The Flexible Straw

The Flexible Straw
September 2006

Autumn gave everyone a flexible straw, a large 15 by 17 inch piece of white water color quality paper. She asked each writer to drop India ink randomly on our own paper. Using our straws we blew designs.

What does this have to do with cancer? I wondered to myself.

New faces sat around a meeting room table. Cancer survivors meeting for the first time for Autumn’s “In other words” writing group. Two guys and a bunch of women.

At that time I didn’t consider myself a writer. I published health education materials in the early eighties. I used desktop publishing which allowed me to do everything. That wasn’t writing. The writing I wanted to start was to write honest stories of my colon cancer experience.

“Autumn, why are we doing an art project today? I thought this was a writing group.”
I asked the teacher. She paused a moment.

Everyone else in the room just glared at me. Just do the exercise their eyes seemed to communicate. I busied myself with snacks and sipped bottled water and waited for her reply.

The teacher explained we were doing this exercise to loosen up our minds and to become more creative. Then she gave us a writing prompt and we wrote for 20 minutes in our own spiral notebooks. Later we could read what we wrote if we chose to do share our writing.

I still have that artwork in my closet. It is stored next to my high school yearbook, the box of fading baby pictures and the backpack I used in 1985 when I took a trip to Alaska.