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I sat on a tiled ledge at the YMCA indoor pool inhaling chlorinated steam, a yellow legal pad perched on my lap and beads of sweat clinging to my upper lip. Despite the echo of sloshing water and the splashing of my three children in their swim lessons, my mind was far away.
By the end of that winter session, my yellow legal pad was dog-eared and covered in scribbles: to-do lists, doodles and three personal essays. Writing had become my lifeline during a hectic time in our Navy family life when my active-duty husband, Francis, was deployed for more than a year.
When Francis returned, I read him the essays. He laughed — not at me, but with me. My stories captured the relatable humor of parenting, marriage and military life. He encouraged me to publish them. But after years as a stay-at-home spouse whose finest skills involved a toilet brush and a meatloaf recipe, I was reluctant to put my ego on the line.
For months, I honed the drafts, reading them to neighbors to test for authentic laughter. When a neighbor pointed out a “guest columnist contest” in our local newspaper, The Virginian-Pilot, I fired my essays off to the editor.
A rejection email arrived two weeks later. “You are certainly a good writer,” the editor wrote, calling the pieces witty but “too wordy.” It was a “good rejection” — a rare critique that taught me my first real lesson in editing.
Soon, we moved overseas. From a computer in our fourth-floor apartment on Patch Barracks in Germany, I kept submitting. One day, my uncle called long-distance: “Lisa, I think I’m reading your essay in today’s Washington Post!” Sure enough, there it was on January 24, 2010.
Naively, I assumed this breakthrough meant I was the next Erma Bombeck. I joined a columnists’ society, launched a blog and set about self-syndicating a weekly column called “The Meat & Potatoes of Life.” I waited for major syndicates to call and make me a household name.
They didn’t. By the end of our next tour at NAS Mayport, Fla., I’d only convinced a few newspapers to carry my work, often fighting to get paid. Thank God for Francis’ Navy income, or we’d have lived in a cardboard box under an overpass on my meager earnings.
Yet I’d found my passion. Writing funny stories became my therapy. It allowed me to sort through the chaos of military life for readers, distilling it down to what mattered, and more importantly, what didn’t.
Finally, in 2016, Stars and Stripes took a chance on me. Every week for the last 10 years, I’ve experienced, expressed and expelled 700 words of military family reality on these pages. It’s been the honor of my life to contribute to the newspaper for the U.S. Armed Forces.
Which brings us to today. After a decade, it’s time for me to step away from the keyboard. Military life teaches us how to pack out a household, say goodbye to friends and move to unfamiliar territory. But saying goodbye to you, my readers, is the hardest PCS move I’ve ever had to execute. There are no packers who can wrap up 10 years of weekly memories without breaking them.
I may be hanging up my Stripes, but I’ll never put down my pen. Life will undoubtedly keep serving up heaping helpings of chaos, and I’ll still need to sort through the leftovers. Over the years, this column has been my way of separating the “meat and potatoes” of life — the core things that truly matter, like family, faith and love — from the rest of the plate. I’ve realized that most of our daily stressors are just the lukewarm gravy, a shaky Jell-O side dish or a limp parsley garnish. They aren’t worth ruining the meal over, but they’re absolutely worth laughing at.
So next week, when the household appliances inevitably revolt or our adult children start pushing my buttons, I won’t have a deadline. But I’ll still be looking for the punchline in the parsley. Thank you for reading, for laughing along with me and for letting me share the meat and potatoes of this crazy life with you.
Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com.
