Stories from an ordinary life

Not so ordinary?

I'm not sure if its the writer or the journalist in me, but I always cut things out of the newspaper that strike me in some way. Sometimes I don't even know why I like them -- they're informative or funny or just plain interesting, or maybe I just like the writing style. Tonight I caught up on three days of the Charlotte Observer and as I was skimming the Saturday paper I noticed a headline on one of the back pages that said something about "a not so ordinary life." The correspondence to my blog's subtitle caught my eye and I read it. It was about an obituary that ran in Albany that was two full newspaper columns long. An only son had written it about his mother, who was no one special per se, but it was beautiful and strange and engrossing -- exactly the kind of story I want to be able to tell.

The woman was told by her mother-in-law that she better not come home from the hospital if the baby wasn't a boy; she broke engagements with two men before she married a third; she had wanted to leave her husband (the son's father) but didn't for the sake of their child and in the end their vows lasted until their deaths. This lady never had a great job and she didn't have some massive impact on the world, but just by her son's tribute to her she has impacted my life. Her story taught me something about writing that I'm not sure I realized before -- people like to see into other's lives. We want to know the bad and the good, the atrocious things people said to them and the compliments they received.

Scarily enough, my life might not be so ordinary to others. I've spent a lot of time worrying what other people would think if they knew everything about me, worrying how they would judge me and how those who have impacted me for better or worse would feel about my revelations on them once down on paper. I've listened when people told me to stay mysterious, don't always act on what my heart or my head wants to say. But really, what's so interesting about that? No one could ever know everything that's in my mind and more is added to it every day. I say fuck the mystery, why can't we all just be honest?

Of course I clipped that story to keep, just in case I forget what it taught me.

posted by This one time . . . @ 11:29 PM