my book of erma’s columns from over the years

 compiled by her children after her passing.

a writer i’ve loved

since hearing my mother laugh

when reading her column

many years ago

most houses in america

had at least one of her columns

stuck with a magnet on their refrigerator 

a few years back i went to a writer’s conference

at her alma mater

her legacy to past, present, and future writers

 had the time of my life

surrounded by all those creative minds

her children, grandchildren, fans

 writers and comedians from all eras

now her book takes me back through the years

with notes in the back from a wide range of people

all who paid tribute to her humanity and to her writing

 it recently became

‘my relax in the bathtub and read book’

yes, i fell asleep and dropped it into the water

at least five to seven-ish times

not because i was bored

because i was relaxed

it felt like home reading her

 i think she’d love

that i read it that way

 the now wavy lines and pages

are my personal tribute to her.

—

“as a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school.

i actually believed all those books belonged to her.”

*erma bombeck

 

—

*

*Erma Bombeck, 1927 –1996) was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper humor column describing suburban home life, syndicated from 1965 to 1996. She published fifteen books, most of which became bestsellers. 

Between 1965 and April 17, 1996 – five days before her death – Bombeck wrote over four thousand newspaper columns, using broad and sometimes eloquent humor, chronicling the ordinary life of a Midwestern suburban housewife. By the 1970s, her columns were read semi-weekly by 30 million readers of the nine hundred newspapers in the United States and Canada. Her work stands as a humorous chronicle of middle-class life in America after WW II, among the generation of parents who produced the Baby Boomers.