Have you run into any retronyms lately?  Not sure what they are?  William Safire devoted his recent On Language column (New York Times magazine, 1/7/07) to the term "retronym".  Safire describes a retronym as "the newly necessary modification of an old noun".  An example he used was guitar -- when we were younger, we would say "electric guitar".  Nowadays most guitars are electric, to differentiate we say "acoustic guitar".  Another prime example Safire gives is the telephone.  Growing up, the exciting development was the push-button or touch-tone phone.  Now those are just phones and we describe the older phones as  "rotary phones" (remember the delightful scene in "In and Out" when the Hollywood starlet is stabbing the rotary phone with her over-sized fingernails -- unable to make it work?)  We talk about vinyl records and desktop computers (because they aren't laptops).  Now that I've pointed some out to you, have fun finding them!

December turned out to be a very difficult month.  Laurie, a good friend from college, ended her three-year battle with ALS (Lou Gehrig disease).  I received an e-mail from her husband on a Thursday evening with the sad news (along with Laurie's last update -- she had sent 22 previous e-mails chronicling her fight).  A memorial service was planned for the following Tuesday in her home town in Oregon.  I immediately came up with a list of why I couldn't go -- I had to meet with my class for the end of the semester, I was in the middle of a big client project, my holiday shopping wasn't done, etc., etc.  And then Friday morning I realized how meaningless that all was.  So I got a plane ticket, reserved a hotel room and a rental car, and notified people I was heading out of town Monday night, returning Wednesday.

The service was very meaningful – full of tears and laughter (as Laurie had planned it to be).  I was able to spend time with Laurie's family (including her twin sister Linda).  The pastor gave a beautiful talk.  He explained that when Laurie became ill, he didn't know how she was able to cope with this awful disease.  And then he realized how she did it – Laurie never focused on what she couldn't do, she celebrated what she could do. 

And so I learned two very important life lessons.  First, don't make lists of why you shouldn't do something -- instead find the reasons why you should do it.  All of my end-of-semester work got done in time, gifts were bought, and my holiday cards did get mailed (the first week of January).  (And that big client project is on semi-hold because the client doesn't really know what they want to do.)  But to have not been there to remember Laurie -- that could never have been undone.  Second, don't worry about what you can't do -- celebrate what you can do.  I feel honored to have known Laurie -- and determined to never forget her.  My resolution for this new year is to remember Laurie and to follow her guide in celebrating my successes -- I'm sure that I will find them.  (The photo above shows Laurie on the right, Linda on the left, July 2004.)