I was reminded yesterday by the features editor of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Jill Williams, that I hadn't been in the newsroom for a long time. I didn't realize how times change; tastes change; and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel was a place of excellence -- where the readers' needs come first.

But I have been a reporter longer than Jill. And you don't have to be Bob Woodward to know that whenever someone says that a decision is not personal, but "business," that person means one of two things: It is indeed personal or it's just plain vindictive.

Jill Williams, who did not like my column, was telling me this as she fired me.

She was explaining that my column, which has run in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel for 21 years -- would no longer be there.

It WILL still run in other newspapers, including the (other and dearer) one where I began my career, The Capital Times in Madison. It will be archived on this site, where you can read it, also.

But it won't be in the newspaper where my column became well-known - where I wrote when my husband died, when my first child was born, when I wrote my first novel.

Of course, sentiment has no place in a newsroom. I agree with my ex-editor on that. And I haven't kept up with the needs of the readers.

Actually, Jill wasn't going to tell me this personally.

She wrote that e-mail to me, pointing out how I no longer understood the dynamics of a fast-paced and ever-changing newsroom (ever-changing in part because no one gets news from newspapers anymore) because I found out from a reader that I'd been axed.

In a form letter sent me by a reader who assumed this was MY choice and wrote to try to dissuade me, my direct editor said, "The SYNDICATED columnist Jacquelyn Mitchard will no longer be featured..." as if a big wind had come along and blown me away.

When I wrote a note to Jill, said that she naturally assumed that Tribune Media (which has distributed my column for ten years, as well as the writings of hundreds of other writers) would tell me.

She thought it was really Tribune Media's job to to inform me personally.

And of my hope that I might say goodbye to people with whom I've had a conversation every Sunday morning for 21 years ... well, Jill basically said he would forward my vexatious letter to the BIG BOSSES, as if I should fear them now. There's a tradition at The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called "the long crawl." It's the position a reporter assumes when he or she has left and wants to be for a job when things go bad out there. A good friend did that some years ago. She did get a job -- and constant, utter disrespect and humiliation along with her paycheck.

I'd rather not.

In fact, I'd rather be a mail carrier.

Back to Jill.

She didn't really think the syndicate would tell me.

She just didn't want to.

She has "put me on waivers" before -- pointing out to me that my column should NOT be political, and just always have more heart and soul than brains; it should include some humor (but not too much) and be useful every day to the citizens of Milwaukee.

And, you know, it hasn't always been a great column.

Sometimes, it's only been a good column, and once in a while a real dumb column. An old friend of mine once said that about writing and baseball that getting a hit three of five times at bat was a good average; and I've maintained that average. But I haven't done it well enough to meet the standards of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. When I was a reporter there, I was often told I wasn't among those who were the pride of a newspaper known for its sparkling writing, its incisive reporting and its glorious tradition of beautiful presentation and multitudes of national awards.

Because of personal reasons, I left to become a speechwriter for Donna Shalala, then a magazine journalist, then an author.

I won awards, got on the New York Times bestseller list; but I never cracked the ranks of the top reporters in Milwaukee. Though many former friends (and some who still are my friends) work there and love it, others simply learned that, after working at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, there nothing else higher to which they could aspire.

However, it was not losing the account that bothered me.

It will hurt my heart, although not my wallet, not to be featured in the newspaper whose readers I loved.

What wounds me was not being able to say goodbye.

Through that column, I've met good acquaintances and dear friends. I received 300 letters the day after I wrote about my husband's death, and 200 more the next day. Some of them were from readers who never agreed with a word I said. I answered every one personally.

It seems to me ungentle and discourteous to try to slide an individual -- despite how little esteem one might feel for that person -- under a rug, hoping no one will notice.

But that was always the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel way.

Years ago, when the Journal and Sentinel merged. a random hit list of reporters were eliminated. Some were so-so; some were excellent writers whose minds the paper simply couldn't control. They were given moments to pack a few cardboard boxes and escorted to the elevators by security guards, while their colleagues watched in silence. It was a sort of Joe McCarthy thing, the key word here being "silence."

No one dared speak for fear the ax would fall next on him, on her.

I was long-gone by then.

But twenty years ago, when I still worked there full-time, I was told that the newspaper's generous maternity leave would not apply to me because my newborn son was adopted, not... well, "real." However, the woman who had to tell me that soon quit her management job, because she found doing such things repugnant. She lost money and status, but gained tremendous respect.

I guess I did need a kick in the pants.

I'm steaming now; but I'll cool off.

My essays have been anthologized in twelve books over the past two years.

So I won't be silent. I'll still be in other newspapers, from Iowa to Maryland, will write novels for adults and teens and picture books for kids, and continue as an editor for Wondertime magazine and an occasional contributor to Parade magazine.

But if you're a reader who had your Sunday-morning coffee with me for all those years, and you see this, please listen.

I care for you more than you know, more than you'll ever know. In my time of shadow, you sustained me. In my time of harvest, you celebrated with me. I will never forget you; and I hope you will never forget me.

All things have a natural place of ending; and their ending does not invalidate their worth.

So,'bye Milwaukee.

No one writer is ever as important as a newspaper, and despite my chagrin at my impolitely engineered demise, I know you'll continue to rely on wonderful writers such as Whitney Gould and Tim Cuprisin and Joanne Weintraub, Gita Sharma Jensen and others.

The truly great columnist Molly Ivins died yesterday of breast cancer. And though I'm not fixin' to die for a long time coming, my last word in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel would have been to pay tribute to a writer who never used a Derringer to fire off a shot when a Colts Dragoon would do.

We should all learn a lesson from Molly and say what we mean without fear, before it's too late.

In the time I have left, I hope to write some things that provoke, some things that make people laugh and cry -- to go on, as I wrote in my first column, to do the verbal equivalent of singing and dancing.

It will just be on other stages.

with love,

Jackie M.

Yesterday, I wrote with grief after learning from a reader (instead of in a courteous note from my editor) that my column had been excised from my "home" newspaper, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I wrote in the haste of anger, because I was never given the chance to write a last column, saying goodbye to people for whom I was (or so they said) as necessary as a Sunday morning cup of coffee.

And then I went to lie down.

So many tough things have happened in the past few months that I've forgotten to collect and treasure the good ones.

Some are humble. It finally snowed; and I got out my cross-country skis and went down into the prairie with a joy I haven't felt in two years.

Some are truly exciting.

There's a review service every author absolutely dreads: Kirkus Reviews. These reviews are influential and seem to be written exclusively by trolls with tight shoes and bad hair. I've NEVER had a positive Kirkus review of any book, although a few contained backhanded compliments ("Her legions of fans will love THIS horse hockey puck!")

Today, for my first Young Adult novel, I got a great Kirkus review, my very first -- not a snarky word it in. It was snide in tone (remember, these are trolls!) but said the book would "fly off the shelves."

From this troll's mouth to God's ears.

My 3-year-old learned to write his name today. Granted, his name is Will, not Constantine... but that was a good thing.

I had a package of Hostess Sno-Balls (shelf life six months) and I could have eaten both, but only ate one.

My son learned he's being considered for a full-ride scholarship -- not to the university he wants desperately to attend, but a full ride is powerful stuff.

I'll miss my Sunday connection with the readers of Milwaukee. The manner in which the decision was made was calculated to make me feel past my prime, like a hack. Words hinting that I wasn't the breath of fresh air I once was were used.

But at the end of the day, my writing's getting better and better. I took out and looked over old reviews of my first novel 'The Deep End of the Ocean,' and they were FAR less complimentary than the reviews of my last adult novel, 'Cage of Stars.'

It's tomorrow that counts, not yesterday (I just made that up).

At least, I'm going to make it count.

There's nothing like a setback to set you up.

So I should thank The Milwaukee Journal. In fact, I do.

yours,

Jacquelyn Mitchard

If you want to experience true, stomach-churning, dry-mouth, muscle-ticcing, neck-aching stress, to argue bitterly with someone you normally hug, to feel about clean, quiet hotel rooms the way people feel about crowded cells in country jails, try this: Accompany your high-school senior to audition for a musical theatre program.

See twenty-eight talented teens beautifully coiffed and looking as though they carry red carpets with them wherever they go. Hear them warming up, sounding like Kristin Cheoweth and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Hear them play Chopin's Revolutionary Etude while your child plunks out 'The Circle of Life.'

Learn that of these twenty-eight kids, approximately one-third of one kid will be asked to enter the program, as there have been six audition dates before this one and five more to follow -- and the program is accepting four students of each gender.

Wonder about that advice you gave so freely, about following your heart, and see why your own circle of life might devour your tail.

Talk up the benefits of a career in cosmetic dentistry.

Offer green tea and sympathy. Wonder about giving pinot noir to a minor.

Talk to other mothers -- all wearing rings that cost more than your car -- about the seven colleges competing to give their sons and daughters full-ride scholarships.

Realize the truth that while there are nursing shortages and teaching shortages and even air-traffic controller shortages, there have never been nor will there ever be actor shortages.

See your child emerge from the audition hall. Ask questions. Get answers in the kind of monosyllables your child hasn't used since fourth grade.

Suffer.

Pray.

Bargain with fate -- your career for this career, your molar for this career, all your molars for... realize this is magical thinking.

Wonder if you know anyone famous.

Ride or fly home in silence, interrupted only by the blistering argument that erupts five minutes before you greet the rest of the family.

Wait for the mail carrier.

Bribe the mail carrier.

Check to see if the telephone is working more times than you have since you were sixteen and wondering if that guy really would call.

Check the website online and note that all the mothers with rings the size of your car now have sons and daughters who have received acceptance letters and full scholarships to twenty schools.

Realize you couldn't afford this anyhow.

Debate the moral rectitude of opening another person's mail.

Talk up the benefits of a career as a representative for professional athletes.

Wait until April, and not for taxes.

Hear your kid hit that high note for the first time.

Wish you could preserve that note under glass.

Wonder what's so darned hot about "the arts" anyhow.

Hope.

with best love,

Jackie M.

We drove around the corner, pulled our bags out of the car and walked down the street to The Palmer House, the ancient hotel where -- several thousand years ago -- I went to my prom.

It was a frigid night, after many like it: We were tired and sleet got into our eyes.

And I was in a nasty mood, having gotten a nasty review on my first novel for teens, after three great ones, (it really IS a good book!) and our son, who was on his way to auditions for yet another college, would rather have spent the evening with a pit viper than with his mother.

On the corner, we ran into a man. Snow was ground into the seat of his jeans. I fumbled for some bills; but I could tell even then that this guy wasn't going to find a shelter for the night. He was singing -- and he was singing beautifully. But you don't sing at 9 p.m. on a street corner, to no one, when it's ten degrees and you're wearing nothing but a blue-jean jacket and a sweatshirt over your jeans.

And I realized that even if I were to ask this guy if he would accept the overnight at a hotel room if I paid for it, he wouldn't. And of the twenty people who died last night in Chicago, of exposure to extreme cold, very likely he may have been one.

Of course, I felt like the luckiest person on earth. And my luck of late would have been the kind that would have made Nathan Detroit reconsider the oldest established permanent floating crap game in New York.

About twenty years ago, when things got me down, I used to say to myself, 'Today is the happiest day of someone's life. Today someone got a letter that changed everything. Today, a baby was born. Today, someone fell in love. Today, someone went at a challenge and nailed it. Today, when all hope for a great outcome was gone, someone found out it wasn't so bad as it seemed. Today, someone found out it was only a cyst."

Sometime along the line, I've stopped doing that. My focus has shifted to a fretfulness that makes me ashamed to be who I was. This sounds like wishful thinking, but the song that the homeless man was singing was the old Judy Garland standard 'Get Happy.'

Otherwise I might never have remembered what I remembered.

Last night in Chicago, I remembered.

I have the only thing I need.

One more chance.

See that face?

It's my youngest child and fifth son, Atticus.

A few days ago, I almost left the hair salon with half a haircut when my husband called me and said that our littlest boy had to be admitted to the hospital for a possible surgical drainage of his lymph node, caused by an unknown infection.

"What hospital?" I asked. It was foolish; but only two weeks ago, one of the closest friends I have had left that hospital -- but on a stretcher, her brain function reduced to reflexes after an event that somehow involved a loss of oxygen. It was also the hospital where, five years before, nurses and doctors worked like Titans to save the life of my older son after a complicated appendectomy.

Atticus likes my husband better.

I'm not kidding. He simply likes my husband better. But there was no way I was going to let my husband stay with him during a possibly extended hospital visit.

My husband is a good sleeper.

Atticus would have gone crawling down to the nurses' station, collecting impetigo germs at every foot (of course, Atticus can walk, but was too weak to do so.

When Atticus was born, one of the older kids bizarrely asked me, "If he died, would you feel the same way as you would about one of us?" It was as though Atticus was a true caboose, an add-on to the train and thus, somehow, less necessary to the whole. For a moment, I almost wondered if I would. And I never thought of that again.

I thought of it when I arrived at the hospital, to see Atticus' hand wrapped tight in gauze to hold in IV needle. I gathered him up. Although he usually struggles a little before he gives in -- Chris is his mommy - he was too weak to do that. He simply lay in my arms.

He lay in my arms for three days, too tired even to cry. I learned more about the poignant death of Anna-Nicole Smith than I knew about the deaths of my grandparents. Massive doses of antibiotics gradually brought down the swelling that made Atty appear to have three chins, two of them swollen and red.

On the day he ate a bite of pudding, I cheered. The nurses cheered. They were the same nurses who'd helped nurse Marty back to health years ago. And they were just as devoted.

We came home in time for his big sister's eighth birthday. Atticus was still, for a day, too weak to walk. But I had an answer to that random question asked me fifteen months ago. My heart has many rooms and if it were ever divided, it could not stand.

yours,
Jackie Mitchard

When

There was a Valentine's Day, about nine years ago, when all the souls in my house -- from my childcare helper to my part-time college-age assistant -- had just suffered a gruesome breakup with the people we all were sure were the loves of our lives.

For Sean, it was a girl named Rudy. She was a cute little vixen; but she would kiss and cuddle him and then give him the old "just pals" routine. He was leaving her so many notes and bouquets, he was like the stalking florist.

For me, it was the man with whom I'd fallen in love at first sight -- twice -- twenty years apart in time. At first we were sure. Then, we were madly sure, talking about mingling gene pools. Then, a few things happened (or didn't; and you can find out more about that by coming to my reading tomorrow night at Borders Bookstore on University Avenue in Madison, Wisconsin) and the taste of honey turned to Tabasco in our mouths. We couldn't say a nice thing to each other, until we finally said goodbye.

For Lilia, a Russian immigrant, a green-card marriage was only a cover for her requited (but several thousand mile distant) passion for a man who was both younger AND married.

"Is hopeless," she would say, as she tried to figure out how to pay her telephone bills.

All the while, the handsome guy in the photo (not the one with the monkey) was making glazed ornamental tiles for my house. He listened as Sean defamed the holiday, calling our combined household population The Ship of Fools.

That was February; Chris and I were married in May. The little guy with the monkey wouldn't make the scene for five years after that.

I still think that Valentines Day is just an excuse to sell jewelry, underwear and eat chocolate without fear, that it's sweeter for those between the ages of eight and eighteen, and over eighty, than for anyone else. When I see those commercials -- urging lovers to buy their Valentines everything from diamonds to a Lexus -- I wonder, who are these people?

I think, are there so many independently wealthy or fiercely successful people living quiet lives in my neighborhood that they can throw down five large for a necklace and not think about it?

When I am in Las Vegas, I have the same feeling. We're not hurting -- actually, in September, when we have three kids in college, we'll know what pain really is -- but the people walking through the Bellagio lobby have blue Tiffany bags the size of my microwave. What from Tiffany's could come in that big a bag? Or how many? And who's paying for it? Is this an expression of passion or simply someone strutting?

I don't know if I'll ever know what love really is; but I know it's not about Valentines Day, anymore than St. Patrick's Day is the measure of being Irish.

In my old neighborhood, local churches celebrated the Feast of St. Joseph -- often on the Friday after St. Patricks Day -- with what was called St. Joseph's Table. They filled their auditoriums with table after table of meatballs and spaghetti and sausage and pasta of all kinds, with cannolis and tutus and flaky pastries.

Any anyone could come to eat. It didn't matter if the person was a member of the parish, or even a Catholic. Everyone.

And I don't know what this has to do with the beginning of this rumination; but that did say something about being Italian. But it said more about being human.

yours,
Jackie M.

There was a Valentine's Day, about nine years ago, when all the souls in my house -- from my childcare helper to my part-time college-age assistant -- had just suffered a gruesome breakup with the people we all were sure were the loves of our lives.

For Sean, it was a girl named Rudy. She was a cute little vixen; but she would kiss and cuddle him and then give him the old "just pals" routine. He was leaving her so many notes and bouquets, he was like the stalking florist.

For me, it was the man with whom I'd fallen in love at first sight -- twice -- twenty years apart in time. At first we were sure. Then, we were madly sure, talking about mingling gene pools. Then, a few things happened (or didn't; and you can find out more about that by coming to my reading tomorrow night at Borders Bookstore on University Avenue in Madison, Wisconsin) and the taste of honey turned to Tabasco in our mouths. We couldn't say a nice thing to each other, until we finally said goodbye.

For Lilia, a Russian immigrant, a green-card marriage was only a cover for her requited (but several thousand mile distant) passion for a man who was both younger AND married.

"Is hopeless," she would say, as she tried to figure out how to pay her telephone bills.

All the while, the handsome guy in the photo (not the one with the monkey) was making glazed ornamental tiles for my house. He listened as Sean defamed the holiday, calling our combined household population The Ship of Fools.

That was February; Chris and I were married in May. The little guy with the monkey wouldn't make the scene for five years after that.

I still think that Valentines Day is just an excuse to sell jewelry, underwear and eat chocolate without fear, that it's sweeter for those between the ages of eight and eighteen, and over eighty, than for anyone else. When I see those commercials -- urging lovers to buy their Valentines everything from diamonds to a Lexus -- I wonder, who are these people?

I think, are there so many independently wealthy or fiercely successful people living quiet lives in my neighborhood that they can throw down five large for a necklace and not think about it?

When I am in Las Vegas, I have the same feeling. We're not hurting -- actually, in September, when we have three kids in college, we'll know what pain really is -- but the people walking through the Bellagio lobby have blue Tiffany bags the size of my microwave. What from Tiffany's could come in that big a bag? Or how many? And who's paying for it? Is this an expression of passion or simply someone strutting?

I don't know if I'll ever know what love really is; but I know it's not about Valentines Day, anymore than St. Patrick's Day is the measure of being Irish.

In my old neighborhood, local churches celebrated the Feast of St. Joseph -- often on the Friday after St. Patricks Day -- with what was called St. Joseph's Table. They filled their auditoriums with table after table of meatballs and spaghetti and sausage and pasta of all kinds, with cannolis and tutus and flaky pastries.

Any anyone could come to eat. It didn't matter if the person was a member of the parish, or even a Catholic. Everyone.

And I don't know what this has to do with the beginning of this rumination; but that did say something about being Italian. But it said more about being human.

yours,
Jackie M.

I always thought that, if I died and my friend Stacey's husband Mike died, my husband Chris could marry Stacey; and they could raise all our kids together.

I wouldn't be jealous, beyond the grave, because any guy who wasn't gay or blind couldn't set eyes on my pal Stace without falling in love with her.

She doesn't look this way now.

In a coma since December 20, after a brain event that took place in the hospital when she was admitted to be treated for strep, she is beginning to change from the assault to her brain. Her hands turn in, as my mom's did when she had a brain tumor; and her beautiful skin is taking a beating.

We all wonder how long Stacey will stay this way. We know God loved her enough to bring her the beautiful baby you see here with her, my godchild, Gaby. What we don't know are what you might call God's intentions -- if he intends the most loving mother on earth to be the most loving mother in heaven, a guardian angel to her little girl, or to get well.

We all know that it is out of our hands and all medical hands. Fate holds the cards. Time will tell how they are dealt. But when I see Stacey, although I still love the form of Stacey that is there, I don't see that form. I see this picture, one of my favorites, that sits on a shelf in my bedroom.

And I think of the old song lyrics..'Oh, but you're lovely/Never, ever change/Keep that breathless charm/Could you please arrange it/'Cause I love you/Just the way you look tonight.'

Whatever the future holds for Stacey, my beloved friend, who will turn 42 just a month before her daughter turns two, no matter how she changes, I want to give myself a gift.

I want to remember her that way, when her life with her husband Mike and their firstborn had just begun, and to be around her was to feel the nature of real bliss -- hard-won, long-awaited.

No one ever said it would be fair. But some events are crueler than others; and this one is the frosting on the cake.

I miss you, Stacey. Every birthday for twenty years, we sent you a bouquet of exotic flowers. For this year, I commissioned an artist to make an orchid out of some exotic clay, mounted in what looked like "real water." I don't know why.

Perhaps I thought that this was a flower that would never, ever fade.

It never will, nor will the Stacey who crosses my dreams, light as thistle and lovely as morning.

Jackie M.