

All of which brings me to my uneasy request to ask you to go to http://2012.bloggi.es/ and nominate my blog for best writing, most humorous, and/or best-kept secret. Many, many thanks — but no Thin Mints this time around.

1) 1958. I first learned television’s power to wound when I was eight.

Aside from hosting frequent tornadoes that blew away houses and people and barnyard animals, the town I lived in — Wichita Falls, Texas — also had a kids’ show called Pet Parade on the local TV channel.

Since I was a budding narcissist, naturally I wanted to be on TV more than anything in the world. All you had to do was send your name in to the station, saying you had a pet and were available any time of night or day for your chance at stardom. I did all that and waited. Finally, the big call came in. They wanted me and my pet on Pet Parade.

This raised a bit of a problem. I was confident that I was camera-ready — but a pet? Our family had two pets (after our third, an Easter chick, had grown up and moved to a farm). Both of our current pets were not only lacking in glamour, I felt, but also totally deficient in star quality.

Our fox terrier, Bouncer, had a problem that would nowadays probably be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. He sometimes liked to play with my sister and me, but would usually end up biting us. (My mother said this was because Bouncer was overly sensitive, just like her.) I had the feeling a pet who bit the show host might ruin my career as a TV star before it even took off.

That left our parakeet, Baby. Baby had no discernible personality, so, in our house, everybody left Baby in a corner. She spent her days squawking and eating. Once every six months, she screeched something my mother insisted was “Baby bird!” Like every other communication in our family, though, this was subject to interpretation.

Anyway, since I wasn’t willing to have Bouncer bite me all the way to the TV studio, I was stuck with Baby. I showed up at the TV station all dressed up and hauling a bird cage with me. When I was introduced on camera, I walked on and plopped the bird cage down on the emcee’s desk.

I’d hoped the emcee would want to focus on me after he quickly realized I was the one with bigtime potential to be another Shirley Temple — and not the parakeet with the dazed look on her face. But he kept pestering me with questions about Baby. Could she talk? No. Could she do tricks? No. Could she do anything? Well, no, not really.

After a couple of minutes of this, the emcee gave me and Baby the hook. They started playing the Pet Parade music and marched us off camera. The prize went to some other kid with a dog that could sit down on command and didn’t bite anyone. On the way home in the car, Baby started talking a lot.

For months afterward, other kids would come up to me and say they had seen me on Pet Parade. But no one ever suggested Baby and I should have won.

2) 1981. Mount St. Helen’s volcano has blown its top. My husband has become an expert on the psychological effects of living close to hot lava and ash. Nightline calls him. Is he available? Well, of course, he is.

We jump in our car and head from Charlottesville, Virginia, to Washington, D.C. Before we leave, we notify every person on earth we know or would like to know. National TV! En route, we chortle. Wait till that 11th grade English teacher (the one who always hinted he would amount to nothing) sees him! And all those snotty people who never gave him the time of day! Ha! We are emotionally intoxicated, we are grandiose, we are insufferable — the way you can be only when you’re still quite young and life hasn’t yet taken a dump all over you and your dreams.

At the last minute, Nightline cuts him. The next day, we slink back to Charlottesville. This time, it’s a quieter drive. We are chastened, we are a little bitter, we seem to have aged a lot in 24 hours. We are also extremely hung over.

3) 2008. Since this is still too painful to recount, please check out my almost-stardom as a cancer survivor in this tragic post entitled, Local Woman Refuses to Come Out of Fetal Position. Read it and weep; God knows, I do.

4) 2011. You think a bad 24 hours can age you? Well, try 30 years — even a good 30 years. Over the years, we have both been on TV a few times, mostly local TV, but don’t quibble. We are mature, we are a bit jaded, we are grounded. Our heads are no longer turned so easily. We won’t be Linda Blair to TV’s exorcist.

So, we are only mildly agitated when Brian Williams’ new show, Rock Center, got in touch with my husband about his book, The Secret Life of Pronouns. A producer from New York flew in and filmed him in his office and in class. The segment was supposed to air on Monday, December 5th. Being mature and wise beyond our years, we didn’t tell many people about it. Well, just a few, anyway.

You know the rest of the story. It didn’t air then. It may air soon. Or, you know, it may not.

The only thing I know for sure is this: No matter how mature and centered you may think you are, when TV comes calling, you might as well be eight years old again, clutching a bird cage with a mute parakeet and waiting to be the next Shirley Temple. Some things you just never can learn.

(Copyright 2012 by Ruth Pennebaker)

Well, yeah, it’s that time of year. I get to re-read a year’s worth of posts and try to figure out which are my favorite 10. Here they are — and, by the way, happy new year to all of you:

– Death of Erotlicism on Channel 3 – A rant of a complaint about those icky Cialis commercials that make you want to join a convent. Love this one.

– The Unexpurgated Story of the Dining Room Table – Marriage is about compromise, capice?

– The Times, They Have Changed a Whole Bunch – Even though my parents are dead, I still find myself trying to explain the world to them. I’m pretty sure I’m failing. We always did have communication problems.

– You Can See the Milky Way From There – Reflecting on a good life.

– I’m Not Having a Nervous Breakdown, I Am Just Trying to Write – The story of someone who looks odd, sounds odd, but is only trying to produce a few sentences. How hard can it be? Why does she look so panicky?

– Who You Are and What You Keep – At a certain age, you realize all you will leave behind are keepsakes and stories.

– Recalling that Long-Ago Moment When Everything Changed – There’s a time in everyone’s life when something changes and you’re never quite the same. Here’s mine.

– On Not Being a Tiger Mom – Ode to mothers who call themselves pussycat moms, since that sounds so much better than terms like slacker or slipshod. We’re proud of ourselves, kind of.

– The Sweet Little Texas Housewife Speaks Up – A famous writer called me this. She may have changed her mind.

– Speaking of Brazilians – Here’s another trend I’m glad I don’t have to explain to my parents. Hell, I’m not even sure I want to know about it myself.

– The Ballad of the Sick Husband – Household drama in 4/4 time. Catchy and catching.

NOTE: I see I have 11, not 10. As Rick Perry would say, Oops. I’m leaving it that way.

(Copyright 2011 by Ruth Pennebaker)

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