Three songs of great importance

It is a strange song to close such a monumental day upon, he insinuated. 

The DJ I hired was perplexed by my musical choices. Apparently I was truly different from his other brides.  To him it made no sense, but I could see it. In my mind, the ones I loved would get it. They'd move, they'd be moved and it would bring us all back together for the finale and we'd smile, we'd laugh and we'd remember it always. 

I was right.

The last song played on my wedding day was Miss American Pie. 

A rowdy, dwindling, tired crowd rose up and sang 
it out.

Circled round me on the dance floor, arm in arm they swayed.

Everyone knew the words.

"Good ole boys were drinking Whiskey and Rye, singing this will be the day that I die..."

It was very ME.

and in some small, surreal way, it was the day I died, a portion of me did anyhow

Two more songs for the day mattered most to me. Not necessarily the one's you'd imagine either. 

The second was for my whole family.  Music had been a part of every aspect of our life.  It still is for me and my own children. I have a personal soundtrack in fact.  This one was for my brothers, sisters, parents and the relatives who were the constant cast and crew on the periphery for the saga of our upbringing.  Sweet Caroline.  "Good times never seemed so good"

Third song, the last song I really cared about, was maybe most important of all...

My Father-Daughter dance.

I was not "Daddy's Little Girl".   I was not sugar and spice, everything nice.  My older sisters were, but by the time I came around, I was not, had never been and still could not be categorized as a little girl. Perhaps I was born an adult.   My mother tells me that her grandmother held me when I was first born and said, "This one's been here before", maybe I came into the world as an experienced human being. Whatever the secret is, that song, that traditional music was not meant for my father and I.

It was hard to find a summary of what he'd come to mean to me. It was hard also, because I knew that I now meant more to him then I ever had dreamed I might.  I had made quite a few mistakes as I was growing up.  I'd strayed off the never firmly intended/unintended path. I'd often felt that I slipped through the cracks in the sidewalk of the life I was meant to walk on. I was a near miss. I could have been something rather spectacular, but by the time I was old enough to go there, those who were meant to shove me that way were disappeared into their own lives. Maybe this is what happens when parents divorce and have many young children to raise? Maybe by the time the younger, more difficult ones come of age, there is no one left with the energy or interest to guide them and so those like me go unattended?  In any event, somehow, maybe because of a hint of potential innately buried inside me, I had rallied and rounded several dark corners and here I was, on my wedding day, in an awesome setting, in a dress that my father bought for me, which was more beautiful then I could have hoped for.   For he and I, I chose this song; because at some point, he'd taken me back in and helped me right the small wrongs that seemed bigger then they were. He propped me up, he gave me chances and space and support. He gave me the love I wanted and needed and he showed the pride in me that I had no idea I could earn. He clapped loudest as I hurdled the gates and low brick walls placed before me, while I ran steadily, at last, a course in life that would make me a prize winner.   If not for him, if not for the last few years I'd spent in his house, repairing, regrouping, re-centering, I'd not be who I was that day and not who I am right now. Who I am right now is a woman who loves her father, loves him as if there never was a day in all my life where things were less then just plain right.

The Absence of Blue

Twenty three paintings and each of them contains some shade of blue.  All twenty-three.

She loves blue.  

She is particular. 

She won't eat at McDonalds for personal reasons.

She's good at swimming, really good.  But, she dislikes competition and so being really good at Freestyle, Butterfly and Backstroke, being fast, and skilled is just something she is, not something she'll do.  

I struggle with this.  I want her to have something; something to fall back on, to advance with.  Something to carry her through.  Some way to participate with others.

Walking into her art lesson yesterday, I immediately noticed an absence of blue on her palate and in her painting, on her clothes and in her hair, where there usually is plenty.  No blue, but instead; purple, red, gold, green, white, black, grey.  

When does enjoying something turn into being good at something?  

 Apparently yesterday is when.

Right around lesson number twenty-four.

I couldn't take my eyes off of it.  

"I would buy this", I said to myself.

"I love this one.  Can I have it?"  I asked her.

"Maybe?"  She answered slowly, thoughtfully, after she looked long and hard at her work.  She seemed unsure about giving it away so easily, even to me.  She loves it too, I realized.   Unlike all the others she handed off to me in the past without consideration, this one was different, completely different.

I could not contain my smile.  I felt it actually pull at either side of my face.

"It's really something", I said.

Something

to hold on to.

stone days...

On weekends we woke to the smell of frying meat, usually it was Taylor ham or bacon, but sometimes it was this incredible mystery meat from the Scottish butcher.  Whatever it was, it was wonderful and always accompanied by the sound of John Denver from my mother's record player.  
We'd feast.  We'd devour the buttered rolls and the hard to eat, but so worth the effort Crumb-buns bought fresh and hot from the bakery in our town.
After we were stuffed, we'd dress and then ride away in either the big van or the Country Squire.   No matter where we'd end up, be it the base of the local Ramapo Mountains or someplace further, we'd  hike for hours together.
Though we began and ended in a pack, while we walked, spaces developed between us.  It was possible to think differently and clearly in these spaces.  Something about the air, the woods, looking at the sky distorted by tree tops, seeing sun speckles on the ground as light penetrated leaves on branches, shining like a kaleidoscope on the earth around me.   These changes opened me to thoughts that never came while at home in our crowded house.
Though my energy was endless then, the apple breaks were the thing I loved most.  Finding a flat surface or a large boulder near water to stretch out on, everyone stopping to rest a while, the crunch and tartness of piecing the flesh of fresh fruit, an end to my well earned hunger and thirst, sun on my face, breeze in my hair.  Then we'd go further.
As I grew older, I'd do as my ambitious sister had, I'd bravely navigate ahead of the gang and find a place to hide from them.    Waiting in the base of a hollowed tree or mashed between two giant stones, secreted under a pile of leaves, the anticipation of springing out to surprise them would build as I heard voices coming closer.   Sometimes I'd surprise myself, lose the desire to move and instead remain hidden, letting them pass me by, instead spying and noticing them in a way I otherwise might not.  Seeing them as people, not family, taking in their voices, laughter, clothing, the strands of hair, freckles, bright eyes, their individuality and their unity.  They were beautiful.  In some strange way, seeing them apart from me made me miss them.  Seclusion was a rarity, privacy gave perspective.   When they'd pass and a distance formed, I'd run toward them, glad to be close again.
I could feel so alone, but I never was and that is something I know well today.   Now long grown and gone away, I am alone, but not truly.  I'm one of five, which makes it impossible for me to be unconnected, no matter where I am, where I go, how I hide.


Like the words to a song that 
reminds me of waking in my childhood home; "Somedays are diamonds, somedays are stone"... somedays are stone, but I can love the stone days, because of all those diamond days...  I am one of five.

something else

"Perseverance".

I wasn't looking at all forward to hearing Jennifer Lopez speak.  
I couldn't imagine that she would have anything to say that might apply to my life, to who I am or want to be or have been.
We are not alike, J-Lo and I.
It is also true that I am in no way similar to a Supreme Court Justice and yet I was thrilled that later in the day I would be in the audience as one of those amazing Madam Justices spoke.


"Blah blah blah", she might as well have said.
She wore a dress I wouldn't choose.  Had on make up that seemed excessive for morning, even in my eyes.   I was in no way familiar with even one of her songs.  She meant essentially nothing to me and so I busied myself as she began chatting into the microphone.  I browsed the beautiful keepsake/program that you are handed as you enter the annual California Conference for Women.
I felt lucky to be one of 14,000, mostly female audience members, for the second time in my life.
This experience is all together magnificent and magical.  I'm not exaggerating one bit when I use the word magical.
Like a bolt of electricity striking you - ZAP, you're cracked in half and then you are systematically filled all day long with information, communication, education, stimulation, explanation, imagination, exaltation, till you are exhausted and rung out like a soaking wet towel that has washed and dried 1,000 plates, from 1,000 different shelves, in 1,000 different houses, in 1,000 different towns, used by 1,000,000,000 different people.   You are touched and touched again on this one day by some of the brightest, most influential and fascinating people on the planet.  Except her.   She has nothing to offer me... or so I thought, until she said, "persevere".
It's a nice word, but not one of my favorites and yes I have a list of favorite words.
I'm not sure what she said next, but I can tell you what I was wearing, what I tasted in my mouth at that very moment, who was on either side of me and what I did just at the exact second the word "persevere" stopped rattling around my previously distracted brain.   I cried.
There it was again, the common bond, the inbred cell, the undetectable thread that binds us all, even her and I together in our sisterhood, our humanness.
She had my full attention then and she taught me something more then she likely meant to with her speech.  I learned, by mistake perhaps, that there is no experience we are presented with from which we cannot learn.
I liked her now.  I liked what she said and I liked what she did; persevered.


In my life of 1,000,000,000 experiences it still stuns me to recognize that I am fallible.  Very.  Highly.  It surprises me that I still make mistakes.   How old do you have to be before you actually know enough to recognize right from wrong for sure, all the time?  How old are we when we're no longer potentially erroneous?   Know what I find harder to swallow then knowing that I am still, with all that I know and all that I've seen and all that I've read and everywhere I've been, faulty at times?   What's harder then knowing I am sometimes completely wrong?  Knowing that I am absolutely right.   Knowing, really knowing that I'm not in the wrong, but am in fact just plain right, is actually more difficult for me to accept.
Isn't that something?

gone fishing

 Is it me, or at times doesn't life seem to be more difficult or at least a bit more trying?    


It seems that many days are simply a walk in the park, with maybe a few detours, but mostly a good walk  You're moving, you're getting there, it's all good.   It's walking/working, but it's good, its life.   You know how to do that and you know what to expect, for the most part. 
Then there are those few other days, which turn out to be maybe more like pushing a motorless lawnmower through that same, but now noticeably sprawling, tall grass-filled, dog shi_ riddled, mosquito infested, suspected pedophile hangout of a park.


I liken this particular week not to walking in my park but to fishing.  The whole act of fishing.  Not deep sea or anything so elaborate, but like lake fishing.  Lake fishing at my favorite spot in Pennsylvania even.   Doing something I love, where I love to do it, but taking notice of all the work involved in what often seems like a walk in the park/fish in the lake I know so well.
Fishing = living my life...
Some days it's all cast and reel it in.  Other days its more, lots more; like...
Go get the pole.
Don't forget the tackle box!
Make your way to the lake.
Dig up some worms
Put those live worms in damp soil inside the little foam cup you keep in that before mentioned tackle box.
Bait the hook (ick, please, for the love of Pete).
Now here is the nice part of any day, even hard days, we cast the line.
Reel it in (yes, very nice).
Cast again and maybe again.  (This is not bad.  This is pretty darn good in fact.)
Pull in a fish!
See the fish.  (excellent)
Oh sh_t.  Um?  Take it off the hook?  Gut it, cook it, eat it?   Never mind.
Throw it back.   
Walk home. 
Put the stuff away.
Try to forget the worms, the removal of live fish from lovely line, the whole momentary contemplation of cleaning it, etcetera, etcetera.


Just remember casting; joyfully tossing that silvery line into open water.  Don't think about the snags on hidden, sunken logs just beneath the placid surface, knots in your line, lost bait or unavoidable hook pricked fingers. 
Live for the casting and the catching.
Remember it's a hope filled endeavor.