Five Haiku

Which brings more peace—dog 
facing me or curled away?
Never mind. That snore.

*

I walk home from work,
Listen to news as I think:
Pasta? Stir-fry? Luck.


*

So: “the first dusting.”
Memories, hope, fantasy—
the real snow report. 


*

All those men, naked, 
having a party somewhere 
without me. That’s right. 


*

A stranger, a chat
about singers I once loved. 
Still do. But . . . what? Time. 

Take Good Care of My Baby

As my mother's life slowly winds down (not to say with certainty that the end is imminent, though yesterday, four days before her 97th birthday, my siblings and I raced to her side, thinking it was), I find myself haunted by the doctor who delivered me.

Having recently fixed on his name at the bottom of my 1961 birth certificate from the US Army Hospital in Munich, Germany, I've discovered, among other things—thanks to Google and Ancestry.com—pictures of his wedding and of his gravesite in Quantico, Virginia, a scant hour from where I live. 

Yes, the doctor who delivered me died—in 1968 at age 35, in the Panama Canal Zone (of what cause I don't know), seven years after bringing me into the world in a hospital where my mother always said the American nurses were brusque and impatient, even rude, so unlike the German hospitals where friends of hers had given birth, with weeklong stays, feather beds, and geraniums on the windowsills.

Was Dr. V., this blond 28-year-old Army captain, equally cold? How did he comport himself as he pulled me from my mother? I experienced the touch of his hands before I did hers. 

She has known me for 55 years—knows mainly the touch of my hand now and the sound of my voice. Does she recognize my face in those fleeting moments when our eyes lock, when her eyes are even open?

As it happens, Dr. V. came back to America on the same ship my family returned on, a year and a half after we did. I know this because I found a photo of him and his wife and two children onboard. It was the SS United States, the fastest ocean liner ever to cross the Atlantic. 

SS United States today

Today that enormous vessel sits empty and rusted at a dock in Philadelphia, but still hanging on 47 years after its final crossing in 1969, awaiting its hoped-for second life, an effort I've contributed money to. Save the SS United States! If you've driven along I-95 through Philly, you've passed it. You've also seen it, from above, if you've watched the opening credits of West Side Story, released a month after Dr. V. cupped his hands around my slippery head for the first and probably only time. 

Bobby Vee

Another coincidence: Several weeks ago, I read the obituary of singer Bobby Vee, who recently died. His biggest hit was "Take Good Care of My Baby," a song I've always liked. After reading the article, I did some additional research out of curiosity and learned that "Take Good Care of My Baby" reached number one in the US on September 21, 1961, the day I was born—not in the US but across the Atlantic, into the hands of an intimate stranger who transferred me, kindly or officiously, into the arms (or not) of my exhausted mother. 

These are the pieces of a story I seek.

My family (left half of group) and the SS United States, 1963

Catch the Wind

My mother did so well in hospice care that she was "discharged" after three months, in June. The real game-changer was the 24-hour aides we hired to supplement hospice, at the recommendation of the palliative-care doctor when she was hospitalized in March. Perhaps more important, these wonderful, loving, professional, and creative women complement the often overtaxed staff of the memory-care unit in her assistant-living facility. As a result, she is always clean, well fed, stimulated or rested as appropriate, and much more alert in general.

Strange to say about a 95-year-old with advanced dementia, but at times I almost forget she has dementia, because the connetion—in her eyes, in her smile, in her gestures—is so much more acute and deep than it has been in, well, years. She still doesn't speak, really, and she certainly doesn't show any sign that she knows I'm her "son," per se, someone named "Billy." But she knows me—has never stopped knowing me, actually, even when she was most out of it—and when I speak she seems to hear, even if I'll never know how her mind processes what I say to her. 

It's an ineffable feeling that a veil has been lifted, not permanently but for now—she was not ready to say goodbye, it seems—a veil that has partially occluded her vision for some time.

I hold her hand and we listen to music on my phone, lately the '60s folk channel on Pandora—Simon and Garfunkel, Peter, Paul and Mary, Judy Collins, songs she once knew from the secular-inflected folk Masses my family attended. I also sometimes play '70s light rock—Linda Ronstadt, CSNY, Fleetwood Mac, the stuff that filled her house when her kids took over the stereo. All that is in her too, because she's more than big bands and Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, and more than classical, which she undeniably loved and which plays on the radio in her room most of the time when I'm not around. She's a fabric with many threads, a suite with many changes.

When sundown pales the sky

I want to hide a while behind your smile

And everywhere I'd look your eyes I'd find . . . 

                                               —Donovan

(And happy birthday, Dad.)

The Way You've Changed My Life

Today I spent several hours with my 95-year-old mother, who has been in hospice care for a

Mom and I doing some leg lifts last summer.

little over a week. We don't know how long she has, but as D. once so aptly said about my father in the weeks before he passed away, she's winding down. 

Ten days ago, as her frail yet strangely resilient and willful body was jostled onto a stretcher (with great care but jostled nonetheless) for the trip from the hospital back to her assisted-living facility—where we would initiate hospice and 24-hour aides—I thought: You'll never have to go anywhere again. This was good news for her, but it made me sad.

These are the words that came out of my mouth to D. yesterday: "She was my first friend, my first love, and my first ally." 

The person I am today is more due to her than anyone else in the world.

This afternoon, as my sister dashed home to attend to some pastries rising in her kitchen and the aide stepped out for a break, I held hands with Mom—lying in her bed, her feet lightly moving under the sheet—while a CD of old musical numbers played. This song filled the silence like a chest expanding:

The way you wear your hat.
The way you sip your tea.
The memory of all that—
No, no, they can't take that away from me.

The way your smile just beams.
The way you sing off-key.
The way you haunt my dreams.
No, no, they can't take that away from me.

We may never, never meet again
On that bumpy road to love
Still I'll always,
Always keep the memory of . . .

The way you hold your knife.
The way we danced until three.
The way you've changed my life.
No, no - they can't take that away from me.
No, they can't take that away from me. 

Fall Descends

They say everything can be replaced,
Yet every distance is not near.
So I remember every face 
Of every man who put me here. . . . .

                                  

Last month, I went to a memorial service for a woman I met 27 years ago, when she was the administrator of the graduate writing program I was in—the very first person I met on the very first day—and whom I last saw in 2003. 

At the outdoor service in Rock Creek Park, we were led in sing-alongs of a few of T's favorite songs—"Blowin' in the Wind," "I Shall Be Released," "Forever Young." Lovely and moving, and some of my favorites, too. The only problem was I found myself singing Peter, Paul, and Mary's "Blowin' in the Wind," Bette Midler's "I Shall Be Released," and Joan Baez's "Forever Young" while the song leader, the printed lyrics, and the rest of the obedient crowd followed Dylan's locutions and beats. 

See, I like Bob Dylan's songs a lot more than I like Bob Dylan's singing—and the renditions that came out of my mouth were the ones that have resided in my head (and music collection) for years.

T. might have appreciated that story. She had a wry (occasionally caustic) sense of humor, a big laugh, and a welcoming manner. It helped that she seemed to like me. A lot of people probably had the same thought (that she liked them, I mean, not me). She managed to pull off a rare, felicitous blending of "get over yourself" and "how can I help?"

That was more or less the gist of all the speakers' reminiscences at the memorial, and I would have joined in with my own if the open period for stories had lasted longer. But almost all the speakers seemed to be designated as such, even those who weren't officially listed in the program. Then it was over. 

It's probably just as well I didn't come forward because I couldn't have said much more than the general, abstract characterization of her I've given here.

Other than my affection for T., my memories of how well she ran the office and supported people like me (a somewhat nervous 26-year-old returning to school after four years away), a memory of one dinner party at her house a few years later, and another at my apartment long after grad school (the last time I saw her, in fact)—coupled with my regret at having fallen out of touch over the last 11 years—I have virtually no specific memories of her at all, in the sense of stories, particular times she did this and I said that and she came back with this bon mot. Nothing.

She's not the only person I could say this about—I who, according to some, have such an amazing memory. (I just happen to remember different things than they do.) More often than not, what I retain are the little things, inconsequential details: music that was playing, food people "et" (to quote the pronunciation of the British actress reading the British book I'm listening to), what grade I was in when a particular movie came out (sometimes when I never even saw the movie—I can often remember what grade I was in when the stars appeared on Merv Griffin or Dinah Shore.)

I wish I could call up more interactions with those people who may not have been major players in my life but affected me nevertheless. Who in sometimes small, daily ways made me feel valued, respected, interested, engaged, inspired to return the favor of their ways.

"Fall Descends on Rock Creek Park" by Matthew Lehner

Are You Alright?

On Friday, July 6, of last year, I got the news from a hospice nurse that my almost 92-year-old father probably wouldn't live through the weekend. I left work and made the 40-minute drive with my brother from the city to Dad's assisted-living facility in the suburbs.

I'd made that journey countless times in the preceding four years, and before that to the house in another suburb where he and my mother had lived for half a century: to deliver prescriptions, figure out why the cable wasn't working, bring a meatloaf, take him to the doctor, take him to physical therapy, take him to McDonald's, shovel the sidewalk, have a cup of tea, try to cheer both of them up or run interference—just be there.

Now, I realized, this might actually be the last time I'd make that drive for him. (Mom was still very much alive, though in the grip of dementia.) Each time I visited, there was less of him there. His small, thin body curled in bed or slumped in a wheelchair, the ever-shortening sentences of this linguist, this man of words.

I'd been slowly saying goodbye for years.

In the car, my brother and I knew, there was little left to talk about. What do you say when all of life has been lived, all measures taken, all opportunities for denial or solutions exhausted? So we awkwardly chatted about our jobs, our health, the weather—I don't even know what. My brother manned the text messages—to his wife, our two sisters (both out of town), his office—as I drove. We made more small talk, then were quiet for a long stretch.

I don't remember if the radio was already playing or if I turned it on at that point. But into the silence came a familiar voice. 

Are you alright?
All of a sudden you went away.
Are you alright?
I hope you come back around someday.

Are you alright?
I haven't seen you in a real long time.
Are you alright?
Could you give me some kind of sign?

Lucinda Williams. I'd never heard this particular song, though I used to follow her avidly. As we drove on, I gazed out the window listening to her unmistakable car-wheels-on-a-gravel-road voice, full of the ragged strength of survival and the fragility of longing. I felt as if a piece of music I didn't even know had flown out of my heart, giving voice to my worry and anticipated loss. 

Are you alright?
I looked around me and you were gone.
Are you alright?
I feel like there must be something wrong.
Are you alright?
'Cause it seems like you disappeared.
Are you alright?
'Cause I been feeling a little scared.
Are you alright? 

But it wasn't only the words. It was the timing of it, the mind-reading. 

I begged the silence to continue till the end of the song, then directed the sentiment to my brother: Please don't start talking, I thought. Please. Let's just listen. 

And this, underlying it all, directed to someone else: Don't go before we get there.

Are you sleeping through the night?
Do you have someone to hold you tight?
Do you have someone to hang out with?
Do you have someone to hug and kiss you,
Hug and kiss you, hug and kiss you?
Are you alright? 

We made it through almost the entire song, were less than a mile away from our destination, when my brother spoke. 

"Are you a Lucinda Williams fan?"

I flinched and for an instant didn't want to say anything in reply. He'd broken the spell, intercepted the message. But I answered anyway. I couldn't hold it against him.

"I am," I said, "but I've kind of lost touch with her."

Are you alright?
Is there something been bothering you?
Are you alright?
I wish you'd give me a little clue.
Are you alright?
Is there something you wanna say?
Are you alright?
Just tell me that you're okay . . . . 

I'd seen Lucinda live, had several of her albums. But after 2001's Essence, which a friend gave my ex and me when we were living together, I never bought another. No particular reason—like friendships, sometimes musical relationships wane or go on hiatus, through no one's fault. Here she was again.

The song finally ended, and my brother and I were there. 

For the next 13 hours, we sat with Dad, my partner, D., joining us for most of that time. We brought Mom in for a short while—a chance for our parents to complete a circle, even though neither was fully aware. It gave us peace of mind.

Just around midnight, he died. And another long silence descended.

Sometime after that day, I put the song on my iPod. I haven't listened to it too often, and I haven't yet bought any more of Lucinda's music. But I know it's there, waiting.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Linda Ronstadt

I

Los Angeles Times

I've never seen her in person. Unlike other musical acts I've been anywhere from interested in to borderline obsessed with over the years—Fleetwood Mac, Carly Simon, Emmylou Harris, Judy Collins, Iris Dement, Peter, Paul and
Mary, even Bruce Springsteen (whom I feel lucky have seen once in my life—35 years ago, and he was filling stadiums then!)—the opportunity has never been right and/or has rarely presented itself to see Linda.

It could have happened just a week ago when she was in Washington for the National Book Festival, plugging her new memoir—on my birthday no less—but D. and I went to Philadelphia for the day to have dinner at one of my favorite restaurants. Another chance, perhaps the last, missed.

II
I did buy her book, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, and devoured it in a little more than a day. It's amazingly well written, if highly selective and a little imbalanced—a long, vivid, and transporting chapter on her childhood in Tucson followed by chapters of varying lengths tracking her career, dwelling on landmarks like the making of her breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel, and virtually skipping over some others, such as my all-time favorite of hers, Hasten Down the Wind.

III

Ansel Adams

"The place where I grew up bore no resemblance whatsoever to the pictures in the little books I read as a child. I wondered what kind of a place would have such an abundance of lollipop trees and lush green meadows that didn't even have to be watered with a hose. Instead, we had the giant cacti known as saguaros. These enormous plant beings (I can think of no other way to describe them) grow within a few hundred miles of Tucson and no place else on the face of the earth. They are the cleverest of water hoarders and can expand their leathery green skin to capture as much as a ton of additional water. Saguaros produce an extravagantly voluptuous white blossom, which is the bravest gesture I can imagine in an environment so purely hostile to plant growth." —Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir.

IV
Linda recorded "Keep Me From Blowing Away," from Heart Like a Wheel, in Silver Spring, Maryland, where I grew up. I find this is one of the most stunning facts in the book. She came down with the flu in 1974 while passing through Washington with a Jackson Browne tour and ended up staying behind to recover at the Bethesda house of John Starling, a member of the Seldom Scene whom she had met through her friend Emmylou Harris. A snowstorm came, and there was a houseful of musicians, one of whom was Paul Craft, who wrote "Keep Me From Blowing Away," which she decided to record as soon as she could—which in this case was at the nearby Silver Spring studio (who knew?) of the engineer George Massenburg, whom she ended up working with many times later in LA.

I have no idea where in Silver Spring his studio was, but I love to think that I—12 years old and soon to be in the thrall of Linda Ronstadt—was probably no more than a few miles away from the creation of a piece of this seminal record.

V
Linda is now probably as well known, if not better known, for her albums of American standards that she recorded in the 1980s with Nelson Riddle as she is for her country-rock and pop hits of the 1970s, but to me her work from the '70s will forever define her. She has not done anything since that has come close to that in my estimation, or that suited her voice better (with two exceptions, neither one a solo project: the first Trio record with Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton and a great duet album she made in 1999 with Emmylou, Western Wall: The Tucson Sessions).

Thinking a lot about her, as I have been over the last several weeks with the release of her book and the news that she's suffering from Parkinson's disease, I've come to realize that I actually felt betrayed and angry when, in 1981 (I was 19), she abandoned rock for a turn on Broadway in The Pirates of Penzance, which was followed by a less successful run in La Bohème at the Public Theater and then those standards, followed later by the hugely successful albums of Mexican songs.

Something changed in her voice, which she rightfully acknowledges in her book as a new color, richness, and range. Yes, technically, she became a much stronger singer—anyone could detect that—but what I've always heard is an almost synthetic quality, a hyper-polished, often girlishly breathy veneer over what was once raw, from the gut, and far more sensual. (You can hear the effect on her pop singing especially on her mega-popular 1989 duets with Aaron Neville, which I think sound almost computer-generated in their trilling, glittery acrobatics.)

VI
Linda's definitive albums:

Heart Like a Wheel (1974) 
Prisoner in Disguise (1975)
Hasten Down the Wind (1976)
Simple Dreams (1977)
Living in the USA  (1978)

I'm undecided about including her next album, Mad Love (1980), in large part a trend-victim foray into new wave (including three Elvis Costello covers) that met with mixed reception but that I liked. I guess I'd say it's part of my definitive Linda Ronstadt years (and the last of her records I bought for a long, long time) but stylistically not equal to the "canon." Likewise her pre-Heart Like a Wheel album, Don't Cry Now, has some lasting moments (including "Love Has No Pride" and "Desperado") but was mostly a hint of what was to come.

VII
Linda first came onto my radar with the inescapable Top 40 hits from Heart Like a Wheel, "You're No Good," "When Will I Be Loved." She remained merely a radio presence until one of my older sisters put Hasten Down the Wind on her Christmas list in 1976, when I was 15, and I gave it to her (probably about $5.99 at Kemp Mill Records in Wheaton, Maryland). My sister was into the Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Little Feat at the time, all musicians who were part of Linda's circle, but it turned out that I listened to Hasten Down the Wind more than she did. I played it all the time and never even had my own copy till she went away to college (it's even possible that I appropriated hers when her tastes moved on; I can't remember). The next Christmas, I got Simple Dreams from Santa.

VIII
I was shy and solitary and didn't really socialize outside of school until I was a senior (I went to a private school and few of my classmates lived near me). My circle was my family, and because I was the youngest of four, my siblings were increasingly unavailable as they pursued activities of their own and then went off to college. I spent a lot of time listening to records by myself. Imagine a skinny 16-year-old kid who never went out or got into trouble tucked up by the stereo singing along to Linda's cover of Warren Zevon's "Carmelita"—Carmelita, hold me tighter. I think I'm sinking down. And I'm all strung out on heroin on the outskirts of town . . . .

My parents were wrapped up in their pursuits—my father in his books, my mother in her teaching and graduate work, so they probably didn't give lyrics like that much more thought than I did (even I  didn't give them much thought)—but my mother came to like many of Linda's songs, especially "Blue Bayou" and (an early hint of Linda's later recordings of standards) "When I Grow Too Old to Dream." The prettier ballads were something Mom and I shared.

IX
Last weekend, when I was briefly considering going to see Linda at the book festival, I imagined what I might say to her as she signed my copy. "You probably have a lot of men telling you that you were a key figure in their adolescence, but I can tell you you were important to gay boys, too. . . ." Where I would have gone with that, I have no idea. It's probably just as well I didn't get the chance. The day after her appearance, I read Henry Alford's New York Times column on awkward celebrity encounters, in which "we want to parse or mediate an entity that is at once wholly familiar but wholly unknown to us; we want to touch the proverbial screen."

What did Linda Ronstadt mean to a gay teenager in the 1970s? Like Stevie Nicks and Carly Simon, she was, for me, a fantasy on which to project my ideas of an unknown territory—but it was all about aesthetics, about sensation, not sexuality. The famous Annie Leibovitz red-negligee photo spread in Rolling Stone, the gauzy white dress on Hasten Down the Wind, Linda gazing off into the Malibu distance—these might as well have been scents of perfume (Charlie! Jean Naté!), a mirrored tray of jeweled necklaces and silk tassels on a dresser, an overheard story about a first date on a winter night, the guy in a puffy down vest, the girl in Frye boots. A future I might someday see. They say just once in life you find someone that's right. But the world looks so confused, I can't tell false from true . . . .

X







XI
I've never felt it was cool to love Linda Ronstadt. I remember when we were teenagers, my brother made a dismissive comment about performers who "only" sang rather than writing songs and playing instruments. It stuck with me, and deep down I felt there must have been something deficient in Linda, and even more in my affection for her.

But what I now know is that she has a musician's and scholar's knowledge of music history, harmony, instrumental arrangement, and the way the voice works. She also can describe a musician's particular qualities like a real writer.

Here she is on Randy Newman, whose adaptation of Faust she sang on (and whose voice makes my own skin crawl, though I recognize his musicianship and songwriting skill): "Randy's songs can be bleak. Not to seem a hard man, he will insert a shard of comfort so meager it seems Dickensian. His songs are superbly crafted, with a musical tension that results from this combination of hope and utter despair. In his orchestrations, he might comment on the narrative being carried by the singer, using the instruments to deliver the jabs. Singing in the midst of one of his arrangements can feel like taking part in a boisterous discussion, with people of unevenly matched intelligence, sensibility, and insight ranting and squabbling."


XII
When I was in Vermont earlier this month, I read a New York Times article about Linda in which she discussed her Parkinson's and her forthcoming memoir. That was the gateway to all of this—she's been on my mind ever since. In a used-CD store in Brattleboro, I bought two of her later records I'd never listened to apart from a song or two. Feels Like Home (1995), whose beautiful title song is by Randy Newman, contains some good performances that could stand up to those of her '70s heyday ("High Sierra," "Morning Blues," "Women Cross the River"). We Ran (1998)—which turned out to be the last solo pop-rock album she recorded—is a lot more uneven.

But I keep listening to them and will no doubt add others to my collection. Not having listened to her much at all for decades, I've started loading her '70s masterworks onto my iPod.

I may one day give her American Songbook projects (Lush Life, etc.) more of a serious listen, or even her mariachi records. But for now the fancy getups, the mannered hairdos, the crinkly-nose smiles of those undertakings just don't interest me. Even as I find I'm more interested than ever in her.

XIII
I've written a lot about having been a solitary, sometimes lonely kid. But thinking back on those days and my love of Linda Ronstadt doesn't make me feel sad or like something I want to distance myself from (though I did distance myself from it for a long time). I feel incredibly attached to this music. These are all really fond memories.

I've never met anyone in adulthood who shared my passion for Linda—not my current partner, not my previous one, not any friends I can think of. I don't know why that is. She still has millions of fans, as the crowds at her appearances have proved. I just don't seem to know any of them.

Linda is at a tough point in her life right now, no longer able to sing and dealing with a serious diagnosis, but here is what I've gleaned: She has a lot of friends, two kids she's proud of, an accomplished and varied body of work to look back on, a fierce engagement with issues she cares about, such as immigration, and—what I've never really appreciated till recently—the great respect of her fellow musicians. There's nothing deficient about her at all (or about me). In short, a life well lived, generously and unpretentiously, whose latest turn she seems to be facing with equanimity and acceptance. I wish her well.

The biggest surprise: After all these years, I find I'm still growing into her.

It's Going to Take Some Time

King with Gerry Goffin and Paul Simon (right). 
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images.

I just finished Carole King’s new book, A Natural Woman. Yes, one of my “things” is biographies and memoirs about ’60s and ’70s singer/songwriters. This is among the best—it’s simply and cleanly written, with a friendly sense of humor and no pretension (except for a slight uptick in name-dropping toward the end, which is excusable because in her life she has so successfully resisted the empty trappings of stardom). It’s the story of a real journey, punctuated by both vulnerability (an abusive marriage) and conviction (motherhood, living much of her adult life close to the land, political activism).

And creativity—jeez. Her first big songwriting hit, the Shirelles’ “Will You Love Me Tomorrow," came out when she was 18. And she’d already been writing songs for years (often forgotten: she didn’t write the words, even on most of Tapestry, until later in her career). She composed “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” in about a day when a producer asked her and her then-husband, lyricist Gerry Goffin, if they could come up with a song for Aretha Franklin with something like the title “Natural Woman” (this at a time, the late ’60s, when their songwriting star seemed to be on the descent). Her description of how humbling and thrilling it felt to hear Aretha sing it for the first time is a reminder that at some point cultural givens didn’t exist. And then they did—and will forever.

I enjoyed this book so much despite the fact that, I’m embarrassed to admit, I’ve never listened to Tapestry, one of the bestselling albums of all time, in its entirety.

One of the things that most struck me was that King became a star despite her ongoing resistance (for instance, going five years in the 1980s without recording when she was living in rural Idaho), but she became one nevertheless—on her own terms. That’s the element that’s in too short supply today.

In a chapter about her 2005 tour, she writes: “Why have I spent so much of my life pushing away from this thing I do that people seem to enjoy, and that I, too, enjoy, so much? Was it because I wanted to experience other things, other lifestyles, other adventures, other career paths? Are those such bad things to want? . . .

“It’s always been important to me to encourage the best in people, and music has been my principal instrument in doing that. And yet I kept pushing music away because I thought it was keeping me from having a normal life.
 

“At this moment I understand that for me, music is normal life.”

This realization (at least as written) comes when she’s 63 years old.

I go through a lot of handwringing about my own relationship to creativity (including what it’s taken me a long time to realize is my principal instrument—teaching). I’m a writer who spends most of his life not writing. Is that normal for me? Or am I just waiting for the next chapter?

How Can I Keep From Singing?

The wife of a college friend passed away at age 51, so last weekend most of my old, small "circle" of a half dozen or so traveled from various points along the Mid-Atlantic to bear witness at her memorial service outside Boston. I'd only met her once, at a college reunion nine years ago (she didn't go to our school; she and her husband met years later), but a better angel of my sometimes reluctant nature prevailed, reminding me that intimate acquaintance with the deceased isn't required and  funerals are for the living.

It was billed as a memorial "salon," at which loved ones could speak, read, sing about whatever inspired them. It went on more than two hours, and there were some lovely moments. The Quaker hymn "My Life Flows on in Endless Song" (which I know as "How Can I Keep From Singing?," by Judy Collins and Enya) and "Dona Nobis Pacem" were among the planned portions of the program, sung by those gathered. Someone read the exquisite, heartbreaking, and right poem "Let Evening Come" by Jane Kenyon. There were lots of memories of my friend's wife, proof that stories are truly the components of a life, the breathing blocks from which a human can be recalled and invoked, indeed created—from which we're all created, every day. I never knew her, but after the memorial I had a sense of her.

The only person in my circle who was moved to speak was one who recited, from memory, "The Owl and the Pussycat." I asked if she'd planned to do that and she said, "NO!"

Afterward my group and some others went to our friend's house, the home he'd shared with his wife until her death, and drank beer and wine and listened to a story she had written herself. I had to leave before most of the others because my sister and brother-in-law, who live in the Boston area and with whom I was staying, were taking me out to dinner. (We had also been through a lot recently, and I wanted to honor that.) I felt rushed and inept as I said goodbye to my college friend and his teenage daughter, and then to all my old friends who I don't see often and who had traveled to be there as I had. 

Just before the memorial, I'd squeezed in a brief, half-hour visit with yet another friend (from a different time in my life, grad school) who lives in the area. We'll catch up a bit more this summer in Provincetown, where it turns out she and her family will overlap with D. and me for a day or two. She walked me to the church where the memorial was, and as we said goodbye, I heard myself say "I love you." I sign my letters to close friends "love" and "xo," but I don't think I've ever said "I love you" to a platonic friend in my life (which might come as a surprise to the friend I said it to, but it's true). The words just tumbled out. I meant them, but they were also on the surface that day looking for someone to receive them. It was that kind of day.

Do You Remember?

D. and I went out for our weekly Silver Diner dinner with my father tonight, Thursday, because we'll be away in Provincetown this weekend. Dad was very quiet, but I didn't have any reason to think he was unhappy. In the car on the way there, I asked him if he had any New Year's resolutions, and he said he couldn't think of any. Then later at dinner, D. asked him again, and Dad said, not with irritation but with a small, shy chuckle, "You asked me that before—I can't think of any." (I can't either!) It's sometimes surprising what he remembers from moment to moment.

After we said good night to him, we popped in to say hi to Mom in the memory-care wing. We weren't sure she'd be up, as it was 8:30, but we found her poking around the hall in her nightie and slippers. We took her back to her room and turned on a CD to get her relaxed. It took only a few minutes to coax her into bed as the music played. We kissed her good night; D. said "I love you" and told her we'd see her in the morning—a lie but a benign one. I had told her I'd see her "in the daylight," unnecessarily staying on the factual side of the fence. We will see her in the daylight, just not tomorrow's.

Here's a picture of me and my father tonight in our tissue-paper crowns after opening some British "Christmas crackers" D. had brought.


And here's what we left playing when we said good night to Mom:

Dearie, do you remember when we
Waltzed to the Sousa band?
My, wasn't the music grand?
Chowder parties down by the seashore
Every Fourth of July . . .

Dearie, life was cheery
In the good old days gone by
Do you remember?
If you remember,
Then Dearie, you're much older than I.

So Runs the World Away

Thanks to Diablo for sending me the following poem by Mary Oliver, a resident, as it happens of Provincetown, where I recently spent a happy week and a half.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

***

I spent many hours with D. biking the trails in and around Ptown, including the magnificent Cape Cod Rail Trail, which we hope will someday extend all the way up the Cape to Provincetown. I haven't owned a bike of my own since I was a child but am on the verge of buying my first adult bike. This is thanks to D. and the roads we've ridden together over the last nearly three years.

While on the Cape, we had a very nice visit with a former grad school professor/writing teacher of mine and his wife. He retired a few years ago and moved up there about three years ago. I used to see him at least a couple of times a year at various social or literary occasions but hadn't talked with him at length since his move, so it was nice to reconnect. One thing I told him was that he was a big influence on my teaching, as, among many other things, I learned from him that it's okay to teach from notes, that no one will think less of you if you refer to them. In fact, I still write out notes before the first session of every workshop I teach, and later sessions if I'm teaching an essay I haven't taught before, but the interesting thing is that I refer to my notes less and less. It's the writing of them that imprints them.

One of the last times I spent time with my old teacher and his wife was at a Josh Ritter concert at the Birchmere, probably in 2006. Now in his late sixties, he's a huge Josh Ritter fan. As it happened, I had just downloaded Josh Ritter's new CD, So Runs the World Away, onto my iPod before my vacation. I was just listening to it the other day and was struck by its style, so different from his earlier, more classic singer/songwriter mode. It's kind of epic sea shanty meets art song. I need to listen to it more.
I started this post almost two weeks ago (through most of that last paragraph). And just tonight I bought a novel, Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, whose title reminded me of Josh Ritter's and then of this unfinished post.
The book I have to finish before starting that one is Rosanne Cash's memoir, Composed. I just finished a lovely chapter about six months she spent living in London at age 20 and 21, and that chapter ends on a note of wistfulness about friends and mentors she lost touch with over the years, some of whom she reconnected with later in moving and unexpected ways, some of whom died before she had a chance to.
I hope to see my teacher again the next time I'm passing through.

Where the Driveway Ends

Why has it been so hard for me to get back on track? Somehow my eight-week jury duty (with 22 people who, for the most part, I could not stand, hearing cases that were, for the most part, maddeningly repetitive and tedious, not to mention depressing) and my mother's fall (she's now almost fully recovered physically but much changed mentally) threw me off my blogging stride. The only way I'll ever get any words down is not to claim any continuity or structure for them.

I had one of NPR's much-touted "driveway moments" this evening when a story on Shel Silverstein came on All Things Considered just as I pulled up to D's house. I knew Silverstein wrote songs in addition to children's books (which, by the way, I never read as a child), but the only songs I knew he wrote were "The Queen of the Silver Dollar," on Emmylou Harris's great first album, Pieces of the Sky," and "I'm Checking Out," which Meryl Streep sings to amazing, triumphant effect at the end of Postcards From the Edge.

There's a new Shel Silverstein tribute album out, the subject of the NPR story, and who knew he also wrote those Top 40 songs of my youth "Sylvia's Mother" and "The Cover of the Rolling Stone," not to mention Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue" and Marianne Faithfull's "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" (which I love and haven't thought about in years)?

I had to sit in the car and hear the whole interview with the album's producers. And who knows -- maybe I'll buy it. See, there's still hope for me after all.

_______

Illustration by Shel Silverstein from Where the Sidewalk Ends.

Cracklin'

For some reason, music has stopped being very important to me—at least in the way it has been for most of my life. I almost never listen to my CDs and records these days, and when I do they're background music; I used to dance around, and not so very long ago. Now I look at the covers and think, eh, I've heard that so many times. I rarely buy music on iTunes. I have a nice iPod Nano D. gave me for my birthday last year (supplanting the minuscule Shuffle I bought myself a few years ago), and my project to transfer my favorite records to it never got very far; it always seems so time-consuming, daunting, and, frankly, boring to complete it.

The last new CD I bought was this, sometime last year, I think. It's a nice-enough record.

I still listen to the radio in the car, but I find I don't sing along much anymore. The only decent music station in Washington is WAMU's Bluegrass Country, which is way down the dial from the main 88.5 station and comes in spottily but at least is original and energetic and varied (it's more than just bluegrass).

I can still get excited by a live performance—such as Judy Collins at the Birchmere in January, or, memorably, Joan Baez in Philadelphia the year before last, or just about any YouTube clip of Peter, Paul, and Mary in their heyday.


I feel lucky to have seen Mary Travers perform solo in the late '70s, a reunited PP&M a few years later, and Peter and Paul without Mary—sadly showing the lack—a month before she died; her death was a great, underestimated loss.

I adore this other, more unexpected trio featuring Mary, doing one of the great songs of our time. I have it bookmarked and sometimes watch it over and over:



It's nice not only that D. loves '60s folk music but that he's reawakened my love of it.

So clearly, I can get excited about music and musicians. But it's not what excited me two or three years ago. What seems to get to me now, whether I remember it from the time or not, is music dating from my childhood. What's that about?

Well, this I would have found very sexy (in an inchoate way), were I to have seen this episode of Johnny Cash's show, which I well might have at age eight or so: