Monthly Archive

It’s the end of July. Hard to believe. I slept very little last night, thinking, and took a drive this afternoon so I could try not to. A tree on the north side of town had given in to the tinges of red and yellow, and the air had that feeling of letting go.

Right now, at 8:30, it is already dark. I hear my kids upstairs, reluctant to go to bed, but soon, they’ll give in to sleep, as well. It is still warm outside. The sun blazed through the day, leaving bronzed, happy campers for me. The air conditioning is still running a little. But summer is getting tired.

Crow’s feet and laugh lines mark my face, remembering joy, remembering more sweet than the joy itself, I do believe. It is bittersweet, thinking of spring’s promise, dreams, wonders. I love this, love this time when summer is quiet. The fireworks have dwindled, the swimsuits faded, the glories exhausted. It is time for August.

When I was younger, I used to swim laps. I still like to. I rode my bike every night to the pool, an hour before it closed at 8:00. In early summer, I always hit all sorts of younger kids dodging through the lap lane. By August, they were mostly gone. The pool was mostly empty, in fact, save another addicted swimmer or two and a lifeguard. Back and forth, I used to swim that hour before they blew the whistle. Back and forth, I hit the rhythm that took me to another world. Back and forth, summer slipped by. The whistle blew, and I used to pull off my goggles to see the orange sun low in the west. I got on my bike and rode the same streets home, through the football field parking lot, to the street that jogged before Chestnut, to Selma, then Florence, Edgar Road and up the hill to home. It was almost dark by then, and I used to have ice cream sometimes, read, write, dream. Nothing could bother me there, in the water-induced peace I had found, looking out the window at the stars, listening to the radio, and figuring out who I might become someday.

Tomorrow is August, the beginning of the end of summer. The best time. The time we remember our real lives, left hanging through the never-ending days of June and July. We remember, but we do not retrieve those lives completely… not quite yet. Farmers markets. The people we love. Practices, but no games yet. Coming home. Plans for the future, but the date book is hardly filled. Another dive off the deck, more cherished because it is nearly the last.

Tomorrow is August. Savor it.

—————-
Now playing: Bebel Gilberto - August Day Song
via FoxyTunes

Yesterday my mom called to see if I wanted her waffle iron.

Today, she was trying to remember how many windows are in my girls’ room, and what size the windows are.

She has been concerned about this sort of thing lately, because she is preparing to move from the house she has lived in since 1967.

Forty years. I am forty-two, and, yes, this is the house I grew up in. It is the same house with the same basement I described in my first journal post here. It is the same house that has the mostly dry creek behind it, and used to have acres and acres of woods beyond that. It is the house I sometimes hated to come home to when I was young and wanted to fly, the house I was sometimes relieved to see. It is the house where I dreamed those dreams of faraway places. It is the house that I always think of when I think of my childhood. And soon, it will be someone else’s house.

This is hardly an unknown event. We all grow up. Most of us leave. I left home in a flash, literally, making up my mind in two hours to pack a suitcase, kiss my mom goodbye, and climb into the passenger seat of a sports car headed to Colorado. It was a crazy thing to do, unprecedented even for me, at least on that scale. Up to then, my spontaneity had been limited to an afternoon, a week perhaps… not a lifetime. Lessons learned.

But it was still time to leave home. I never went back.

Some of the same neighbors still live in the same houses next to my mom. Most of them are very old now, and I have known them since I was a little girl. My mom is 76. She says now that she should have moved somewhere more convenient, smaller, after my dad died, years ago. I agreed at the time. I was 20, and hated going back to the ‘burbs when I quit college. I wanted my own apartment, and I wanted my mom to be the independent creature she seemed to have aspired to be. I had moved back home with her partly to help her, partly to help me. I went from door to door with my resume and found work. I was ready to leave my mark on the world when the time was right. In other words, I wanted to leave. In other words, I was determined not to die without living first. In other words, I wanted my mom to live, too, not become some lonely middle-aged woman in a ranch house with a boring job, a cigarette, and a television in the background. It frustrated me, and made me feel guilty at the same time… Who was I to judge?

We did live in a three-bedroom ranch, not unlike a lot of middle class St. Louis houses. It was a nice suburb, not the richest or most glamorous. My mom had worked before I was born, taught, dressed to the nines, drove a ’62 Galaxy convertible and had her pilot’s license. Her legacy to me: the clothes, the hats, the gloves, and 1950s lingerie. Amazing. The sense of adventure. Then she got married, pregnant (yes, in that order), went to PTO meetings, and never had a paying job again before my dad died.

When my dad finally did die (it was awful, slow, cancer), she agonized about what to do for a long time, as she does about most things. Finally, after getting fired from an evening stint selling some substandard product over the phone (unsuccessfully, which is why she got fired), she found a job in a kitchen design place. Never one to overstep her role, she cattily critiqued the designers, and was usually right, and went right on answering the phones and typing envelopes. Her boss offered her the chance to learn to design kitchens herself, but she never took him up on it. This lasted until she retired, several years after I had headed west.

She did all right, still does. It’s strange to think of her not sitting in the living room with a crossword puzzle and a cat on her lap, strange to think that she’ll be in a living room somewhere else. It’s strange to think of the bird feeders in the backyard—she will no longer have a backyard. Ah, the backyard, and its wildlife… My family had some strange customs, I realized later. One was feeding raccoons. When I was about five, a little masked thief was prowling around the backyard. My mom thought it was cute, and gave it a Hershey bar. It came back. Before long, we were feeding many raccoons regularly. Hershey bars were cheap, but those coconut-covered marshmallow puff things with the cookie bottom were even cheaper. With Mystic Mints as the choice, we also did not tend to eat the marshmallow things. At some point, my mom decided that the new wild pets needed a healthier diet, and started buying Chuck Wagon dog food–maybe that brand because my brother and I liked the commercials. We were lucky not to have skunks or larger, more ferocious wild things, and only saw the occasional possums in the mix. The birds cleaned up the leftovers the next day. I realize now that all this was a little odd. The brand of dog food has changed to Purina Dog Chow (it’s supposedly healthier), but by golly, my mom still feeds those raccoons. One night this week, I expect to hear a report on how big the babies have gotten. Her new neighbor, who has expanded her entire porch out into the woody hill, seems ready to take over the care and feeding of suburban wildlife. This, I believe, is a great relief to my mom.

Houses are containers of memories. I sometimes think about this at garage sales, and wonder about the lives that touched an ordinary object with a masking tape price: 25 cents. I can imagine the things that my mom will never be able to move, things I have no room to take, things my brother cannot use. A white pyrex dish with turquoise roosters around the outside reminds me of the rice that my mom made for nicer occasions, and the faces that sat around the table at different times that it was served. The big yellow bowl was for popcorn, on Sunday afternoons, made in the heavy frying pan, with a mismatched lid. A western was on the black and white television in the basement, and the fire in the fireplace was too hot, nice but making me sleepy on a day too cold and grey to lure any of us outside.

Once, after I had left home, I went to visit my mom’s aunt and uncle. They lived in St. Louis until I was around ten, and had always been like grandparents to me. Uncle Perry had left Poplar Bluff in his twenties, and talked about going back home. “You can’t,” he said. Things change, some remain, but the circumstances change, and you change. So what remains? What makes places and things hold us and call to us? Is it really the lamp on the corner end table? The Spode china? The piano with the recently repaired key? The button box? Oh, oh! these things enchant me and exhaust me.

No. Not the clutter. I think what we want is some piece of our lives, some tangible reminder of the stories, some mnemonic trigger to conjure up the faces, the precise feelings we still hold and cherish in our hearts. The comfort of things. And at some point, the courage to let them go.

An online dating service has asked me what I do on my typical Friday nights. I named off a few exciting things, that involve clinking glasses, snippets of overheard conversations, cars, night noises. It sounds like fun.

Wishful thinking, at least for this Friday.

Well, not true exactly, for the “wishful” part. I’m pretty happy, not too far off the general idea, so I do not really wish I were anywhere else than where I am right now. But I have a few other ideas about what I would be doing now that the house is quiet. The time is right. It is my weekend for kids, but duties are reduced tonight. Two kids are at their respective camps, doing the overnight option. Two are here, tucked in bed. And where am I?

Here, of course. At the very moment, here means sitting at my computer, typing these words. But here, in a more general sense, means at home. I like my home. I could neaten up a bit, but it’s a great place, full of the character I love in older houses. I need to hang more pictures. I need to paint. I need to do something in the yard. I still love this place. I have been busy. Life calls. Life changes. Life is life, and life is grand.

So, I have plenty of music, shelves of books, pictures, magazines. Plenty of distractions that I love. I also have a balcony, a nice enclosed porch below it, a Japanese maple in the backyard, and a blanket to sit on. I have wonderful bubble bath that aromatherapeutically is supposed to do something magical—I cannot quite remember what it is for this bottle. I have tea. I have wet hair and a towel. I am outside, drying it on the balcony. I see the lights on the street, a few stars. It’s hot, and I abandon the balcony for the quiet air conditioned comfort of my house, quiet after the noise of the day. Bebel Gilberto seems to fit whatever was in that bubble bath, and I can light candles and just lie around now. I don’t even feel like talking about her music, or even her father’s… which is rare for me. That is for another time, definitely. For now, though, it’s all about the moment. And this, for this week, is how I am spending my Friday night.

“Hello, you good lookin’ thing you. ..
Now this is the Killer speaking.
Do I like what? I sure do like it, baby….”

–Jerry Lee Lewis, at the beginning of “Chantilly Lace”

I played piano growing up. I did not play it very well, but I took lessons until I was about twelve, and it was one of those things I wanted so badly to be able to do well. I wanted it so badly, in fact, that my parents bought a piano when I was seven. I guess I must have shown some promise at one time, and I really did try. Alas, a great talent I was not to be. My Hanon Variations may have made my fingers faster, but I was not one of those who can do much with them on the piano without hours and hours of practice… which is what the really talented kids often do. I’d never catch up! I kept at it, but after a while, I became a pre-teen, and therefore, bored.

Another factor that discouraged me was Jerry Lee Lewis.

My dad suggested a few times that I could try to play like Jerry Lee. I just could not figure out how to make a piano sound that way. It was not that I wanted to displease my father; I just could not for the life of me do what the Killer was doing. I tried a few times, but it really just hurt my hands, and I was sort of afraid of damaging the piano or something.

I played mostly classical music. Lessons after the nun who taught in third grade (I didn’t last too long with Sister Alice) were at Mrs. Bolsterli’s house. My teacher was Miss Moline. The entire house was devoted to piano lessons, and once a month we had to kill a Saturday afternoon at Club. Club was required at least eight times in the year to play in the recital. After “The Sting” came out, a rule was made that we were only allowed to play non-classical pieces twice during the year at Club. As it was, Scott Joplin was by far the most played composer for a couple of years. Of course, the recital was all classical. Club was interesting… well, no. No, it was not. It was interesting sometimes because there were new people to see (for some reason I think we were all girls) who all took lessons from the three teachers who taught in the house. I knew none of the girls at school, because they went mostly to Bristol Elementary, I think, whereas I went to Edgar Road. Recital was fun, because it was at the Monday club, and they served punch in bowls and fancy refreshments after it.

Once I brought in a book of music that my older half-brother had given me once (I now remember only one song in it: “Popcorn”), Miss Moline got a concerned look on her face, a look she had certainly had to give before. And indeed, she was prepared to give the necessary, accompanying speech. “No, no, Julie. These songs are not for here.”

So much for the Monkees songbook, then, too. I got away with “Shades of Grey,” but only because she didn’t realize it came from that book. I removed the pages and neatly placed them inside another book. (I heard a rumor that someone I knew around the same time had turned in “Strawberry Fields Forever” for a poetry assignment. Comments: “vivid imagery, a bit repetitive.”)

Miss Moline’s idea of appropriate music included all sorts of great music, to be honest, even if it was not my first choice. One of the firsts was “Laura.” What a beautiful song. I realized that many of the other songs were ones I had heard in movies, too. Before I knew it, she was bringing in all sorts of pop standards from places in time that I had never been before. My parents certainly had been there, though, and it got me off the honky tonk hook for a while if I played “Misty.” (There was even a Clint Eastwood movie my dad liked, “Play ‘Misty’ For Me.”…) I was getting tired of Clementi sonatinas, and my efforts to move to harder things like Chopin were not going well. I happily played pretty much anything Miss Moline put in front of me. I liked much of the music, but sometimes memorized most parts pretty easily. So, when I was bored, instead of reading the music, I read the lyrics. As a result, I know most of the words to many, many songs popular between 1930 and 1975, as long as they were not the sort of music that was not acceptable in Miss Moline’s lesson space. Yet another reason that my lack of vocal talents is a darned shame.

Again I say it, and it’s true. I wish I had been a great pianist, but I wasn’t. What playing and practicing did give me was a lot of appreciation for people who do play well, and a love for the sound of a piano. Now, it took me several years to remember that a piano, while melodic, is in fact a percussion instrument. That went a long way in helping me understand exactly what it was that Jerry Lee was doing with it, and what my dad liked about it. Rhythm. Hmm.. I was not lacking rhythm; I just had not realized… Hmm…

Now, about those lines I used at the beginning here. My brother and I loved to irk my mom at times, and they did the trick pretty well. But despite the suggestive tone, and the ominous nickname of Jerry Lee, it was still allowed in our house. We really did not have a lot of rock in my house when we were little. It was not that it was exactly forbidden; it just seemed that there was a musical line we should not attempt to cross. Seals and Croft at the swimming pool, yes. Dylan, no. But older stuff, rockabilly if you will…. Now that was all right. We could definitely get away with that. So we did. Jerry Lee Lewis was by far the hardest rocking album on the rack.

My mom was not, and is not, a rocker, though. So, for someone who was more word-oriented, I can see the objections to “Chantilly Lace.” Wow. Maybe she was right… Definitely not tame stuff, or a tame performer. Well, looking back, I think my dad would really have been a little concerned if I really could have played a piano like Jerry Lee. Certainly, other things would have to go with a personality like that, things he would probably not have chosen for his daughter. It was going to take some hard drinking and wild nights for me to reach that level, and really, I don’t think he was ready for that. And neither was Mrs. Bolsterli’s Club.

It does kind of make me snicker now, though, to consider it. I was frustrated by the time I quit at my own lack of talents. I had reached a point, I realized, that I just was not going to become significantly better without a lot of really hard work. The thought of turning the instrument into something quite different than the way I had been taught all along is compelling to me now, if not inspirational. What if I had tried that? Who knows what would have come out of it if I had been able to escape the genre boundaries and just found the power in the many ways of approaching a piano. Not a bad lesson for many things.

On that, I bid you all good night.

—————-
Now playing: Jerry Lee Lewis - Chantilly Lace/Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On
via FoxyTunes

When I lived in Vermont, I was always fascinated by a sign that pops up not far from the Canadian border on I-91. I cannot remember the exact wording, but it informs the passer-by that you have reached the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole. Wow. The sign is north of Newport, and I often saw it in times when the snow had been as high as my car for several months. The thought that a person could go even farther north, where it was certainly colder and snowier, simply horrified me at the time. Then, it made me wonder what was up there. So, one day, I decided to cross the border.

At the time, in the late 1990s, it was fairly easy to go to Canada, and not a whole lot harder to get back into the United States. Canadian customs agents usually came out, asked you the purpose of your visit, how long you were staying, and told you to enjoy your trip, all the while hoping you’d spend money and save l’économie québecoise. There was one place I crossed regularly, and the guy just stuck his head out the door and waved to me. I do not remember where that was, and it will never happen again in my lifetime, I am quite sure. On the other side, the US guards were a sometimes a little less friendly, sometimes asked a lot of questions, once made me cry (that was after 9/11), but I never had any serious problems getting back into the land of the free and home of the brave.

Still, I did not realize it was that easy at first back then. I was pretty sure something terrible would happen, some agricultural product stuck to the back of my van, and I would end up questioned in a room with a chair, a bare light bulb and two Mounties. Wait. That sounds a little weird. Visions of Dudley Do-Right…. And Nell. And Dudley’s horse. Definitely weird. I think I have just insulted the entire Canadian population reading this. No. You must understand. Many of my neighbors were very wary about crossing the border. When the speed limit signs said 100, they told me, it does not mean miles. That was different. And sometimes, in some places, there are no signs in English. You cannot turn right on red, and if you do, you are guilty until proven innocent. You can see why I was nervous.

But I went anyway. It’s kind of like the first time you go to a drugstore to buy contraceptives. You are sure everyone is going to make a big deal about things and tell you something is wrong with what you are about to do. Then you walk out of the store with your stuff, and it’s never a big deal again. Crossing the border was just like that. Well, without the sex.

It did not take me long to figure out that spending money in Canada was a good thing. I could have felt bad, and maybe should have after Ames went out of business, but honestly, I liked to dress my kids like the ones on “La Boîte à Lunch”. It was one of the sweetest programs on Canadian television, which is about all we got for pre-dish television, except Channel 3 from Burlington. Ames did not sell clothes like the ones Julie-Pier wore, and they also did not return your federal and provincial sales tax. Or speak French to you. Or tell you “qu’est-ce qu’ils sont mignons!” when they saw your kids in the store. And actually, I found nicer, warmer things. I love the United States, but I also like nice clothes. In the cold climate where I was living then, I liked warm clothes. I also liked the exchange rate. And as I discovered the benefits of nice, warm clothes, great exchange rates, and returned sales tax, I also had more excuses to return across the border, which I was also starting to enjoy. It was a vicious cycle, and one I came to love.

So, no visit to Canada was complete without a trip to the duty-free shop. For one thing, it was the place you had to go to get your sales tax back. For many northern Vermonters, though, the purpose of a trip to Canada WAS the duty-free shop, and its glorious and relatively inexpensive selection of what I think is termed in Canada as booze. [Now, I have no idea if this was a loose usage of the language, or if it was considered the term of choice for alcoholic beverages up there, but I did see the word used once, on the front page of the Gazette—I swear—in an article where you would normally expect a more formal description of the beverage consumed before the accident.] I liked many things in the duty-free shop, including the nice selection of watches, pens and perfume, also the booze… um… fine wine and chocolate. But hell, I was happy with a trip to Costco in Sherbrooke, too. I liked Nutella and Tin-Tin videos.

What I really loved about crossing the border was the people. I loved crossing the border and immediately speaking French—albeit a French that I had trouble understanding at times, especially when older people in smaller towns talked to my kids. Most of the time, though, it was just fun. Sherbrooke had a mall, one that grew during the time we lived there, a mall. This, you must understand, was something I did not see everyday in the Northeast Kingdom. At Christmas one year, we were fascinated by a display that had real, live reindeer. I loved that what was the north in the United States was the south in Quebec. Lake Memphremagog was beautiful on its US side, but luxurious on its Canadian. Funny how perspectives can change. People talked to us all the time, and my older son began to pick up French. He liked Tin-Tin, too. That helped.

I loved the escape, the feeling that as isolated as I sometimes felt sitting in my Vermont living room, watching the snow swirl around the backyard on a bitterly cold day, I could get in the car and go to another world, with better coffee and people who talked about literature in French on the radio. That was pretty exciting to me. Not to say that there was none of that in Vermont. I still miss things from there, like the Eye on the Sky from St. Johnsbury and picking strawberries and that swirling snow and the Milky Way and packs of coyotes howling in the night and neighbors, both down-to-earth and eccentric, and hidden gems and the Willey’s Store in Greensboro. But crossing the border was different. It was the escape, the feeling that I had crossed into something new, something different. And that was before I discovered Montreal. I found Montreal a while later, and then… well, then, nothing was the same. But that is another tale for another time. I have wandered a lot from my intended topic, I think, but please be patient with my exhausted and circumlocutious writing style; for I am weary at the end of the day. Good night.

If I cannot be Julie London, I would be happy to be Blossom Dearie. Oh hell, I do not really want to be either one of these singers, really. I just enjoy listening to them.

Blossom Dearie was introduced to me by way of a tape that arrived with my brother when he visited me in France. I was twenty-three years old (thought I was older, thinking back, but I thought wrong when I figured out the year).

I was on a junior (except it was my senior) year abroad (except I had also quit school for two years and was returning, so I was way older, I felt, than my compatriots). I had worked hard to get to France, spoke the language almost fluently when I left, and had known a good day’s work for periods of time after my dad died when I was twenty. I put myself through school, and going to France was cheaper than another year at my chosen establishment of higher learning. So, Caen it was, after six weeks in Paris. It sounded okay to me.

Despite my normal level of responsibility, I had just spent a rather reckless summer trying to earn money in various jobs, perfecting my French and Spanish with the local foreign student population, flirting, and generally getting myself into all sorts of enchanting entanglements. My main employment was temp work. For most of the summer, I took over as the secretary for a CEO of a clothing company while his regular secretary was getting married. It was more challenging than typing letters and answering phones. The people on the phone were aggressive, the expectations demanding. The CEO had a bodyguard, something new to me.

It was the summer I happened on to “La Dolce Vita” and decided to climb into a fountain with a girlfriend after coffee one night. It is the summer I accompanied an Austrian traveler, whose brand of German made no sense to me at all at that point, to a bar that I knew would have great blues. It did, and he was happy as a clam. Afterward, we ran down the hills of Forest Park, dangerous though it was reputed to be at night, watching the people leave the Muny, and sitting beside a pond kissing because we had few words that seemed to be getting across the point any better that life was fun. Another night, I went out with a friend, a doctoral student in math from Milan. His apartment was always stifling, and I remember sitting for hours making him tell me about Italy, watching the lights on the street in the apartment that seemed a little cooler when it was dark and the fans were all on. I remember the reproduction statue of David that his roommates had placed in the center of the furniture-free room. He was a nice guy, a friend. I felt free and alive and young. I met a couple of English grad students and tried to write stories collaboratively. The tales we created were awful, I think, but fun.

Later, toward August, I worked in a wine store. The friend who gave me the job had known me from my translating days. I used to go in the gourmet shop during lunch to talk and buy coffee beans, a great pleasure during that time, especially when they put a bakery in the store. The same friend introduced me to an investment banker who had a room full of jazz records, had just moved from New York, and had enough money to take me out to dinner somewhere nice. We chose a very nice place on the Hill, not the sandwich place down the street, but something very special. The fact that his life had been very different from mine became absolutely apparent the day he told me that his grandmother would have never allowed him to eat at McDonalds… and he never had. Really. It is true that I try to avoid the place, but never to have eaten there? Even as a kid? It was a foreign concept, as were the Sotheby’s auctions, the boarding school upbringing and the air-conditioned apartment in a place where the single professors at my university tended to live. I had friends who lived in less swanky quarters just across the street—well, my Italian friend, for example; it was another world.

I went out with the investor just a few times before I left for France, but I did enjoy his company. I liked his politeness, his passion for the things he loved, and his habit of making dates around Preston Sturges movies and splendid dinners he made himself. I was challenged by his intelligence and yes, his record collection. He had a fabulous turntable and receiver, and had inherited most of the LPs, as I recall, from some sort of a mentor who had needed to move from a much larger place. The records were in perfect condition for the most part, with many rare ones, he told me. I hardly had the background to know them all at that point, but I did recognize a lot, and I did appreciate it. My would-be boyfriend loved going through them, but troubled me by his seeming indifference to the pop I loved. He redeemed himself one day when I discovered on his shelves an Elvis Costello album. “My Aim Is True.” Good start. New York was his favorite place, where he heard live music, and was always on the search for a great new vocalist. It was during that time that I first heard Michele Hendricks. I saw her live years later. And then, there was Blossom Dearie. I heard her not in his apartment, but on the tape that arrived with my brother at December break.

The tape had been delivered, I learned, by the dashing young man in a topcoat, along with a jar of jelly and Christmas greetings to my mother. It came with a note, saying once again that he missed me (ah! joy!…), describing the many pleasures I should be seeking in France (I could not afford many of them), and something about the life he had been leading while I was away. A mix tape! From my sophisticated almost-was-a-boyfriend. It was a lonely existence at the time in France. I had been sick. I missed Paris. Now, I was in heaven. This was the good stuff! No one could have brought me more happiness than I found in that cold Normandy dorm room one December afternoon, when I first played Betty Carter’s “Tight.” I was transported from the world of students (all younger that I, besides) to something that I couldn’t quite have. It was great.

Blossom Dearie’s “I’m Shadowing You” was on the tape. I love Johnny Mercer’s words:

“In Venice
I’ll be a menace
In your Italian hotel
In Paris
I shall embarrass
You on La Rue de la Chappelle.”

It was a great choice. Coincidentally, my brother and I had splurged on train tickets to Venice. We arrived a few days early to a very cheap room in Paris, ready to walk and go to flea markets and museums, and then to set out on the journey from the Gare de Lyon. In Venice, we shivered our way around the frigid, foggy canals, and made the mistake of forgetting the name of our penzione. The city wound around, indecipherably, it seemed, a maze. I wished I had a warmer coat against the bone-chilling cold. We finally decided to eat. We were exhausted, perplexed, and I tried some version of Italian (more Spanish, actually) to explain our predicament. As it turned out, the wife of the owner was from Malaga. Words worked! Before we knew it, our table was covered with a map while the entire restaurant proposed possibilities for how to get us back to our cozy warm beds that night. Finally, the owner’s wife just put on her coat and said she’d help us find it. And she did. My brother hugged her. No menace in the hotel for that night, please.

So, I found the tape again, and listened, wondering if the guy would still be around when I got back. (He wasn’t, if you want to know. I sent him a birthday card shortly after I returned, and he called to say he had started dating a theater director closer to his own age). Oh well. So much for a future there. But I did think about it for a while.

“Both of us will be
So independent we
Will live on the run.
Picketing for every cause
Fighting all unjust laws
Happy we will be
Just you, the Secret Service and me.”

Social activism now? Hmm. Surprising choice for an investment banker. But maybe not for me. And a few more by Blossom Dearie in the meanwhile, the perfect songstress for the newly smitten.

This music may have made me wish for more back then, but she is refreshing to me now. I find myself unable to get “If I Were a Bell” out of my head after I hear her belt it out about as much as it can be belted out with that voice…. Somehow the innocent exuberance is so effective for that song. Wonder what she would have been like cast as Miss Sarah Brown.

The sauntering “Surrey With the Fringe On the Top” makes me relax into a slow ride in the country, when other times I may prefer the hurry. Talk about being in the here and now… Wishful thinking again, what a sweet, slowed-down version of “Tea For Two”! Yes, I can just picture it.

I have the album “Once Upon a Summertime” playing in the background as I write this. It is indeed a beautiful summer day without a trace of melancholy at the moment, and I am off now to enjoy it.

But first another great line from “We’re Together”: “Without you, life’s the flavor of flat… champagne.” Without whom?” Gee, I don’t even know. Well, maybe some regrets, some wishing. Not very zen… probably makes me unhappy. Ah… but what’s life without it? I can only keep practicing. “Doop-Doo-De-Doop…” Wow, I’m certainly familiar with pianissimo, but not “Perry Como” as a musical directive. On that note, I leave you. Have a peaceful day.

—————-
Now playing: Blossom Dearie - Doop-Doo-De-Doop (A Doodlin’ Song)
via FoxyTunes

I am going out on a limb today to discuss a topic that is a little embarrassing to me. Yes, this is the day I admit to my obsession. No, interest. Mere interest.

Last night I… I… listened to Chris Montez. Again.

Now, normally this is the sort of thing that I keep private, enjoying those hidden moments up in my attic, but the CD was sitting down on my kitchen shelf next to my Bose Wave Radio (same one Paul Harvey always talked about back when I only had AM radio, in the Barracuda, by the way). No CDs there, either. But now, cruising around in my minivan, I feel hip singing along with Chris.

For one thing, I am not a great singer. I think I could have great style and flair if I could only hit the notes, but no, no: woe to the would-be jazz artist me. If I could sing, perhaps my taste would not dissolve into these schmaltzy renditions of the great American songbook…

I hate this, hate the way I love it as the CD starts, with applause: “And now for the star of our show, Mr. Chris Mon tez!!!…” The vibes, and there he is indeed, “Because of you, there’s a song in my heart…” I hate how much I enjoy this.

My kids used to like this stuff. I bought it—ordered it from Amazon, no less—right around the time I realized that something was amiss in my marriage. You’ve got to wonder. I went back home to St. Louis for a week with a couple of the kids to see my mom, and had a rental car that was upgraded because something was wrong with the first one. The kids loved the CD, and I was cruising the streets I used to know playing “Sunny.” My older son loved it. He was innocent then. Now he groans, “Chris Montez sings like a girl!” No denying that.

All my kids make fun of me for it now. And rightly so. It is so hard to explain to them a song like “Girl Talk.” For one thing, it has to be one of the most sexist songs I have heard. It’s right up there with “Wives and Lovers”. To my knowledge, Chris Montez never covered that Burt Bachrach/Hal David hit. Jack Jones did just fine with it. (You remember Jack Jones, don’t you? “Love Boat”? Ugh.) Sure I’ll take the curlers out before you go to work, hon.. Please! And yet, the whole thing with Chris Montez singing about how women go on and on with “inconsequential things that men don’t really care about” seems … I’m searching for the right adjective, and I can’t find anything that amply describes the feeling I get with Montez’s feminine voice singing about the problems of women and their ways. Wow. I just discovered that Bobby Troup wrote that song. What a guy. He also wrote “Route 66” and was the doctor on “Emergency!” The nurse was Julie London, his wife–no, ex-wife, I’m told–and a torch singer I would aspire to be, if I could sing.

I like the idea of sitting on the back of a piano singing “Cry Me a River.” Doesn’t everyone?

But getting back to “Girl Talk,” I just looked up the lyrics: “She’s just a dame; they’re all the same.” Now this is where I draw the line.________ I must stop. I must find good music. Why am I drawn to this kind of thing? No, no! I have to put away the Claudine Longet. Vic Damone’s version of “MacArthur Park”? Sergio Mendes, “Pretty World”. Oh, save me!

I have to break myself of the habit. Never mind that I can sing along with Chris Montez with no difficulty. The question is, do I really want to?

I think I need voice lessons. I really, really wish that I could sing well enough to sing along with Sarah Vaughn when she *intentionally* sings off key and gets it right back where it’s supposed to be. You couldn’t take it away from her… and I can’t even get it!

“Time after time
You help me know that I’m*
So lucky
To be loved by you.”

*[note the rhyme, please]

Oh. I think I just killed all hopes of ever getting a date on this site. I promise not to play this stuff unless you like it, too. I can stop. Really.

—————-
Now playing: Chris Montez - Time After Time
via FoxyTunes

“Did you see it?” my younger daughter pointed out the car window. “It’s there, there!”

The daily heron lumbered over the Farm Pond, toward the hospital, in search of better fishing, perhaps, or just part of the routine. Who knows?

I love herons. It amazes me that such a large, steady bird can just fly right over the neighborhood and downtown, largely unnoticed as people go on about their business. Seeing them, although not rare, is always an event for our family, perhaps just because I have made it one. I have always liked to watch them, pinning some hope for luck on them as if they were storks… although I don’t really need a stork’s brand of luck anywhere near my house. I love the way herons fold their necks into their bodies as they fly, but leave legs hanging, making their tallness graceful, but not graceful enough to lose charm. When they have found a nice, shallow river, they stand, silently, forever, it would seem, for the essential fish to swallow whole. They wait for what sustains them, and take it in a breathless and elegant moment.

The heron spotting for today happened in spite of rain that had started hitting the windshield lightly. Another rainy day, after all. In some ways, the rain seems a relief. We were all already wet, riding home from a swim, hungry, and a little cold, to be honest. The car doors open, and girls spilled out, running into the house. An hour remained before boys would return from camp. The girls ran a bath to warm up, dried off, put on pajamas (yes, pajamas) and took peanut butter sandwiches to the basement. They started drawing.

I made tea and watched them for a while. They were quiet, more likely exhausted after a very late bedtime last night. I was tired, too, working in morning, yes, the swim, too. I could have slept later this morning.

So, now I can sneak upstairs for a few minutes before the late afternoon. I crave my attic. Like the balcony, it is accessible only from my bedroom, my own private spaces. My records are there. Let’s see.. what for today? Glen Campbell, Todd Rundgren, Charlie Rich. Charlie Rich? No, maybe not a good choice for mid-afternoon. I opt for the Lovin’ Spoonful. Hums. Yes, “Rain on the Roof” seems pretty obvious. But what I want, two songs actually, are on a greatest hits album. Where is it? Yes. I have to hear “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice” (I love the way it adds the layers) and then, one that always makes my heart beat faster, “Darling Be Home Soon.” Never mind what the song does to me, I am just still impressed with the “dawdled”/”toddled” rhyme.

So, I put on the album, and gather myself. A big, round, fuzzy white rug covers most of the floor, and it is there that I sit, looking through the quarter-circle windows that really do open. I look down at the rain puddling up in the neighbors’ yards, and I look through the steam of my tea at the gas station down the street, the umbrellas bobbing along the sidewalk. I love this quiet moment. In a few minutes, it will be busy again, for a while. And then, later, in a few hours, it will be wonderful in ways that nights are wonderful, wonderful wishes, wonderful, graceful, lumbering words.

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Now playing: Lovin’ Spoonful, The - Darling Be Home Soon
via FoxyTunes

The words on the page of the letter made the decision tangible. Yesterday, they were just words I uttered through tears over the phone. Little details, clothes packed away, toys in boxes, and memories playing over and over though my head, made the decision more real. I walked up the stairs to the attic. The boxes, ten years worth of letters and records from doctors and schools and therapists, made the decision more understandable, in my mind if not my heart. In exactly two weeks, our lives will be different. My boy is leaving.

Oh, of course we’ll see him again often enough. He’ll come home some weekends, and I’ll visit him at school. But, he will no longer live with us here in our house in Framingham.

It would not help to defend myself as a mother at this point. Either you understand the wrenching choice, or you don’t. It is not a decision I made easily, or quickly. Indeed, the proposal had been made three years ago, by a behavioral specialist who worked in our home. It has taken a few injuries for me to consider it. Strangers bitten, therapists leaving the job after hurting their backs… The days I spent unable to walk after trying to lift him were over a year ago, yet I look for some sort of way to explain how hard it has been. Sleepless nights? The scratches on my arm? His room is a wreck, drywall falling where he has banged his head, windows broken, contents of drawers and closets scattered in nighttime frolics. His frolics, not mine or anyone else’s. And the price paid by his brother and sisters? Sure, they love him, but they have given so much, learned so much so early. How about my ten-year-old son? It is for him that I know I have to do this. I can damn the world we live in, but at least for now, it feels like the only chance he has to move forward and really learn the daily living skills that will make his life better as an adult. His life could be better. That, at least, gives me some consolation.

But then there are the joys I will miss. My boy laughs from deep in his belly. When he is truly happy and seems to know I understood him, he beams, and holds me tight for a hug that feels like forever. Amidst social service budget cuts and reason for pessimism, this kid inspires generosity, patience, and tolerance. They have been lessons for all of us. The world slows down, and the essential things become clearer, the judgments less harsh, the pleasures more sublime.

I was inspired in my own work and life by my son and the people who have helped him, and by the people who have helped me. It is a world that was so foreign to me when I was younger. I was afraid of it. In working on policy around disability, I see the range of people who are perceived as limited by what their bodies let them have. And yet, what remains is the spirit. It sometimes astounds me. It all seems normal to me now, more normal, in fact, than the perfect health we hope to attain or maintain. Is this not the human condition? I think of accessibility, acceptance, and love, and I leave you tonight with this:

The Poems of Our Climate
by Wallace Stevens

I
Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations–one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.

II
Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one’s torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.

III
There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.

Yes, I did note that one of the private things in my life is that I am a one-time horse-owner. I do not recommend it, especially if you feel the least bit intimidated by animals that are bigger than you are.

Forgive me, horse lovers. I have surely hit the nerve of some of you out there. I assure you, I voice my caution with utmost respect and admiration for the equine enthusiast. Indeed, I imagine that it is you, oh horsey friend, who truly understand the care and loving that these animals need.

So how did this all begin?

I was pregnant, pre-doctoral-exam and, looking back, half mad. I had gone from my normal coursework, teaching and student life to pre-mom panic near the hub of the universe. We lived in Brookline. We had just moved from Colorado, and I loved the hustle of the city and the feel of being in the East. But, when prompted sufficiently, I did have to agree that it was sort of noisy, and really expensive. So I entertained the notion of at least looking at houses one day while we were on a little getaway in the Northeast Kingdom. There were some nice houses, much cheaper, of course. Some were on beautiful, quaint commons. Some were in the woods. There was one stunning house, on pavement (as opposed to the ubiquitous dirt roads found in those parts), that just went with the image of canning and berry picking, and drinking tea on the back porch after a satisfying day’s work on a novel I had not started, or even considered writing… I would be embarrassed to admit falling for the whole thing, had not so many others been similarly seduced by this image of bucolic utopia. A few months later, we packed up the new baby and headed for the hills. It was March, and they were snowy hills, I might add. There was a LOT of snow, and it did not melt until May. Late May. It was forty degrees below zero the night after we moved in. Nothing melts when it’s that cold.

Although I found many things to love there, I felt a tad isolated—oh, I can tell more stories about that, too—when I lived in Vermont, and the horses were no help. Mostly, they took a lot of time. Now, you all may assume by reading this that I don’t take well to critters. Not true. When I was little, we fed raccoons in our suburban backyard. I was a big birdwatcher. As for bigger farm animals, as a little girl, I rode horses, albeit cautiously, nearly every time my family went to the country to see my aunt and uncle, about once a month. I was never the horsey girl who was in the equestrian troop of the Girl Scouts or wanted riding boots or read Black Beauty over and over at the age of eight, but it was pretty fun seeing my cousins and riding Dixie. (I also shot at cans with a rifle and drove homemade go carts too fast through the hills, but those are yet more stories for another time.). Dixie was gentle, and fun to groom and feed, and I really liked the barn. And then I went home and didn’t think much about horses. That was my experience with them.

So the question is sure to have come up in your mind by now. Why horses?

Well, the answer is simple. They came with the house.

The house we moved into was beautiful. It had two staircases—a dream I had growing up, because of the house where I used to take piano lessons. Add to that the push-button lights, three huge clawfoot bathtubs, pocket doors, leaded glass, a full walk-in pantry. It was elegant, wonderful inside. And outside were seven acres of perennial gardens on a gentle slope. Around the back was the entrance to the updated stables in the lower level of a three-story barn attached to the house. And there, in the stables, were the horses.

The big Morgan mix was twenty-six years old. Her name was Amber, and she was cranky. I couldn’t say I blamed her. The people who owned the house seemed to love her, and she loved them, and now they were going back to merry old England. The younger one—who turned out not to be that much younger—was named Marc Antony, or Tony for short. Tony the pony. Oh yes, he was a pony, and he was hell on wheels.. ahem, hooves. If Amber did not get out, Tony did. And if Amber did, it was usually because she was worried about Tony, who had already loosened the gate and headed down the field, or possibly the street. Have you ever tried to catch a naughty pony? The normal techniques I tried with cats sometimes worked. Tony liked oats, and occasionally came running if I shook the bag. When that trick failed, though, it was not fun, especially because I was not used to hip-deep snow, ice, and otherwise nasty conditions. So that was it for me. The care and maintenance of beasts, as well as starting the fire in the woodstove, were now in the hands of my then-husband. After nights up nursing, I had a good excuse to sleep in until seven a.m., after all.

There were still many coincidental worries around the animals. We were constantly running out of hay and feed, and the bit about shoeing them was more trouble and expense than I ever could have imagined. We had to lock the oats away from Tony, or he would eat too much and somehow develop founder, which is a scary condition I had never encountered. I felt that we were probably not doing everything quite right, and at best, were not giving the horses the opportunities to pull carts and be otherwise useful and productive. I had the idea that Tony’s shenanigans were as much a statement of boredom as a simple part of his personality.

Still, we kept the horses. I would have given up much sooner. Once, I was on my own for a couple of weeks. I was six months pregnant, had another baby in a backpack, and was shoveling manure. It was not a graceful or comfortable thing to do. In context, though, it did not seem like a big deal. What made it somewhat easier was the fact that many of the people I had met up there were dairy farmers. They were in cold barns working from four in the morning, sometimes with a young child or two in tow, sometimes pregnant, usually tired, and taking care not of pets, but of the animals who were their livelihood. I have never seen anyone work harder. They were often out there for hours later than any normal bedtime, repairing machines, tending sick animals, haying in the summer. I saw their raw hands and red faces, day in and day out, and I couldn’t really find it in myself to complain about a couple of cranky, but somehow amusingly mischievous horses.

Still, it was during my then-husband’s first long motorcycle trip that I realized the horses needed to go. By that time, number three child had arrived, and I realized that my role as a mother was turning into something I had not expected. My second boy’s delays in development across the board were quite evidently not cured by the various therapies I had set up, and a Leo the Late Bloomer scenario was becoming less and less likely. In June, my son was diagnosed with autism.

A neighbor gave me the name of the previous owners of the horses, and I called them. A few days later, they came and took Amber and Tony back to the horse farm where they had lived years before.

Strangely enough, after a couple of years, horses were exactly the thing that gave my son more than any other therapy he has ever had. I have no statistical data to prove this, and it could very well be argued that all the other efforts we had made just came together right then. It did seem like a miracle, though. He learned to walk, then run, after just a few rides on the back of a horse, a very calm horse—well, actually, a pony. I never knew this, but according to the occupational therapist who ran the show, humans ride horses comfortably because our gaits are the same. Horses are therapeutic, she said, because they give the rhythm of walking to those who don’t have it themselves. It seemed to be exactly the case for my son. And the magic continued. He said words he had never said before or since when the rhythm was right on the back of those animals. He smiled when he was riding, and rode on trails for several weeks with his brother one glorious fall.

Now, it takes a special sort of horse to be able to be a therapy horse, and I can tell you right now that Amber and Tony were a little past their prime for that kind of training. One thing was certain, though. I was no longer afraid of big animals. I stayed away from their backsides, more to avoid being kicked or stepped on than anything else, but aside from that, they didn’t scare me anymore. Chasing an ornery pony around the yard in the dead of a cold Vermont winter was a great way to dispel any fear I had.

So, when the time came to put my four-year-old son, who could barely sit up, in the saddle, I handed him over, watched him, and waited. I trusted, watched, waited, much as I do today, and will no doubt continue to do, as his life moves on at a different pace from the lives all around him.

I just put dinner on, and have decided to cheat at the risotto tonight, using the pressure cooker and cheaper arborio rice instead of stirring, stirring, stirring the canaroli. I taste the difference, largely because my hair and clothing don’t bask in the aroma for the time it takes to make it, but I’m not sure the kids care as long as there is plenty. Ah, but to give them taste.

Speaking of taste, during an otherwise lovely ride from Hopkinton yesterday morning, my 11-year-old son begged for me to roll up the windows when I was blasting the Fairport Convention on the van stereo. He said it was embarrassing. Sniff. I thought that the album I had chosen rocked, and had wide appeal to all age groups. Then, he noted that “Matty Groves” was “inappropriate.” Well, hard to argue that, as the lyrics started with Lord Arnold’s wife’s proposition and became increasingly violent. He truly was shocked at the idea of Lord Arnold’s abrupt return to find Matty in bed with his wife, and the murderous ending. Yeah, it is a little brutal, I admit. The part that really gets me is Simon Nicol’s gruff “GET UP” after he asks Matty, “How do you like my feather bed? How do you like my sheets? How do you like my own fair wife, who lies in your arms asleep?” It gets me every time. Still, my snobbery would have me prefer to let my kids learn about murder and adultery this way than to figure out in some giggling OMG moment that “Candy Shop” is a song about fellatio.

Right now I am listening to a CD by Lori Carson, an artist I had discovered at a friend’s house on a late night, with snow falling, turning to ice. I heard the song, “Something’s Got Me” and ordered the album soon after. When I heard the whole album, it was “Snow Come Down” that always reminded me of that night. Situations change, though, and the feelings I had lying on the floor listening to music that night turned into a friendship instead, and a nice one, at that. This evening, though, as the wind picks up and rain thinks of falling, the entire album casts its melancholy mood. Why do I subject myself to this?

Good question. I do have an answer, too.

I have to.

I love the escape of it–or rather, into it. God, I can feel it right now, the raw exposure as she sings. I get the same spine tingling from Beth Gibbons. I remember hearing her for the first time outside Portishead, on a CD from a French music magazine I used to get, “Les inrockuptibles”. I immediately bought the album after hearing one cut, and never looked back. I found it at Archambault in Montreal on one of my weekend excursions from the isolated life I led in northern Vermont… The November “stick season” with its chill grey and smoke from the woodstoves sank into my memories as I heard her remarkable voice sing, “Autumn leaves/beauty’s got a hold on me.” By that time in Vermont, the leaves were long gone, the feeling faded, but “Sand River” is still my favorite song there, one that immediately makes me wish I were in bed, and not alone.

Well, the risotto is ready. It smells marvelous, and I’ll grate the parmigiano reggiano. Mmmmm…. Wow. I forgot about the Todd Rundgren cover on this album. “And you gazed up at me, and the answer was plain to see…” Like that, too.

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Now playing: Lori Carson - Something’s Got Me
via FoxyTunes

Coinciding with Rob Sheffield’s Love Is a Mix Tape, I recently found in my attic a wooden box of cassette tapes. Unlike Sheffield’s, though, mine chronicled an earlier era: early Elvis Costello (at least one whole tape) and Squeeze/the DBs, Bob Marley. We considered this cutting edge at the time. This was even pre-U2. My graduation present was a boombox. When I went away to Mizzou, my brother, a senior in high school at the time, keeper of the stereo and record collection, made two cassettes for me to enjoy in the dorms. He titled one, “Music of Your Life”; the other read “Music of My Life.”

Looking back over years since he made this tape, I remember our basement. My dad, who was a carpenter by trade, finished a playroom, a sewing room for my mom, and a family room—complete with fireplace—in the early 1970s. Our house was a small ranch. Because it was on a hill, it felt like two stories in back, with the basement opening up to the backyard. The room with the back door was the family room. Then there was a hall, a tiny sewing room that my mom never used because it was claustrophobic and lit with fluorescent lights that buzzed. The playroom was at the foot of the stairs that came down from the kitchen.

The playroom had large toy boxes decorated with decals we had picked out to distinguish them. For some reason, I chose frogs and flowers. My brother’s had various American-themed stuff, maybe planes, too. The playroom also had swings, and a train table, complete with train and fake trees. It was fun. Barbie shared her camper with the “Pogo people,” as we called them, that came free with Proctor & Gamble products, and with Big Jim. Barbie may have been infatuated with Ken, or intimidated by G.I. Joe, but we didn’t own those. Big Jim was no match for Barbie. For one thing, she was taller. She also had big boobs and better clothes. I managed to break Big Jim’s bicep by flexing it too many times, and had to spend my own allowance to buy my brother a new doll. Alas, the new Jim never shared the camper with Barbie.

The family room was where all the really good stuff happened. Because it was the only room in the house with a fireplace, it was where Santa had to come in. To make things easy for the overburdened elf, we just put up a second tree down there, for Santa’s presents only. When we got the color TV/stereo/speaker piece upstairs, the old black and white moved to the basement, along with the old record player, and most of the LPs. (The old green radio that had to warm up, that played WIL 1430 in the kitchen when we were getting ready for grade school, also ended up in the basement, but in the unfinished part where my dad had his workbench. We could hear it just fine anywhere in the basement.) The family room was carpeted in the same olive-green shag carpeting that graced the living room floors upstairs. The gun cabinet was there, next to a lumpy fold-out couch. When we built fires, I can remember being excited to hear popcorn hitting the pot lid upstairs. A few minutes later, my mom would carry down the big pyrex yellow mixing bowl, and sometimes we were allowed to have Vess cream soda then. The soda was bright pink and bubbly and I still have never found another brand I like better.

I grew up with a lot of country music. For a long time I didn’t like it because it replayed the wars my parents had on Saturdays. This was the day of the week that two radio shows aired: the Metropolitan Opera, which my mom has always loved; the other the Grand Ole Opry, which my dad had listened to since he was a boy. Sometime after the second or third feature movie on Channel 11, Dad switched on the green radio. My mom by that time already had started listening to Puccini and the witticisms of the opera quizzes upstairs while she worked crossword puzzles and read mysteries in the living room. For at least a couple of hours, both programs overlapped, and my parents used to turn up their own radios to ever increasing volumes to drown out the other. It was quite a cacophony, but Grand Ole always won because it went on into the night.

We didn’t always listen to it all night, though. Hee Haw and the Porter Wagoner Show were on Saturday night, as well. Before my dad started drinking heavily, we used to watch these shows as a family on the color TV upstairs after dinner. As years passed, though, my dad was asleep by the time The Love Boat came on.

So, I did not question why my brother had included the various Hank Williams songs, Jerry Lee Lewis’s menacing rendition of “Chantilly Lace,” Claude King’s “Wolverton Mountain,” or “Tennessee Bird Walk” (my brother won the album from WIL when he was five). I did notice one song of our youth that I had forgotten.

The first song my brother selected was David Rose’s “The Stripper.”

We just always knew that my dad had bought it for my mom before they were married. It was right next to the Jerry Lee Lewis and Hank Williams records in the basement. My grade school friends and I used the fireplace as a stage. We also used to turn off all the lights and put a flashlight on a turntable with mirrors around the room so the light would bounce off. (I’m not sure how we did this while playing the record, but I remember that detail distinctly.) For more mood, we put the cellophane red wrappers from bunches of bananas over the flashlight. This was what my slumber parties were like. I even convinced my mom to buy me a boa once from Eunice Farmer’s, the fabric store we went to at least once a month.

In the cedar closet off the playroom, my mom had a wardrobe of beautiful clothing from the 1950s and 60s. It was an era when ladies wore hats and gloves, girdles and wildly colored slips. Well, at least, my mom did. My mom also flew an airplane and bought a 1961 Galaxy convertible on a whim, so I cannot say her tastes were representative. Still, from the things that she allowed us to have for dress-up, we found plenty to take off, and even got a pretty good idea about how to do a bump and grind. For some reason, no one ever seemed offended by our shows, even though we giggled a lot. Then we chased my brother around the house with Jean Nate or Tinkerbell, or Avon’s Moonwind, collected in bottles shaped like deer or cats or mermaids. No wonder Big Jim left the camper. Oh well, it undoubtedly gave Barbie more time to organize Pogo’s run against Nixon. And Carter. Forget Jim, honey. He wasn’t that big, anyway.

Other selections from the tape came from the soundtrack of The Pink Panther. Henry Mancini was a big part of my life. “If you’re ever going to kiss me, it had better be tonight/while the mandolins are playing and stars are bright.” We used that stuff in the basement when we’d set up the family room as a cocktail lounge. Still the same red-cellophaned light revolving, but now we had set up wood-grained TV trays around the room, with cups of soda and Pepperidge Farm crackers and mixed nuts. I got into trouble more than once for sneaking the adult snacks downstairs. If my friends weren’t over, Pooh bear and Raggedy Ann were the audience. In retrospect, I realize that the cocktail lounge was patterned after the only nice restaurant we ever went to when I was a kid. It was called the Flaming Pit, on 66 in Crestwood. It was the kind of place with dark lighting, a miniscule but expected dance floor, Muzak, gin and tonics, and a deep male voice over the intercom saying “Number 32” as orders came up. I don’t have a sense of what happened in any other sort of restaurant in the 1970s, except Howard Johnson’s. Hojo’s was not the effect I wanted.

On occasion, the family room was a coffee house, and I eased the Morton Salt girl mugs off the umbrella in the kitchen, and tried to play my dad’s huge guitar that he couldn’t play, or my brother’s tiny ukulele, if he let me. He usually didn’t. I wasn’t too successful at either one of those, anyway, so the electric organ was another option that I actually did know how to play. It just wasn’t the effect I was looking for. In fact, I had little idea what kind of music I was supposed to be playing, anyway, beyond “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” and the Coke song “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” and other things that didn’t openly criticize the war or glorify drugs by sending representatives to Woodstock. Hell, I didn’t even know what Woodstock was when I was a kid; I just knew that it caused a lot of uproar around the house when it was mentioned. I had an older half brother who smelled funny (I recognized that same smell later at a reggae concert) and wore a headband and a leather vest with fringe and had something called VD, and a motorcycle that I burned my leg on. He was also a source of heartache for my dad, even before he started jumping from airplanes. Still, for some reason, it was all right to sing about going to San Francisco with flowers in my hair. Mostly, I played from the Girl Scout Handbook.

My ideas about post-Woodie Guthrie folk music were not to unfold until later. That had to wait. When my brother made the tape, I was innocent. The music we listened to was early REM, the Police, stuff like that. It wasn’t until I started dating older men that I got to hear a lot of Dylan. Bob Dylan, that is. Dylan Thomas was in a poetry anthology up in the living room, and I used to copy “Fern Hill” for calligraphy practice. Still love the stuff.

Wow. What memories…