Trivial truths. The Days of Our lives.
This is the story of Stashes and Hashes & Bashes and the already-conceived Mucho Cash.
Trivial truths.
That’s what life is about. Not espionage, insurgents and counter-insurgents, cyber crime, and such. Not on my street or yours or many others either. No adrenaline-charged genre on our block.
Unless I told you that IRA bomb detonators were once assembled in our home’s former garage, long dismantled by our 1992 remodel. Truth and not-so-trivial. Details don’t matter in this instance, the evidence was all removed when the former owners moved out, their son jailed since the discovery in 1986. We’re told that his uber Irish Catholic mom attended mass each day, trekking up-and-down the hill, a half-mile by herself.
Thrillers, mysteries, romances, suspense. Comedy, drama, good guys and bad. Everyday heroes, some with mild acclaim, most without. You and me and he and she. Dingle and dangle and dumb bell blondes. Shoot-em-up-go-to-hell. And back. Sometimes within a block.
It’s about putting one foot on the floor each morning and then the other. About stirring the pot and about letting go. It’s about growing up and getting on, getting by with a little help from one’s friends.
As novelists we are admonished to go for the interesting, the novel, the intrigue rather than the expected, the ordinary, the mundane.
But subtext always lurks like a shark amidst trivial truths.
Right now my husband is wrestling with wrenches, flanges, and putty knives, repairing a toilet that he’s already repaired twice: argh-h. But, as I comply as plumber’s friend/loyal helpmate, holding this and handing him-that-tool-no-the-other-one, cajoling, and handing out atta-boys, I consider that this is what “I Love Lucy” thrived on: trivial with twists.
I recall a more dramatic backdrop for the first time my husband repaired this toilet: when we learned that, yes, chemotherapy was required because the tumor, fully removed with excellent margins I’d been assured, had ‘jagged’ edges and may have already migrated via blood stream. Back then I was glad for the diversion: my wonderful husband had a problem he could solve. He had a problem to fix, even if he couldn’t fix me.
My husband and I must be toilet trash, because I’ve written a potty post in the past: Living Life as a Miracle: Innocent Blush.
Recent Comments