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Like a lot of folks, I find it hard to keep a
hobby. I have had several: Scuba diving, guitar, aquariums, biking, and so on,
but the press of family and career has peeled them away one at a time, like the
stamps I collected as a boy.
I don’t resent it. I gladly stow the fins and
mask in favor of my wife and children, which I suppose makes them my hobby. If
that seems to trivialize them, Webster’s New World Dictionary defines a hobby as
“Something that a person likes to do or study in his spare time; favorite
pastime or avocation.” They are certainly my favorites; it’s my job to shake
loose the time.
The one true diversion I cling to is this
column. Regular readers know this is a sideline for me, that my bread and
butter comes from debits and credits, forecasts and spreadsheets. I find that
satisfying enough, though if I could make a living at my pastime I would, like a
million other hobbyists. Ask any golfer.
As much as I’d love to be in the big papers,
the fun of a small town is that you get to know people and they get to know
you. Andy Warhol predicted that one day everyone would get 15 minutes of fame;
I have joked that in Chico you get a half-hour. Still, much of the satisfaction
comes from people I’ve met and the things I’ve been able to do.
A few months into writing this feature I was
asked to address my first community group as a gen-u-wine newspaper columnist.
A reader I will call “Cleo,” since that’s her name, invited me to chat with a
senior’s group after an exchange of emails. I had given many talks to boards of
directors, shareholders, and assorted business types, but this would be
different. You want a board to like what you tell them; you want readers to
like you.
Fortunately I purge my files as often as I
clean the garage so I still have my notes from that talk. My approach to
writing is much the same now as then, though there have been changes. For
instance I am no longer “five columns ahead.” Inspiration still throbs but
there seems scarcely enough time in the week to write one.
One thing that hasn’t changed is Cleo. We
continued to trade emails and she has often snail-mailed clippings and
articles. She was one of my most generous contributors when I was a celebrity
pig-kisser for the American Diabetes Association’s “Kiss-A-Pig” fundraiser in
1999; my wife personally delivered the small gift given to larger donors.
Her kindness extends to her time and advice as
well. She has freely shared her thoughts on these screeds and is second only to
my wife as a sounding board. When I wrote of my daughter’s pug puppy, Cleo, a
former pug owner, suggested carrots as a low-cal snack for the little glutton.
We even had a wonderful dinner at a local steak house with friends of hers last
summer, the only time I have seen her in person since that speech in 1997. She
thought we might find her guests good company and she was right, just as she has
been with the clippings and articles.
You wouldn’t think you could get
to know someone just from reading their work but somehow she has managed. I
like to flatter myself that I’m her friend, so when the emails slowed, then
stopped, and our emails to her went unanswered, we became concerned enough to
call. Cleo has been ill, something sudden and unexpected. She is at rest in
her home in the loving care of family, but writing and emailing is a little
tough.
It is a privilege to get these
few column inches every week, to be even a tiny part of a reader’s weekly
routine. Whenever I’ve forgotten that it seems there has been an email, card,
letter, or comment to remind me. Many of those have been from Cleo.
For which I thank her. Get well,
Cleo. You are in our prayers.
© 1997- 2002 Brent Morrison
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