Don't Mess With October

Here it is more than half over and I didn't know until today that October is "Breast Cancer Awareness Month." (Thanks a lot, Georgetown Lombardi Cancer Center, for your informative email.) I feel like such a fool. I have not thought about breast cancer once all month, nor have I been aware of it. I've thought about COPD, which recently took the life of a close friend. I've thought about heart disease, which landed me in the ER last week. And who's not aware of mental illness, what with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth "Pocahontas" Warren releasing her DNA test results?

Until now I've always considered October as our most fun month, with crisp leaves crunching underfoot, the glorious colors of fall dotting the horizon, hayrides and corn mazes and farmer's markets, and of course Halloween, with bright jack-o-lanterns and festive costumes and lots of leftover snack-sized candy bars, and who doesn't like that? But from this day forward I'll have to add breast cancer and chemo and hair falling out and reconstructive surgery -- all things that will surely tarnish October's glow.

If you ask me it should be in April, which is already known to be the cruelest month because of the first line of T. S. Eliot's famous 1922 poem, The Wasteland: "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain."

Certainly not October.