I’ve written my column through hell and high water. To be specific, I wrote my heart out after 9/11, grieving with so many readers who lost loved ones in the towers. I scribbled my way through blackouts, epic blizzards, hurricanes and, for three years, the pandemic.
I wrote about how to sleep better and eat better and find friends and keep friends. Sometimes an idea landed on the page full blown, and sometimes it’s been a struggle to compose a cogent piece. I spent my 750 words in wildly different ways, from a tribute to a courageous teacher friend going through chemotherapy to a send-up of the much-reviled New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, to one column many years ago in which I advertised for a prom date for my daughter. (She was in on the joke.).
My work has been personal. I have written about my children’s lives, their mitzvahs and their missteps. My breast cancer. My husband’s heart surgeries. I struggled for days trying to find just the right words to honor my parents when they died. In some ways the column has been a running history of our times in our Long Island communities. After all, don’t we share the same lives and dreams, worry about the same threats to our mother Earth and hope for a safer world for our kids?
Many of my columns have suggested or reviewed books, the other love in my life. In return, many of you have pitched books my way that turned out to be thrilling and illuminating.
As politics got nasty and toxic in recent years, I jumped in, wanting to use my 750 words a week to rally support for our democracy, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights and laws that ensure equality for every community and every human being. I think these were words well spent, although at times the backlash has been fierce. That’s what opinion columns are for: to stir the pot, open up the debate and disagree without getting too creepy.
Copyright 2023 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.