There's a First Time for Everything

Four hundred and twenty blackbirds just flew into the trees outside my window. I ran to the sunroom and opened the door to hear the cry of the birds accompanied by the sound of displaced acorns falling on the patio.

I’ve never seen this before.

“There’s a first time for everything.”  Remember when someone said this to you as a kid? The context was never good.  You had left your guitar at home and Sister Juanita was mad at you.  You had just been bit by Hot Diggity Dog and blood was seeping through your shirt.  You had gotten your first B from Ms. Pica in typing class and you saw your GPA plummeting for a business course your mom said you had to take but Madame Danzig said should have been sacrificed for German.

You’ve stayed up all night before.  It’s preferably with a lover and preferably not with a sick child who wants you to read The Guest Who Threw Tomatoes over and over until dawn.  This week I stayed up all night with a dog, only to take her to the ER at six in the morning.  A first.  There’s a first time for everything.

There is a first time for everything. Just sometimes though, there will come that first time for something that will be glorious.  It will be splendid.  And if it happens at a certain age when you think first times will not send you, you will be doubly blessed.

I’ve had some notable first times recently.  One came last night.

I was in my office, editing, when an e came in at nine-thirty from my son.  The subject line was “wrote this for english” (sic). It was a poem, his first. 

My son, how did you know which words to capitalize?  My son, how did you know about structure?  My son, where do these deep thoughts reside when you are walking through the house shuffling a deck of cards with a blank look on your face?

To my son, who used to tell children, “My mom is a writer but I can’t write”: You were wrong.  But don’t worry, there’s a first time for everything.  And I hope that in the balance, most of them are splendid.

All your life/

You were only waiting for this moment to arise

“Blackbird”

Lennon-McCartney

Blue Moon Sessions

Yesterday at Pine View Dairy Farm, the back-to-school flavor of the month was peanut butter and jelly.  While it’s true I ate my strawberry ice cream without company since my kids are in school, I thought a blue moon flavor might be a better offering.

In August 2012 we'll have two full moons, the last one occurring today.

The blue moon to me is all about value.  In grocery store lingo it’s a lunar bogo (buy one get one).  It’s got me thinking about value in my life. I’m so inspired by the moon’s beneficence that I’m looking to song lyrics for a similar generosity of value.  But more on that later.

When I recall poems and songs about the moon, one poem really comes to mind. Some years past, my friend Susan, who is just as moved by words as I am, gave me a book of poems, 365 of them, to be exact.  The concept is that for each day of the Julian calendar, there’s a poem.  

Spoiler alert:  You just may fall in love with the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem for June 18, “To Jane: The Keen Stars Were Twinkling”:

Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.

The poem was inspired by Shelley’s infatuation with a guitar-plucking housewife in Pisa named Jane. The lines about “music and moonlight and feeling” resonate with me during this month of the blue moon. 

I’ve made a point to spend some time with the moon this week, harvesting the magic. These blue moon sessions of mine include a patio and some candles and an iPOD. I’m listening to songs and recalling their meanings at the time they were popular (thinking about the acoustic memory) and comparing them to the lyrics’ current message for me, or really, how the song speaks to my life today.

These blue moon sessions have been rather purposeful:  I’m mining old favorite albums like Decade and Let It Bleed to look for lyrics that might suggest a second meaning at this juncture in my life.  I’m searching for songs that will render a blue moon acoustic memory.

A couple times I’ve run across a song that's inspired me to run in the house and play a song on my guitar (like Shelley’s Jane) when lyrics call to mind a newer meaning.

Aside from harvesting blue moon acoustic memories, this month's double dip of a full moon is a great time to contemplate intent.  If you could have something twice this month only, what would it be?

I am a lonely visitor/
I came too late to cause a stir/
Although I campaigned my whole life toward that goal/
I hardly slept the night you wept/
Our secret’s safe and still well kept/
Where even Richard Nixon has got soul.

“Campaigner” 
-Neil Young

Country Girl

Acoustic memories often come with a hankering, and since I just drove to Austin with my daugther in the car a few weeks back, those hankerings have been countrified.  Somehow the longing in my heart has shifted on the dial.

I’ve been bit by the bug--not a bed bug--a Country with a capital “C” bug. I was voted least likely to be bit by the country bug.  I cut my teeth on Stones and Faces (and Maker’s cause that’s how they handle the younguns in Kaintuck).  I aspired to become a rock guitarist (or a vet or a detective), not a country music fan. And don’t blame it on my parents: My dad only tuned to WTMT 620 for race results. I promise my dial was set to LRS-102 during the impressionable years, as the photo clearly shows. (Technically, this was Paul Neff's basement.)

How did it happen? Might be all the time I’ve been spending on farms in Lancaster County. Could be the windows were open while I drove through Nashville.  Blame it on the sound of eighteen wheelers infiltrating my dreams on the road. I could’ve caught it from Kelly Ford, the diva of country music DJs, at our high school reunion. Or maybe it’s emanating from the pearl snaps on my western shirt.

Maybe I’m evolving. Nah! Too late for that.

Cards on the table, here’s what was on my daughter’s iPod on the road trip that’s now on rotation in my head:

Jake Owen/ “Alone With You”

Luke Bryan/ “I Don’t Want This Night to End”

Eli Young Band/“Even If It Breaks Your Heart” 

Way back on the radio dial/

A fire got lit inside a bright eyed child/

Every note just wrapped around his soul/

From steel guitars to Memphis all the way to rock and roll.

“Even If It Breaks Your Heart”

-Will Hoge and Eric Paslay

She Wears It Well

I’ll admit I changed my Internet loading page to PBS NewsHour to get away from the mindless drivel of information that headlines on Yahoo.  Nonetheless, I find myself starved for some popular culture from time to time, and although I enjoy Jeffrey Brown’s segments, my diet is still deficient.

That’s why I found myself looking at an analysis of Kate Middleton’s spectator attire at the Olympics.  I’m happy to report I liked what I saw.  

What I didn’t see: toe cleavage, plunging necklines, tattoos, VPLs or even visible panties. Instead, I saw classic beauty in subtle wrappings.

I’m sure Kate would love to cut loose with some short shorts and peep-toe pumps, but I’m glad she’s promoting a demure, feminine image.

Now I can't get the song that mentions Madame Onassis out of my head.

But I ain't forgetting that you were once mine/

But I blew it without even tryin/

Now I'm eatin my heart out/

Tryin to get a letter through

“You Wear It Well”

Rod Stewart, Martin Quittenton

Back on the Chain Gang

My daughter and I are back on the chain gang.  We're not really out in orange work clothes on the side of the highway, but we're about that miserable.

Our chains are made of mental heavy metal as much as they are of pretty papers.  At some point when she was just a little girl, we made a chain of colorful construction paper to count down the days to a special event.  Nowadays, we use the chain to count down the days until we are reunited.

Over the years, my daughter's status of child of divorced parents has caused heartbreak and misery on the part of both mother and child.  The summers apart or the holidays spent away took giant chunks out of my heart. Now, when we start to feel like we've been apart too long, the chain rears it's head, offering up both bondage and hope.

My daughter is visiting her father this week.  She's been away two days and is due back in five.  So it's back to the chains. Sing it, Chrissie.

The powers that be/

That force us to live like we do/

Bring me to my knees/

When I see what they've done to you/

But I'll die as I stand here today/

Knowing that deep in my heart/

They'll fall to ruin one day/

For making us part

Chrissie Hynde

"Back on the Chain Gang"

WTMT 620

The jingle for WTMT 620 could only mean my dad was at it again: on the go and in need of race results. My first intersection with country music was with my father and the radio.  Although my father’s musical tastes ran more toward mainstream pop, his gambling genes put him on the receiving end of country airwaves more often than not.  He always needed to know how that horse in the fifth did at Aqueduct or the horse in the sixth did at Santa Anita.  For that reason, his right hand could turn the dial to 620 while his left hand steered onto I-65.   Once he had the racing news, he’d put the dial back onto something more to his liking.  And he liked songs with a backbeat and a great big ‘ole hook.

Back in ’78, when he was still driving me to school, his favorite song was Alicia Bridges' “I Love the Nightlife.”

Please don’t talk about love tonight/

Your sweet talk won’t make it right.

Backbeat, check.  Hook, wait for it:

I love the nightlife/I got to boogie/On the disco round, oh yea.

My daughter’s home from college, and the sounds coming from her room have changed.  No more Foo Fighters.  Now it’s the Randy Rogers Band.  Her biggest risk factor for a country music affinity would have to be living in Waco during the school year.  I’ve never cared for mainstream country, and it was just her grandfather’s way of finding out how much money he’d made. Otherwise, he'd never have strayed all the way down to 620 AM for a country station.

But this country music coming from a distant corner of the house is taking me back to race time with Robert.  Given that we’re right here between the Derby and the Preakness, it’s a timely acoustic memory.

Sailors sail, cowboys ride/

Lovers love when they get the chance.

“Kiss Me in the Dark,” Randy Rogers Band

Last Word

My professional writing has sparked my muse, and I'm left to ponder the power of last words. A study from Mass General on marathon runners contained the nugget of history that Phidippides ran from Marathon to Athens to announce victory and in proclaiming it, died on the spot.  His last words: “Rejoice, we conquer.”  

My grandmother’s last words were, “I love you.”  I received the words (thanks to Alexander Graham Bell) in a car at a drive-in. I relished the truth that Mamaw spoke her last words to me before going to bed, saying her prayers, and slipping into her final slumber.

My nephew slipped into a diabetic coma this month.  When his friends and family gathered, many testified.  He had been quite a catalyst in his short twenty-six years. He leaves behind songs and guitar melodies as his last words.

Today my friend Susan will stand before friends and family, giving her version of the last word on her father’s life.  Unfortunately, he lost the capacity to speak due to a brain tumor, but he had proactively worked out a system of communication using blinks and hands. In his final days, Susan was a vigilant daughter at his bedside decoding messages.  

Imagine that, though, trying to come to peace with the end of your life yet not being able to speak.  Surely Susan’s father was a strong man in life and in death.  And that he died quietly might be a testament to this man’s style in life. And perhaps our deeds should speak our last words for us.

In his case, news of one of his great deeds reached me after news of his death. When we were high school students, a friend in need received a large sum of money from an anonymous benefactor that changed his life for the better in a lasting way.  None of us had any idea who gave him the money.  I recall the power and the mystery of the money scared me a bit and yet no harm was done. 

Before he died, Susan’s father told her he was the donor.  This quiet man’s deeds have outlived him. Last word.

I read in the Good Book someplace it says every word uttered will be accounted for/

What’s the last word? What’s the password? Anybody gonna say?/

But in heaven it’s the lion laying down with the lamb/

Yeah in heaven, all the dinosaur look in the face of an angel man.

-Victoria Williams “Last Word”

In memory of Michael Sheldon Griffin and Brenner Fillmore Eugenides