Think Pink

Everything this month is pink. Women in pink. Men wearing pink lapel ribbons. High school kids, boys and girls alike, wearing pink t-shirts, socks and shorts. Pink dye in the fountains. Pink newspaper pages. NFL players and officials with pink gloves and whistles. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting something pink.

Clearly it's breast cancer awareness month proudly sporting pink as the color of the cause du jour. Women no doubt live in the shadows of this affliction, having been drilled since youth to remember yearly exams, self-examination and know the advantage of early detection. It may not be a conscious concern each day but surely it weighs on a woman's mind from time to time, if for no other reason than propagation of this particular affliction. Everyone knows someone who has contracted breast cancer. Many know someone who did not survive it.

Clearly breast cancer is a terrible disease, affecting even women who undergo surgery to remove masses that might possibly serve as a platform for cancer to develop. Awareness is high and seems to increase each year with more walks, runs, pink days and media attention than the year before. Women are constantly reminded to be vigilant.

With the possible exception of Muscular Dystrophy, I think no other affliction approaches the public relations and media frenzy that accompanies breast cancer month. Make no mistake, it is well deserved and does much good teaching and alerting women to the danger.

It leaves me only one observation: Where is equal time for men?

Seriously. Men are not commonly stricken with breast cancer. Many, however, are hammered with prostate cancer and it too can lie undetected. By the time symptoms develop, you're way behind the recovery curve. There doesn't seem to be any hype associated with it though. No fun runs, no walks-for-the-cure. No Susan Koman standard-bearer. No awareness month. What color do we wear for prostate cancer? Who walks for men?

Perhaps the public doesn't care that men get sick. Females are supposed to be the fairer, gentler gender (a highly subjective view, I must add) and need more attention, more nursing, and must suffer more publicly. I don't know. In this era of political correctness and not caring to bruise any feelings about anything, should men not be granted a bit of support against a disease particular to men?

None of this is asked to diminish the dread and horror of a breast cancer diagnosis. Not at all. But when will society fall in behind men with prostate cancer? The treatments are unpleasant to discuss or contemplate. Cancer of any kind is an awful future to face, but many men face it too. Perhaps men are expected to be stoic and suffer in silence, but why should that be? Correctness demands an balanced approach.

Again, take nothing away from the pink cause. It's a good thing and promotes life-saving practices. But who is looking out for men?

Just wondering.

34 in the bag

In my vanilla past there have been, and are, a few significant women that have had an effect on me. I don't mean role models, or runway models, or Playboy models, but women I have actually known that have somehow shaped my life a lot or a little. There were a few that temporarily changed my habits, like the gorgeous young Italian woman (who, appropriately, taught Italian) in college that caused me to linger in the hallway after Criminology just to see her walk by on her way to her classroom. But I refer more to those who had a longer-lasting positive effect.

Of course there was my mom with whom I was always close, but becoming more close after my father died far too early in life. Her life took her from an Iowa farm without electricity or plumbing, to college, through a teaching career, through World War II as a civilian Navy file clerk, to life with our small family. Things she taught me to do and be, and to not do and not be, are always with me and always will be just as Mom herself is.

I can point to my mother-in-law as one whose caring and endurance and hard work--all with a sense of humor--helped me form a lot of my adult life and parenting skills. Always putting everyone else first, she set the standard high to ''love thy neighbor.'' No one else I have ever met comes close.

My daughters continually wow me with the things they accomplish. They are not bank presidents or genetic engineers but regular responsible people, one a dedicated mother and teacher; the other a multitasking psychologist who works with seniors. They, too, are determined and work hard. When your offspring grow up and take on the world as they have it is gratifying and humbling all at the same time.

There are some others; a teacher, a friend who has dropped out of my life, a few other women I have personally known who have impressed me or effected my life in some way.

Then there is Adorable Wife, now on the eve of anniversary no. 34. Words fail me.

Her good qualities are great and her no-so-good qualities are actually pretty tolerable. If the daughters are hard workers they learned it from mom. She balanced what became full-time work, two grade-school (and later high school) girls and all the activities and diversions that accompany adolescence, aging parents who often depended on her for help, and my own demanding job which kept me out of the house and unable to help.

Sure, lots of women do all that and more, some as single parents. Others have huge obstacles to overcome with health, work and income. We didn't have most of these. But Adorable Wife, operating not on college education or hard-knocks experience but on her own wits, took on the task of helping support the family in fund-raising.

Fund raising makes strong men wince and women turn their heads away. It's difficult to humble yourself enough to ask for money and still have the dignity to accept any answer. It is more difficult to do it over and over, occasionally with the same benefactors and get results. It's difficult to create events that honor benefactors and alumni and do them with style. It's hard to get supporters to come back year after year and want to help. But they do. She got them to.

I am amazed, awed and just plain lucky. Some women refuse to work, expecting to stay home, go to country clubs and have domestic help. Others are all about career at the expense of family. It's all about balance, and somehow Adorable Wife has found her balance. I love her forever for who she is but also for what she accomplished in these past twenty years, setting out not to help shape an institution but merely to support it. At the same time, she kept home and family together and prosperous. There is a sharp temper and streak of stubborn, but incredible warmth and caring and concern as well. It takes all of these to do what she has achieved. And then, of course, she is adorable too.

Thirty-four is a funny number to pause and make observations like this; usually it's on mulitples of five years or ten. The number is meaningless. I should have done this a long, long time ago.

Well done, Adorable Wife!