No excuses, just write

My first serious encounter with procrastination came in fifth grade when I nearly drove myself crazy over the consequences of not writing a letter to the tourism bureau of Nicaragua when I should have.

Things have been better since then. As I told a visiting group of students the other day, I suspect one of the reasons I stumbled into journalism was to vanquish my childhood problem with deadlines.

And vanquish it, I have.

Except.

Except for those writing chores where the words just don't seem to want to cooperate.

Write a weekly column? No problem.

Turn out 500 crisp words on a murder trial in 20 minutes? Piece of cake.

Finding the right words when an old friend is struggling with survival? That's another story entirely.

The old friend's name doesn't matter in this discussion.

First, because I think she'd prefer her privacy. And second, because we all have old friends of our own facing similar challenges.

Word came this spring. Another friend and classmate, who sometimes seems to be shepherding us all, sent out an e-mail alerting folks that our mutual friend was in pretty dire straits.

She'd been there before, but with the help of her husband and family and doctors had prevailed.

But this new round looked grim.

Send her a card or letter, the class shepherd exhorted.

And I knew she was right.

I checked out get-well-soon cards and found them pretty dreadful. The choices seemed to be between bathroom humor and maudlin sentiment.

Finally, I asked my wife to pick up a blank card so I could write a personal message.

She did.

But I didn't.

Oh, I thought about it often enough.

I picked up the card. I sketched out a couple of phrases in my head. And I put the card down again, procrastinating like a fifth grader. Or a 60-year-old still trying to learn the lingo of mortality.

Fortunately, the e-mail updates kept coming. The patient was struggling. New treatments were being tried.

Each time I read them I thought of a 13-year-old tomboy's smile and the unwritten card misplaced on the kitchen table.

What would I say? Wouldn't I be as maudlin and sentimental as a card from a shop? Wouldn't my words of encouragement ring hollow in the face of my old friend's nightmare?

After the most recent e-mail, with yet another urging to send cards and notes, I found that I had trouble getting my old friend out of my mind. But when I thought of her, it wasn't in her current, painfully afflicted state.

It was back in the old neighborhood when we were kids. It was in a photograph taken at the last class reunion, when her smile was incandescent and indomitable.

And so, at the end of a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark, I went looking for that blank card.

And I wrote.

The card went out in the mail Monday.

Now, here's my challenge to you, fellow procrastinators. You know you have a letter that needs to be written or a card that needs to be sent. You have old friends in trouble who need to know there's somebody who cares about them, is pulling for them, and is thinking about them.

Find a card. Pick up a blank sheet of paper.

Don't worry about the words, because ultimately the words take care of themselves.

They always do.[[In-content Ad]]