The guessing games are over and I don’t have to wonder what it feels like to be one any more. I can stop looking at babies in grocery carts pushed by women who look a bit too old to be their moms and stop feeling jealous. I also can look on Face Book at all the pictures of everyone else’s grand children, and now feel the camaraderie: I’m a Grandma.
As of 7:33 PM, November 22, 2012 (which, by the way was Thanksgiving Day, my favorite holiday), I joined the ranks of millions and possibly billions of women who have gone on before me: Eve, Grandma Moses, the old woman who lived in a shoe, Mother Goose (I know, she’s a bird, but then again, so am I), my lovely grandmothers, Edna and Annis, Sarah Palin, my mother-in-law, Patricia and my mother, Virginia, who is my hero, weighing in with eighteen grandchildren and plenty of bragging rights.
Arriving a couple days ahead of the blessed event, to ensure that I wouldn’t miss one jot or tittle of the labor and delivery of John’s and Mesha’s baby, I found myself staying at Peter and Isaaca’s house in Nashville, Tennessee. All of my children live there and we were hoping to kill two birds with one stone; celebrate Thanksgiving together and have a baby while Bill and I were visiting everyone. It always helps to have a plan, right?
With plans in mind for Thanksgiving Eve, I put together a hearty stew and invited all the kids over, setting the trap, luring them to help me prepare for the next day’s feast by plying them with good food and wine. It worked! Cody was the DJ, playing his favorites- Merle Haggard and George Jones. We alternately ate, danced, chopped vegetables, made cakes and watched the oven while we also kept watch on another oven…our radiant, gloriously pregnant, Mesha.
She was fascinating to watch in her pregnant splendor, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders, her belly stretching to seemingly unnatural limits and her legs and feet a bit swollen from carrying the extra weight. She sat as a queen upon the couch, all of us anxious to jump at her requests, bringing her more bread, propping up her feet, pouring her more water, all the while wondering when her body timer would go off and make a buzzing sound, alerting us all that the baby was done and needed to come out of the oven. I supposed she fascinated me so much because she carried my first grandchild, my own flesh and blood besides my own children and the next cycle of life in our family.
We got the call at 3:15 AM, Thanksgiving morning. “Momma Byrd…my water’s broken and I’m having trouble waking up John”. I don’t know why men want to turn back over go back to their dreaming when they hear news like that in the dead middle of the night, but he did, believing that she had to be joking. Mesha cried, “I was dreaming that my water broke and I woke up and jumped out of bed and it broke…right there on the floor”. There was no time to spare, I thought. “Bill and I will be over in about twenty minutes. Girl, this means you are, for sure, having a baby…Today”! I clicked “end” on my cell phone and went to wake up Bill.
She labored all day and early on it became obvious that we would miss the Thanksgiving feast. I called Natalie, Stacey and Isaaca and said, “Looks like we’re having the baby today. You girls are going to have to cook everything we didn’t cook last night”, which was really a lot of food because we were too fascinated with Mesha to do much cooking. “I know we had big plans, but you guys just cook the turkey, ham, dressing and make all of the side dishes. I know you can do it.” And just like that, I shirked all of my normal Thanksgiving duties as “the mom” and handed them off to the second generation so that the third generation could be born.
At about 6:00 PM, the kids began to wander up to the second floor of the hospital to wait out the birth. All of the men stayed in the waiting room and my daughters and I watched Mesha and John have the baby. Even though I had birthed six of my own, I had never actually watched a baby being born. Mesha wowed us all as she let her body take over and push out another human being, another little girl, our Lilyana Espen Byrd.
With my eyes full of tears and my heart filled to the brim with wonderment and joy at the sight of my Thanksgiving bundle of love, I looked around the room, busy with women cleaning up an exhausted but relieved and beautiful Mesha, nurses clamoring to make sure the baby was normal, all eight pounds, eleven ounces of her royal highness, Princess Lilyana! My daughters were punch drunk with “aunthood” and my son, beaming with pride looked good in his new role of fatherhood, as he gazed lovingly into the face of his perfect daughter. One by one, the men in my family, the new grandpa, Bill and uncles, Jeremy, Cody and Peter, trickled into the hospital room, peeking around the curtain, anxious to see a child they had months ago decided was their baby too, to love, defend and protect.
I felt like it was a scene from “Parenthood” as we stood in a circle around the bed and it was, but only our own version. Our own episode. The Byrd family at it’s finest. I was getting my feast. A love feast. Quite a perfect Thanksgiving Day, my favorite holiday. I have to smile and say, “Thank you Lord”. ‘Cause God always did love me best.
I knew I had put it somewhere in my closet or dresser. The extremely warm spring had driven me to my favorite hiding places early this season in search of “Old Faithful.” Finally, after having gone through layers of under clothes and unmentionables, socks, tights and winter scarves, I found it in the back corner of the bottom dresser drawer, all wadded up in a crumpled mess: my bathing suit.
I smiled when I saw it. It was like being reunited with an old friend. I took it from its winter tomb and did what I always did to new things or things I hadn’t seen in a while: I closed my eyes and breathed it in. Instantly, the faint smell of coconut oil, ocean water and sea breeze took me back to laughing sea gulls, a hot, white sun and the endless blue of the sea and sky. Hugging it to my chest, I welcomed it back into my life. “Here you are, my little friend! Time for us to have some fun!” I shook it out and held it up to the light.
To my dismay, the bathing suit looked faded and stretched. I tugged at the elastic in the legs and it didn’t spring back into shape. The black and gold animal print looked more like an old stuffed animal one of my kids had dragged around the house for too long and the seat was knotted and almost see through. Why hadn’t I noticed this when I put it away at the end of the season last year? I had overlooked the obvious. It was time to get a new bathing suit.
I hated saying goodbye to an old suit and shopping for a new one. Each suit I bought always took on a life of its own, a personality that wasn’t easily forgotten. I remembered the yellow bikini I had in the ninth grade, one I had bought with my own money. I loved “Old Yaller” dearly and couldn’t believe it when my mom dried it in the clothes dryer and melted the cups. It was ruined and I was devastated. I couldn’t wear misshapen bikini cups in public and I had to throw it away. My grandmother knew how heartbroken I was to have spent my own money on something that got melted in the dryer (although everyone but me got a good laugh out of it) and bought me another one, exactly like it. My sweet, little grandmother on a pension bought ME a BIKINI! Old Yaller and I were friends for two years until it was stolen off of a clothes line at a beach cottage in North Carolina. I took its loss like the young woman I was becoming and went out and bought another one. I remember that one too, a green and white stripe two piece I called “Lucky Stripe.” I always seemed to have fun and adventures in Lucky Stripe.
But now I was much older and the thrill of the hunt for a new swim suit was long gone. I bought a new one only when the old one was literally falling apart. Shopping for a bathing suit was discouraging, disheartening, dismaying…all of the “dis” words that would make me want to shout, “’Dis is NOT fun! I’m disappointed with myself for not exercising all winter!” I, like any other woman over the age of fifty didn’t want to see myself under the glaring, too realistic glow of the florescent light in a public dressing room trying on the newest fashion and fabric of the fledgling summer bathing suit season. It was dis…gusting.
But with the warm sun and ocean calling me out to play, I had no choice but to sneak out one “off” night of the week, making a pact with myself to go into one store only, trying on only a few suits and making my choice before I confused myself with the options. That is, if I could find any choices at all.
I found myself at Marshalls. I could not, in good conscience, pay department store prices for something I knew I would not be in love with. The days of being a friend with my bathing suit were over. I grabbed a cart and headed to the swimwear section. Breathing a sigh of relief, I noticed there were two long racks and two circular racks of bathing suits with two circular racks of swim suit cover-ups in the same vicinity. I used to never understand why one would pay so much money for a bathing suit that they would want to cover up. Now, however, I understood their meaning. You had the “problem” on the first two racks and their “solution” on the others. It was brilliant! I decided right then that I was also in the market for a solution.
I looked around the near empty store to make sure there was nobody shopping there that I knew. Whew! Luck was a lady after all! I could fill up my cart with all the colorful options and slink away into a nondescript cubby in the dressing room maze. This was going to be a cinch!
I parked my buggy and started at the beginning of the rack. “I can do this,” I thought. “There’s so many to choose from.” The third one on the rack caught my eye. I pulled it out and held it up to get a better look at it. It was a two piece, red and white striped little number with a gold, nautical symbol on the hip area. The red was refreshing and cheerful to me. Black, brown and animal prints had been my choices for too many years.
I heard a man somewhere from behind me clear his throat as if to get my attention.
“Don’t even think about that one. It would be a total waste of your good money.”
I recognized the almost flat sounding voice immediately. The owner of this voice came to visit me each year on the eve of my birthday to tuck me in. It was the age police and his silent partner. I slowly turned around.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought I only had to see you once a year on my birthday. It’s not my birthday.” I was confused and didn’t know what to think of this unofficial visit.
“Yeah, well…Just for the record, you’ll be seeing us more often as you go through Middle Age. You used to see us only on birthdays but occasionally we’ll show up to keep you from making age inappropriate decisions.”
I was offended. I always thought I made good, tasteful decisions concerning the age differential. Why didn’t they trust me? I felt like a thirteen year old wearing a bikini in front of her father for the first time and I hadn’t even tried the bathing suit on yet.
“So…you think this two-piece is too young for me? Is that what you’re saying? It’s not even a bikini. I mean, I would never even dream of wearing a bikini at this point in my life. I have my pride. I mean…why would I even want to…wear one?” My voice sounded whiney and hurt.
He looked at his partner and shrugged, then back at me with indifferent eyes. “And we’re here to help you keep that pride.”
I let that remark sink in as I stared at them. They seemed so out of place standing in the women’s swimwear section. “Why are you wearing a gun in your holster? I asked. “Do age police have to use guns to make us comply with the “Age Laws? Sheesh! This is crazy! I wasn’t even going to buy a bikini! This is a TANKINI. See? The top covers the stomach and comes down to the edge of the bottoms. It’s perfectly respectable…”My voice trailed off again as I was at a loss of words to make my point.
He patted his gun as if it were an old friend. “You’d be surprised at the number of times we have to use these babies just to scare someone into making the right decision. People hate to age and sometimes we just have to help them along with the process.”
I thought about that and wondered if there would be a show down at the old Marshall’s corral. Did other women my age have these conversations about whether or not an article of clothing was age appropriate with the age police? I had these conversations with my parents when I was thirteen years old. But to have these conversations when I was fifty-five…Was I crazy? I decided to play along. Maybe this WAS nature’s way of helping me though a mid-life crisis with grace.
“Alright. I give in. Tell me why this bathing suit is not appropriate. I happen to think it’s adorable.”
“Lady…First of all, it’s a two piece. You haven’t worn a two piece since after the birth of your second child. After the last four kids and …what is it, twenty more years, why would you start now? Some women your age can get by with that, but you won’t. You’ll second guess it until you decide to leave it in the back of your bottom drawer. You won’t feel comfortable in it. I swear. You won’t even let it be your friend.”
I looked at him and then at the suit. He was right and I hated to admit it. I was the queen of second guessing and no matter what the bathing suit looked like on me, I would always be uncomfortable in it. I put it back. “OK…Maybe you’re right about this one. Let me look some more.”
I pulled out a pretty one piece, turquoise, corral and brown. I held it up and looked back at the age police. They both shook their heads in unison.
“What’s wrong with this one? It’s so cute! I love the colors!”
“Well…I know it’s what you consider ‘cute,’ but you are going to be self conscience in it. Look at how short it is in the torso. It’ll ride up on you in the back, feel too snug and drive you nuts. Believe me. You don’t want that one. “
Once again, he was right. It was too short- waisted. I put it back and went to the next one. I stopped on a navy and white one piece that had cut outs on the sides and lingered a moment. I heard fake coughing. “OK…I know…Cut outs are too young for me…Right? What was I thinking?” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation.
I turned back to the rack. I was nearing the end of it and began to worry. What if I couldn’t find the perfect bathing suit? I couldn’t bear the thought of having to go to more shops to look for “the one.” I had made a pact with myself to come out of the store with a bathing suit. I just didn’t know the age police would be there to direct me.
I passed over an animal print with a black, baby dress top. The bottom was connected to it like a one piece but the “dress” top still hung over the bottom. I was started to pass over it and I heard the age police cough again.
“What? You think this is good? This is appropriate? I took it out and held it up to the light. “It’s black with animal print. I didn’t want another one with that type of fabric. Plus…It’s so…I mean…It has a skirt thingy and older women wear things like that.” Immediately I thought and said out loud, “You’re only as old as you feel.”
The age police shrugged again and said, “Look lady. I’m just here to help you transition. It’s not easy to do that… to transition. Sometimes you have to be told what to do in a transition. How old are you?
“Fifty-five.” I said softly, looking to either side, not wanting anyone else to hear. “Are you saying I’m old enough to wear this now?”
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. You ARE old enough. But look at it. It’s cute. The bodice is cute. You’ll be covered up enough in the right places and be showing you’re good stuff in the right places. What’s wrong with that? You’ll be confident in it.”
I looked back at the piece. Who died and made him the age police? Was he right? I would try it on and see for myself.
I couldn’t believe it, but I was trying on only one bathing suit. That was it! No more. Either I would trust them or I would shake them and come back later. “Gentlemen. Do you mind if I do this alone?”
They both shrugged, again. “Go ahead. See for yourself.”
The cubby was tiny. The lighting was bad, very bad. I took off my clothes and put myself into the bathing suit. Slowly, I turned around and looked in the mirror. It didn’t look bad. Actually, it was cute. I liked the baby doll dress. It covered up all of my insecurities. I could bend over and touch my toes and it stretched with me! It was perfect! I could sense that it wanted to be my friend; have its own personality. The question was, how did the age police know this?
I took it off and put my clothes back on, hurrying out to let them know that they were right. I loved it and I wanted to thank them for the tip and saving me from bathing suit “woes” in the future. I scooped up the suit and ran past the dressing room sales lady.
They were gone, nowhere to be seen. Were they helping some other unsuspecting middle-ager like me? I didn’t see them anywhere in the store or see any other woman having a conversation with “herself.” I had wondered if these conversations were actually with the age police or if they were figments of my imagination: my fragile ego talking with itself. I guess time would tell.
I hugged the bathing suit to my chest, walking past the “solution” racks of beach cover-ups. Why would I ever want to cover up “Tigger?” I walked on toward the sales counter. Tigger and I were going to be great friends. All it needed was a little coconut oil and ocean water to baptize it. The summer was waiting for us.
Here’s your song! Some day I will figure out how to upload this properly…
Last week began with Mother’s Day and ended with a solar eclipse. Even though I didn’t get to see my mother on her special day or live in a place to view the rare ring of fire in the heavens, the two events brought together in my mind, a memory long forgotten.
It was Saturday, March 7, 1970. I was thirteen years old and in the seventh grade. For several weeks, our science teacher (someone whose name has escaped me as I sit down to write this), had been teaching us about the upcoming solar eclipse and how lucky we were to be able to see a total eclipse in our lifetime. We were so hyped up about it that it was as if we were on science steroids.
For the first time in my life, I became interested in all things celestial: the sun, moon, our solar system neighbors – planets both near and far and all of their moons, the constellations in the night sky, super stars, novas, black holes, red giants, white dwarfs, the Milky Way, our universe and galaxies beyond. I became very aware of astronomy and the “science” of astrology and learned that there was a difference between the two.
The week of the eclipse finally arrived and all of us amateur astronomers were ready to make our solar eclipse viewers. We had been warned for months not to look at the eclipse with our naked eyes. Directly looking at the sun, even as the moon began to cover it could burn our retinas and we wouldn’t even feel the damage! As we sat at our desks with our shoe boxes, tin foil, glue and scissors, I stole a look around the room to see which one of us would come back to school blinded by the light. There had to be a least one rebellious, mean girl or boy who would defy the rule and look at the sun unabashedly, naked eyes and all, staring at the beautiful corona or ring of fire. Who knew? With that kind of magical allure, even I could be tempted to steal a glimpse of the forbidden beauty. Like Eve eating from the “off limits” fruit tree in the garden would I gaze into the light of the dangerous sun? Monday morning, the first day back at school after the eclipse, who would be wearing an eye patch? How many kids would have disobeyed? We shook with terror of the potential consequences and got to work making our viewers.
Saturday morning, we awoke to a clear, cool day. Having heard every weather report for the entire week, we knew that good weather was to grace our scientific outing. My siblings and I and a few neighborhood friends all met after breakfast with our trusty eclipse viewers. We staked out our observatory area and put lawn chairs out to wait out the event. As I can recall, around mid-morning we began to see the moon slightly edge itself onto the sun’s disk.
There was a party-like atmosphere as it began. From time to time my mother would come out onto the front porch and shout at us, “Don’t look right at it! Don’t damage your eyes! You could go blind!” Ten minutes later she would come out and sit on the front porch steps and see if we were using our viewing boxes.
The moon was taking a huge bite out of the sun. After an hour and a half or so, the sky started to darken a bit, and an eerie feeling began to settle down upon us. We stood with the sun at our backs, holding our viewers with the foil pinhole taking in the direct sun’s view. Magically, the sun appeared on our screens and we were watching the fascinating eclipse.
The sun starting disappearing until it became a perfect sliver. The sky turned a deep navy blue and Venus shone like a diamond earring near the sun/moon. The birds stopped singing and a few dogs nervously began to howl. Next, the wind began to pick up and there was a noticeable drop in the temperature. The moon slid perfectly over the sun and we were caught in a twilight zone. The corona shone like a halo around the sun and for a brief moment, I peaked at it with my naked eyes. It was glorious!
We were caught up in the moment, briefly seeing something we knew we would more than likely, never see again. It was awesome, majestic and magical and that’s when the screaming began.
“Oh, my God…Precious Jesus…Look at that! Look at that, Jesus! Oh Jesus! Jesus! Kid’s don’t look at it. Don’t stare at it! Look at it! It’s beautiful! I’ve never seen anything to beat it in my life! Oh, my Jesus, I praise you!” It was my mother, Virgina Painter. She was standing out on the porch, laughing while tears rolled down her cheeks, the wind blowing up the skirt of her house dress. Her arms where lifted up as if she was getting ready to be received by her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I honestly think that she thought that the end of the world was nigh unto us.
We all stared at my pretty, little mother, standing on the steps, in an almost holy trance, having a moment with her creator. As children, we later teased her about screaming out to the Lord during the eerie black out of the eclipse but even we knew that we had been first hand witnesses of God and science together, putting on a show for us.
I entertained for years after the viewing of the solar eclipse, the idea that I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up, although I learned years later, as a sophomore at East Carolina University, that a strong knowledge of mathematics was needed if you wanted to make an “A” in Astronomy 101. I had a blast in the class lab though, meeting on Tuesday nights during the winter months on the roof of the Science Building with my classmates. The roof top was romantic and dreamy and on it we forgot that we were bound to the earth by gravity. Somehow, the silken ropes that held us in captivity to our earthly prison fell away and we became moon struck lunatics, jet setting around our galaxy and time traveling into the light of distant stars. We looked up into the heavens and saw…God. He was majestic in his heavens and He wore a black velvet cape encrusted with diamonds and pearls. He held up both arms straight over his head and the voluminous, billowing fabric became the back drop to the heavens and the diamonds and pearls, the objects of our affection.
We studied these luminous objects in awe and reverence, the entire class every night for weeks enfolded in the cloak of God’s heaven. It was magical and spiritual at the same time, demanding that we speak in whispers on a roof top, gathered around a telescope, under the influence of the utter beauty of the creation. I often thought of my mom as I looked into the telescope and saw God’s handiwork, spilled zillions and zillions of miles across the vastness of space and wished that she could have been there with me viewing something so mysterious and awe inspiring that she would lift up her arms to her precious Jesus and let him pick her up off of the roof top and spin her around and whisper to her, “Not now, Virginia, it’s not time to go now. But how do you like what I made for you?” I think she would have liked that.
Check this… Carole King and James Taylor – Up on the Roof
In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t published a blog in a month or so because I got a part time job and I’m learning how to juggle my hours, get my bearings and make room for writing time. Now, I’m almost ready to get back into the writing zone. I have missed it so!
I thought that you might all enjoy this post I put on my http://www.mothersofmusicians.blogspot.com a year or so ago. It’s about my muse and it was one of my favorite posts. Hope you enjoy it!
“Thus with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: ‘Fool!’ said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write.” Sir Philip Sidney, (English statesman, 1554-1586)
OK. So what happens when the muse needs a muse? Believe me. It is not amusing! My computer and I have come to an agreement: If I don’t give it any words, it will not write anything down for me. There is a standoff. I stand across the room from my computer and my computer stays turned off, silently accusing me of negligence and being a wannabe blog writer.
So, today, I confess to you, my reader, that I am drier than an instant potato flake, as shriveled and as hard as the orange I found this morning hiding in the back of the vegetable bin in my refrigerator, as uninteresting as last week’s TV Guide and as uninspiring as this rainy day in March…I have nothing to give, nothing to say. I need help….I need inspiration….I need my muse to rescue me from myself!
In desperation, I’ll lure him to my table, to sit and talk with me. I’ll set the atmosphere like I would a well-dressed dining table for tea, hoping he will see that I went to “all that trouble” and stay awhile.
First of all, I have to get dressed for our little tea party. I put on my good jeans, pull on my boots and splash a little color on my face. Because I can think more clearly when I can see, I put on my contact lenses. I don’t want to miss anything he might want to show me. I brush my hair and dab a bit of perfume behind my ears. I don’t want him to see me slumming around the house!
Satisfied that I won’t scare him off, I make my way to the living room and select the music that always seems to draw him like a moth to a candle. My muse loves Celtic music and it is St. Patrick’s Day. The luck of the Irish must be with me and I put on the Gaelic tunes. I can almost swear that I hear the wind chimes tinkling as he stirs the air by the kitchen window.
I get out my tea cups and remember a Leonard Cohen song that always inspires me. It’s called “Suzanne” and it’s about a young woman who was a muse for dozens of Beat-Poets during the early 60’s in Montreal. She lived in a little wooden cabin and had a poetic view of the river. Cohen would come and see her in the evenings and they would sit at her table. She would light a candle that she had named Anastasia, and then pour them each a cup of Constant Comment Tea. They would sit for a few minutes in silence, drinking their tea, and then they would begin to talk for hours. Cohen probably milked her for all the artistic inspiration she could give. He became the poet laureate of Canada.
“Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by;
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half crazy
But that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover.”
I smile to myself. I realize that Suzanne did set the atmosphere, and like her, I light a candle and take it to the dining room table. I must attract light with light to get my muse to bite. The law of attraction? I put my computer down on the dining room table, my cup of tea and oranges in hand. I sip slowly and look at my poetic view.
I am surrounded by some of my favorite things. My big wooden book cases, envied by some, flank one side of my room. My teapots and lovely cups are displayed in the oak secretary that sits directly in front of me. I look at my angels of bounty that smile at me from the buffet and my cross stitched “welcome” bell pull by the door that leads into the kitchen. I bask in the golden light of my candle and table lamps, waiting for my inspiration to arrive.
I sit at my table, with my eyes shut. Peace begins to seep into my mind as I pray for the light to cover me and shed it secrets like an ancient tomb that’s just been discovered. I feel my muse slip into the chair across from me, waiting for me to pour his cup of tea.
I pour it slowly, not wanting to startle him. I am so relieved that he came! It’s been so long since I’ve seen him. And we have so much to talk about. I stare at him openly, my eyes taking in the miracle of him, the brightness of him. And all of a sudden, I feel the ice begin to melt in my heart. He brings his own flame and adds it to the glow I have created for him. I just sit there warmed by his presence and the tea we share. The melting ice creates a flow and I realize I am finally connected to the river.
The current is ever so slight, but it flows out of my eyes, down my cheeks, into my heart. I am on his wavelength. He “lets the river answer that I’ve always been his lover.”
I don’t doubt my muse. It’s just that when I can’t see him, I feel uninspired and insecure. It’s been the longest and coldest winter of my adult life, physically and creatively. But I trust him. He always comes when I set the atmosphere. I just haven’t had the presence of mind to do so.
Later in “Suzanne,” Cohen writes:
“And you want to travel with her and you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind.”
Now I know that I am nowhere near perfect, but I am perfect in the fact that I was perfectly made to discover mysteries of the earth and understand them with a creative bent. As long as I keep setting the atmosphere by invoking the light, playing inspiring music, making tea and sitting at a blank computer screen at my beautifully set dining room table, my muse will come. And I trust him enough to close my eyes, take his hand and travel blindly by his side. I do love his mind!
I turned fifty-five last month. I remember going to bed the night before, when I was a young fifty-four, and making a mental note of how I felt. I wanted to remember that feeling throughout the next year so that I could have a basis on which to judge any rogue 55ish feeling that would, more than likely, try to creep in on me in case I might inadvertently leave my guard down. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, every bright light blazing down on my fifty-four year old bare body. I wasn’t going to forget one detail. This was as young as I was ever going to be. I gathered up my courage and took a look at the naked truth. The three, 100 watt vanity lights cast a garish glow down on me and I realized that I was about to be questioned by the “Age Police.”
“How old are you?”
“It’s my last night of being fifty-four.”
“Last night? Last night? Why can’t you go ahead
and round it up to fifty-five? What difference
does a few hours make?”
“Not a lot, I’m sure, but a lady’s got to hold
on to her youth for as long as she possibly
can.”
“You women are all the same! Take a long look,
then. You’ve got a few hours ’til the switch-
over. Believe me, not much is gonna change
after the magic hour of midnight.”
“I was born at 1:57 P.M. in the afternoon!
Technically, I won’t be fifty-five until 1:57
tomorrow afternoon!”
“Alright, Lady. Whatever you say. Fifty-four,
fifty-five…don’t make any difference to me.
Just don’t get all…emotional and stuff.
Nothing I hate worse than a dame who whines
about getting older…Hey, you rolling your
eyes at me? Ain’t my fault time’s caught up
with you. Happens to everybody.”
“Just shut up and give me a few minutes, will
you please? I need to do this by myself, not
with the ’Age Police’ looking over my
shoulder.”
The interrogator shook his head and rolled HIS eyes at me.
“Whatever you say, Lady. We’ll be right
outside the door, if you need us.”
If I need them? Who needs the “Age Police” to remind them of how old they are? They close the bathroom door and leave me alone. The vanity lights become a single spotlight and I stand naked on the stage of my bathroom floor. Just a girl and spotlight…I try to think of the appropriate song for the moment…Frank Sinatra’s “My Way?”
“And now the end is here and so I face the final
curtain…”
No. Totally the wrong song to sing. That was a grand finale song. I wasn’t nearly at that place in life. What about John Mayer’s song, “Stop This Train?”
“Stop this train, I want to get off and
go home again.
I can’t take the speed it’s moving in
I know I can’t but honestly,
Won’t someone stop this train?
So scared of getting older
I’m only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find
A way to say that life has just begun.”
I gasp. The numbers game…The new twenty is now thirty. The new thirty is really forty. The new forty-five is really fifty-five. Was that what I was doing? Playing a numbers game? Why was John Mayer so wise in his lyrics but not so wise in his personal life?
I looked at my body. Fifty-five. It could be worse. Not that bad. Sure, having six children had taken its toll. Each year had left a few scars and a bit of sagging skin, a few achy joints and a head full of gray hair. But wasn’t that what was supposed to happen?
I leaned into the mirror and studied my face. There were lines and wrinkles and a softened jaw line. I couldn’t remember what my old face had looked like…not exactly. Maybe my memory was helping me soften the blow of aging by blurring the lines all together. I stepped back and smiled. My last smile in the mirror at age fifty-four. Would it look like a different smile tomorrow at 1:57 P.M.? No, I believe it would not. Aging was too subtle to switch things up on me that fast. It was inevitable, but thank God, gracious enough to lead me gently into it’s soft, comfortable arms.
I lifted up my arms slowly, stretching upward toward the ceiling and stood on my tiptoes. I twirled around like a ballerina, ending in a deep bow before the mirror.
“Goodbye, fifty-four. You were good to me…
even kind. You brought me great peace and
joy. You were a very good year.”
I stood up, tall and straight. I knew the “Age Police” were outside waiting. Walking up to the mirror, I leaned over the sink and lightly kissed my reflection in a final farewell gesture.
“You guys can come in now. I’m ready.”
In a flash, the door opened and they were there.
“So…you’ve said your good-byes, now?”
“Yeah. You didn’t give me long. It seems like
you come earlier and earlier each year.
What’s the deal with that?
“You know why, lady. The older you get, the
faster time flies.”
How well I knew that! I pulled my night gown over my head and looked the “Age Police” directly in the eye.
“Let’s go.”
I opened the bathroom door and let him escort me to my bed, a few steps away.
“Will you do me a favor and tuck me in tonight?
I’m a bit tired from the mental process of
moving into another year. Don’t you think I’m
getting better at it? I’m learning to
gracefully give up one year and go peacefully
into the next one. Haven’t you noticed? Come
on, guys, sometimes, I just wish you would
tell me if I’m doing it right. If I’m aging
properly.”
The two gruff officers looked at each other and shrugged.
“Sure, lady. Hop up…”
I got into my big bed and sank deep into my soft mattress and pillow. The “Age Police” took my cloud-like comforter and brought it up over my shoulders.
“Now, you know we’re going to go ahead and
take fifty-four with us and leave you with
fifty-five. Are you ready for that?”
“Yes. Go ahead. It doesn’t matter anyway…
I really don’t have any say-so in the matter.”
“No, lady, you don’t. But you’re doing good.
Some ladies cry, kick and scream when they see
us coming. You’re really graceful about it.
You seem to take it in stride.”
“Really? Thanks. I mean. Wow! You just
made this all a bit easier for me to handle.”
“It’s just part of our job, lady. But, hey,
thanks for the gratitude. We don’t get that
often.
“No. I’m sure you don’t. And I can’t promise
it every year, but I’ll try.”
I peeked out from under the covers and they were gone. I don’t know how it happened again, but they had left me one year older. I thought about kicking and screaming, but it was already a done deal. I yawned and turned over, shutting my eyes. Tomorrow I would wake up to fifty-five.
I heard a train whistle blowing in the distance and I could swear I felt the gentle motion of a passenger train rocking me to sleep as it marked the time in railroad ties. I drifted off to sleep thinking, “I wish this train would stop.” But I knew I was a lifetime passenger.
Two weeks ago, I posted “The Present” on my blog. I promised to give you part two this week. If you didn’t read my last post, please read it before reading this. It will make much more sense to you if you do. Thanks for waiting. Hope you enjoy it.
“Here, let me take all of this for you,” God offered, scooping the music and lyrics out of my hands and putting them back into the box. “You don’t want to lose this song. You may need to pull it out of the box later for a special occasion.” The tiny bits of paper were sticking to his hands like they had static electricity in them. He had to peel off more than a few clingy notes left on his fingers.
“So, you have questions? Let me hear them,” he prompted.
“Ok…so what you are telling me is that YOU are music and YOU write all the songs?” I ventured out a little bit further. “Even the wild and crazy stuff?” I thought about how a lot of people would be shocked if they knew about that.
“Uh huh. I write it all. All different kinds of styles…just like languages…well, it is a language. It’s one way I communicate with people even though most of them don’t realize it.”
“But how does it happen? I thought that PEOPLE write music…” My voice trailed off as my mind made room for an epiphany.
“And they do! Don’t get me wrong! When someone opens themselves to creativity, I take over and most of the time they are totally unaware. They get the ideas and subject matter all from me.”
“But how?”
“When a writer sits down to write a song, I don’t care who it is…a portal from heaven opens directly above them and I just inspire them to write exactly what I want to convey to the world. They usually think that they are writing a love song about someone or a situation they have been through – and it is, but it’s also me singing a love song to the world, to the church, or to a specific group of people that needs encouragement. Sometimes it’s a heart-felt song that becomes a prayer that the world is singing to me. It can be about anything, really. It’s one of my ways of communicating. It’s a language from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven…’It’s from me. It’s for you. It’s from you. It’s for me.'”
My heart shot a message to my brain and told me that it was true. I felt that I was being “let in” on a huge secret and that I was about to be educated in a way that only a hand full of musical scholars had been educated. The great creator of the heavens and the earth, and all that they contained, was about to explain a hidden truth to me. I was about to be taken “behind the curtain” of written music and lyrics to discover what happens that makes us love and relate to music so much.
I pictured a writer sitting down at a table, head leaning back, staring up at a blank ceiling while waiting for “inspiration” to pay him a visit. I then saw through the ceiling, up through the roof and then up into the heavens. All of a sudden, I saw a light come down from the sky, as if heaven had pulled back a dark curtain and opened a small window. The light poured down into the sky, onto the writer’s house, cutting its way through the roof and down into the ceiling, illuminating the writer in a golden pool of words and musical notes. It was as if the music box had spilled out from heaven and rained down a song over the willing writer. The writer, bathed in the swathe of creative light, all of a sudden, picked up a pencil and began to write, relief spreading across his face as the words tumbled onto the lined notebook paper. His writing session would be productive, after all, because “inspiration,” that illusive muse, had chosen him, out of every other songwriter creating at that moment, to write the one song that needed to be shared.
I gasped. “You just did it, didn’t you?”
“Did what?” God asked.
“Made a portal or opened a window from heaven over ME…because I just saw it in a vision. You showed me what it would look like if I could actually ‘see’ inspiration or creativity come down from heaven and touch someone.”
God smiled. “You’re quick. The vision just came to you in a flash, didn’t it? That’s how it is for any artist – songwriter, painter, dancer, poet, novelist, designer…It doesn’t matter. I give the natural talent and send inspiration to make it come alive, conveying my thoughts through them to the world.”
Wow! I had to have an example, a case study to make sure I was getting it right. “Can you give me an example of a song you wrote that I would know? So that I can understand this better? Like…what’s the saddest song you’ve ever written?”
Without missing a beat, he answered, “For YOUR generation and particular culture? ‘You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille’”.
“Really? Why that one? What sets that one apart? There are so many sad songs.” For just a second I wondered if I was making up this entire conversation with God. Was I imagining some kind of supernatural “present” from God because I wanted one so badly? My spirit must have heard my questions because immediately it said, “No! You could never make up anything this fantastic! Listen. God’s telling you something he wants you to know.” I paid strict attention and hung onto his every word.
“It’s sad on several levels,” he began. “First, notice it’s a song about someone named Lucille. That’s your first clue. Lucille means ‘light bearer’. Always look at the names in a song. It gives a huge clue to the deeper meaning. On the surface level, a man’s wife, Lucille, has left him. The one who always brought light into his life is gone.
‘You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille.
With four hungry children and a crop in the field.
I’ve had some bad times, lived through some sad times
This time the hurtin’ won’t heal.
You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille.’
‘Light’ left him at a crucial time. He’s busy with his crops and can’t take care of his children while he’s in the fields. Naturally, he’s hurt. The absence of her light leaves him in dark despair.
“Now, let’s take the song to a deeper level. Let’s say, that there are those who consider themselves in a relationship with me. They believe that I’ve let them down for some reason or another or that I’ve promised them dreams that never came true. They get tired of holding on to their dreams and they leave me, their children, destiny and purpose, and the crop in the field; their ability to change the world around them. They leave me and everything I have to offer them before the crops are even harvested.
‘When the drinks finally hit her
She said, ‘I’m no quitter.’
But I finally quit living on dreams.
I’m hungry for laughter
Here ever after
I’m after whatever the other life brings.’
Can you imagine the overall effect of all the disillusioned ‘light’ in this world, leaving me and seeking elsewhere for comfort and personal satisfaction? These disappointed ‘Lucilles’ were intended to be light bearers but instead they put out their fire, the inner light that I put in them. It’s been heartbreaking to me. If only they could have held on a little longer, they could have had everything I promised them.”
I felt his pain hit my heart and I wanted to weep…for God and for the people disillusioned with him because of their own impatience with their struggles. It WAS a sad song indeed! I wanted to go and find all the ‘Lucilles’ in the world and tell them to hold on a bit longer, that they would get every promise God had put in their hearts. I would tell them never to give up. I thought of other songs; some old and some more recent; “Candle in the Wind,” sung by Elton John, “Light the Fire Within,” by LeAnn Rimes, “Light My Fire,” by The Doors…there were countless songs about the subject. My mind was racing with the discovery.
“Believe it or not,” God was not through with his line of thought, “there is another level of meaning to this song, if you want to go there. I had a ‘Lucille,’ too. I created him before I even created man. He WAS music, created out of things that made musical sounds and things you have never even heard of. He was the most beautiful creature I ever made. His name was ‘Lucifer,’ which also, means light bearer.”
“What happened to him?” I thought that this story seemed vaguely familiar. “Isn’t he on the earth now?”
“He IS on the earth now. But he was once with me, leading the choir of heaven, writing all the music. You would be blown away if you could have seen that. It was spectacular! We had all sorts of plans and things to do but he wanted to be me. He wanted all the power. He even organized a protest in heaven and a third of the angels in heaven joined forces with him. I finally had to make them all leave. They fell to the earth and torture mankind now. At first, it angered me. I didn’t create him for that. He was my “Son of the Morning,” my Morning Star. Now, he’s so jealous of man because man can be redeemed and he can’t. He’s really jealous of musicians, by the way. They get to do what he did in heaven. He can’t stand them. But, I suppose you can see the communication coming down from heaven to earth. I know he must detest that song.”
I was shocked. I had never thought about God having “issues” with spiritual beings that I coudn’t see. I was astounded that music was a communicator between the forces of good and evil. I didn’t know what to say.
“You’re getting it, aren’t you?” God wanted to know. I nodded my head up and down. “But the important thing is that not only that you understand it, but that it causes an emotion – compassion, to well up inside of you and calls for action to help those who need it. The energy that the melody and lyrics sent out to the ‘world’, play on your emotional heartstrings and cause you to respond in a way that would help my Kingdom be established here on earth. That’s what it’s all about, anyway…establishing my Kingdom.”
I had to take a few moments to let this revelation sink into my spirit and my soul. The window of heaven must have still been shining down on me because I could actually see the white, bright light rise up to my reasoning mind so that God could saturate it a bit with more understanding. I saw it then move down to the fine, tiny bones and inner parts of my ear, where the mysteries of sound were taken in and digested as energy with communicating capabilities. The light lingered there for awhile, for it was necessary to give my ears the ability to interpret what they heard when music and lyrics had a message for someone. The light then flowed to my eyes and bathed them in the warm energy that would enable me to “see” a person or group of people that the song had been written for. Slipping down to my mouth, the light radiated a warmth that loosened my tongue, freeing up my ability to communicate the revelation of this musical language. Lastly, the light intensified and stopped at my heart, marinating it in a kind of empathy or compassion tear bath that would be activated when the song was interpreted for someone.
I stopped seeing where the light was going. It had stopped at my heart and left me with the instant knowledge of what my present really was. The exquisite heavenly music box was only part of the supernatural gift. God had taken the wrapping paper off to show me a heavenly musical language that was intended to speak on his behalf to people who needed to feel love again and become reacquainted with their purpose. It was a just another pleasant way he communicated with man. He was making it easy for us. The problem was, though, most people didn’t recognize the language on that level. They didn’t look for the higher meaning in the lyrics.
“So…I guess you’re giving me this music gift to help people with, huh?” By this time I was crying. I always cry when I feel God in such a real way. In a way, it’s always one of the signs that he is truly speaking to me about something important.
“Yes. That’s it,” he said. You will be able to look at someone and I will put a song in your mind about them and you will tell them about it. It may just be part of a lyric or phrase, but something that will blow them away just because they will know I’m thinking about them.”
“Do you have a song for me right now?” I asked. “What do you think of me?” It took only a second for the song to come to my mind…
“Unforgettable, that’s how you are
Unforgettable, near and far.
Like a song of love that clings to me
How the thought of you does things to me
Never before, has someone been more
Unforgettable, in every way
And forever more, that’s how you’ll stay
That’s why darling it’s incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am
Unforgettable, too.”
I laid there in my bed, tears running down my face. He “had me” at Nat King Cole. I was almost embarrassed to have the God of the whole universe think so extravagantly and lovingly about me. Is this what “the gift” did to people; take God out of a box and show them that he does relate to them in a way that they could understand?
I thought about it a long time that night. Actually, I don’t think I got much sleep. I wanted to try this gift out; see if it worked. I got up and got dressed and decided to head to Wal Mart. It would be a great place to practice my “new present.”
I got a few things I needed and stood in the checkout line. There was a man standing in front of me. “Here goes nothing,” I thought. “OK, God. What about this man? Do you have a song for him?”
I didn’t have to wait. One came to mind instantly.
“This is for all the lonely people
Thinking that life has passed them by…”
This man was lonely and felt like he had missed the mark somewhere along life’s way! He felt like giving up! The band, America, had him pegged. I didn’t want to talk to him, though, I wasn’t quite ready for that, yet. I just wanted to see the gift work.
I walked to the car and saw a young woman holding a little boy’s hand in the parking lot. “What about her?” I asked God. “What’s her deal?”
“Do you know the way to San Jose
I’ve been away so long, I might
Go wrong and lose my way.
Do you know the way to San Jose
I’m going back to find some piece
Of mind in San Jose.”
“Oh,” I realized. “She wants to get out of here and leave. She feels no peace here.” Burt Bacharach had her number too.
I saw a man getting out of his car. “What about him, God? What’s going on with him?”
“I get knocked down, but I get up again
You’re never going to keep me down.”
“Chumbawamba? Now, God….that’s funny right there. I don’t care who you are…but I get it. He’s from the ‘school of hard knocks’ and he’s a tough guy.”
I began to see people through the words of songs. The same window that opened over the songwriter opened over me when I wanted “to see” into someone’s soul. Life was beginning to get real interesting!
Several years ago I was sitting in a staff meeting at the church where I worked. That day, we had invited a guest minister to come and speak to us about staff relationships and other church leadership matters. One by one, we went down the table, introducing ourselves to him and telling him what our roles were as part of the leadership team. When he got to me, I said, “My name is Donna and I am the coordinator for Isaiah 58.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, he looked at me, smiled and said. “The Lord just told me that He was going to give you a present.”
I looked at him, thinking, “What? A present? What kind of present? From God?” My face must have looked puzzled, because he looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know what that really means, but when I looked at you, that’s what God told me. He’s going to give you a present.”
I quickly gave him the once over. He was a good sized man in his late sixties, early seventies, grayish-brown hair, wore glasses, jeans and and a buttoned down plaid shirt. Who was this messenger from God? He looked kind and quite ordinary. I summed him up in one word: trustworthy. Immediately, I was a believer, a taker, a “toker” and a receiver. My mind was racing with thoughts. “My birthday IS next week and I can’t believe how fast the years are going by and I totally hate getting older and what if God really did give me a present?” (It’s funny how your mind can think of all these things in only two seconds.) “Well…my birthday IS in five days…” I said slowly, with a sense of wonder. He looked at me, lifting his elbows up to the table while resting his chin on the knuckles of his interlocking fingers. “All I know is that God told me He was giving you a present. Maybe it will be for your birthday.”
I have no recollection of anything else that was said in that meeting. All I could think of was that the words were out there, hanging like laundry on a clothes line, blowing around and snapping in the breeze, shouting to the atmosphere, “You are going to get a present from God.” I had never been told that. There was so much hope in that statement. The shear possibility of it happening manifested in my body, running up and down my spine, making me want to run home and see if there was a package in the door or an envelope in the mailbox with my name written on it in some exotic handwriting that looked like it came from heaven’s administrative offices and with a mysterious return address on it, known only to God. The feeling was so wonderful that I wondered if this could be the gift: the feeling of delicious expectation. It was a heady feeling and I felt a little bit dizzy. I wanted to giggle. I looked at the others in the room with me. Were they wondering too? Would they be watching me to see if I would be getting some type of spectacular gift, like a luxury car or Rolex? Or would they be thinking…”I have noticed that Donna has been emotional lately. She’s been looking kind of tired. Maybe God’s going to give her some extra peace and patience…or a chance to get some rest…the kind of things that aren’t really tangible.”
Phooey. What did I care what everyone thought anyway? God didn’t tell anyone else that He would give them a present. He told me that, personally. I was left alone with my imagination for days.
I rationalized it. God gives us gifts all the time doesn’t He? I was blessed. I already had a beautiful family, home, friends, good health and a nice job. Why should I expect more than that? Maybe I had already received the gift and the kind gentleman was just a bit “off” on his timing.
I let my imagination run wild. What if He had decided to give me something that I had always wanted? Hadn’t we always been told to go to God with a specific list? “You have not because you ask not.” I had trouble being specific. I could not come up with a list of five things I ever really wanted. What was wrong with me? Did I have everything I wanted? It’s hard to get a present for someone who has it all. I felt like I was playing the “if you had three wishes what would they be” game. Nobody ever really wins that game.
I finally decided that God already had my gift and it was not up to me to tell Him what to give me. He had already been to his God store, bought it and had it deluxe gift wrapped. I just had to wait for the right timing and let Him choose when we could have our own little private party. I couldn’t believe how excited and full of expectation I was. I didn’t say a word to anyone. I had a feeling it was going to be huge and I didn’t want anyone feeling jealous of me. I walked around smugly and kept my thoughts to myself.
I woke up to a beautiful day on my birthday, the day I thought I would get my present. I hugged myself most of the day in anticipation, looking around every corner and under every rock as a possible hiding place for my most special gift. I was hoping I hadn’t hyped it up too much in my mind. A gift is a terrible thing to get hyped up on. It may disappoint. It may be something that you need really badly but no one will ever know that you got it because it’s hidden from public view and no one will ever see it (like underwear, socks or…an iron.) This gift could be totally, spiritually utilitarian, like a gift card for EGR, (extra grace required,) to be used on a tough situation nobody knew that I was going through. Heck, it could be anything! I decided to wait it out and let the gift come to me.
So I waited…and waited…Nighttime came and we had dinner with the children and friends. I looked around the happy table and wondered, once again, if my gift was just an important reminder from God showing me how “gifted” and “present(ed) my life already was. I was satisfied and went to bed thinking of the multitude of reasons for me to be glad and thankful.
I lay there for a while, my eyes open, staring at the dark ceiling. Maybe the old guy had missed it and I should just forget about it and go to sleep. I sighed, turned onto side, curled into myself and closed my eyes. “Why do people tell you that God says that something good’s going to happen to you and it doesn’t?” I was ashamed to think like that. I was a grown woman. I lay in a fetal position and invited disappointment and self pity to wrap their cold, long fingers around my heart. Pulling the blanket up over my head, I sealed myself into a tight cocoon of despair and let the tears start sliding out of the corners of my eyes, forming little puddles on my pillow.
“Girl, I was thinking that you and I would be having our own little birthday party, not a pity party. I hate pity. I think I’ll leave.”
“Wait…God …is that you? Don’t go!” I threw the covers off sat straight up in bed. “No…I just thought that…”
“I know what you thought, but you’ve already given up on my present for you.”
“I didn’t mean to. It’s just that today was my birthday and I thought it would come today. See…it’s late…it’s after midnight. It’s not even my birthday anymore.”. I felt like such a whiny baby.
“I had to wait until it would be just you and me,” God reasoned. You were so busy in the day doing what it is that you do, I had to wait until the perfect time. I couldn’t give it to you without a little bit of explanation and instruction.
Embarrassed in front of him for acting like an eight year old, I sheepishly asked, “So…can we just forget about the pity party and tears?”
He threw back his head and laughed. “What tears? I don’t see any tears. I only allow happy tears on birthdays.”
I fell back down on my pillow, lay on my back and put my hands under my head and then crossed my ankles. I had a feeling that God was getting ready to blow my mind and I was ready for it. I wiped away all the tale-tale signs of tears and just tried to grasp the moment. “So, this is going to be one of those intangible presents that only you and I will know about, huh?” I asked him, preparing myself for something extraordinary.
“Why are you so worried about if it’s intangible or not?” He started laughing. “Those are the best kind of gifts. Anyway, every good present and every perfect gift comes from me. You’ve always had this gift. I’m just going to make you aware of it and show you how to use it.”
I was ready for God to give me my gift. “O.K. Well…What is it? Is it in this room?
“We are going to have to work on your patience with me,” He said. “You’re not so bad with other people, but with me? Horrible!”.
I thought He was teasing me, so I rolled my eyes…”Why are you making me wait?”
“Alright…alright…Just stare up at the ceiling. Stare until you see something.”
It sounded like a strange request, but, hey, this was God and He could do anything or ask of me whatever He wanted to. I began to stare…
I stared until my eyes began watering. I wiped them and blinked a few times, staring into the dark ceiling “screen.” He was quiet as I lay there, never saying a word. It was like I was waiting for a movie to begin.
I don’t know how long I gazed into the darkness, but suddenly, I saw the shape of a box take it’s place on the screen in my mind. As it came into focus, I noticed that it was a big, clear box, filled with tiny bits of paper dancing around each other. It vibrated with energy and the lid shook underneath the sparkling bow. I thought I heard it humming.
“God is this it? Is this my present?”. I wondered if I was dreaming, but I knew I was barely sleepy.
“Sure is,” He said excitedly. “Open it.”
I slowly lifted it and held it up to the light. It was a box made of shimmering glass and I could see through it perfectly. Inside, I saw what appeared to be black and white little pieces of paper swirling around as if wind was blowing them. On inspecting more closely, I saw that some of the bits of paper had words on them and that others had black music notes on them. Immediately, I knew that it was a music box with thousands of words and musical notes dancing around on the inside, waiting to be put together as lyrics and melodies. Together, on the inside, of the box, they were charged with a type of energy and anticipation. I saw no machinery to make this happen but the contents of the box were alive with creativity and I wasn’t sure what would happen when I lifted the lid.
Gently, I pulled the glittery ribbon off the top of the box and as soon as I did, black music notes spilled out onto my white down comforter in a tumble of familiar music. In astonishment, I laughed out loud, not believing what I was seeing. This was a music box and it was alive!
To my surprise, I saw words gather up as if a magnet was pulling them out of a word pool, bringing them together out of the music box. I saw them fall down to my pillow and string themselves together in what seemed to be a familiar lyric.
“I’ve been alive forever
And I wrote the very first song
I put the words and the melodies together
I am music and I write the song.”
“Wait a minute…Wait a minute…This is crazy. Are you showing me a music box that…puts together songs and melodies? Because if that is what this is, it’s totally cool! I mean..Wow!”
God said, “You like it? I created it myself!” He seemed proud of His creation and really wanted me to like it.
“Well, yeah, I LOVE it! I mean…do you know what a singer songwriter would do to get one of these?” I looked at Him, shaking my head in disbelief, thinking how amazing the music box was but not fully understanding what I was seeing and why God would choose me to have this supernatural gift. I looked down at the words strung together on my sheet…I recognized them. Didn’t Barry Manilow sing that song years ago?”
“Yeah, he did. He and several others.”
“It’s called, ‘I Write the Songs,’ isn’t it?”
“Uh huh. Remember the chorus?” As soon as He asked me that question, other words were magically pulled out of the word pool and fluttered down to arrange themselves on my pillow in the form of a lyric.
“I write the songs that make the whole
World sing.
I write the songs of love and special things.
I write the songs that make the young
girls cry.
I write the songs. I write the songs.”
“Who wrote this song?” I asked. “I mean, who pulls the words and the melodies out of the box?” For some reason, I felt like this gift was more than the coolest music box in the world. I was about to learn something that would change my life and the way I thought of creativity.
“I did,” God answered back. He had a sound in his voice that must have sounded a bit like Michelangelo’s did when someone asked him who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
“You did? You wrote it?” It was so hard to believe. “You’re kidding me, right? Because if you did, then I’m confused. I’m sure somebody else wrote it and sold it to Barry Manilow and he made a lot of money off of it as well as the writer….” I trailed off the thought. Was God a ghost writer of sorts who wrote for musicians or did he just write music all over the earth, leaving his music notes and lyrics laying around in obvious places for less talented people to find, steal and get credit for?
Why was I being so skeptical of what God had said to me? He was God, after all, and we had many conversations before like this. He always told me the truth in ways I could understand it.
“Don’t believe me?” He challenged me. “Look at the next verse.”
“There goes God again, reading my mind,” I thought. The words came falling out of the box and formed themselves under the chorus.
“My home lies deep within you
And I’ve got my own place in your soul.
Now when I look through your eyes
I’m young again, even though I’m very old.”
The black music notes were coming up to my pillow when they realized that they belonged to the words. They didn’t want to be separated from each other, the music and the lyrics. I imagined that God was taking his finger and conducting the song. Other words joined the score to finish it out.
“Oh, my music makes you dance and gives
You spirit to take a chance
And I wrote some rock’n roll so you can move.
Music fills your heart, well that’s a real
Fine place to start
It’s from me. It’s for you.
It’s from you. It’s for me.
It’s a worldwide symphony.
I am music and I write the song.”
“So music wrote the song. You are music?”
“Yeah, I am. Pretty cool, isn’t it?”
“Actually, it blows my mind…I mean…it blows my mind.” And with that I scooped all the lyrics and music notes together and held them in my hand. They were alive and quivering with sound waves and energy.
“Hey God, I hope this gift comes with instructions or something, because I have some questions.”
(I’ve divided this post into two segments. I’ll post the next part of “The Present” early next week. Thanks guys!)
The house in Alabama on Allendale Road had dreams all over the place. They were piled up in corners, stored under beds, shoved behind the piano, stuffed into dresser drawers and stacked up where no one could see them behind the couch. They sat atop the dining room table like lazy cats claiming their territory and we had to learn to share the space and eat with them as their tails swished across our plates. At night, we had to push them off of our beds to have room to sleep. They would only crawl back up and spoon with us after we had fallen asleep, whispering their plans and suggesting crazy things into our comatose brains while we were most vulnerable. There was no room at all left in the band room. The dreams were squished into drum bowls and guitar bodies. They crouched behind the sound board and hid in the amplifiers. And the microphones; they didn’t fool us a bit. They were long, skinny dreams with a shiny magnet for a head that screamed phrases all the time, like, “I just wanna be heard,” pulling at the iron wills of my children and becoming inseparable. On one side of the room, they were stacked like a cord of dry, fire wood, just waiting their turn to be pulled out from the pile and put in the fire place upstairs, just wanting to burn like nobody’s business. Oh, the laundry room! I could hardly get in there to do a load of dirty clothes because dreams were all over the place. I had to push them out of the way to wash the towels and make room for the mounds of clothes that magically appeared daily before my very eyes. The garage was a mess of dreams. They were hanging from the tool racks and shelves attached to the walls and hung over old bicycles and lawn mowers. There was an old patio table and junk lawn chairs that sat on the top of an old rug and the dreams would sit there and spawn more of themselves and multiply. We didn’t have room to park a car in there! Dreams were constantly knocking on our doors and peeking into our windows, just trying to figure out if they could come in. Our house was bursting at the seams with dreams and there was not room for one more.
One day, the dreams decided they were being stifled at our house. The house had become too small for them and they needed a place to stretch out real big and be allowed to grow if they wanted to. They began to consider a place where they could go that would be home to them, a place that they could turn into more than just a thought and a hope. Dreams are like that. They get tired of just being illusive happy thoughts. They have to develop and have substance. With that in their minds, they crawled into my children’s beds as they slept and began whispering their big, fancy plans to my babies. “We need a place to go ,” they sang in their heartbreakingly beautiful Siren voices. “Dreams need more room to roam. Let’s go and find a bigger home.” Who could resist the Siren’s song?
And that was that. “Mom, we’ve decided that we are going to move to Nashville. We’ve done all we can do here musically and we need to move to a place where we can network with a music scene that can move us forward. Plus, we’ve found a house we can rent on Sneed Road. We can all live there together.” I was looking at their hopeful faces but all I could see were the dreams talking. They were manifesting and acting just like my children, but I know a dream when I see one. And their voices had the Siren song thing going on. How could I resist?
It’s strange when dreams pack up and move out of your house. Sure, the kids left and moved to Nashville, but the absence of living with their dreams was the hardest to get over. All of the hope and promises that cluttered my house left with the kids in the U-Haul truck. Bill and I would have to dedicate the next few years to making our own cluttered mess.
While in Nashville over the holidays, I rode by the house on Sneed Road. The kids had moved out of it after Thanksgiving and it was empty, almost dilapidated looking. The owner had bought it to tear it down and build a Nashville mansion on it for someone whose dreams had propelled them to stardom and success. He was having a hard time selling it in this economy and instead could only rent it to a bunch of hopefuls, my children.
I pulled the car over to park in front of the house and just sat there for a while and stared. I gazed at it, my thoughts spilling all over Sneed Road like a bucket of water turned over. I couldn’t collect them and put them back in their holding tank. They were running all over the place. It had been two and a half years since the big dreams had moved to Nashville. At one time or another, the house on Sneed Road had been a home for all of my children. It was the place their dreams chose to live and I could understand why.
It was shabby compared to the houses surrounding it. John Prine, a Country Music Hall of Fame singer/songwriter lived on one side of home and a lawyer lived next door on the other side. Kelly Pickler lived four doors down and one of the Kings of Leon lived several blocks over. Daily tour buses rode down Sneed Road pointing out the houses of the famous. I always cringed at the possibility that the tour guide was telling those on the bus…”And on the left you have the beautiful home of John Prine, a country music legend. And next to it, you have the home of The Bridges, those who are trying to make it in this industry and are too busy chasing their dreams to cut their grass.”
I wondered how the house felt now that the dreams had moved out. It took only a few years for the dreams to take over the house, cluttering up the place like a dream junk yard, the neighborhood eye sore. I suppose at some point, the dreams crawled up into bed with each of the kids and whispered dream visions into their deep sleep realms, telling them things like, “This house is too small for all of us. We need to keep the same dream but move into several houses. That way we will have even more room to multiply and divide.” The dreams had become like big, tall, yellow daffodils, growing together on the same small plot of land, rising up thick and strong side by side with not a finger of room left between them. The only way they could continue to bloom and grow was to dig up the plants, tear the roots in half and replant them in different places. Same flower, same dream, just able to grow bigger in many places.
The house looked cold and dark. I saw no shadowy flickers of life within. No hope and dreams smiling at me from the old, loose windows in the living room facing the road. I felt like I was the tour guide on the bus and I wanted to say: “To your left there is the former home of The Bridges, which was the largest house of dreams on Sneed Road. Don’t let its shabbiness fool you for a minute. Dreams have put a lot of wear and tear on this house, but when it’s all said and done, this house was the richest house on the street. The dreams in this house were some of the most extravagant ones in Nashville. They were elegant and lush, so grandiose that they were almost too embarrassing to speak of out loud. Yes, this is Nashville’s famous, House of Dreams.” I could imagine the folks on the buss sucking in their breaths as they looked upon the house at 4014 Sneed Road, their eyes shining with dancing stars and adoration. “Stop the bus,” they cried out, “so that we can take a picture of the dream house!”
I took out my camera, pointed it at my noble but lonely, old friend and took one last picture. After all, these dreams had become mine too. But, I had taken my cluster of daffodils and planted them in the sandy soil of SNEADS Ferry, North Carolina and they were beginning to take root and grow. I know…weird, right?
“Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings, these are a few of my favorite things.” The movie, “The Sound of Music”
I’ve always loved the musical, “The Sound of Music.” One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when the Von Trapp children are afraid of a thunderstorm during the night. One by one, each child sneaks into Maria’s room until they are all piled up on her bed, seeking comfort from their fears. In her happy, bell-like voice she sings to them that if they can remember their favorite things during times of sadness and discomfort, they will not “feel so bad.”
I noticed a few years ago that this song, “My Favorite Things,” was being played as Christmas music on the radio and on Christmas sound tracks in shopping malls and stores. Each year, it seemed that it was gaining more popularity as a Christmas song and was being played more often. I have heard it so much during this Christmas season that I’ve decided to take its advice. It’s time to consider my favorite things.
Armed with my iPad and a nice glass of red wine, I sat down Sunday night to make my list. I thought of Oprah and all of her “Favorite Things” lists. I didn’t have Oprah’s budget and couldn’t send out teams of employees and my best friends to choose wonderful exotic treasures from all over the world; treasures that would pamper and make me feel like a spoiled princess – not that there’s anything wrong with that. No, all I had was a scattered list in my mind of things that made me happy. In no particular order, I began to put into words the things that made me smile every time. Here is my list and what I wrote.
My Favorite Things
1. Stemware. I “flat out” love stemware and crystal. It makes me feel wealthy when I look in my cabinet and see my crystal catch the light and sparkle like diamonds. I love to take a glass off the shelf and place it on the counter top as I consider what I will pour into it. I love to hear the stream of wine hit the bottom of the glass as I make my pour. Then, I love to pick up the half full glass and hold it. Caress its fragile body and slim leg. Sometimes we guess the musical note that pings when we thump the glass with our fingernails, finding the true note on the key board to see who was right. I know – stemware and music nerd games. Oh the luxury of it all.
2. Sea glass. I love to walk the beach and find the treasure of sea glass. My eyes constantly search for a flicker of color or frosty white amongst the sand, shells and rocks. If I happen upon the treasure, I scoop it up, clean the sand off and put it in my pocket. I am jealous when I see others walking the beach with a hand full of the exquisite glass. I makes me search harder and more diligently, not wanting to leave the beach without at least one piece. I take my smoothed out shard of glass home, adding it to my growing collection of blue, green, white and brown sea glass, which by the way, are held in a piece of fancy crystal stemware Bill and I got for a wedding present over 30 years ago.
3. China. (Not the country) I adore china. My cabinet shelves groan with the weight of plates, cups and saucers. I have china in my cupboards, china in several kitchen cabinets and china packed away in the garage. I don’t have room for all my china. I have given some to my children and love to sit at their tables and recognize my old friends staring up at me, filled with good food. Comfort dishes for comfort foods. I also decorate with plates. They proudly are displayed on plate racks in my dining room and bedrooms. I see that I have surrounded myself with the things I love and the things that make me smile.
4. Pearls. I have always loved pearls. I suppose that they may not be considered “gems” in the most technical sense, but they are to me. Simple sophistication!
5. A fire in a fireplace. I don’t care if it’s made with chopped wood and kindling or fake logs and natural gas, if it’s cold outside, I will back up to it and warm myself up. It’s comforting!
6. A good book. I love to read and I read all kinds of books. I especially love novels. I have discovered that they are the best way to escape my reality and I have become quite a good escape artist. I love to walk in a book store and smell books and coffee. The mixture of those smells is intoxicating to me and like a drug. My heart palpitates a little and my hands shake ever so slightly as I try to walk and not run to the best seller rack. I put my hand over my heart as I look over the titles and book covers. Slowly, I reach out to the one that flirts with me most…That feeling is one of my favorite things.
7. A bride standing with her father at the back of the church waiting for their turn to walk down the aisle. My husband and I used to sing at a lot of weddings. We would always be on the platform looking out over the church in the opposite direction of all the other wedding guests. We could always see the father/daughter pair before the rest of the crowd could. The scene got to me every time and would bring me to tears, even if I didn’t know the bride very well. I could actually see the emotion of the moment in the father’s grip on his baby’s arm, her eyes smiling up at him to reassure him that she’s made the right decision and the grip loosening to a gentle pat by him on her arm to indicate that he understood love and letting go. I don’t sing at weddings anymore but I always turn around in my seat to catch the father daughter exchange. It’s one of my favorite things to witness.
8. Roses on a fence. What could be more charming? No matter where I live, I always try to have roses on a fence. They are homey and welcoming. If for some reason I don’t have them, I will be combing the countryside taking pictures of everyone else’s!
9. My mother’s laugh. My mother has a great, loud laugh. Ever since I was a little girl, I have been comforted by that laugh. Hers is a distinguishing laugh, one that rises above all other chuckles and heehaws in a room. As a child, I remember getting separated from my mother in a grocery store one time, only to hear her laughing with a friend and all I had to do was follow the laugh and there she was. On several occasions when I was older, I was shopping at a mall in another town and I swore that I heard my mother laugh. “My mom’s here.” I said. “She’s around here somewhere. That’s her laugh.” Sure enough, I followed the sound of the laugh and there she was, laughing with someone she had “run into from Tarboro.” I shopped with her this week for Christmas and I was reminded of how that sound from childhood was still one of my favorites.
10. My father’s blue sweater. I love my father in blue, my favorite color. It makes his grey hair silver and sets off the color of his green eyes. As I became older, I realized that it was the color that suited him best, the color of a pool of calm waters. That’s what reminds me of my father: still, deep waters. That’s my father. Cool, calm, patient…blue.
11. My children’s faces around my table. I love to sit at the dinner table and watch my children eat what I have cooked for them while they talk and laugh. If I could make that time last for hours, I would. I take each face, hold it in my mind and put it in my heart. That time is heaven on earth.
12. Riding around in the car with Bill and dreaming. My favorite pastime. We have actually whiled away many hours driving around in our car, looking at houses we can’t afford, commercial properties that could house potential businesses and…you name it. We’ve dreamed it! If I go a few weeks without riding around and dreaming, I get irritable and start focusing on all of my problems. I grab Bill and say, “It’s time to go dreaming.” Love it. Love it!
I don’t have the time to give you the other “favorites” on my list. I had twenty-five! When I finished writing them down on Sunday night, I read the contents of the list out loud to Bill. He couldn’t believe the things I read off to him. “I had no idea that those were your favorite things.” “Actually,” I smiled, “neither did I until I thought about it and wrote them down.”
They were inexpensive things, for the most part. Some costs nothing at all. “Now that I know what your favorite things are,” Bill said, “I’m going to devote the rest of my life making sure that you are surrounded by them.” I couldn’t have loved him more when he said that. It wasn’t until I made the list that I defined myself.
Everyone needs to define themselves. Each year you can begin by making a list of your favorite things. Some things will remain the same and others will change. You will discover amazing things about yourself when you think of the things that make you laugh and smile or things that give you peace and comfort.
I challenge you to begin your new year by making a list of your favorite things. You’ll be surprised at what you find.
It’s surprising the places your mind can go when you’re confined in a car for twelve hours. On this trip from Sneads Ferry to Nashville, Tennessee, my mind is like a butterfly in a garden, fluttering from one thought to another, sometimes lingering on a memory inspired from a scene outside my window or a song on the radio. After I sit on one memory and sip all of its nectar I get caught up on the breeze of another memory and meander to it’s special spot in the garden. There I rest as I get lost in the fragrance of the past, presence and future.
My eye is drawn to a small lake by the interstate right outside Knoxville, Tennessee. By most standards it’s not even a lake. It’s a glorified pond, pretty enough, but so close to the road that the cars whizzing by on I 40 are bound to shake and rattle the campers like a constant series of mini earthquakes. Plus it’s cold outside. I wonder who in the world would want to spend Christmas in a tin can on trembling ground right up by one of the busiest roads in America. For a few seconds I linger on that thought and my mind jumps to the back yard of my parents house in Tarboro, North Carolina. I am about ten years old and my brother, Scot and I are camping out in a pup tent behind the house. It is a damp night and within a few hours the blankets smell of wet dogs and old woolen beach mildew. It begins to drizzle rain and I wish we were in waterproof sleeping bags.
Sleeping bags and camping…During Spring Break of my Freshman year at ECU, my friends and I go camping on the Outer Banks of North Carolina with the dual purpose of looking for summer jobs and having fun. We have no camping gear so we make a tent out of bed sheets. After we finish putting it together the wind fills it up and it looks like a giant marshmallow sitting in the middle of tin can campers. What is it with tin cans?
Tin cans…My memory takes me to the warehouse of Isaiah 58, a food ministry for the hungry, in Oxford, Alabama, where I used to work. I see a big, battered pallet box filled to the brim with assorted cans of food for the needy. It’s winter time and the warehouse has no heat, but the volunteers don’t care. They have formed an assembly line and as they joke and banter back and forth, laughter fills the air as cans of food fill the banana boxes.
A line of tired, worried looking people has formed outside the lobby door, waiting for us to open up. There is a girl who barely looks old enough to babysit, much less be old enough to mother the child sitting on her jutting hip bone. “Do you have any diapers in a size three?” she asks. That’s a popular size and I don’t know if we have any left, but I tell her we’ll look and see if we do. An elderly woman, held up by her walker, stands in line, her shabby, thin coat barely shielding her from the biting wind. “May I ask you something?” she motions her head at me because she wants me to lean into her whisper. I put my head near her lips. “Do you have any Depends in my size?” She is embarrassed to ask and I feel her shame. “Mam, I saw some earlier this week in the back of the warehouse. I’m sure we have some for you. She’s so relieved to hear that bit of good news that her shoulders sit up a bit straighter. I thank God that for one week we can give her a little bit of dignity and how pitiful it is that dignity has anything at all to do with Depends…
Bill puts the breaks on and the car slows down a bit. We are passing by a little town with one exit off the interstate. I look down off of the overpass and see a small gas station with two pumps. Right beside it is a Piggly Wiggly. Why would anyone name their grocery store that? It sounds so unappetizing to think of squealing, wiggly pigs and yet the parking lot is filled with trucks and cars. My eyes shift to the Baptist Church across the street. It is a small, red brick building with a steeple and big white double doors adorned with cheery Christmas wreathes. My mind wanders…
It’s Christmas Day and it’s a Sunday. I’m twelve years old and I don’t like Christmas falling on a Sunday. Don’t preachers know that kids don’t like to leave their Christmas trees, toys and nice warm houses to go to church on a Christmas Day? My mom tells me and my siblings to stop whining; that we aren’t remembering the real “reason for the season.” My mom knows how to put a guilt trip on me. She tells us we can all bring something we got from Santa to church, as long as it’s small and we behave with it. I decide to show off my new watch.
We walk into the sanctuary and I’m utterly amazed at the size of the crowd. Other parents must have dragged their children there too, because there are kids sitting down by their parent’s feet on the floor playing with their toys too. I sit down in the pew next to my mom, deciding I’m going to act older and more grownup. I notice my grandmother and grandfather sitting across the room. Church still hasn’t started and I lift up my arm and point to the new watch attached to it. I mouth, “Look what I got.”. She smiles and motions to me to come over and sit next to her. I ask my mom if that will be alright and she says, “Sure. Go ahead.”.
I walk over to her like the teenager I am not, carrying myself like an older, wiser young lady who has on a watch any cool teenager would wear. I’m fooling no one but myself. Everyone in the room knows everything important there is to know about me. Grandmother pats the chair next to her and I plop down and shove the wrist with the pretty, golden, Citizens watch in her lap, waiting for her to comment. She picks up my hand, caresses the watch like it is a family jewel found on a fairy princess’ delicate arm. “Oh, Donna!”. She exclaims. “That is the prettiest watch I’ve ever seen!”. I look up at her. Her grandmother’s love is brilliantly shining at me and I realize I am old enough to know the difference between unconditional, glowing love and “putting up with” kind of love. I grin up at her and say, “It is beautiful, isn’t it Grandmother? (I call her ‘Grandmother’ because I am older now and ‘Mamaw’ sounds so babyish.
It is time for the service to begin and Pastor Kridel greets us and thanks us all for coming out on Christmas Day to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus. “Please turn in your hymnals to song number 111 and let’s stand and worship our Lord in song.” We stand together, me and grandmother, as the organist cheerfully blasts out an introduction to “Joy To The World.” I look up at her and wait for her to begin to sing first. She starts, her shaky, older grandma voice plain, but never once off key. I listen, letting her voice reassure me and I begin to join her…”Let heaven and nature sing. Let heaven and nature sing. Let heaven and heaven and nature sing.”Suddenly, I am so glad my grandmother is sitting next to me on Christmas Day at our church. We are worshipping together and I am wearing a princess watch. It’s been over forty years since that Christmas and I can still hear her, singing in her no nonsense voice. I don’t know what happened to the watch but the memory of her voice sounds like Christmas to me.
The sound of the ringtone from my cell phone startles me out of my random thoughts. “Hello?” I answer. “Mom, how far away are you and Dad from Nashville?” Not too far now,” I say excitedly. Yay! Let the fun begin! Christmas on a Sunday.
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