This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way.
The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q.
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Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer. Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs.
Learn more and take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get RealaboutskinCancer.com. Yeah. You've watched racing.
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Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. Up next, another story from our regular contributor out in Kodiak Island in Alaska.
Leslie Leland Fields. Leslie's the author of the phenomenal book, Write Your Story, Change Your Life. And today she shares with us a deeply personal story about a woman who inspired one of the tales from that book. Take it away, Leslie. The glass doors sigh open.
and the attendant glances as I enter. She nods, recognizing me, because every day for nearly two weeks, I've been striding through those doors, past the rows of all the residents. Most of them were slumped over their wheelchairs. At this day, Did one sad man look up and look? and wave as I passed?
I've flown down from my home in Alaska. Here to Indiana. To accompany my best friend Linda, who has stage four ovarian cancer. but she's not in this rehab hospital for her cancer. She was on her way to her chemo appointment.
When she fell face first onto her concrete driveway. And as if to prove that suffering has no limit. Her spine was crushed, and now she lies in that hospital bed. Her face is bruised, her neck held by a brace. How do we want to live?
The years that were given. Every morning at home, four loons swoop in loops by the shore. Their song, the voice of fog, drifting across the water. Many days I walk by them deaf. ears tuned to the cacophony of my own worries.
But if I stop and listen to their whispering hoots, my lungs open like wings. and I swear I can fly. This summer, I watched the spiders. I counted 14 outside my four front windows, weaving maps and traps of sustenance. This week, in rehab, Linda told me about the blue jay, how it perched at her window, peering at her solemnly for nearly a half hour as she gazed back in delight.
Each day that I'm there, we sing past the pain. and the cement walls. are voices seeking heaven. And Now I must leave after nearly two weeks. I have to go back home.
Mm-hmm. I'll be back, I tell her. I know she has at least six more months.
So I do not expect the call. that comes a week after I leave the rehab hospital. Her hands and feet are swelling. She's not eating. The doctor says she's nearing the end, her brother tells me.
voice thick with sorrow. Should I come back? No, Leslie. She's so tired. Ah, Linda might be at peace, but I am not.
The day after the call from her brother, I'm flying back to Alaska and I'm dreading the three flights that will take until midnight. I find my seat on the plane knowing I'm flying in the wrong direction. But We don't take off. We end up sitting for an hour on the tarmac till finally the pilot comes on. We'll have to de-plane.
and wait for another flight later in the day. I'm sure my heavy heart broke the plane.
So instead of flying all day, I'm grounded all day, just waiting in an airport terminal. I'm neither home. nor with Linda. Is this waiting space a purgatory? While I am waiting and pacing, My phone rings.
It's Linda. Her voice is weak, but it's her. Leslie. Where are you? What are you doing?
How are you? She asks. as if I'm the one pinned to a bed and a brace. We talk now about dying. She's ready, she says.
She wants Jesus to take her home. She wants to dance. I tell her it's not fair. She's going to get there ahead of me. She's going to learn all the cool moves before me.
We laugh. We don't know how to say goodbye, but we try. I hang up and hold on to my phone. Just pacing the concourse, my hands knotted in prayer but grateful prayer. Just playing over our conversation in my mind and wiping tears that won't stop.
40 minutes go by, and my phone rings again. It's Linda. She is a message to send on to all those in the writing community that we lead together. Thank them, would you? For all the love and support they've shown me all these last two years.
And would you tell them to keep writing their stories? Because I truly matter, she says. Two calls. My heart is full. and breaking.
Now Three more hours go by. My phone rings again. Linda's voice is even weaker, but decisive. She has one more thing to tell me, Leslie. I've set aside money for a scholarship fund for writers.
for those who need to write their stories. who need to heal like I have. This call is short. It's the last call she makes. Three days later, Linda dies.
I was supposed to be flying. I was supposed to be flying all day long into the night. If my plane had not been grounded, I would have missed those three calls. What a conspiracy of mercy this was for both of us. And what about you?
Who have you lost? What miracles have you seen even in the losing? Who have you opened your heart to? The afflictions and wonders of life have no single address, nor a single tongue. They visit and speak to us all, but no one promises will be awake enough to hear it.
and alive enough to answer it. We can glance at the loons or the careful common spider in our corner window and still not see. A rainbow can shower prisms upon our front yard, and our back is turned. A call can come in from an unknown number and we silence it. We can be too busy to visit a friend in the hospital.
We don't mean to turn away. We don't plan on living frantic, overscheduled lives. We've all caught ourselves side-eyed in the morning mirror, wondering. Who is that? How did she get so old?
The poet Mary Oliver writes her dying wish. When it's over, I'll I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom. taking the world into my arms. I do want to take the world into my arms as long as I can.
I do want to stay that child bride, still married to amazement.
So I write. I keep on writing. Everywhere I go, I carry an invisible pen in my hand. What must be seen? What must be said?
Who can I love? What can I pass on of this piercing, achingly sacred life?
So that we both, writer and reader, can still see the spider on its silk. The blue jay at the window, that pale man in pajamas who waved at me. And Linda. in her hospital bed. I see her there still.
Lifting her faltering arms to hold her phone, her swollen finger. Punching my number three times near the day of her own dying. Do you see her there too? In each of those calls, she has a message for every one of us. Take the world into your arms.
while you can. And a special thanks, as always, to Leslie Leland Fields for sharing not just her friend Linda's story. But in the end, her own, and why she writes. How do we want to live the years we're given? She asks early on, and And the last thing that Linda did with her life A scholarship for writers, she tells her friend she has set that up.
She's thinking of others. Even in her final moments. What a great way to live. It's what we do here on our American stories, what we love doing. The story of Linda, the story of Leslie Leland Fields here.
on our American stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint.
It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. Spending time outdoors, then let's talk about skin cancer.
Non-melanoma skin cancers, or NMSCs, including basal cell carcinoma and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, are the most common cancers in the U.S. and can become harder to treat if left undetected. That's why sun protection and timely detection matter. Our sponsor, Regeneron, is raising awareness about advanced NMSCs. Learn more.
And take the pledge to see a dermatologist annually at Let's Get RealaboutskinCancer.com. You've watched racing.
Now get behind the wheel. At Kaizen Autosport Racing School in VIR, professional race drivers teach you how to drive faster, safer, and with more confidence on one of America's legendary racetracks. Never driven on track? We'll get you started. Already experienced, we'll take you to the next level.
Ready to race? Earn your competition license and learn real wheel-to-wheel racecraft. Stop watching, start driving. Go to racevir.com. That's racevir.com.
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