"What did you write about in your last column -- washing dishes or something? Ordinary stuff. I like it. I mean, it isn't fine literature. It's not Tolstoy. But it's a decent read," the lawyer said.
"No, it's not fine china. I'm more a melamine kind of girl," I joked. Yet his comment stung for reasons about which I wasn't quite sure.
He's right, of course. Though my first editors may have felt they were reading War and Peace in my lengthier early submissions, the task given me was not to write about the powers of darkness. My commission was personal interest. Oh, I've written serious pieces over the last seven years, but none garnered more responses than when I wrote of my cat, Floyd, catching himself on fire. Twice.
At times, I have something to say, and other times, I have to say something because a deadline looms and the cursor blinks and dares me to see whether Wendy's is hiring. So I manage to string some words together about my dog, my mama, a date, my day or the latest debacle at the DMV, and hit "SEND," then wonder what is wrong with me that I just wrote about my dog, my mama, a date, my day or the latest debacle at the DMV. And then Thursday rolls around, and folks read their papers and tell me how they related because they experienced the same thing with their dog, their mama, a date, their day or the DMV.
I can't write about eating petit fours at a Parisian café. Well, I could, but I'd be totally making it up because I've never been across the pond, and I've never knowingly eaten a petit four, and apparently I have never even typed it before because when I typed "pettifore" SpellCheck burped and called me a fraud. The Victor Hugos of the world will have to write about petit fours. And it's likely that the Hugos can't write about life on the farm with Uncle Ronnie or snakes in guinea coops or the solace of handwashing Mason jar stemware.
Perhaps in the back of each of our minds lurks a wish to be the pinnacle of whatever it is we are, or think we are. Then a day comes when we realize, or others inform us, that we are not what we -- or they -- hoped we'd be. It's sobering. Maturing. And liberating, in ways.
'Cause it turns out that what we may see as our weakness may be what others enjoy most about us. Maybe it's in the moments we think we don't measure up when we're actually the thing we were meant to be all along: ourselves.
So while we're making New Year's resolutions to be thinner, better, faster or smarter than we currently are, here's hoping we also cherish the beauty of our here and now and celebrate the ordinary in every moment.
Tolstoy is dead. I suspect he wouldn't be averse to washing a little melamine about now.
NAN Our Town on 01/03/2019