I'm thinking of one of my favorite childhood memories, as a result of the post today on Time Goes By where there are mentions of many of the songs that were the playlist for the first decade of my life.
I can remember being about 8 or 9 years old. It is a warm, sunny summer day, and my cousin Dianne and are holding hands, skipping down Chestnut Street and singing
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
My, oh my what a wonderful day!
Plenty of sunshine heading my way
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay
Mister Bluebird on my shoulder
It's the truth, it's actch'll
Ev'rything is satisfactch'll
It is one of those days when all seems right with the world. My cousin, ten months younger than I, is my best friend. Our mothers, who are sisters, often dress us alike. We have a close extended family. World War II is over. Rationing has finally ended, and we have just seen the Disney movie Song of the South -- the first Disney movie that featured live characters interacting with animated ones.
--the simple, heart-warming story of a boy, a girl, and the person of Uncle Remus himself, who becomes a living personality. Set in the nostalgic memorable days of the late nineteenth century, the story enacted by the living players take place on a lovely Southern plantation. It is a deeply moving, romantic account of a lonely and bewildered boy, left to his own devices when his father, an aggressive Atlanta newspaper editor, is caught between domestic responsibility and political challenge
At least that's how the Disney camp described it at the time. And, at the time, it enchanted me. Uncle Remus (the live, storytelling character) was a poor man, an old man, and a black man in a post Civil War America that offered few opportunities for him to better his life. Uncle Remus enchanted me with his humor, his compassion, his wisdom, his wonderful animal stories, his optimism.
The animal stories were conveyed in a manner in which they were not deemed as ostensibly racist by many among the audiences of the time; by the mid-20th century, however, the dialect and the "old Uncle" stereotype of the narrator, long considered demeaning by many blacks, as well as Harris' [the author] racist and patronizing attitudes toward blacks and his defense of slavery in his foreword, rendered the book indefensible to many. Without much controversy the stories became less popular.
Several years back, some people began to think that it's time to bring back the Song of the South, bring it to a much different audience, an audience that lived through the Civil Rights movement, an audience that celebrates Black History Month, an audience that can view the Song of the South through the lens of history.
Those who have criticized "Song of the South" have claimed that it makes slavery appear pleasant or pretends that slavery didn't exist at all. Nevermind the film is set in the years following the abolition of slavery. I always have thought the movie offers a good, honest representation of the lives that some black Americans lived in a time that really existed.
I would love to see Song of the South again. I'd love to see it with my grandson, who has grown up without being hampered by old stereotypes. I'll bet he would love Uncle Remus for the kind and entertaining man he is. At least he is, still, on the disintegrating film locked up somewhere in Disney's vault.
More to the point, I miss getting costumed up on Halloween.
At my last job (which lasted 20 years, and there's lots of reasons why), my boss loved Halloween, and every year we all dressed up and made the rounds of all the offices.
This is some of us as Snow White and some of her dwarfs. That's me on your bottom left, and that's my boss behind me. Other years we dressed as the Seven Deadly Sins, Hogwart faculty (I wish I knew what happed to my costume for that; I wonder if I loaned it to someone), gangsters, and, of course witches. I've forgotten some of the other themes we used. There are photos, somewhere, but it was all before any of us had digital cameras, and they were never scanned in.
Two years ago, when my boss retired, she chose Halloween as the day for her farewell party, and she urged people to dress in costume. Of course, I did.
About six years ago, I went to a few dance parties as Medusa.
I guess that's where my grandson gets his love of costumes. You sort of become whatever you wear.
I suppose that's one way to get little kids aware of the election coming up. Although I imagine it would be more appealing to girls than boys, who tend to like more physical activities where they don't have to sit still for so long. At least that's the case with my 6 year old grandson.
1984 -- the year my dad passed away and the year that my son b!X acquired his first Macintosh.
I unearthed it from under the steps in my brother's cellar today, padded khaki case covered with at least two and half years worth of cobwebs and twenty years worth of the dust it has accumulated as I've hauled it around through move after move. B!X long ago moved on to other parts of the country and other versions of the Mac.
I don't know why I kept it. And I don't want to have to lug it through one more move.
I can't help wondering if it's worth anything, this boxy Macintosh 128K.
I also can't help wondering -- if I kept it for another twenty years, would it be worth something then?
It's astounding to realize that the damned thing cost close to $3000 back in 1984. My dad was a very generous man, both in life and in death.
When I hear that song, I am back in my little cocoon of a room where my asthma has me ensconced for days on end listening to the radio and playing with my endless supply of movie star paper dolls. The sun is shining through the sparkling window panes, opened just a bit to let in the fresh air. The room is filled with my breath and my music and an otherwise silence that negates any stress. My imagination takes me wherever I want to go, and the music on the radio is my magic carpet.
Even today, as the ear worm circles through my brain, somewhere deep inside me, I retreat into a safe, secluded place, where the sun shines through clear window panes and I am left to conjure a life of peace.
I'm caught up in a wash of nostalgia these days, with friends I haven't been in contact for a long while emailing photos with messages saying "Were we ever that young?"
And so this poem, one of Jim Culleny's dailies, reminds me of just how young I once was and how much has happened since.
In Memory of Radio
Amiri Baraka
Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?
(Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.
The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,
Or something equally unattractive.)
What can I say?
It is better to have loved and lost
Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?
Am I a sage or something?
Mandrake's hypnotic gesture of the week?
(Remember, I do not have the healing powers of Oral Roberts...
I cannot, like F. J. Sheen, tell you how to get saved & rich!
I cannot even order you to the gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goddy Knight)
& love is an evil word.
Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean?
An evol word. & besides
who understands it?
I certainly wouldn't like to go out on that kind of limb.
Saturday mornings we listened to the Red Lantern & his undersea folk.
At 11, Let's Pretend
& we did
& I, the poet, still do. Thank God!
What was it he used to say (after the transformation when he was safe
& invisible & the unbelievers couldn't throw stones?) "Heh, heh, heh.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."
O, yes he does
O, yes he does
An evil word it is,
This Love.
Some women take to mothering naturally. I had to work at it. And so I wasn't the best mother in the world. I would have worked outside the home whether I had been a single mom or not. But because I was, mine were latchkey kids, with my daughter, beginning at age 12, taking care of her younger brother, age 5, after school. I left them some evenings to go out on dates. Oh, I did cook them healthy meals, and even cookies sometimes. I made their Halloween costumes and went to all parent events at their schools. My daughter took ballet lessons, belonged to 4H (but I got kicked out as Assistant Leader because I wouldn't salute the flag during the Vietnam War) . I made my son a Dr. Who scarf and took him to Dr. Who fan events. I bought him lots of comic books and taught him how to throw a ball. But most of all, I think/hope I did for them what my mother was never able to do for me, -- give them the freedom to become who they wanted to be -- to explore, make mistakes, and search for their bliss. I think/hope that I always let them know that, as far as I was concerned, they were OK just the way they were/are. (Me and that dear now dead Mr. Rogers.) Not having had that affirmation from my mother still affects my relationship with her. I hope that my doing that right for them neutralizes all the wrong things I did as they were growing up.
So, you two (now adult) kids, here's to you both. You keep me young, you keep me informed, you keep me honest, and, in many ways, you keep me vital. I'm so glad that I'm your mother.
So, in memory of those not-always-good ol' days that you two managed to survive with flying colors, here you are, playing "air guitar and drums" -- enjoying each other's company sometime in the 70s and bringing so much joy into my life.
I've been thinking about my life's soundtrack -- the songs that have played in the background as I lived through various eras in my life so far. My still new car still has it's free trial satellite radio connection, and I find that the only station I really listen to is the 1950s one. With each song, my being remembers the feeling of when I heard it played all those decades ago. I don't necessarily remember events; I remember feelings. That's the magic of music.
I have discovered that many of the songs from subsequent decades that I still like to listen to are the ones written by Leonard Cohen. Not sung by him, but written -- or co-written -- by him. They seem to generate the most visceral emotional response.
And Don McClean with his "And I Love You So" and "Winterwood" and "Vincent."
Judy Collins singing "Suzanne" and"Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" and "Sisters of Mercy" ..... -- music that took me through bittersweet 70s.
Over the past decade or so, especially those years taking care of my mother, I haven't been listening to much music. There is no stereo in her rooms, and I spend a great deal of my time there with her, watching television.
Occasionally, in my own space, I listen to Josh Groban. "Vincent," again.
I'm finally starting to download songs into my MP3 player, but it's not any new music that I want to listen to. I want to hear the old songs, the ones that bring me to remembering when I had a real life.
Though solitude and communion are both necessary and do in part serve to renew the depth of one another, a man must decide for himself at which point to give up one for the other.
In the corner of a file folder holding my various diplomas -- a transcript of my grades for the 1958 - 1959 college semesters. Suffice it to say that I was much less than a stellar student. But I could hold more beer than most of the guys I knew. Ah, those were the days.
Our offspring and I are rooting around in search of legacies left by my once-husband. He left boxes of memorabilia about his plays -- from playbills to reviews, to posters -- so those legacies are obvious. What is not obvious to our kids are the times in his life before they existed, and b!X, for one, is in the process of digging out his Dad's military history -- mostly because it appears that during that time period he changed from good Catholic to angry agnostic. I met him after he got out of the army, so I have no idea what transpired to precipitate that shift in world view.
As I'm rooting around in my -- and my mom's -- old files, I'm finding glimpses of an old self of mine that I had forgotten in the lines of poetry I had written back when I was in high school. Those are the ones that my mother saved; I never gave them to her, so she must have gone through my teen-age dresser to find them when I was away at college. If I knew then that she was invading my privacy, I would have had a fit. Now, I'm kind of glad she saved them, because I never would have.
The Winter passes into Spring
The birds begin to sweetly sing,
And through the air the Church bells ring.
But, yet, I notice not a thing.
To me the world is cold and gray,
E'er in twilight, ne'er in day.
There's nothing in my life that's gay.
Happiness seems far away.
(Of course, in 1957, "gay" only meant "happy.")
Here's one from 1953. I was 13.
The land is so dry, it's all just a waste.
We've no water for days, no food to tatse.
The sand on the desert is not food to eat.
Even the cactus furnish no meat.
The sun is so hot and oh so dry.
The hot breeze in our ears whispers
"Die......dry.......die!"
I don't know if it was adolescent angst or if I was depressed even back then, but here's one I wrote when I was 18.
I hear the dreary, mournful refrain
Of the steadily falling downpour of rain.
Not the rain of a wild and stormy night,
With furious streaks and flashes of light,
With tormenting winds of passionate force
And eerie outcries from an unknown source.
Not the kind of rain that rises from hell
And holds all the world in its magical spell.
Not the kind of rain that's so torrid and splendid --
That you still stand in wonder even after its ended.
And still not the rain that's mellow and mild
As sweet and refreshing as the smile of a child.
Not the shower that calls all of nature to waken
With gentle caresses that leaves all unshaken.
Not the rain that makes every creature feel new.
Not the rain that leaves the world sparkling with dew.
But a gloomy depressing curtain of gray
That covers and hides all the brightness of day --
A shroud of depression, a mist of despair,
A cloak of discouragement, everywhere.
OK, so there's lots of trite phrases and rhymings. After all, my high school education was in a Catholic school, where in our senior year the big piece of "literature" we read was "Father Malachy's Miracle." What I can't help noticing, though, is my focus on the dark side of things. Even then.
Here's one I like. I must have been a freshman in college when I wrote it:
If I were to choose my own heaven,
It would be forever Spring,
with no bugs
and plenty of food
and books, books books
and a rock 'n roll band on weekdays
and a jazz band on Sundays
and people people people
and all of them would be college graduates.
If I were to choose my own hell
it could be no worse
than boredom.
I think that my once-husband would have chosen the same kind of heaven. Except for the "people people people" and probably the "college graduates." He was never bored in his own company. Unlike me.
Finally, I wrote this when I was 20. Apparently, I knew that one day I would be rooting around. Twenty is Young
When I am old
I will not care for
rock 'n roll,
slopping
and
jazz
bongos drums
beat poetry
and
Kafka
Kerouac
Jake Trussell
and
lifeguards with
sea-burnished hair
and convertibles.
But now I am young
and I know that all of these
will one day be
the cushions
on the couch of memories
on which I will repose
Myrln fidgets in the hospital bed in the emergency room, where they have him hooked up to various machines that beep and chime and whir.
"I just wanted a few more days. I needed a few more days. I needed time to think...." He looks at me with eyes angry and sad at the same time. He is back in the hospital after only two days at home from a week-long stay for tests and such. I have been with him for the past 36 hours, including this morning when we had to call a Rescue Ambulance because he couldn't breathe, even with an oxygen tank.
We have been divorced now for twice as many years as we were married. But time had healed our wounds and we had developed a friendly relationship.
"I will be eternally grateful," he wheezes, "for all you are doing for me now."
My eyes fill with tears. "No problem," I say.
"I have to tell you something," he says. "Even through it all, there was always a little love left."
"Yes," I say. "Me too."
And I'm crying and we are holding hands the way we once did long before I begged him to stop smoking.
Tonight he is temporarily hooked up to a respirator. b!X arrived from Oregon, and his sister and family from Massachusetts. He has not yet been awake for b!X and him to have a little time together. I hope he wakes, for both their sakes.
Meanwhile, I am back on the mountain with my mother, but I suspect will be be leaving again in a day or so.
They will take him off the respirator. He will either breathe or not. Either way, he won't be going home again.
Myrln, who once blogged here on Mondays, is my former spouse, the father of my children. He has inoperable lung cancer, which has spread to just about every vital organ.
Is that the way it was done before nursing homes and hospices, before miracle drugs and transplants, when old folks died slowly at home, their sons and daughters and grandchildren and cousins all taking turns taking care? The frail old ones, dying only from the final stresses of age and gravity, moved slowly and silently, sleeping through most of those last months, last weeks, last days. Relatives came and went, stayed and shared, while the old ones slept and dreamed and waited, and that was the way it was finally done.
But there are only two of us here to keep watch, to take care. Each day she is more tired, asks to sleep more and more often. Awake, she sits sad and silent, eating slowly in front of the television that she can barely hear anyway. I sometimes still hold her and dance with her late at night, when she's afraid and won't sleep. Sometimes I sleep with her to make her feel safe. Sometimes, no matter what we do, she's up and down all night, wants to eat, wants to go home. "Please, please," she mutters, unable to tell me what exactly would please her.
Someone cracked my rear passenger side bumper, and I have to go and get an estimate so that I can get it fixed. But then what. My brother would have to get my mother in his car and come with me to drop off (and then pick up) my car from the body shop. It is hard to believe that we know no one around here who can help with that chore so that we wouldn't have to put my mother through that. I don't even think that there are taxis in this little town. At least I've never seen any. I think I'd better start checking that out.
This is not the way it's supposed to be done -- without friends, without extended family, without a support system. But this is the way my brother insists, and I am too tired to argue any more.
I'd better check the phone book for taxi services.
And I'm still purging and packing and planning. While I cook, and feed, and clean, and sit, and hold, and hope.
ADDENDUM:
Whaddya know. There IS a taxi service right in town! Family or friends would be better, but I'll settle for a taxi when it comes to getting my car fixed.
No other work of my childhood, and to a very large degree almost entirely at an unconscious level, likely did as much not just to steer me to an eventual appreciation of science fiction, but to an almost innate understanding of how deeply art in general, whether words or pictures or sounds, could implant itself into a person.
So nearly ends a beautifully written memoir by b!X about the death of Arthur C. Clarke and the influence that the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey had on his childhood aspirations and imagination. You should click here and read the whole Star Child post.
Like my son (and, actually, the whole of our family -- my daughter's wedding cake was topped with Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia), I, too, am a lover of the kind of science fiction that not only opens up possible new worlds, but also explores the kind of human spirit that will be necessary to make the best of those worlds.
My first exposure to sci fi was C.S. Lewis' Perelandra, upon which I stumbled by accident in my Catholic high school's library. As far as I was ever able to tell, it was the only sci-fi book on the library shelves.
I don't remember the sequence of my growing love of sci-fi, but I do remember watching Clarke's movie when it first came out -- a night out with my then-husband and another sci-fi fan couple. Our daughter would have been about 5 at that time; I don't remember her being with us.
But I do still remember the sounds, the visuals, the bone flung into the air that became a space ship, the appearance of the megalith, that last breath-stopping image of the Star Child.
I can't remember when the last time was that someone sent me a Valentine. And it's apparent, as I continue to sort through all of the stuff I've been carting around all of these years, that I didn't think any that I got in the past were important enough to save.
Except for this one, from about 28 years ago, by the little guy who still thought is was OK to give his mother a Valentine card:
