A few weeks ago the TTHM and I were arguing about something. The specifics of which, I can’t completely recall. But it was something to the effect that I only write about him when he’s hurt me and never write about when he makes me happy.

My immediate and snarky comebacks included ‘because you don’t,’ ‘it’s not your job to make me happy,’ and ‘there’s nothing to write about.’ I think I was feeling particularly bitchy that day, because none of those are true. He makes me happy quite a bit, and he’s right, I don’t ever write about it. Which, I suppose is unfair. It seems I never hesitate about the hurt, but never mention the good. It reminds me of something Dale, my writing teacher, read to us. It was from Tobias Wolff’s introduction to The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories. In the introduction he writes:
“I’ve have never been able to understand the complaint that a story is ‘depressing’ because of its subject matter. What depresses me are stories that don’t seem to know these things go on, or hide them in resolute chipperness; ‘witty’ stories, in which every problem is an occasion for a joke, ‘upbeat’ stories that flog you with transcendence. Please. We’re grown-ups now, we get to stay in the kitchen when the other grown-ups talk.

Far from being depressed, my own reaction to stories like these are exhilaration, both at the honesty and the art. The art gives shape to what the honesty discovers, and allows us to face what in truth we are already afraid of anyway. It lets us know we’re not alone.”

Dale went on to quote, perhaps Raymond Carver or some other famous author, about how he doesn’t need art to help him deal with his happiness, rather he needs it to help him deal with the sadness.

That’s kind of how I feel about writing. I write to get the yucky out. I like to keep the happy with me. It’s really quite selfish. I like my happy little secrets buried in my memory, like seashells in the sand. I dig them out whenever I need them, turning them over and over in my hands, delighting in their beauty.

But like I said, that’s selfish. I know it’d be hard for me to read about how I’d hurt someone. So, if I were to hawk my seashells by the seashore and you found the TTHM table, here’s what you’d find:

• That time, after a long discussion about one of my stories, where the TTHM said, ‘part of your charm is that you don’t realize how talented you are.’
• A beautiful July night in St. Paul.
• A postcard from Queenbee Creations with an inscription that brings tears to my eyes.
• An afternoon at the theater that “would have been two hours better spent drinking.”
• A fairy tale involving a weeping flea and a scalded louse.
• An aisle in Barnes & Noble with a tall, tall handsome man reading James Joyce to a tall, tall awkward girl.
• About 392 e-mails that make me smile.
• He’s the only one who makes my phone ring.
• Hearing the sound of a man cooking with no recipe at all and calling it minestrone.
• “It’s time for you to forgive your mother and eat your broccoli.”
• A Valentine that says, “Now if only there was someone there to shoot you every moment of your life.”
• Heart-wrenching discussions about loneliness

.

You’d find all this and more, much more than I could ever share or make you understand. But let it be know that there are many things that make me happy.

(Visited 24 times, 1 visits today)