If life is a bowl of cherries, then what am I doing in the pits? (Erma Brombeck)

Whichever way you look at it 2020 has been a very difficult year for everyone. With just 3 months to go before we say goodbye to it and pray 2021 will be better, I thought we could all do with raising a smile or two.

When I first started writing a lifestyle column for several Devonshire newspapers Erma Brombeck was my idol and my inspiration. An American journalist she wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns, using broad and sometimes eloquent humour, chronicling the ordinary life of a midwestern suburban housewife. She also published 15 books, most of which became bestsellers. I realise her name in all probability will mean nothing to anybody under the age of forty but at that time she was the queen of family and lifestyle quips like this:

My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you? 

Sadly I know my humour in my newspaper column never matched hers - she had all the best lines stitched up already. Here are a few of my favourites.

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it is a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway. 

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, 'A house guest,' you're wrong because I have just described my kids.

Have you any idea how many kids it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen? Three. It takes one to say, "What light?" and two more to say, "I didn't turn it on.”

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

This year is the 24th anniversary of her death. Bombeck was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease (an incurable, untreatable genetic disease) when she was just 20 years old. She survived breast cancer and mastectomy, and kept secret the fact that she had kidney disease, enduring daily dialysis. She went public with her condition in 1993.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

On a waiting list for transplant for years she received a kidney transplant on 3rd April 1996. She died 19 days later aged 69, from complications of the operation.

I’ll finish this short blog with one of her quotes that could have been penned in the 21st century rather than the 20th:

I'm trying very hard to understand this generation. They have adjusted the timetable for childbearing so that menopause and teaching a sixteen-year-old how to drive a car will occur in the same week. 

Erma Bombeck February 21, 1927 – April 22, 1996,