Becky
I went out to lunch last week with my editor at The Beacon. We had Mexican food.
My editor's name is Rebecca Carr. Only her friends get to call her Becky.
I get to call her Becky.
I've known her for almost four years, back to when she was just a reporter and not editor. It was quite a promotion, although not on a grand journalism scale; this is a small-town, weekly paper, with only a few employees, none of them (I think) fulltime, and most of them in the advertising area, which is where the money is.
Mostly, it's a success story because of the beginning. Her father left the family when she was young. There wasn't much money. She got a job as a medical technician and did that for 11 years, working for one of the world's most famous ophthalmologists. She then got some work copywriting, and had talent, and ended up at the Beacon.
She's 38, single but still looking, a Girl Scout leader, the chief reporter for the paper in addition to being its editor and webmaster. Again, it's a small business; her job is technically listed as 28 hours a week, although it's anybody's guess how many hours go into it, how many city council meetings and interviews and polishing sessions. She also runs a web design business from her home with several clients. She does good work; I've seen.
She loves practical jokes, and all jokes. We spent a morning once, via e-mail, trying to reconstruct the lyrics to Gilda Radner's "Talk Dirty to the Animals." Heaven forbid I forget to attach my column to the e-mail on Monday mornings; I'll hear about it all day, hear about my impending dementia and my advanced age.
She looks after her mother, taking her out once a week, celebrating both Father's Day and Mother's Day with her because that's what her mother was and is.
She was in a car accident a while back. Another driver struck her on the driver's side; no injuries, not a big deal, just a big dent, and the insurance money bought her a new computer.
"See my laptop?" she told me the other day, pointing out the buckled door of her pickup.
She attends church. She does the Girl Scout thing. She takes her job very seriously. She is a very good writer.
She can't stand bigots. What she tells me of her home state of Oklahoma is this: "It was the kind of place where people say, 'I'm not a racist, but...'" and I understood, although I have nothing against Oklahoma. I guess she just preferred it out here, for lots of reasons.
She's been a good friend, supportive and encouraging. She passes along positive comments she hears, and gives me a heads-up when a disapproving letter to the editor is in the works. It's a funny thing; I've told her secrets only my family knows. Somehow I just trust her, and count on her to be there in good times and not so good.
It's been a cyber-relationship, mostly, me and Becky. I've only seen her in person a couple of times, one being last week. I bought her lunch because it'd been a long-overdue promise.
She despises melted cheese, by the way, considers it an affront to God and nature to place a slice of cheese on a burger, and she was very particular in this Mexican restaurant about cheese issues. People are funny.
We spent over two hours together, talking mostly about our dreams. She has a few of her own, including freelance writing someday and maybe a children's book. She's a pleasant lunch date, interesting and funny. We should do that more often. She took pains to tell me that I looked good, even though she knew I lost a lot of weight and then gained a lot of it back. Supportive, as I say. She hauled out her laptop and took notes toward the end, hoping to write an article about my book to push sales. I noticed she had a few more gray hairs.
She didn't tell me, not that day, that she had at least five brain tumors.
There may be more, too.
One apparently is wrapped around one of her carotid arteries. Another is impinging on her cervical spine. They need to go, ASAP.
This will be 10-12 hours of surgery, under the knife of a well-respected, big-time neurosurgeon in one of the best medical centers in the country.
She has massive headaches now. She can't work but she does anyway, still covering stories, still writing, still putting up the website. This is what you do when you know something about a work ethic, when you know that bad things happen to good people, when you wander around town and see stories so sad you want to stop and just sit and cry, but you have a job to do.
Partly part-time and partly self-employed add up to hard work but no benefits, and health insurance was not in the package. Maybe soon, maybe someday, but there was a mother to help and rent to pay and dreams to dream. Maybe someday.
I wrote about her last week. At that time I was trying to protect her privacy, so I was careful to be vague and gender neutral. It was funny, from my e-mails, how many people assumed my friend was male. It makes sense, but still it's funny.
You can have all sorts of friends, you know.
And honestly, right now I want to sit down and cry, too, but I don't think it would do much good.
If you live up here, go to any Bank of Washington and ask about the Rebecca Carr Fund.
If you don't, and you want to help, checks made out to "Rebecca Carr Fund" can be sent in care of The Mukilteo Beacon, 806 Fifth Street, Mukilteo, WA 98275.
Anything would help, of course. She may be facing a few months without income, so even as she tries to navigate through the morass of contemporary health care and programs, etc., she still needs to pay rent and eat.
She's not alone. You can't move through Small Town America and not move others, particularly if you're a good person. There will be car washes and other fund-raisers, support and more support. I will do what I can do. I will bring her a cheeseburger just to see her smile, maybe. I will try very hard not to cry, but I seem to be more sentimental the older I get. Which is not a bad thing, but it's hard. Hard now that my problems seem to pale, that my frustrations seem trivial, that my difficulties seem manageable compared to a gamma knife and a drill and 12 hours in the OR.
Chuck Knox, the NFL coach who once led the Seattle Seahawks, years ago, was a man of cliches, and his favorite seemed to be, "You play the hand you're dealt."
I would like my friend Becky to have a new hand, but since I have no power in this regard I guess I'd just like the other players to push the pot across the table toward her, saying it was okay, it was better this way, you take it, you take care, you come back to us, to all of us, and good things happen to good people sometimes, and they should.
2:08:14 PM 
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