UnMcQuestionably good
I’m not a novelist or a poet, but my years in the newspaper business taught me something about personal writing that you’d think would be self-evident: If it’s going to be read by someone else, it better not be something that only family or friends would appreciate.
Granted, most of the millions of webloggers out here are ordinary people writing things that their family and friends do appreciate, and rightfully so. But it shouldn’t be hard to find professional writers who reach beyond those small circles. Alas, it is.
Which is why it is so rewarding to find in this overgrown blogosphere a site called McQuestionable Musings, a blog by freelance writer Karen McQuestion (above) and the latest addition to our blogroll.
Everything about McQuestion’s blog is personal, yet it has universal appeal. Playing a large part is her sense of humor about herself and her family:
What’s new with me since I last blogged, you ask? Well for starters, my husband had a monumental birthday at the end of January. I won’t say how old he is, but if you split a century in half . . .. Anyway, in honor of his birthday I tormented him with some memory math.
Me: Do you realize that when we met, I was younger than Charlie (our oldest)?
Him (in disbelief): No!
Me: Not only that, but when we first started going out, your parents were younger than we are now.
Him: Why are you doing this to me?
And then an exchange with her younger son, Jack, last May:
We have this same conversation every year.
My house yesterday:
Jack (bless his heart): What do you want for Mother’s Day, Mom?
Me: You know what would be really great? If you guys would clean the whole house from top to bottom, without me even having to ask.
Jack: Still dreaming the dream, huh?
But don’t think it’s all humor, even when it appears to be. An entry March 26 opens with a 911 call and her father being taken to the hospital:
Later, my mom said the ambulance had traveled at 85 miles per hour, the fastest she’d ever gone. I was telling this story to my husband when our older son, in the next room, called out, ‘That’s not that fast.’
Ahem. Do I even want to know why he would say such a thing? No, I do not.
Later, I asked the same son, just as he was heading out the door to go back to the university, to pray for Grandpa.
Charlie: I would, but I don’t really pray.
Me: Could you make an exception this time?
Charlie: I’m not on God’s prayer list. He’d think it was spam.
The entry ends on an optimistic note that “my dad’s situation seems somewhat better (she says hopefully) so I like to think all our prayers were heard — even Charlie’s non-prayers.”
What I find wonderful about this entry isn’t the humor, which is good, but a deeper insight that resonates within me. Most of us, especially at my age, have been in situations where death lurks in our helpless midst. It is at these times that humor can be an irresistible respite from anguish.
Karen McQuestion’s work has appeared in Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, Denver Post and Christian Science Monitor, among others. She also is an essayist, a radio commentator, and has written a novel.
She actually has two blogs. The link in our blogroll takes you to her home blog where there is a larger offering of her posts but no place for comments. She also has a Publishers Marketplace site (here) that has fewer offerings but a place where you can comment.
– Sid Leavitt
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