Second Random Act: 'From I-ville to You-ville'

Today participants of the Week of Random Acts of Publicity were asked to write a book review. Here's mine.

I don't like pedantic children's books all that much. Especially when they're religious. Yes, I know that probably sounds surprising, given that most people know me as someone who writes for religious publications and spent a year doing publicity for a religious press. Thing is, I much prefer the rare religious children's books that infuse spirituality with engaging stories to books that are glorified tracts with pretty pictures. I'll happily take a well-crafted secular story any day to a poorly-crafted religious tract. (Incidentally, I hate that I have to refer to any publication as "secular" or "religious," but that's a whole other blog post).

I admit that when I first heard about the book From I-ville to You-ville by Mersine Vigopoulou (published in 2006 by Uncut Mountain Press), I assumed this children's title released by an Eastern Orthodox publisher was more "pretty tract" than "beautiful, spirituality-infused story." I'd heard of the book long ago, but assumed, quite unfairly, that it was yet another dull, preachy, morally "safe" book we'd have to force feed to kids who'd rather be reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Still, I'd heard good things about the novel from many folks I like, so out of curiosity I picked up a copy at a friend's house last weekend, sat down on the couch and started reading. Thirty-five pages later, I put it down only because I was at a party, and much as I wish this weren't true it is SO not cool to sit on a couch reading a book when you're at a social gathering. (Thankfully, my friend let me borrow the book).

'From I-Ville' is part picture book, part novel. Its hard cover, larger trim size and bright illustrations make it look like it's targeted at preschoolers, but it is actually fairly text-heavy, which means it would work better as a family read-aloud. The story involves a boy named "Stubborn" from a "great kingdom called I-ville." I-ville is ruled by a goddess-queen named "Conceit" who lives in a crystal palace at the center of the kingdom. The people of I-ville love their home, but they've got problems. They fight a lot. Every person wants to do things his or her own way. And the children never play together, because when they do each one wants to be the leader, and they can never agree on who gets that coveted role.

One day Stubborn happens to meet a stranger outside the walls of I-ville -- a girl named Serenity. She is traveling past I-ville with her father on her way home to a placed called You-ville. Stubborn immediately takes to Serenity because she is kind and sweet. He likes her even more after he challenges her to a race and beats her. After losing the race, Serenity lavishes Stubborn with praise, instead of complaining like the children of I-ville. "Well done!" she says, shaking his hand. "You run like the wind!"

Stubborn is surprised to learn that there are other kingdoms beyond the walls of I-ville, and he likes Serenity so much that he asks Queen Conceit if he can journey to the distant land of You-ville. She grants him his wish to be a "great explorer of I-ville" and off he goes on his journey.

Despite Stubborn's overwhelming self-confidence and the prideful notion that he'll have no trouble finding You-ville, he ends up wandering and can't figure out how to complete his journey. Then he stumbles upon a kindly "elder" (illustrated wearing the garb of an Athonite monk -- the one marker in the entire book that reveals the religious leanings of the author). The old man instructs him on the way to find You-ville. The entry to You-ville, he says, is a small, low passage, like a tunnel.

"I'm small," Stubborn says, "so I should be able to pass through."

"I don't think you'll fit," says the elder.

"I'll bend down then."

"The secret," the elder continues, "is this: in order to pass through, it's not enough just to bend down. You need to shrink your ego."

You might think, based on the naming structure of the characters in 'From I-ville,' that they are as one-dimensional as Goofus and Gallant. Surprisingly, this is not the case. While the people of You-ville are innocent, thoughtful and Gallant-like, the people of I-ville, selfish as they may be, are redeemable, human, and capable of love. This makes the story all the more intriguing, as we wonder what will happen when Stubborn makes his journey back from You-Ville to I-ville to share the good news with his countrymen about loving one's neighbors as oneself.

Yes, the book is simple and pedantic, in the same way that the great fables of Aesop or the Ancient Greek myths are pedantic, encapsulating critical life lessons in absorbing stories. 'From I-ville' speaks directly to readers living in a world where Ego is king, where selfishness is a virtue, and where "God" is a positive force whose sole reason for existing is to bring us the good things we wish for (think Disney godmother, except not as chubby).

The truth is, we live in a world full of fleeting joys that disappear like vapor almost as soon as they come. The happiness that lasts is the joy that comes from loving and serving our neighbors. Sure, it's important to take care of oneself to a certain degree, but if we spend all our lives making ourselves the gods and goddesses of our own personal "I-villes," we'll never really know true joy.

Imagine, for a second, if our world was You-ville -- a place where EVERYONE put the interests of others before their own. What ecstasy would we all experience if all humans were motivated primarily by the desire to bring joy to the lives of others?

First Random Act: Tuesdays at Ten

It's my first day participating in Darcy Pattison's Random Acts of Publicity Week and I'm already cheating.

Because Tuesdays at Ten, my first 'random act', isn't a book. Rather, it's several books. It's also rhymes and songs and finger plays. And it's a talented singer/guitarist, a Spanish teacher with word cards, a creative photographer snapping shots, a cast of adoring fans and one adorable storyteller named Molly Del Vecchio.

Del Vecchio's concept is simple -- once a week, she offers a structured 30-minute story time that brings families out of their homes and into a local cafe for fun and friendship.

A former elementary school teacher and mother of a 5-year-old, Del Vecchio begins and ends her weekly story time with hugs for the many friends -- big and little -- who wouldn't miss their weekly pick-me-up. In between the hugs are songs, finger plays and books: Molly reads a few different picture books related to the theme of the day, which can be anything from feet to friendship to firefighters. She not only reads the books to her audience, she carries along a crate full of picture books from the local library. When story time is over, moms and dads mingle while children romp around, often finding a cozy spot to flip through one of the library books they've dug out of Del Vecchio's crate of books.

Del Vecchio is already a local celebrity adored by the Tosa toddler set, so hopefully it won't be long before she'll be able to share her stories with a wider audience. She's already expanded her storytelling efforts: she recently started doing birthday parties and special events under the moniker Happy Hour and was hired this summer to teach part-time at the Milwaukee Zoo. Let's hope this is just the beginning of a fabulous storytelling career.

Let's also hope that other creative moms and dads around the world will follow Del Vecchio's lead and start their own story hours in coffee shops around the globe. The beauty of Del Vecchio's simple idea is that it promotes literacy among our children and helps families engage with the community. Kudos, Molly!

Random Acts of Publicity

You may know that I write stories, and as such I'm a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. This morning I learned from an SCBWI e-mail about an intriguing concept dreamed up by another children's writer named Darcy Pattison. It's called Random Acts of Publicity Week. Darcy's idea is for book loving folks to spend a bit of time each day for one week promoting the books they love out of the goodness of their hearts.

I *love* this idea. As a former book publicist and as someone who is disillusioned with American mongering-I-mean-marketing, I find this concept refreshing. I am coming to believe that books truly succeed not because of the scheming of corporate marketeers, but because they are GOOD, and because the average consumer is intelligent enough to recognize a book's quality and then share the good news with their communities.

Or at least, that's the way things should be, and the Week of Random Acts is just the kind of concept that supports this publicity model.

Starting tomorrow morning I'll unveil my four random acts of publicity, one each day. I'm not going to say much right now, but I'll give you a hint: I'm promoting books/authors because they're GOOD but also because they're flying under the radar right now. Sure, I'd love to publicize Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, or Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, but I don't really think they need the publicity.

One more thing: I might cheat a little. Pattison recommends we follow a regiment that involves a different kind of act each day, and that we promote *books*. I might promote an author, instead of a book, or I might promote something related to books, but that isn't a book. And because Tuesday's action is to promote something by word of mouth and I *still* don't have my voice back after two thyroid surgeries, I'm going to have to take a different tack.

Now I just have to narrow my choices down to only four days' worth of book-related things to publicize. Yikes!

Till tomorrow, friends.

The Trials of Life

The summer has gotten away from me, I'm afraid, and as I was preparing a post about what I've learned this season about gardening through trial and error, a much bigger life lesson was pitched my way.

I found out on Monday, August 24 that I have thyroid cancer. This is the note I shared on Facebook announcing the news to friends and family:

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Dear Friends,

I know several of you have asked me to give you an update on my thyroid situation.

To give some background, about four years ago I was told I was "pre-hypo thyroid." Thyroid troubles were on my radar, so this summer when I noticed a very slight swelling in my neck I went to the doctor. He knew I was pre-hypo and also that I had been diagnosed as fairly anemic in the winter of 2009 (which can, for women, be a symptom of thyroid troubles). So he ordered a thyroid sonogram the following day, then called me the morning after with the news that I had a small (1/2 inch) nodule on the right lobe of my thyroid gland.

The next step was a FNA (Fine Needle Aspiration), the results of which that came two days later indicating not that the nodule was benign or malignant, but rather that it was a suspicious "follicular neoplasm" that would have to be surgically removed to be biopsied.

On August 20 I had the one-hour, out patient surgery on my thyroid gland. The surgeon removed half of my thyroid and the suspicious nodule. The surgery was the easy part -- the recovery was no picnic, but thankfully, it went rather quickly: it is now day five and my 3" neck wound is stiff and itchy, but otherwise I feel pretty good.

When I went in for my post-surgery consult on Monday morning, my doctor had not yet received the news from pathology. My mom was with me, so she took me out to lunch and to a movie to settle my nerves as I awaited the news. It was about 1/3 of the way through Julie & Julia that my cell phone started buzzing. I answered and it was Dr. Bowman with the news: the nodule contained malignant cells, meaning I have the horrid "C-word": Cancer. I'd have to return to surgery immediately to remove the remainder of my thyroid.

My voice was still weak from the first surgery, so I mostly just cried as he told me the news, and then pulled my mom out of the movie and we went home. Steve left work early and joined us. I cried on and off for a few hours, but Steve and my mom were a positive, calming force. After my mom left, Steve and I decided to do something relaxing, as much as that was possible. It was a beautiful evening, thank God, so we started walking. We decided to walk all the way to the mall 2.5 miles away, taking the path along the Menomonee River, and I think it was the best thing I could have ever done. The walking was so empowering and wonderful that by the time I made it to the mall I felt 100 times better, then and for the rest of the night, and until today. We had salads and smoothies at Panera and then hung around at the bookstore for a while before walking home.

This morning, pre-surgery #2, I'm trying to keep busy and stay positive. I'm cleaning the house, weeding and watering my gardens, organizing my office. I go in for surgery at 11:45 a.m., then they operate at 1:30. I will stay over at the hospital one night and then go to my parents' house to recover for a few days.

I think this will be a critical turning point in my life. I am learning so much from this experience, life lessons I have mostly regarded as cliches until now. Like how to not take things for granted, how to let myself be taken care of by the people I love, what true friendship means, how to not let anxiety get a grip on my soul, how to stay positive, how to treat my body as a temple, and how to live in the moment.

Obviously I'm not through this storm just yet. But I am hopeful that, as they say, "this too shall pass." And I ask you for your thoughts and prayers as I make it through this trial, and I thank you for your thoughts and prayers to this point, and for your love and support.

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As I was sitting in that movie with my mom on Monday, I could barely concentrate. I'm a pretty high strung person, extremely neurotic, and I sat there in the dark theater turning over and over in my mind the possibility that I might have cancer. I imagined the doctor's voice as he said the word "malignant" and hoped I wouldn't panic. I thought about that scene in Hannah and Her Sisters, when Woody Allen's extremely neurotic character Mickey is sitting at the doctor's office waiting for the M.D. to return with results of a cancer test. He first imagines in horror the doctor coming in telling him he has the c-word. A moment later, the doctor enters and tells him he's fine. When Mickey learns he's OK, he runs through the streets, kicking up his heels.

I was hoping that my experience would be like Mickey's; I fantasized about how great it would be when I, too, could possibly run through the streets kicking up my own heels.

Surely the news would be good, I told myself. I had already suffered enough through the first surgery and the terror alone of possibly having cancer. God would let me off the hook. I am a relatively healthy 33-year-old with virtually no family history of cancer; surely I was one of the 90 percent of folks who find out their thyroid nodules are benign. And anyway, hypochondriacs like me are never *really* sick, right? Being a hypochondriac offers a sort of superstitious consolation: we who worry about problems we don't have are safe from actually having those problems. "If I fake it, I don't have it," said the character Bob Wiley in the film What about Bob. To date, this has always been my way of coping with rampant fears.

But there in the dark, after consoling myself with these mostly irrational thoughts, my mind would swing to the dark side. I would tell myself I had to accept the real possibility that the news wouldn't be good. And I'd try to brace myself for the worst, and hope that I wouldn't crumble if and when the doctor said the word "malignant."

Back and forth I'd swing, every minute, every second, as I waited for The Fateful Phone Call.

"Calm down, Heather," my mom said to me in the Theater, putting her hand on my arm. "Whatever the news is, we'll get through it."

"Yes," I replied, "but the thing is, I'm scared. Tomorrow could either be the best day or the worst day of my life."

I realize now, in retrospect, that what I should have said was not that tomorrow would be the best or the worst day of my life. The day I found out I had cancer was merely another "first day" of my life, just like the day I went off to college, or the day I got married, or the day I gave birth to my first child. It was a day for a new beginning, a day to open my mind to a new way of thinking and living, and a day to face my fears of death and dying and acknowledge that no matter how hard I run from suffering, no matter how arduously I work toward distracting myself from these frights, suffering and death are real, and each and every one of us encounters them. So it isn't so much the fact that I will encounter trials that I should anticipate, but rather how I will deal with them when they inevitably come. This is the beginning of healing and growth.

Of course, I have spent some time wondering why or how I could have gotten cancer when none of my parents and siblings and very few of my relatives have had this experience. NO ONE in my family, to my knowledge, has thyroid cancer.

I could speculate on causes. Tainted water. A high-carb diet. Too many convenience foods. Radiation exposure through my cell phone or through climbing a local radio tower when I was a rebellious teenager. Irradiated food. Standing too close to microwaves. Pesticides. There are all sorts of ideas floating in my mind about how cancer cells could grow in my body, and if I wanted, I could cling to blame of any one or multiple causes, of my own behaviors or of someone else's, and cling to the hope that if I just do X, Y and Z I'll be able to beat this problem and never suffer again.

The truth is, it doesn't matter. My mom said something very striking to me that day at the mall. I was telling her that, like all people who experience something painful or dreaded, I briefly went through the "why me" period. I cried, whimpered, and felt lost and alone. I asked God, "Why did this have to happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?" My mom, a woman who, before the age of 13, lost both her biological father and her beloved step-father to untimely deaths, responded in this way: "why NOT me?" We all have to suffer. There is no avoiding it. And if not us, it will be someone else who suffers. The good thing about suffering is that we can experience what so many others have experienced, and share in the trials that are a part of the human condition. And, God willing, when we suffer we are offered an opportunity grow in leaps and bounds.

And it is a tremendous blessing to be able to really grow, to learn from suffering. It is life affirming and healing to suffer. Because in between periods of despair, of anxiety, of feeling more alone than you ever have before, of feeling like the pain and fear will never subside, there is a light that comes when you acknowledge that a power bigger than yourself is Good, and that power will bring you safely to the other side if only you hold on with all your might.

I'd like to say one more thing about that power -- about God. If you know me, you know that I am a pretty "religious" person, although I hate to use the term. It's almost my claim to fame. Heather Zydek, she's "really religious." Churchy. She's an "Orthodox Christian," whatever that means. It's true that I am a church-going sort, that I take the Christian tradition as seriously as this anger-prone, foul-mouthed, gluttonous, passionate woman can. So when I prayed for a miracle prior to my surgery, I in my fragile, weak faith did genuinely hope for something miraculous to happen. And when the news was bad, instead of good, and I had to endure not just one but two surgeries to my throat within five days, some folks, even religious, might have become angry with God. God didn't heal me, so therefore God does not exist. And if He does exist, either He doesn't like me or He's a big jerk.

I admit I was tempted to play this game. But I clung then, and continue to cling, to one idea that overrides all my doubts. After the first surgery, I was filled with despair and panic. And what I repeated most during those days were two prayers: the words of Psalm 23 ("the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want") and "Please, God, do not forsake me. Do not abandon me." These prayers, and, I believe, the prayers of many loved ones, helped me to realize that God is not far away from us, ever. He is right there, on the other side of a mysterious veil, and if we reach out, he will invisibly but powerfully give us the strength to go on. There is so much comfort in this. God may not have made my cancerous nodule disappear before surgery, but He held me close when I felt Despair pulling me with all its might into a pit from which I might have never returned. And He gave me hope and wisdom to see that He can use all things for Good.

And aside from this, I now believe that one should not discount the miracle of modern medicine. Sure, Western medicine is wrought with problems, and I'll be the first to admit it. Still, the fact that a 69-year-old surgeon could gracefully remove my cancerous thyroid gland and bring great comfort and healing to me is a gift from God. Miraculous, in its own sense. Every day I wake up, and with every breath I breathe, I have a new chance to live my life better, to truly experience the good around me, and to truly love all the people I meet.

Now my mission, my beliefs in sustainability and a clean earth and in real communities are clearer, but more personal. Because I feel all the more passionately about wholesome food and clean air and water, but also about living a life in the moment, not rushing to bigger, better illusions, and not ever taking God's many gifts for granted. That starts with appreciation for the fruits of the earth that sustain us, and it starts with good, loving stewardship of these gifts, and with loving compassion toward one's neighbors. And it ends with trust in God, and a willingness to hang on to Him during this sometimes wild ride called life.