Happy Birthday Jan Jan

My present sucks a little less this year (see first post).  I couldn't imagine a better gift this past year than getting to know you better and keeping you a dynamic part of my life. 

I imagine you still up in the ballroom with Yul, and Tullis, and Virginia, and Baba...all dancing while John Denver sings.

Strawberry Story: Lyrics to an Unknown Song

If I lie inside the covers
With the darkened warm of breathing-only me
And I curl up like a kitten,
Closing all the blankets very carefully,
Perhaps the goblins will not find me,
Will not touch me, maybe even go away

If I climb onto a tree limb
With the shiny leaves in bunches
Hiding me
And I never move to stir them,
Sitting motionless and waiting quietly,
Perhaps the bullies will not find me,
Will not touch me, maybe even go away.

If I watch a funny movie
With lovely couples all surrounding me,
And I eat the salty popcorn
And the candy
Till I'm laughing painfully,
Perhaps the worries will not find me,
Will not touch me, maybe even go away.

If I only talk politely
To the friends who never fair
Inviting me
And I skim the paper lightly,
Glancing at the news reports just casually,
Perhaps the questions will not find me,
Will not touch me, maybe even go away.

If I tumble in the grasses
With another who pretends he's loving me,
And we exchange the little gesture,
Little phrases of the way
Love ought to be,
Perhaps the loneliness won't find me,
Will not touch me, maybe even go away.

If I lie inside the covers with the darkened warm of breathing-only me,
And I curl up like a kitten,
Closing all the blankets very carefully,
Perhaps my life will jnot find me,
Never touch me, Maybe even go away, go a way.

** This is a song mom heard in South Dakota in the late 1970s.  She didn't know who wrote it, but included it in her book as it represented to her the option of hiding from life, in her words "the choice that is always there and that at painful times often looks the most inviting."  Do you recognize it?  Let me know!

Strawberry Story: All I Ask of You (no, not that one, the other one)

For the Music as Therapy post I wanted to put in music from Weston Priory, but now realize there is a copyright reason none are posted on YouTube.  There is a video that features a group playing on of the songs, which is worth a listen just to hear.  For this Strawberry Friday I thought I'd post the lyrics.  The song was played my my mom's memorial services and is a wonderful message from beyond. 

Today is the eve of the 12th anniversary of her passing.

Chapter 3 needs a theme song...

Hit play on the screen cap and let's review. 

In 1961 Janet graduates from Arlington Heights High School.  She wears a prosthetic eye and she experiences discrimination for her facial differences at school, and then work. 

In 1962 she transfers from MacMurray in Illinois to Denver University, and the summer between attends beauty school to brush up for her United Airlines job.  She makes a bold decision to abandon the eye and embrace her sewing skills by working up a patch proto-type to fit her face.

The transformation goes beyond her appearance.

Defying Gravity  lyrics by Stephen Schwartz

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same
I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game

Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap

It's time to try
Defying gravity
I think I'll try
Defying gravity
And you can't bring me down

I'm through accepting limits
Cause someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I'll never know
Too long I've been afraid of
Losing love I guess I've lost
Well, if that's love
It comes at much too high a cost
I'd sooner buy
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I'm defying gravity
I think I'll try defying gravity
And you can't pull me down

Wild Women: Opera gives its right eye (or left, depending)

Chapter 3 has me thinking about the inspirational opera star.  Searching for her on Google has rendered little results.  One hit I got was Katharine Cornell, an opera star who once wore a patch, on Opera News.  She wore the patch for her role in That Lady. 

I take issue with a reviewer of That Lady who wrote that the patch was "unable to obscure her radiance," John Mason Brown The Saturday Review Nov 22, 1949.  Was it supposed to?  Could just a patch do that?  Look at that beautiful, elegant woman.  I would argue the patch adds to her beauty, but then of course I'm  biased and have the benefit of sixty years of tolerance.

Turns out there are a lot of eye patches in opera, only it seems more frequent for men.  Take the role of Wotan in Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung series, or Odin from Norse mythology. 

Wagner's Wotan found on Intermezzo.

Some Wagner to set the mood.

 

Hopkins as a one-eyed Odin in next summer's Thor.

I did find some interesting information on the "Opera Whiz" blog as I was researching (okay, Googling) why Wotan as the Wanderer has lost his eye:

Brünnhilde herself is the original warrior maiden. In Norse lore, the valkyries were the daughters of Wotan and Erda, the earth goddess. "I'd give my right eye for a one night in the sack," was the line he used on her. (That's why he wears an eye patch in the operas.) It was the valkyries' job to fly down from Valhalla. They would swoop over the battlefield and collect the bodies of the most valiant warriors and take them back to Valhalla, where they would live in celebrated eternity.

Of course Intermezzo makes the point that Wanderer's missing eye seems to wander itself...(see Eye Eye Wotan post)

Last related point for this post: guess what the Valkyries fly down as...SWANS!!!  That's why they have wings and NOT horns.  Read Beth Parker's entire Opera Whiz post  Hey Wagner, thanks for Xena and She-Ra post here.

Remember: swan wings not horns ladies!

We'll save "Soap" operas for another day...

Chapter 2: Music as Therapy

Growing up, one of the few morning rituals I can remember is mom playing Weston Priory on the record player.  The needle would hit the vinyl and the ancient voices would sing us through the melodic meditations.  The music is a time capsule. 

From their website: One of the Psalms says, "Singing makes you happy!" The community of Benedictine monks at Weston Priory finds that not only does "singing make you happy," but singing also can express a whole way of life and, at the same time, can carry the message of that way of life.

In Chapter 2 mom begins her love affair with music:

Prosthetic Eyes and Foreheads (wait for it, wait for it!)

A few years ago Eric and I were sorting through stuff in the house when he accidentally shocked himself--not with a live wire, but with a box containing two of my mother's prosthetics.  He gave a nervous laugh and handed the box over to me saying, "Look, you have your mother's eyes."

This photo tells me all I need to know about mom's esteem with the prosthesis.

Mom's long relationship with prosthetics began around age 10 and some highlights from Chapter 2 are below.  I'll scan in the 8 page chapter and post it unabridged this week, but for now this will do.

Fourth grade also marked a transition from the gauze bandage taped on my face to an artificial eye prosthesis.  It required another surgery to line the eye orbit with skin from my stomach....I was so excited about not having to wear the gauze anymore and have questions about who hit me or what happened to me.  Over the years I had asked my mom if she couldn't just paint an eye on the gauze or behind a Halloween mask for me.  I really wanted to blend in.

We started trips to downtown Chicago to get the prostheses started.  The clinician was a wonderful artist and the moon shaped part of the eyeball showing was exactly like my left eye....Sometimes it fell out, sometimes [the glue] burned, sometimes it was okay.  They got me a pair of glasses, not that I needed them, but that they helped to camouflage the seam of the circle of plastic surrounding the eye.

It took me a while to realize that although people who didn't know me didn't ask em as many questions [with the prosthetic], they were now asking my friends and family.  They were too embarrassed to ask me because it looked like I thought everything looked okay, which it didn't.




Mom and I saw TMBG in DC years ago at Wolf Trap.  What a great summer day, prosthetic foreheads and all.  The song spoke doubly to me today, "where was I, I forgot the point that I was making," seems to be the theme of the day!

Smiles: Mark Sloniker

Straight from Mom's intro:

I first laid eye(s) on Mark Sloniker as he played the synthesizer and entertained during an outdoor noontime program for Colorado State University.  As a music fan, I was naturally attracted to the sound, noticed he was a red-head getting way too much direct sunlight.  Between numbers I asked if he would like some sunblock and when he nodded with his dripping face, I headed out for the student union for a tube of goop for him.  We have been friends ever since.  This is a "tune" he wrote that was first an instrumental on his album True Nature, and then done as a vocal on another album where his baby son Myles makes his recording debut of giggles and coos in the background.  It is a wonderful song about the love and joys of a father and his son.

http://www.marksloniker.com/
(also check out his books of the month http://www.marksloniker.com/just-for-fun.html)

Smiles by Mark Sloniker

In your rainbow live life's colors
Reds and yellows, greens, and blues
In those colors I see smiles
Pour from deep in the heart of you

I see smiles in your month of May
There are smiles on every rainy day
Breezy smiles blowing through the air
Makes me smile just to know you care

In your rainbow live life's colors
Painting all the things we see
In each heart are fresh paint brushes
So paint a picture that sets you free

You'll find smiles in the skies of blue
There'll be smiles from every point of view
I'm in love with life when you smile at me
We see smiles when that's what we choose to see

In your rainbow live life's colors
Painting all the things we see
In each heart are fresh paint brushes
So paint the picture that sets you free

For a free download of Mark's song, click the album below to go to his website:

Gasing Up on Sweet Honey

It's been a long, long work week and I'm needing to dig down deep to plunge back into the book.  I'm drawing inspiration from  Sweet Honey and Rock's "Wanting Memories."  My souls sister Laurie recommended this song for one of mom's memorial services (she had three), and I only wish I could have shared it with mom before she passed. 

I've never heard this Keali'i Reichel version before...just beautiful beautiful.

 Wanting Memories

(from CROSSINGS by Y.M. Barnwell (c)1992)

I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me
to see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.
I am sitting here wanting memories to teach me
To see the beauty in the world through my own eyes.

Damn You Jewel, You Made Me Cry!

Watching the Emmy's last week I had quite a surprise. I'm not a big Jewel fan, but when she sang the In Memoriam song "The Shape of You" I had that moment when your heart and mind open up to a parallel universe. A direct line to my mourning, my loss, my sadness, and my joy at having had mom in my life.

I wanted to yell, "Damned You Jewel! You Made Me Cry!" But in truth, I'm grateful to her because these moments ten years later are fewer and far between.





Lyrics and Official Jewel Website

Jewel prefaces her performance by saying the song is in honor of a friend who passed away from cancer.

It got me thinking of the other songs that transform me.  Not just the ones mom and I shared, but the ones she never got to hear that I know she would have loved.  Those songs give me something so special, a new dynamic memory of her that proves she lives on through me.  So I take back my "Damn" and replace it with a "Thank."  Words I never thought I'd say...Thank You Jewel.

And back to Chapter 1...