Dashing my dreams in Dayton

“You really have a way of getting people to spill their life stories,” Newfound Friend Number Two remarked while sitting in a Marriott Hotel lobby in Dayton, Ohio last week. This was in response to the rather innocuous question of why did you move from Colorado to Asheville? Her answer had everything to do with death and dying. She was caring for an aging-out-of-life parent and a spouse (whom she still loves, so no upside there) who has six months to live. As the conversation grew, so did my awe. I don't have a nurturing bone in my body, I confessed to this friend who was a stranger not ten minutes before.

“But you have three kids!” she scoffed. “Of course you're a nurturer.” 

 

Oh honey, if you only knew. 

 

Newfound Friend Number One shared the story of a brain injury her husband sustained at a construction site. Not an ultra-debilitating brain injury, but bad enough. It wasn't due to a fall from a collapsible scaffold. Nor was it a head-hit from an errant crane. It was an act of God. While hanging a bigger-than-life-sized crucifix, the cable snapped and down they went. She weeps a lot. I witnessed it. Not, she claims, because of her life but because of the HRT.

 

Newfound Friend Number Three who protected her loved ones from an in-house grizzly bear (for real, not a code word for a family member) by locking herself in the bathroom, resides in rural Virginia amongst a slew of less ferocious animals, and does a really impressive contortion of character when given a mic.

 

I watched the UConn vs Iowa women’s basketball semi-final with Number Four, a woman from Newtown, Connecticut. Yes, that Newtown. The one where the most heinous of humans slaughtered a school-full of children, forever scarring every single resident of the once obscure town. But before long we were connecting on a completely different level – laughing as we shared stories of our sordid youth and (lovingly) rolling our eyes about the youth we in turn had raised. 

 

Along came more and more Newfound Friends including the travel writer from Atlanta who apologized on behalf of her parents for gracing her with the name of a stripper; the proudly-confident, fluorescent-pink haired voice-over professional from Oregon; the Cincinnati mother who, against (almost) all odds, birthed an IUD baby – kept it, loved it, had two more; the trans man from Boston who self-deprecatingly laughed his way through the absurdity of his newfound body.

 

As well as author Anna Quindlen, actor Kathy Kinney, and slam poet Barbara Fant, I met a cat/dog (take your pick) woman with synesthesia (google it) who admitted that despite growing up in the same county as I, got the heebie-jeebies looking at my purple sweater with its big, bold orange flowers. There was the one who proposed to her spouse on Leap Day in the tail end of the last century (still married) and appeared on E. Jean Carroll’s talk show at the same time I was working at CNBC. I probably wrote the promo copy. I was sure I had bored the asymmetrical-haired woman from California with my Taylor Swift ticket acquisition story until she handed me a friendship bracelet (look up the TS / friendship bracelet correlation if you don’t inherently know this) adorned with four white beads: 

E   B   W   W

 

Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop

 

And that's where I was with my newfound friends. 

Last fall my Moth-winning, story-telling cousin, Karen, asked if I wanted to attend this event with her. I responded with a resounding YES, just as long as we can have separate rooms. You know, the sharing of snores, fans, and bathrooms can foil the best of friendships. 

 

Erma Bombeck has been my idol for as long as I can remember – I’ve read all of her books multiple times and at different stages of life beginning when I was a teenager torturer, right through to the years when I became a torturee.

 

I hate to think there’s anyone out there who hasn’t been touched by this incredible writer, but just in case…the upshot is that over a span of 30 years beginning in the mid-sixties, Erma wrote about life as a suburban housewife and mother back when it wasn’t in vogue to poke fun at those (including oneself) who chose that path. She was funny, smart, inspirational, cutting-edge, and oh, so profoundly human. 

 

For as long as I have professed to be a writer, I’ve been inspired by this plaque hanging above my desk: 

Gotta admit, I was nervous in the midst of these people. Sure I can write. I pen a blog and post it to Facebook, sweating it out as I count my likes. I can whip up a tear-jerker of a eulogy for someone I don't even know. I can get a kid into college with a killer essay (their moral issue, not mine). I can write ad copy for products I would never use, websites for sites I would never visit, birthday poems for those turning 21, 50, and hopefully 100 (my mother is currently 98.5 years old). But put me with some 400 random strangers, all of whom are legit writers, and my knees quake way worse than the tremor that hit my home state on day two of the conference. 

Even since my first piece was featured in the Oreland Sun back in second grade, I've dreamed of becoming a published author. (Note below the obvious reason for not aspiring to become a poet.)

Tommy got a brand new gun,

Let's go out and have some fun.

Christmas is a time of giving, 

And I'm so glad that I am living. 

When I attend my class reunions, which I always do, somewhere between "How many kids do you have?" and "Are your parents still alive?" comes the inevitable "Have you written your novel yet?"

I've written three. They're all incarcerated in my computer and will never see the light of day. 

I felt totally out of my league at this workshop, surrounded by so many masterful writers. Still, I got to my classes early, took copious notes, jotted down meaningful messages, and didn't play a single game of Words with Friends during any session. 

"So what was your biggest takeaway from the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop?" my friend texted upon my return. 

"I'll get back to you on that," I answered.

I've been mulling it over for a few days and finally saw that lightbulb icon flashing above my head. 

I didn't learn a thing about sentence structure or grammar nor did I figure out what a dangling participle is. But I did learn something way more important. 

It's okay if we're not the exact version of the writer we dreamed of becoming our whole live-long lives. It's okay and perhaps even necessary to pirouette, to pivot, to rewrite our goals.

And if we cut ourselves a break and stick with what we do best then maybe, just maybe, when we meet our maker, whoever he, she, they, or it turns out to be -- we will finally find peace within our prowess. If our words touched even one single soul, stirred one heart, changed one perspective, or made one human smile, then we have done what we were put on this earth to do. Even if we're not the most published, the most popular, or the most talked about writer in the history of the world.

I learned that as we bumble our way through to the pinnacle of our pens, not to get stuck on the I'll never be and the I wish I were voices running rampant in our heads, but rather to embrace the I am. I AM a writer and so are all those newfound friends of mine. We are witty, weird, wacky, wordy, whimsical, wayward, wise, and wonderful writers. 

However we craft our words, whether it be in the form of a novel, a poem, a podcast, a Moth story, an essay, a memoir, a speech, a Substack, a news article, an ad campaign, a TikTok, or a blog born while sipping bourbon in a hotel bar, we all have the power to make the world a better place.

And that, my friends is quite a gift.

Hello Mary Lu

I lost Mary Lu somewhere in the shuffle of life. 

 

But forever etched in my mind is the image of her laughing, dancing and toasting my happiness at my wedding almost 35 years ago.

 

“I told you that you’d get what you always wanted,” she said. 

Mary Lu and I met when we were both working at TV Guide magazine. With its intense deadlines, surges of stress followed by incongruous down time, infuriating computer crashes, and long hours legitimizing a short four-day work week, it was the kind of job that artfully converted co-workers into the best of buddies. Most of us were young and single and bonded over the kind of fun you can only have in your 20s. 

 

Mary Lu and I were fun-chasers to the nth degree. 

 

TV Guide believed itself so essential to life in the 80s that whenever it snowed we were put up at a hotel around the corner from the office. Not for our personal safety of course, but as assurance that we wouldn’t use icy streets as an excuse to miss work the following day. The mere possibility of a printing delay was the only justification Walter Annenberg needed to pick up the hefty tab that we ran up while eating, drinking and canoodling at the St. David’s Inn. Mary Lu and I loved those snowy nights, bellying up to the bar long after our co-workers bedded down for the night, sipping our vodka tonics, flirting with out-of-town salesmen who swore they weren’t married and sharing the dreams of our future selves. 

 

Mary Lu was the kind of person who brought out my wild and crazy side. Not that I have ever needed external encouragement – but when adventure offers its hand I rarely think twice. I just reach out and then hold on for dear life. Beyond our snowy escapades, we spent many a night searching for love in all the right places with all the wrong people. We circled Philadelphia and its suburbs, frequenting night clubs and parties, laughing, dancing, sharing nachos at Bennigan’s and hot dogs at Phillies games. 

 

But Mary Lu was so much more than fluff and fun. Her heart was pure gold with a soul to match. She lived with her parents and a bunch of siblings who rotated in and out of the house. No family member, and possibly no one in the world was more important to her than her mentally-disabled brother, Sean. After her parents died, she became his primary caregiver, though one might argue that she always had been.  

 

Mary Lu believed in me at a time in my life when there really wasn’t a whole lot to believe in. I wanted more than anything to grow up, get married, produce a slew of children and replicate my childhood. It may be chuckle-able now, but when I was in my late 20s I was pretty positive that I had already reached the pinnacle of my life.

 

But Mary Lu was the yang to my yin, promising that I’d end up not only successful, but married with multiple children, driving a minivan, walking a Labrador retriever and owning a house with a white picket fence. I merely rolled my eyes. 

 

Until in a simple twist of matchmaking fate, one of those best of buddies at TV Guide magazine became a boyfriend. Then an ever-loving spouse. Then the father to my children – three of them. Minivan, owned it, drove it, traded it in for a second one. Fence? While it isn’t white, its six-foot high pickets restrained first a black mutt, then our current yellow Lab.  Successful? As long as that term is defined as living in layers of love surrounded by friends and fun rather than fame and fortune, then yup, she nailed it all around. 

 

When I was 31 years old, I left TV Guide, got married, moved to New Jersey and never saw Mary Lu again. 

 

But it wasn’t for a lack of trying. 

 

Life was hard In the olden days. There was no whipping off of fast texts, no tapping quick “likes” on Instagram posts and no such thing as email. We relied heavily on the telephone, despite its downfalls. We had to pay for long-distance, parents were prone to answering the phone, often wanting to (gulp) chat and pesky siblings loved to delete answering machine messages before they reached their intended.  

 

So I did the old-fashioned thing and wrote actual letters to Mary Lu. OK. I’ll admit, I only sent two, but still – they both were met with radio silence. 

 

Fast forward to the modern era. Somehow she had circumvented social media. A less obsessive human would have given up but there was something about Mary Lu that I couldn’t let go of. 

 

I am not a particularly religious person, but rather more of a better-safe-than-sorry sort. I sit by my ever-loving spouse’s side at church on Sundays, provoking bored children with funny faces and doodling on the weekly bulletin in the margins next to the Lord’s Prayer. But this year I decided to do join the holier-than-whatever I am contingent and do something for Lent. 

 

Friends have always been the cornerstone of my life and I pride myself in keeping them for a life time. But a few, like Mary Lu, had fallen through the cracks. So for the 40 days of Lent, which I learned because of you know, my Excel sheet, is actually 46 days (go ahead and count) I vowed to make contact with someone I’d neglected, rejected or lost along the way. 

 

And down the rabbit hole I went. 

  

While I’m not big on rejection, when it comes to the making and keeping of friends, that word left my vocabulary in middle school. I simply don’t take no for an answer. When I recently googled Mary Lu’s name, my screen lit up with several Mary Lou’s including one from Tasmania, a singer-songwriter, an author and an obituary. But no Mary Lu. Clearly, the  missing o makes all the difference.

 

I then went on whitepages.com and it showed the same address that had yielded no response thirty odd years ago. Yet there was a new clue. It revealed another name at the same address. A husband, a son? I found him on Facebook and messaged him. I got a response a couple of weeks later asking who I was, how I knew her, and quizzed me on her maiden name. I had all the right answers and convinced him that I was not a stalker by giving him my phone number and email address. 

 

It worked. 

 

I really didn’t know if I’d recognize her after a 35-year hiatus when we planned to meet for lunch at Miller’s Ale House at Plymouth Meeting Mall. The restaurant was on a corner so there were choices – left lot, right lot, front lot. I pulled in two minutes late due to a long traffic light, reached over to my passenger seat to gather my goods, looked up and in a serendipitous nod from the goddess of friend-finding, there she was. She had pulled into the very spot that was right next to mine. 

 

It took no less than a split second to know it was her. 

 

And when we took our seats in a booth at the restaurant, the first thing she asked was, “So, tell me – did you have the five kids?”

 

When two hours I left to go visit my 98-year-old mother, I did so reluctantly, realizing there hadn’t been a single second of that dreaded lull in conversation. We filled in the gaps of our aging minds, sparking memories of people and places and wondering how we ended up not only alive, but happy and somehow, still friends. We had just barely touched on the titillations and tribulations of our lives when we said our goodbyes. There was so much more to go.

 

But luckily, we have a ways to go. Neither one of us is planning on checking out any time soon. I know that we’ll stay in touch and we’ll see each other again and again. In our newfound old friendship we won’t be bellying up to the bar, but we will be in constant awe of how we got where we are and how we got what we got.

  

It’s a wonderful life, indeed.