What Qualifies as Honorable Mention?

As we await the results of the 2019 annual column-writing contest, NSNC member Annette Januzzi Wick reflects on her 2018 honorable mention.

By Annette Januzzi Wick
NSNC Member

In the hotel ballroom in Cincinnati, Dave Lieber, master of ceremonies at the National Society for Newspaper Columnists’ annual banquet, stood at the podium and announced the winners in the annual column contest categories of A, B, and C. Next up was Category D.

That was my category. In my black, sleeveless blouse, my armpits began to sweat and I was sure someone could see through the armholes to my thumping heart.

I had entered the contest by submitting essays from the blog I wrote over a ten-year period about a daughter’s slow waltz with her mother’s dementia. I stopped updating the blog recently and wondered if any award mattered given that my mother now lay close to death.

As the announcer retrieved the envelopes for Category D, I crossed both sets of my fingers as they rested beneath the banquet table. Under my breath, I said, “Please don’t let me get honorable mention.”

In my lifetime, I had been a collector of honorable mentions. They stuck to me like lost dryer sheets. Every year in high school, I was nominated as one of six girls who would vie for Homecoming Attendant or Queen. But I was never voted into the top three to earn a place on court.

Later, as I moved on from minor letdowns, I fell in love with a man and learned he had been divorced before we met. I married him, but six years later, he died. I remarried, this time to a man who also lost his first wife to cancer. I took on the mantle of second wife, second time, like a woman who was always a bridesmaid and never a bride.

My profession was not exempt from this misfortune. Three years in a row, I was nominated in CityBeat’s annual Best of Cincinnati contest for Local Author. But the prize eluded me. I embodied Susan Lucci, Erica Kane on All My Children, who waited nineteen years to win a daytime Emmy. Sadly, I still had a few years to catch up to her.

I won an honorable mention award from Writer’s Digest for an excerpt from my memoir, I’ll Be in the Car, and another honorable mention from Sinclair College Writing Competition for my novel-in-waiting, Somewhere Her Voice.

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists (NSNC) had opened its contest in January, with winners to be announced in July during its annual meeting. I should enter, I thought, reasoning the event would take place in my hometown.

But was my writing on par with national columnists who wrote columns daily—for the discerning public? My blogs were personal—and I had yet to edit them for professional consumption. I devised a few other excuses to not enter. I needed time to care for a mother, who endured a number of non-threatening maladies, and I needed to spend my attention on a dog that required medication every two hours. And I had a trip planned to travel overseas. I conveniently forgot to submit my entries.

Following my flight back home to the states, I learned the NSNC contest deadline had been extended. I worked all night to edit my entries and shape them into the proper format. I pushed the button and said, “There. As long as I don’t win honorable mention.”

It was either go big or go home empty.

One month before the annual meeting, I received a call that changed the course of my time. My mother had fallen at her care home and fractured her hip. I pushed thoughts about the contest and my attendance at the conference to the back of my mind.

Over a period of eight days, I sat bedside with my mother, watching her grow smaller, my fingers tracing around her lips where her smile once opened wide. My siblings arrived for a visit the weekend of the conference. It was their time to sit with my mother. It was their turn, too. I didn’t need to be in the company of a sibling who would shoot orders—contradictory to mine as caregiver—at the staff and leave the city without speaking to me.

With hamstrings aching from sitting for long stretches with my mother, I showed up at the conference wearing black—and a brave face. When Saturday evening rolled around, though, I felt compelled to be at my mother’s side. I texted to my husband, What should I do? He wrote, Everyone is fine. Be where you want to be.

I stayed.

When the award ceremony started, I envisioned my mother as the champion of my writing. She would want me here. Maybe she was looking over my shoulder, or giving my entry a little nudge for the win, or second, or third. My hopes rose. Even if I was losing my mother, I might win something in this contest.

At dinner, I sat next to a former Detroit journalist. “What’s been the most impactful time you’ve spent at your mother’s care home?” he asked. Pushing around the drooping salad leaves on my plate, I avoided talk about my mother and bragged about her caregivers. “They are so brave. They go beyond anything I’ve done for my mother.”

Then I remembered the advice Nick Clooney had given us at lunchtime. “Most of the lovely dreams you still harbor won’t come true. Most of the goals toward which you strive will remain unrealized,” he said, and in the end, “it was always the journey that counted. Every moment of it. Every mile of it.”
Most of the goals toward which you strive will remain unrealized,” he said. In the end, he admitted, “It was always the journey that counted. Every moment of it. Every mile of it.”

Next, the A, B, and C category winners were shuffled on and off the podium and had their photos taken with the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award-winning columnist, Connie Schultz. My palms were sweaty. I wiped them on my napkin and on my skirt.

“Next up: Category D,” the host said. “General Interest – Online, Blog and Multimedia Columns – Under 100,000 Monthly Unique Visitors.”

My face flushed. The number of monthly unique visitors to my blog fell way below the threshold of 100,000. Did I really belong in that room, let alone the contest?

“Just please no honorable mention,” I said quietly, right up until the announcer read, “…And honorable mention for Category D goes to Annette Ja-cca-nu-zzi Wick.”

There it was. Another honorable mention. And my middle name mispronounced.

In a room full of colleagues, I was recognized. But I was crushed—not in ego—in spirit.

We all want to believe our writing matters. In some small way, our writing saved someone’s life or at least made a difference. I had thought if I won first, second, or third, the award would be an affirmation of the difference I made in my mother’s life.

My legs trembled as I walked in high heels toward the podium and listened to a round of teasing from Dave. “How is your last name pronounced?” he asked. “It’s like Jacuzzi, but not really,” I said. I felt a little like Alexander Hamilton and those around him singing, The world’s gonna know your name.

I walked off the stage and had my picture taken with Connie Schultz. At the evening’s conclusion, I left the conference room with my lips quivering. I bit down on my bottom lip to keep from crying, but not because I was a sore loser. In my car driving the ten minutes home, I let loose a tidal wave of tears. I tired of asking myself if I had done enough—not related to writing. No, I tired of asking two questions I had been asking for so many years. “Is Mom comfortable?” “How can I let her go?”

Five days after the conference ended, the answers were, “No” and “She will let you know it is time.”

Death had been my greatest instructor, first as I sat with my grandfather the morning he died, next at my husband’s side after he lost his cancer battle, and finally at my father’s bedside when Parkinson’s took him from my mother and me.

Looking back now on that night of the awards ceremony, I acquired more than a mention. I won a full-blown badge of honor—for honoring my mother’s life.

***

Annette Januzzi Wick is a writer, teacher, and author of I’ll Be in the Car. She facilitates craft and outreach writing workshops in Greater Cincinnati. Visit annettejwick.com to read about her forthcoming collection of essays titled,I’ll Have Some of Yours: What my mother taught me about dementia, cookies, music, the outside, and and finding the best care.