Quote of the Day (Erma Bombeck, on Family and ‘The Common Thread That Bound Us All Together’)

“The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.” —American humorist Erma Bombeck (1927-1996), Family: The Ties That Bind…and Gag! (1976)

She is known best for the humor she brought to her syndicated newspaper column over three decades and to her Good Morning America TV segments for 11 years in the Seventies and Eighties. But Erma Bombeck—who died 25 years ago today of complications from a kidney transplant—sought, at the most basic level, to convey the truth of domestic life she lived as wife and mother, as seen in the above quote.

At the time of her passing, I’m sure many readers thought of another quote of hers—and writers particularly probably should have been struck by it: “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’”