Humor, Honesty & Heartbreak: Why I Write What I Write
Thursday, June 27, 2013
I had the pleasure to speak at the Herrick District Library in Holland, Michigan, for the first time this week. There seemed to be quiet concern (I was later told) about my presence there, it seems, because, well, I'm gay.
Shocked? No, right?
I didn't buy into the consternation, either, because I always find such events to be an opportunity rather than a risk: I can change minds, I can change lives, I can open hearts, simply by being me. I never alter who I am, what I read, how I act based on where I travel: I am me. And that simple fact always has a profound effect.
The response at the library was overwhelming: A SRO crowd that laughed until it cried. And, after the event, hundreds of people waited to tell me that I touched their hearts and changed their lives with my humor, honesty and heartbreaking "human-ness." I call this the "3 H's", and it's what I bring to my writing.
Many people emailed and asked that I share my opening remarks: Here they are. Now, go be you.
*****
Our libraries, like our schools, depend on diversity of thought. To be
surrounded by homogeneous ideas is to live in an isolation tank: The best books
and authors are like the best teachers: They are literary, lyrical keys that
unlock not only our minds but also our hearts.
I love to speak at libraries because they were a saving grace to me
growing up in rural America. My grandma volunteered at our little, local
library, and that is where I learned it was OK to read, to write, to explore
new ideas. It was OK to be smart and creative while my peers were outside
fishing, hunting or nailing squirrel pelts to oak trees.
It’s especially fitting I speak here tonight, as the overarching theme here
this summer is Everyday Stories.
Perfect, really, because that sums up exactly what I do: I write about everyday
life. I celebrate the mundane and minute moments that make life so magical and
memorable.
The grand moments are wonderful, but I believe those are just the frame
to life’s picture. It’s the little details that make the portrait of us so memorable. I believe it’s our
failures, foibles and fragilities – rather than that façade of perfection that
we strive so hard to impress upon others – that make us so unique and
beautiful.
My M.O. in telling my everyday stories differs from most authors: I
utilize humor. It is that way I make sense of a world that has often been hard
to understand. It is my way of connecting and of understanding.
I’ve told this story, and I will tell it again: I learned the beauty
and importance from telling everyday stories with humor from my idol, Erma
Bombeck, a much-overlooked writer in American literature. I know I would
impress you more if I said Hemingway, Shakespeare, Faulkner, or Franzen, but
I’d be lying.
What I learned from Erma Bombeck was to channel your own voice and to
never give up. This is a woman, mind you, who in the 1960s was
ignored because those in charge believed what she had
to say wasn’t worth reading. And yet this was a woman who continued to lock
herself away just so she could write because
she believed that what she had to say was worth reading. I’ve faced similar
obstacles in my writing career because many have believed the same thing about
me.
But what’s happened is this: Readers have been drawn to me and the
everyday stories in my memoirs because – no matter how different we may be from
one another – it is our universalities that bond us all, that make us human.
We’re a society that tends to focus on our differences, when we should be
focusing on our similarities, because we’re not that different. Our experiences
are largely the same, and that’s what I document: Most of us do not engage in
heroic acts everyday, what we do is live and love, succeed and fail, pray and
curse, laugh and cry, rejoice in minor triumphs and cling to one another in
times of loss.
What I try to do is slip in a lesson while you’re laughing, teach you
something while you’re smiling, show you – while you’re giggling – that the
chasm between us is tiny. I believe the best books are like mirrors: We are
forced to take a good, long hard look at ourselves when we hold one in front of
our faces. Oftentimes, we don’t like what is reflected back, when we study that
image: But, if we are willing, we change as a result, for the better.
All of my books are based on everyday stories from my life and those of
my family’s life, because I believe that those stories – our stories –
accumulated over a long period of time tell a profound tale of human existence.
My mom – who was a nurse and a Hospice nurse – passed away a few years
ago, and she was not only a woman who heard more everyday stories than most people
ever do but she also taught me more in her final months, more about how to live
and die with grace, than most folks have taught me in decades. She told me that
we all make everyday life so hard, but really it’s so simple. “Our everyday
stories are pretty much the same … she told me a few weeks before she died. “The
sun goes up, and the sun goes down. And we have just a few, precious hours in
between to live without regret, to make a difference, and to love until our
hearts ache. It’s up to us to write a new chapter every single day.”
posted by Wade Rouse at
11:54 AM
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