The Power of Words. Elizabeth Abbott: So much for worrying

11.18.98
Elizabeth Abbott: So much for worrying

Related: Baseball when you really need it

        I honestly can't remember when I got the idea for the essay about my mother and baseball. It had to have been sometime when she was in the hospital because I started writing it while she was still there. I started writing it with no thoughts about publishing it. I wrote because I was in pain and didn't know what else to do with myself and because it made me look like I was working, when I really wasn't.
        The writing came very easily to me, and I think that's because I had so much emotion invested in the subject. Unlike some people, who find writing about personal matters difficult, I find it easy to write about something close to my heart. It's the other writing that's difficult for me, the pretending-to-be-objective stuff we do as journalists.
        I wrote a first draft in a few hours, and it's remarkably similar to what appeared in the paper. The only change I made was taking my father, sister and boyfriend out; they had all made an appearance at one point. Also, the last paragraph about picturing all those people in a ballpark tracking a ball was an afterthought added a few weeks after I first sat down to write.
        The piece posed a few challenges for me. One was trying to describe my mother's condition and the effect it had on me without getting too melodramatic. Another was keeping the essay lean and to the point; I tried very hard to work in this line about my mother being served Swedish meatballs when she was supposed to be on a soft diet, but it just didn't fit.
        But, without a doubt, the biggest challenge for me was telling my mother what I had done and asking her permission to publish it. My mother is a very private person. I assumed she didn't want thousands of Rhode Islanders reading about her throwing up in the hospital. I also had misgivings about using someone else's tragedy for professional purposes -- you know, the leeching aspect of journalism. It's bad enough when we benefit professionally from the misfortunes of a stranger, but in this case it was my very own mother. Was nothing sacred to me? Was there nothing I wouldn't write about? Then one day, about three weeks after my mother's surgery, my father stopped by the bureau to say hello. Coincidentally, I had just printed out the essay, so I gave it to him to read. He liked it and assured me my mother wouldn't have a problem with it. A few days later, I told my mother about the piece and asked her if it was okay to publish it. "It will have my name on it and describe you in the hospital right after the surgery," I told her.
        She said she didn't care.
        So much for worrying.

Previous editions | About The Providence Journal's Writing Program | E-mail us | Order How I Wrote the Story | Writing-related Web links
Back to main