I’M JUST SAYING … A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, by Sarah Smiley, Ballinger Publishing, $14.95.
When Sarah Smiley’s mom wondered who was going to take down the Christmas decorations, Dustin the Navy pilot dove right in to help.
What comes next is one of my favorite funny passages from Smiley’s “I’m Just Saying … A Collection of Essays.”
Next thing I knew, Dustin was dragging our seven-foot Christmas tree — still in its base, and dripping water — through the living room. His face was flushed and tense, like someone coming off the battlefield — my mom’s organizing battlefield. Then, in what I guess was a harried attempt to just get it over with, but ended up being a Clark-Griswald moment instead, Dustin shoved the behemoth tree through the front door top first so that the stand caught on the wall, pine needles fell like rain, and large branches made the worst scratching sound ever against the paint on our front door.
When that didn’t work, Dustin stood back, scratched his head … and tried the same maneuver again.
After reading that passage, I’m wondering what my children think are the most memorable funny things their dad has done. Yes, I’ll be sure to ask.
Speaking of children, the columns in this book that really touch me, the mother of two grown sons, are the ones about Smiley’s three young boys, Ford, Owen and Lindell.
Superman shirts, Matchbox cars, “Star Wars,” Batman, T-ball games. Mention any of them and I’m back in the days when those huggy little guys could still sit on my lap.
Tucking away the older boys’ Superman shirts in the baby’s drawer, Smiley laughed. And cried, too. To which Dustin said,
My gosh, you’ll be a mess when they go off to college some day.
But it’s not only Smiley’s gift for writing about family life that touches her readers, including those who read the Bangor Daily News on Mondays.
It’s her essays on being a military wife that have intrigued newspaper editors — and readers — around the country.
Smiley has the perspective of one who knows what it is to take care of the home front when her spouse is deployed, and how to roll with the punches of being moved hither and yon — most recently, from Florida to Maine, which I think is yon.
She also is the daughter of a retired Navy officer, so she has more than earned the right to say her piece on the military.
And yes, some of them are funny moments — and some of them are half-funny and bordering on serious. Some will really make you think, such as the essay on recruiters.
Other writings just grab you by the heart, or in the pit of your stomach.
Take the essay “For This Veteran Every Day Is a Good Day,” which Smiley wrote after meeting an older man, sitting in a wheelchair, at a doctor’s office. Its last paragraph reads:
As we mark the five-year anniversary of our involvement with Iraq, and while the politicians continue to fight over when to leave and who was right or wrong, let us all remember that at the end of the day, if a soldier has completed his mission and come home to his family alive, it is a very good day indeed. And while some of us gripe about long lines, slow traffic lights, and the high price of gas, there is a man with one leg who despite a bullet in his leg and years lost to blindness, still can’t complain. Neither should we.
