By 2023 Bacopa Creative Nonfiction Editor Stephanie Seguin
The other day I was in Trader Joe’s. Part of the feature display was a neat stack of Kringles and I literally squealed with delight when I saw them. (Thank god my kids weren’t with me or they would have fainted, literally died of embarrassment mom!)
The cause of my excitement was that I had never tasted or seen one before, but a Kringle was the featured pastry in the winner I chose for Bacopa’s 2023 Humor category.
2023 was our third time including Humor as a category in the annual contest. The gold standard, for me, is a David Sedaris type of humor writing. I am always looking for a writer who can achieve that delicate balance of tender and funny, with maybe a little edge of sarcasm. It’s tough to get it right. (I’ve tried!)
So when I read Mary Liza Hartong’s Kringle my heart squealed like a middle aged woman who just saw a giant pastry in a grocery store. In Kringle, Hartong’s mother has cancer, her relatives have irritating habits, yet the piece still oozes warm sweetness. I couldn’t even tell you how, the same way I can’t tell you how a lump of gooey ingredients turns into a flaky puff of pastry. But it does.
I’ll be microwaving popcorn and catch her in the act of writing the email, hair swept back in a clip, reconstructed breasts in a tennis tank. When she was diagnosed, I was fourteen. I thought, if my mother dies I will never know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Against the pop-pop-popping of the kernels, I attempt to dissuade her from sending this aggressive missive. What if Nancy is sicker than you were? What if she never cared for jogging in the first place? What if she needs someone to say, “there, there” and not, “show me some hustle”? Despite my pleas, my mother inevitably hits send.
Starting in on the popcorn, I’ll wonder why my uncle can’t just dole out gift cards, my mother, casseroles. It’s the sort of familial algebra we all do, especially around the holidays. Add some common sense, subtract the urge to talk about tennis, take the square root of good intentions, and maybe I could end up with a normal family.
And yet, by the time I finish the popcorn, Nancy will return the email.
“Thank you, Mary,” she’ll say, “This is exactly what I needed to hear!”
No matter the category, I am always looking to feel something when I read submissions. There’s more to good writing than including all the right ingredients. When I read Kringle, I felt tenderness, love, a dash of sadness and the need to roll my eyes at people I love dearly. Most importantly (this won the humor category after all) I laughed at a story about someone’s mom having cancer, and that is writing magic.
(In case you are wondering, the Trader Joe’s Kringle was delicious! Bigger than I expected. It’s pizza sized, so you can share it with your whole irritating but lovable family.)
About the contributor: Mary Liza Hartong lives and writes in her hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. She's a Dartmouth grad, a Fulbright Scholar, and a proud aunt. You can read more of her writing and buy her novel "Love and Hot Chicken" here.
