ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 28, 1995 TAG: 9512290004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Beth Macy
SOURCE: BETH MACY
While you're taking down the tree and taking back the presents and counting down the days till the Great Diet of 1996 (sorry to mention it), I thought I'd do a little tidying-up of my own.
It's my 1995 clean-up column - updates, reactions and amplifications to some of the stories that have appeared in this space throughout the year:
A Roanoke office manager called in October about my column on the untold fears of doing monthly breast self-exams. ``It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, so I picked the perfect time to have breast cancer,'' the 57-year-old said.
Her horror story began with a lump. Doctors felt the lump, but dismissed it when a sonogram report came back negative. Three months later - enough time for the lump to grow to a 2-inch tumor - the cancer was diagnosed and a lumpectomy ordered.
The woman doesn't want to point fingers, but she does want to remind people: ``To the medical community - if it's there, it's there, even if it doesn't show up on anything. If there's a growth, always send the patient for a biopsy.
``And to women - don't just take your doctor's word for it if you're sure something's there. Get a second opinion.''
Now three months into chemotherapy, she reports: ``One [breast] is a little smaller, but I haven't lost my hair yet - or my sense of humor.''
Roanoker Doug Lothes wrote in August to alert me to a mistake in my column about ``Absolutely Fabulous,'' the hilarious British sitcom about two wild and boozy women named Patsy and Edina. Lothes captured the style of the show perfectly when he wrote:
``Sweetie darling, you made a slight mistake in reporting that Jennifer Saunders quit after only 12 episodes. There are actually 18.
``I see ABFAB as a pate,'' he continued. ``One can only eat so much because it is so rich. Just a small nibble, darling. My fear is that an American version will not be the fois gras our palates are accustomed to, rather a meatloaf made with lots of bread crumbs and ketchup.''
By the way, for those who fear the Americanized version of ABFAB will be watered-down vanilla extract, the originals are now for rent on video. All 18 of them.
A reader-submitted riddle:
How many men does it take to change a roll of toilet paper?
I don't know. It's never happened.
This letter, one of my favorites, arrived Oct. 18, written in pencil with typewriter-perfect penmanship:
Dear Ms. Macy, Hello. I enjoy your columns. You look quite beautiful in your lovely photograph in The Roanoke Times newspaper, and I like you, and I was wondering if you would write to me and be my American friend. Allow me to introduce myself. . . I am very wealthy in the Free World, ambitious, adventurous, garish and very, very handsome, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I have also arrived in this country only recently, from Europe, and I am quite lonely, and I would be most happy to hear from you. Ciao. Passionately yours .
P.S. Unfortunately, I am incarcerated in prison at the present moment, for possession of a deadly weapon, but I am getting out soon.
An October column on a mother's support group hit a nerve with Roanoke homemaker Margaret Martin - not because I failed to mention that homemakers were part of the group, but because I failed to describe them as the working women they are.
``The issue for mothers shouldn't be whether to work or not to work,'' Martin wrote. ``The issue should be whether we, as women, will support each other in whatever work choice we make and whether our husbands and children will work with us and support us in that choice as well.''
Martin, by the way, wrote her master's thesis on the devaluing of the American homemaker, has twice lobbied the General Assembly for a tax credit for parents who stay at home to raise children, and once had a check-cashing policy changed at K-mart after a gum-popping clerk insisted she give her husband's work telephone number as part of her identification.
``I've had people at parties ask me, `What do you do?' And when I tell them, they say, `Oh,' and turn around and walk off,'' she says.
``This is the hardest job I've ever had, and I find it very discouraging that society as a whole looks down on women who don't get paid for their work.''
Contributions continue to dribble in to the fund for Noah and Jed Smith, two Rockbridge County boys profiled in July who have a rare form of muscular dystrophy that will slowly, painfully cripple them before they reach adolescence.
Lexington friends are hoping to raise $25,000 so that Alva and Chris Smith can concentrate on giving their boys the adventures of a lifetime - in a few short years. Faculty and staff members at Washington & Lee University are pooling together frequent-traveler miles to send the family to Disneyworld.
And strangers from Roanoke who read the story sent in more than $600 for the cause. ``The appreciation and the cards and the continued prayers of people mean as much to them as the money,'' says organizer Jane Harris, a longtime family friend.
``Right now, they're concentrating on what they can do, rather than what they can't.'' (Contributions can be sent to the Noah and Jed Smith Fund, c/o First Union Bank, Ann Compton, 101 S. Main St., Lexington, Va. 24450.)
Now that bathing suit season's passed - but the Christmas cookie hangover hasn't - here's what Pearisburg's Joyce Ann Wells had to say about my May column on the hazards of trying on swimsuits:
Years ago, when my son was 4 or 5, I took him with me to a Leggett store to try on bathing suits. I found a ``darling`` little two-piece number with a ruffled skirt that I hoped would hide my mommy thighs.
I parked the kid on the dressing room chair and (modestly) yanked on the suit under my street clothes. Then I whipped off my skirt and blouse and glanced into the mirror. Ugh! The kid giggled and said:
``Mommy, you look like a ballerina!''
``A ballerina?'' I said. ``Really?'' I was on cloud nine - maybe it didn't look so bad.
``Yeah,'' he said. ``From that movie. You know. The one with the alligators and Mickey Mouse.''
Yep, that's right. ``Fantasia.'' My son thought I looked like a hippo in a tutu.
And finally, a note I stumbled across on my desk written with a child's orange marker on a grocery list. Can't remember why I saved it, but the handwriting is mine, the sentence by Voltaire: ``The road to the heart is the ear.''
Thanks to all of you who called or wrote to pass along your observations and column ideas in '95. If you hear of any good stories out there in '96. . . I'm listening.
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