1987, Addison-Wesley Publishing - Paperback
1988 Bantam Audio - Cassette

 

 

 

 

 

In Small Comforts those wry observations are leavened and enriched by deft glimpses into Bodett's darker side as well: lingering doubts about trading the sweaty camaraderie of construction work for the scary solitude of a word processor; melancholy marvel at his young son's joy in each new day; the resisted - and then mourned - impulse to buy a meal for an old man carrying the sign: I'm Hungry. Meditations like these aren't easy to capture, especially when they're flanked by humor, but the spare style that carries most of Bodett's light pieces is even more effective in his serious essays.
--The Los Angeles Times

 

Tom Bodett is too normal to be this funny and too smart to be this nice. All nicely funny people should buy this smartly normal book.
--P. J. O'Rourke, humorist

 

Fans will be comforted by the familiarity of this return visit to Bodett country. Those new to his work will discover one of the freshest, friendliest voices among writers of humor today. Here is Bodett on his inability to dance, his near inability to see and his disinclination to fix things. Here are treatises on how to place your car in a ditch, how to create sculpture from dinner dishes, and how to cash in on your countryman's bottomless need to be flattered. But most of all, here are profound - and less than profound - meditations on the everyday joys and embarrassments of being a husband, father and hard-working member of the American family.

 

Wow (page 156)

Among the thousand and one truisms that were hurled at us as expectant parents was one I especially wanted to believe: "You are going to learn the most important things from your children." It sounded so promising, and when accompanied by a smug veteran-parent grin, it appeared to hold water.

I looked forward to learning about these "most important things," but soon after our boy arrived I decided it was all a lot of tripe. If the most important things are pricing Pampers, holding tempers, and coming up with six hundred variations on the word "no", then I figured people’s idea of "important" is purely subjective.

My partner in crime and I have spent the last twenty months with our child teaching him everything from rolling over to the dynamics of liquid in cups not carefully handled. All the while I held onto the hope that one day the teaching would leave off and the learning begin. Apparently it was just a matter of time, and the time, at last, has arrived.

We recently had occasion, as a family, to spend the night at the house of some friends in town. They have an extra room down in the basement, and we were set up with the bed and crib in the same room. No big deal. The kids went to sleep early, we had wonderful late-night conversation, and retired to our accommodations. I slept well but woke up too early, realized I was in a strange place, and couldn’t go back to sleep.

In our natural habitat my wife and I don’t share a room with the baby. We normally first come to know he’s awake by a series of screams from downstairs that would put any self-respecting banshee to shame. But lying there wide awake in an unfamiliar house offered me the opportunity to hear my child wake up for the first time. This is where the learning came in.

Let me establish here that there are only a few words in our boy’s vocabulary. "More" is the one we hear most often and can refer to anything from fun to food. "No" comes in a close second as he repeats it just about as often as he hears it. "Hello", "bye-bye", "Momma", and "Daddy" make up the rest of his standard casual conversation, and that’s all the words he’s got. All, that is, but one.

By far his most distinguished and seldom-used expression is the word "wow". He only says "wow" when something really impresses him. If Dad lets a frying pan catch on fire and juggles it out the front door into the snow, it’s "wow". If we turn around backwards on the way to town and hit the ditch at thirty, it’s "wow". If the house were to burn down around him with the Messiah whispering reassurances into his ear the whole time, I’m confident he would sum it all up with "wow".

My reason for going into all this, like I said, is I had occasion to hear him come to life one recent morning. I’d been awake for over an hour, but nobody else was up. I lay there silently straining to hear any encouraging sign that there might be people and coffee about. I thought about my day, a Sunday, and took inventory of the chores at hand. We would have to get organized and make the drive home. Once there I’d have wood to put up, a door to fix, a few letters to write, and some bills to pay. My wife would clean the house, as she does every Sunday. The boy would refuse to take a nap, as he does every Sunday. Luck willing, we would have a little time to spend together before Monday once again descended on our lives. All this was less than the stuff of dreams.

As I was lying there brooding, I heard my child stir. He rolled over – I assumed he opened his eyes – and said "wow". Suddenly I felt like a heel.

With all my training to "think good thoughts", "look on the bright side", and "take it one day at a time", I woke up to a near-miserable world. This little boy who knows nothing of optimism, saw he had a new day, and gave it his grandest praise. I learned something.

It dawned on me that this innocent little child was at the place I wanted to be. To wake up in the morning, take a look at the world, and say "wow" is probably about as close to contentment as a person can ever hope to get.

Contentment is a rare commodity. The more we learn about this world, the more anxious we get. There is trouble afoot. There are heartbreaks, failures, tragedies, and an endless list of selfish desires that are never realized. Sooner or later we come to resent our own existence. I’m sure our innocent child will eventually eat this forbidden apple, and wake up, as most of us do, to say only "ugh".

I wish I knew what I could do to never let this happen. I wish he could teach me the way he sees things now so that I could help him hold onto it – and so I could remember how it’s done. That truly would be a "most important thing" – if this tiniest of guides can show me from his crib how to open my eyes in the morning, see that I am alive in Paradise, and say "wow."

 

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