Thursday, July 29, 2010

Running from the Devil at Bedtime

Songs with names like "Runnin' From the Devil" and "Nobody Left in Nebraska" don't sound like lullabies, and they're not-never were meant to be. But there's nothing I'd rather be singing to my children as I lull them to sleep at night, and I've sung those songs to all of them. Why? Because my dad wrote them.

I used to hold my eldest son's hand through the crib while I sang him to sleep with Dad's songs. This time I'm singing them to the little boy who is named after the man who wrote them. They're part of Dad's legacy to his children and grandchildren.

When I was four and five, I was a "music brat" if you will. While my siblings were in school, I was riding in the back seat of the family car around Nashville. Dad was driving and Mom was dressed in her beautiful peach-colored suit and fancy heels (Dad had bought her these things when we were more affluent, and I still remember how Mom kept those heels with another elegant pair stashed in the closet throughout all those years in Tennessee.). She was ready to pitch his music to the music publisher's of that city.

One time, when they had bought me a cheap Barbie to keep me busy, I was fortunate to hear Dad perform in one of the clubs. Mom kept shushing me because I was asking when Dad was going to come on throughout some other guy's performance. On the way home Mom and Dad fought, and I cried "with intent", as children are able to do, just to get them stop. I doubt I understood what the fight was about, but I do know it was hard for them to be working parents with four children to support and still find time to pursue Dad's music.

Of course, I have often heard my dad play since. I heard him play with his band at parties and local music festivals throughout my years growing up. I heard him record his music in a small recording studio in Dickson and even heard his songs on an am dial country music station. In high school at my graduation party, my friends asked why he didn't try to get a record deal (HA! If they only knew!). He sang at my wedding and recently at my baby boy's christening. I already want to hear him perform again, and I badly wish I had just one of his old demo tapes to play whenever I feel like it-particularly when I'm missing him. Sadly, those demos are in storage somewhere. I hope they've survived.

If you can't tell, I'm his number 1 fan. Only someone who truly loved a song like "Runnin From the Devil" could turn it into a lullaby. And I have.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Do I? Do I really?

When I woke up this morning, I was not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. My sight was blurry, and if I had a tail, it would have been limp and pathetic as it swept the floor behind me. I had just gotten up on the wrong side of the bed which just happened to be a fold-out Elmo couch on the floor in the baby's room. Obviously, such a bed is not meant to accommodate anyone larger than a toddler.

When I came out I selflessly asked my children what they wanted for breakfast (though that may be part of my job description as a mother, I guess). My eldest, my boy, treated me to an imitation of myself, the way I looked when he came into his brother's room this morning and found me sprawled on my splendid sleeping space. "This is what you looked like, Mama," he said as he proceeded to throw back his head, sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth with drunken eyes.

"I do not look like that," I responded with dignity as my husband began to snicker.

"Okay," said my boy. "But your mouth was open and you were breathing like this." He began a cacophony of train whistles and rhino snorts, and it was at that moment that I shouted, "Ahhaaaaa!!" and pointed an accusing finger at my husband.

For years Matthew has teased me about snoring. He'll say things like, "When I came in last night you were really out. I could tell by your snoring." Whereupon I ask in a petulant tone, "Do I snore? Do I really?" Then he laughs, pats me on the bottom and assures me that I don't really; he's just teasing. I have never been able to get a straight answer, but the jokes have persisted. And behind every joke, they say, there is a kernel of truth. Thus, I have been haunted for years by the possibility that I have this unlady-like problem.

"You told me I didn't snore!" I shouted at Matthew after my son had finished his tribute performance. "You told me I didn't!"

Matthew did not respond with, "Okay, I'm guilty as charged....because believe me, sister, you do!" No, he was far, far too busy laughing.

"Well maybe I snore because I haven't had a good night's sleep in seven years!" I railed.

But what was the good in defending myself about something over which I have no control? I decided to end the discussion. After all, at long last the truth had come out of the mouth of babes, as it usually does.

"Okay, just stop it, you guys," I said as I walked away. "This is far too much flattery. Really!"

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Cereal, Oldies and Bicycle Plates

Today I heard a song on the oldies station that I love. Part of the chorus goes like this, "Naa-na-na-na...naa-na-na-na..hey, hey, hey-Good-bye!"

Why do I love this song? It's not my quintessential bad-break-up song, no. It simply reminds me of Honeycomb bicycle plates.

There was a magical summer once in my childhood when my siblings and I ate enormous quantities of Honeycomb cereal, listened to oldies tunes on the radio, and collected bicycle plates with the fifty states on them. These marvelous plates were prizes we extracted from the boxes of Honeycomb. And I hope you believe me when I say this...the licence plates were made of metal. Honest to goodness, not one part of them was plastic. And they came from a cereal box!

We loved those sturdy bicycle plates with their pretty pictures of the different states. We wanted to collect them all, and we were desperate for two in particular: Tennessee and Idaho. Well, of course Tennessee. But we longed for the Idaho plate because all our little seen relatives lived there, and it was the state where Mom and Dad had grown up and found each other before leaving shortly after my birth. As I remember we got lots of Connecticut and Colorado plates but never did get the two we most hoped for.

I have a vague memory of the bikes for which the plates were destined. My sisters Vinca and Annie had matching Strawberry Shortcake bikes. And my brother Nate also had his bike at that time, I believe-a surprise gift which came home in the trunk of Dad's car for his only boy. I never had my own "ride", but I was content to wait, rubbing my hands together in eager anticipation of the day when I would inherit one of the beautiful red and white Strawberry Shortcakes. Of course, when Vinca finally did outgrow hers, it fell to her to teach me to ride it. The only lesson I remember was my last and might have been my first, too: Vinca pushed me hard down the hill of the driveway. I remember the exhilarated terror with which I tried to steer toward the curve of the lane without hitting the mailbox. The bike and I made it, and so did the bicycle plate. Well, of course it did. It was metal.


Monday, July 26, 2010

The Lady

I was raised by The Lady. I mean my mom, of course. She was such a lady in fact that common every day words like butt, snot and tissue were considered bad words. At least, I think tissue was considered a bad word, perhaps because it could be confused with bathroom tissue. And for The Lady what happened in the bathroom stayed in the bathroom and was NEVER to be discussed. But at any rate a tissue was for us "a naughty nose wiper".

Calling it such (I have no clue why the more specific Kleenex was forbidden) was okay for running around the house, and, "oh my gosh I had a big sneeze, Mama!" moments, but in school using such terms to ask for a tissue could compromise your whole standing as a normal human being. Unfortunately, we did call it that in public...and my sister Annie did at least once when she was a teenager. She walked to the front of her class in junior high school and very politely asked, "Can I have a naughty nose wiper, please?" To describe the amount and length of the laughter that ensued would be to cause her undue pain, but from that time forward tissue was, for her, no longer a forbidden word.

Three of the four of us kids took speech therapy in school. I think it is simply because my mom taught us euphemisms for everything, so no one could understand what the heck we were talking about. They finally figured out we were bright children who knew what we were trying to say, if in a somewhat unusual way, and they shooed us out with a shake of their heads.

And now for the "f" word. No, not that one!! That one does not exist for my mom-it unexists, kind of like the undead. No, I'm talking about the term almost everyone I know uses for passing gas and which, no gentle reader, I cannot even write in good conscience. This word gives me particular trouble now that I am myself a mother; my daughter already says it and says it with gusto. Every time it falls from her mouth, my ears burn, and I wring my hands and plead with her, "Now, sweetheart, it's a toot, remember? What would Grandmama say?"

What would she say indeed? It's so hard to be a lady. I am myself already teaching my kids euphemisms for things, and mine don't quite roll off the tongue the way "naught nose wiper" did. We say nooger instead of booger (sorry, Mom!). We say snoot instead of snot. And carp instead of....well, you know. Okay, so they're not all that clever, but I have no pangs of guilt when I say them. Now, if could just get my daughter to stop calling her bottom her "butt", I'd do my mama proud.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Dixie Home

My son asked me the other day if I had now lived longer in the city than I had in the country. I realized after a moment's reflection that I had indeed. And I'm afraid the trend will only continue.

I've often talked about my childhood in rural Tennessee. I must have laid it on pretty thick, because my son tells me he plans to have a farm there someday, and I can visit, "anytime, Mama, anytime."

I always miss my childhood home more in the summertime. I miss the cornfield at dusk when the whippoorwill's call can be heard, the lane with its profusion of black-eyed susans and honeysuckle and our slice of Johnson Creek to which we migrated most afternoons.

Pathetic, but I have recurring dreams about that piece of land where I grew up. I have nightmares about people bulldozing the woods and building strip malls. I have pleasant dreams where I'm swinging on a metal swing set by the Walnut trees in the evening. Then there is the dream I had a month ago; I was running joyfully through the cornfield from the lane, glad to be home and eagerly advancing over a hill so I could glimpse the squat little house with its blackberry bushes smothering the fence.

I do not miss that place because I am unhappy now. God has blessed me with a husband whom I adore and four beautiful children. We do not lack a home or sufficient food or even health insurance.

And we have a decent backyard. Thank God for that rectangular piece of grass, rocks and dirt. I know my children and I would be hurting without it. And if its one lone tree in the corner ever dies, I'll be heartbroken.

Last weekend our family was heading home from a park when Matthew, my husband, commented on the newer neighborhood through which we were passing. "Nice houses," he said innocuously, but I had a fleeting moment of panic. "Yeah, but look at the yards," I responded anxiously. "They're tiny." I made him promise not to move me to a nicer house with a smaller yard. I'd rather live in an older neighborhood for the extra bit of green space. I may be a city gal now, but I was once a little girl who freely roamed ninety-eight acres of rural Tennessee. And I need a near bit of nature, even if its cordoned off by block fencing.

Saturday, July 24, 2010

THE RULE OF NO PENS, PENCILS, KNIVES OR SCISSORS

My father gave his children many things, but his greatest gift to his children was time. He spent hours playing with us outside and having many conversations with us about God, our dreams, choices, relationships....well, he covered so many topics.

He also had a habit of being ultra-protective, inventing rules which indelibly stood from our toddler years to adolescence, despite the fact that our allotment of common sense had increased dramatically during this time. One rule especially lives in the memories of his four children. For years every time my parents left the house, my father turned to us kids and with a deep tone of warning said, "No pens, pencils, knives or scissors!"

These four utensils were banned on principle. According to Dad any one of them could, with a lack of proper supervision, put an eye out. This created a dilemma when my parents worked late, and we kids had homework to do. The time came when we could no longer do it in crayon without inviting the derision of our classmates and teachers. So Dad let us use a pencil, but only if we sat a good distance from each other, preventing the possibility of it flying from our hands in a moment of mathematical fervor and lodging itself in a sibling's eye. As we studied in four separate corners of the living room, we often speculated on what bizarre accident in Dad's past kept us from being normal.

My eldest sister Vinca had Dad's exclusive permission to wield a table knife. My other two siblings and I were utterly dependent on her for our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Annie, Nate and I tried to stage a coup once, creeping up behind her as she made our lunch. But when she turned on us, drunk with her own power, and said, "Don't make me use this!", we went squealing into the living room.

Eventually, the rule became more of a joke than a rule in our home, and Dad pronounced it with a twinkle in his eye and a smirk on his face. Nevertheless, I spent many childhood years waiting for the day when I could make my own sandwich using any sharp object I chose - a knife, letter opener, table saw. Yet as a grown woman, I still attempt to slice through various cuts of meat armed only with a fork and sheer determination. This spectacle provides my husband with entertainment at the dinner table...until a hunk of meat flies off my plate to hit him in the face. But, as I remind him, no one ever heard of putting an eye out with a T-bone steak.