The Right Medicine

(Published in the April 2024 issue of Brazos Monthly magazine)

Some old pundit or poet once said that the month of March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

I don’t remember exactly what the weather was like on the first three days of the most recent March, but I can report that I, personally, was much more lamblike than leonine. I’d spent the previous several days getting things ready for a writer’s workshop I’d be conducting while battling a runny nose, a stuffy head, nagging low-grade fever, and a persistent headache that had pitched its tent right over my puffy eyes and settled in.  The workshop had been planned for months and I knew that a bunch of participants had already signed up and would be at the Brazosport Center for the Arts & Sciences on the first morning of March expecting me to be cheerful, helpful and wise.  The first two I’d have to work at, given my sluggish state. The third one is always an iffy thing. Wisdom, what there is of it, comes and goes no matter how I feel.

I’d led more than a few creative writing workshops at the Center over the years, and more at other venues in other towns, focusing on everything from general wordsmithing to planning and writing in specific genres, like memoir. But this was a new one I’d put together which was a deep dive into what makes stories, be they fiction or nonfiction – from telling a joke or giving a talk to penning a novel – work effectively.  Having never taught it, this first time would be something of a trial run.

Truth be told, it was a trial run for me as well, for a reason other than being a bit under the weather.  It would be my first in-house, non-Zoom, workshop since the pandemic.

At the height of that worldwide plague I’d fallen ill, not with Covid, and after being sent to enough specialists to field a baseball team it was finally determined that I had sarcoidosis, where granuloma infects lymph nodes, in my case in my lungs.  It’s an extremely rare malady that affects only about two hundred thousand people on the planet at a time.  I wish my odds were that good when buying lottery tickets.

The treatment was a six month regimen of very strong steroids meant to blast out the aggressive intruders.  It worked. They’re gone for now and the disease is in remission, but the illness and it’s cure working in tandem left me with serious balance and energy problems.  More than two years and dozens of physical therapy sessions later I knew that this three day workshop consisting  of fifteen total hours of instruction would be draining. It would definitely be a test, especially since I would be feeling cruddy from the start. 

On the drive down from Sugar Land on the first morning I felt a little bit like David going up against Goliath, but with considerably less stamina than he’d had to sling the rock.

But fate stepped in, as fate sometimes does, and seated seventeen wonderful people at the table that stretched out in front of me. The range of their ages spanned sixty something years, and the stories they planned to write were enticing, clever and interesting. We looked at numerous examples of good writing and considered what to do and what not to do when telling a tale.

The time we spent together those three days was wonderful. And it was definitely good medicine for me.  Those fine folks’ lively interaction with each other as they worked through their various projects put my puny problems in perspective.  When my scratchy voice threatened to surrender completely I simply shut up and let them talk their way through the situation at hand. During  four decades of teaching school I’d eventually learned that sometimes the best thing a teacher can do is stop talking and let the students take up the slack.  Socrates knew that more than two millennia ago, but a few of my old college professors who had lectured ad infinitum never got the memo.

The workshop was a success. Both for the participants, I believe, and certainly for me.  I passed the test I’d set for myself and look forward to working with more groups in the future. That assemblage of good people was the biggest reason for it.  But they had some help from a reliable source of support I’ve had for a long time.  

After the first couple of days I was totally exhausted after my drives home. On the last day my wise wife Karen drove me down and back. She didn’t ask if I’d like for her to do it. She didn’t even offer to do it.  She picked up the keys and told me to get in the car.

I think I mentioned that she is wise.