“A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.”—Dolly Parton

Greetings Dear Ones!

Well, with all the shite going on all over the world, I thought some talk of a good old-fashioned purge might be just the thing to cheer us up.

Some people think a colonoscopy is a real bummer but I disagree. I had my first one in December and, after all the dread and attempts to delay it for more than ten years, it was not actually the ordeal I anticipated. I wouldn’t say it was the BEST experience, but given how the rest of 2025 treated me, it was up there! (Go ahead, Prudence, roll your eyes.)

I embraced it like I do the most awful chores—When You Can’t Get Out Of It, Get Into It!” This mentality works well on things like cleaning out the chicken coop and dealing with mangled zippers on snowpants, so why not an evening of explosive diarrhea? Just sigh deeply, roll up your sleeves, and Get On With It until it is over. You’ll thank yourself later.

So! I went to the pharmacy, collected the gallon of sea water I was assigned to consume, chose a period drama set in the time of cholera to watch on Netflix, cleaned the bathroom, stocked up on electrolytes, and set my timer to go off every eight minutes to remind me to drink another eight ounces of the vile juice that was supposed to make my intestines gleam like a freshly-scoured kitchen sink. I also got out some knitting. It turns out that the knitting was not necessary. I hardly had time to count any stitches and it’s probably best NOT to have two sharp spears on the couch when one is trotting laps to and from the potty and sitting quickly.

My inner health nut was excited. “We are going to use this cleanse to jump start a whole new regime!” she announced in perky tones. “We’re going to lose weight, eat great, get fit, and really turn this ship around!”

“This “ship” has been taking on water and listing towards starboard for some time now,” said Prudence, looking sourly at my midsection.

“No problem!” chirped my inner gym girl, bouncing up to stand with Health Nut. “We got this! It gonna be great! It’s time to get all the bilge pumped out and take on a new cargo of Ambition stacked on racks of lean muscle. We’ll feel so light and bright! I’ll get a work-out schedule ready!” She started doing yoga poses mid-sentence.

Even Prudence got mildly optimistic, which is rare for her.

“It’s just like going to Confession,” she said brightly. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness. You will get rid of all the clog of past sins and when you emerge, you can go forth and never eat another bad thing again. You could even add a little prayer to your fasting and offer it up for the souls in Purgatory.”

My inner fifth grader ignored them. She was begging me to pick all the “organic” stickers off the bananas and eat as many as I could (stickers that is, not bananas). Unfortunately, like all my best creative ideas, I should have done it earlier. Once my body got the message to reverse all the gears, it didn’t want to take on any extra art projects. We were in “exit only” mode.

“Now we don’t get to be like our friend T,” sobbed the disappointed fifth grader.

T had told me that at his last colonoscopy, he was surprised to find his doctor in the recovery room. At first, he assumed the worst. One rarely sees doctors in the recovery rooms—usually it’s just a kind nurse offering you ginger ale and crackers. But there was the doctor, waving a cell phone, and telling my groggy pal that he needed to see the picture he had taken. It was of a smiley face. The camera had spotted an “organic” sticker stuck to the wall of my friend’s intestine. The letter “O” for “organic” was a large smiley face. The doctor said in all his years of practice, he had never seen that before.

Evidently, my friend eats not just the fruit but peel and stickers also.

“I don’t understand this story at all,” snaps Prudence, shaking her head. “How did the sticker survive the bowel prep? How did it survive the digestive enzymes, which were clearly strong enough to destroy the fruit, including the peel? Did he not CHEW the sticker? Does he even chew the fruit?”

“I wish someone could find a large smile inside of me!” pouts the fifth grader.

“They’ll probably find your whole head up there,” snaps Prudence. “You can smile for the camera then!”

The evening passed in a hurry. I didn’t have as much time as I thought I would to watch the drama set in the time of cholera, once my own dysentery hit. I found it safer to just keep the same seat, after a while, rather than attempting precarious voyages to the couch. I amused myself by tuning in to various news networks on my phone and literally crapping myself as they made their commentaries. I took savage delight in being able to do (literally) what I usually feel like doing when I hear the news these days. Apart from a few griping pains early on, the prep was really not too bad and rather quickly over. After about three hours, I felt safe enough to go to bed on actual sheets, rather than plastic bags. I’ve heard others sometimes have a much rougher time than I did and that’s too bad. Maybe I was lucky.

“I thought you were going to genuinely suffer,” muttered Prudence. “This was too easy. You didn’t save a single soul, if you ask me.”

I didn’t care. I saved my own ass and was grateful.

The next morning, I went to the hospital. No souls were saved there either. Kind people gave me a soft bed with a heated blanket. A nurse slipped a needle in my arm so skillfully I didn’t really notice. A nice young man asked me to count backwards from ten, which became stupendously hard to do after seven.

Then I woke up from an amazing nap to a kind face offering me ginger ale and crackers.

“Did you find any smiles?” I asked. She looked puzzled.

“Just two polyps.”

“I don’t want to go home,” I slurred. “I want to stay here now. This was the best nap ever. This place is like a spa. I get to lie down and I’m so nice and warm and everyone is so nice to me! Thank you!”

It turns out that recently anesthetized Nancy is a lot like drunk Nancy—she’s a friendly little muppet (who now actually knows how Real muppets feel), who cannot stop talking and gushing about how much she loves everyone and everything.

“She’s MESSY,” says Prudence with sincere disdain.

I took the rest of the day off. Furry, somewhat domesticated animals kept me company and together we watched that period drama set in the time of cholera. I managed to knit entire rows without having to recount stitches or run to the bathroom or come back and sit on the needles. Life was quiet for a day. I loved it. (You know you’ve had quite a year when a Colonoscopy stands out as one of your Best Days.)

“Stay CLEAN!” said all my inner housekeepers and gym trainers and dolphin trainers and Prudence. “Stay Clean!”

But Christmas and the annual Bell family “Festivus” galloped up to the gate soon after and I polluted myself thoroughly with Good Cheer and all the traditional delights of feast days that make Repentance so worthwhile come January. I managed to lurch towards the finish line of 2025 clogged with plenty of regrets in the end. “All things in Moderation, including Moderation,” says Ben Franklin smugly to a snarling Prudence.

I hope you are taking Good Care of yourselves, Dear Ones.

Just think…somewhere in this world full of mayhem…there is a person who’s job it is to look up the back sides of hundreds of patients (and people like my brother who once had to do his prep on Superbowl Sunday for a Monday morning procedure and couldn’t help treating himself to a few hot wings during the prep) and deal with all sorts of horrors we cannot imagine…and one day, quite unexpectedly, he found a Smile.

And somewhere, perhaps to this day, there is a man who is so excited about his organic fruit, that he even eats the stickers. And both people are now forever joined in a story that spreads that smile a little further. We don’t even have to Create the Good. We just have to notice it.

May smiles find you, even in the darkest places. May you keep Mending. Thank you for your Good Work!

I love you Sew much!

Yours aye,

Nancy