Lori Borgman’s first grandchild did steal her heart — so much so that she wanted to steal away with the little one when Borgman first got her hands on her in the hospital.
“I whispered to the baby that Grandma could slip that security tag right off her little leg and we could give hospital security a run for their money,” she writes in the opening of her just-released book, “What Happens at Grandma’s Stays at Grandma’s.”
Borgman saved her energy that day. Good thing. She and retired newspaper photographer and husband Charlie Nye of Indianapolis now have 11 grandchildren to keep up with.
Borgman, whose syndicated, family-oriented column is distributed to more than 400 newspapers nationwide, including The Republic on Sundays, will speak on the grand topic of grandchildren and more during a free presentation at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Red Room of the Bartholomew County Public Library in downtown Columbus.
Unlike some masters of the printed word, Borgman’s often wiseacre ways and dry wit in her presentations and interviews usually are just as bright and well-timed as they are on the page. Reaction to the new volume of musings, many shorter than her column, is good, she acknowledged from her recent presentations.
“So far, nobody’s thrown any tomatoes or wet diapers,” she quipped, speaking by phone from her home, where she electronically sends each column, launched 27 years ago, by Monday to an editor in Chicago. “Even if they did, I can dodge them. I know how.”
Tough to dodge the fact that her field has undergone dramatic change and upheaval in the past decade alone. Yet her work still finds an audience devouring her takes on everything from children’s refrigerator art to her shock at the modern trend of axe throwing. The woman who figuratively lives and dies by her words is momentarily stumped for an answer as to her longevity.
“I’m as surprised as anybody,” she said with a chuckle.
Actually, she keeps her efforts grounded in the wisdom of late writer E.B. White, whose advice for his peers hangs above her desk. It reads in part: “A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter.”
Absorbing her fancy in the new book is, well, child’s play, mostly. And she has filled it with far more laughs. Her essay “The Stork Has Landed,” which appeared in publications a few years ago in a shorter format, stands as a heart-tugging, beautifully drawn prose portrait of a couple longing for a baby and suffering through a laborious heartache to finally hold their fragile dream in their arms.
“You can’t be funny all the time,” she said of the importance of learning to be “soft.”
Mary Clare Speckner, the local library’s community services coordinator who plans the venue’s speakers, mentioned that the chiefly 40-and-older audience who most often attends the Red Room presentations are into such topics as grandparenting, and have responded well to Borgman in the past.
“And I love her sense of humor,” Speckner said.
Away from the computer keyboard, she hovers over another keyboard. The part-time pianist is teaching three of the grandchildren to play. The process alone makes her heart sing, and nearly brings her to tears.
“It is phenomenal to me to see how the brain and the eyes and the hands and the whole body works so well together (when they learn and play),” Borgman said. “It is amazing to me just to see their intellect grow.”
Spoken, understandably, like a proud Grandma.
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Who: Newspaper columnist and author Lori Borgman discussing grandparenting and her new book "What Happens at Grandma’s Stays at Grandma’s."
When: 6:30 p.m. Nov. 19
Where: Red Room of the Bartholomew County Public Library, 536 Fifth St. in downtown Columbus
Information: 812-379-1266 or mybcpl.org
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