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I received my copy of In an Instant: A Family's Journey of Love and Healing, from a publisher. It sat on my shelf for a while because I was afraid it would induce my gag reflex. Bob Woodruff had just been tapped for the coveted evening anchor
position at ABC news after the death of Peter Jennings. His wife Lee
had moved around the world, packing and unpacking boxes at multiple
destinations. Suddenly one morning when Lee was at Disney with her
children, she received a call that shatters her world in an instant. I figured it would be some sickeningly sweet story of the selfless wife (she's all blonde and pretty on the cover), the understanding and self sufficient children and the courageous husband.
What I found instead was a candid account of what a normal (well except for the whole being-a-network-anchorman part) family does when a crisis impales itself in the heart of their world. When Lee received the phone call that Bob had been seriously injured in Iraq, she didn't react logically. She didn't intuitively know what to do. She went for a walk and called her friend Melanie to figure out what to do next. This is what I would probably do, substituting drinking a bottle of wine for the walking and Amy for Melanie.
I naturally connected more with Lee's part of the story. But Bob's portion served as the anchor, no pun intended...well, maybe, of the story, providing the timeline and historical perspective to their lives. I saw so many similarities between Lee and Bob and me and my husband (except the whole evening-news-anchor-dining-with-presidents thing.) She picked up and moved according to the whims of his career. She didn't do it stoically and angelically...she sometimes got pissed off that Bob was at a 5-star hotel in Dubai while she was managing moving crews and trying to find the basic necessities in boxes.
He got to respond to the allure of the road, while she was in the trenches making lunches, chauffeuring four kids and trying to establish relationships in each new location.
At one point, when times are tough and Bob says, "We are a team!" I wanted to say, "Hey, that's our line!" It's the mantra we have used over and over again from our first year of marriage when my mother-in-law was dying of cancer to the births of our children to my two major depressive episodes.
Lee doesn't pull any punches...even when they might land on her. She doesn't hide her imperfections under a veil of justifications. She tells it like it was...even when it was less than flattering.
When I read that Lee was reading an unnamed book about a school shooting (which I surmised was We Need to Talk About Kevin), I wanted to rip it out of her hands and tell her, "That book is way too dark and deep for you right now. Read something by Anne Lamott. Laugh and be inspired. Don't read a book that is going to make you question everything you believe in as a mother!" As the book progressed, I felt more and more like Lee was a friend and that I should put a casserole in the oven to bring to her children. I wanted to help her and be there for her. And I wanted to thank her for sharing her incredibly painful journey...because who knows, someday my life might change in an instant.
Di
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