Bombeck, Blogs, Balance, and Barf

"Uncle Rod" wrote this comment about my last post:

Well, I have to admit that I have many times wondered at the secret juicey stories that DON'T get written about !!I've been in yoiur house and know some that don't get written down. (Except maybe in your daughters' diary...)Those bad hair days, stupid comments, embarring events... the ones you choose you politely overlook or that get edited by the perpetrator...Someday one of your kids will take revenge and probably write a book of some of those things you didn't include...

It so happens that I have been thinking along these same lines myself recently. A friend of a friend went to a writers conference, I was told not long ago, and there they heard Erma Bombeck's husband and children talk about what life with Erma was really like.

I thought, hmmm, what would my husband/kids say in a similar situation?

I think my family would say, mostly, that the stuff I write is accurate. But they know that there's plenty that I don't write about. What isn't accurate is the conclusions people draw from the relatively little information they have.

In my newspaper column, I write about 1200 words a month. Well, believe me, you can describe only the teeniest slice of life in a family of eight in 1200 words a month. Yet regular readers feel like they know every detail of our lives from these monthly bites.

Since I like to write essays where everything is tied in a neat bow at the end, I choose a topic where things actually turned out. For instance, if you recall, the story of the two cats and how we ended up keeping them indoors. A friend of mine wrote to me after that and said that my life must be full of tidy endings, or something like that. Well. That was one tidy and happy ending among a hundred loose ends and unresolved situations that month.

I suppose I blog about 1000 words a week. Again, that lets me be very selective with the topics and details.

I recall reading that the old Jewish scholars would interpret the Scriptures by what was written, and also by what wasn't written. And that was why it was said of Melchisidec that he was without beginning of days or end of life, or father and mother--because these details were left out of his story, and that was taken as significant.

There is a delicate balance here between not enough honesty and too much.

There are difficult people in my life I won't be able to write about until they die. There are church situations that would be gratifying to the flesh but completely wrong to expose to the world. There are faults and sins of my own that I don't care to publish.

When I have to throw up, I shut the bathroom door, turn on the fan, and flush it away when I'm done. You don't want to be there. If you're a very very close friend or sister, I'll let you be there, maybe, to hold my head and hand me tissues.

Just because you have never seen me throw up, doesn't mean that I never do. And believe me, you don't want to see me throwing up in print either.

Quote of the Day:
"There's something I've always "wanted" to do but it was against my better judgment, you know: Set an alarm clock for 12:00 and hide it in the pulpit."
--Emily