Jun 09
Lisafamily church, family, home, hymn, hymnal, piano, sheet music, sing
For as long as I can remember, and it escapes me as to what year she acquired it, the piano was my mother’s prized possession. It endured move after move as the Navy dictated our place of residence—even up and down steep flights of stairs at different times.
As a small child, I could count on her playing hymns during the week, her then dexterous fingers landing flawlessly over the keys. The sound of music filled our home. Momma had a voice that most assuredly could have been good enough for opera. Maybe not diva quality, but for sure in the supporting roles had the proper training was afforded her with fortunate circumstances.
Momma’s beautiful voice sang solos in church services. It was a sense of great pride to see her standing solo amongst the choir giving praise to God with the voice he had blessed her.
The upright always had sheet music and the hymnal in its place on the piano stand—countless pages of sheet music in the bench seat. To hear her singing and playing gave our home a warm welcoming place for our family.
On a particular Saturday, prior to a Sunday service, she sat at the piano becoming familiar with a hymn, trying to perfect her delivery. I sat on the living room floor playing with my Lincoln logs. As I casually looked up across the room, I became aware of and thought, “How can she sing, play and move her feet on the pedals at the same time?”
I lost all interest in the cabin I was building and stretched out fully prone, supporting my head with elbow on the floor, hands on each side of my face. Here I watched her most intently for ten minutes, it must have been—I was entranced.
At some point Momma turned in her seat and saw me watching her. She smiled and patted the seat next to her signaling me to join her on the bench. I jumped to my feet and took my place next to her.
Momma asked, “Want to help me Clarky?”
“Sure!” Not knowing how I might do that.
Momma slowly closed the hymnal and pulled out some sheet music. It was a contemporary song of the early sixties, but I’m not quite sure. She opened to the first page of notes. “Now sing along,” she said. I edged closer to the keys and then she instructed me to turn the page when she nodded her head.
We started, and with anticipation, I waited for my cue. I sang the words, humming at those I couldn’t pronounce, but all the while really listening to her angelic voice. I acquainted myself well in the page turning, or at least I believed I did.
Upon completion of our mother-son duet, she put her arm around me, pulled me close and kissed my head. “Thank you, son.” I so remember shining brightly at that moment. Somehow I had helped my dear momma at something with which she was good. It was then that I wanted to learn to play.
This was never to materialize, however, except for a feeble attempt on my part a couple years later. Momma started me on lessons, but soon enough I lost interest. The calls of boyhood, times outside, called louder than the piano keys.
Momma was not one to force this issue. If I really wanted it she would have pursued it tirelessly. As an adult I regret that choice.
The instilling of music in me was solid. Because of Momma, late in life I listen to operas on the radio performed at the met in New York City. On one particular performance, lost in the moment, the voice was so much like Momma’s that tears flowed from my eyes.
Seemingly projecting her into the performance from my cell, the voice soothed, at least for a short time. With Momma so far away and the opportunities of my life missed, my eyes filled with her ebbing.
The gift of music that she filled me with in my youth is a comfort that sustains me behind bars—life such that it is. In the still of the cell, in the dark of night, I remember lovingly, her gift—and her gift to me.
May 24
LisaIt's My Life, Uncategorized bus, dog, family, Florida, home, horse, prison
The southern sun promised another sultry day as I sat in my seat. The stale air that permeates most buses hit hard on my senses as I gazed out the window. While waiting for the bust to start moving, I looked down at the shaded asphalt. Then up at a live oak with its parasitic Spanish moss. It was dripping dew heavily and as I looked further into the trees, I couldn’t help notice the silvery hue of the moss—a sure sign of inadequate rainfall, without which it could not show off its normal greenish brown color.
Light from the low hanging sun was diffused as it streamed through the live oak, and yet it was heating up through the pain of glass through which I stared. This was my ride home. So many times in my 50 years I had moved to a new town, new city, new state. Each time with renewed hope. This trip was different. Oh, I was to have a new home, but this time there was no hope. The bus jerked into motion. Finally, I thought to myself. Let’s get on with it.
As the bus found its way to the main drag and onto the highway, I watched from the window as users of the sidewalk went on about their morning business. My mind was in neutral as the bus came to a stoplight. I looked down at the car outside my window. A boy of about eight years old, holding his backpack in his lap, sat in the backseat. Our eyes met. As he looked at me, seemingly a little befuddled, he faintly smiled. Before I could summon a response his mother was shaking her finger, admonishing him not to look up at me. Although he did not look back, I kept watching him, remembering myself at that age and the carefree, wonderful life I had with my loving family.
As I drifted in my mind, the bus accelerated up the on-ramp onto the interstate. I mindlessly watched the tree line and noted each mile marker as it flashed by. How many times had I driven this stretch of road for pleasure and business?
After 20 minutes or so on the interstate, I spotted a stray dog mindlessly trotting down in a ravine. I know this stretch of highway and what lie beyond the easements. This dog was lost. An upwelling of sorrow came upon me, my love of dogs, and I feared for its future. It also brought back memories of Ruby, my bloodhound, which I had to give away.
Such was my condition. I had lost every material possession except what was in my paper bag. I opened my bag to assure myself, for the fifth time since getting on the bus, that what I did have left to my name was still there: six pair of socks, two t-shirts, cowboy boots—one pair, sweatshirt—one, three jockey underwear, five books (biography of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, three civil war books), and various toiletries. This was what my life had been winnowed down to. As I rolled the paper bag up, I clung to it in my lap and somehow, unconsciously, feeling that I would lose this last vestige of ownership.
I felt the bus slow and swing off the interstate. Immediately I recognized the little town. Where had my mind been? We’re here already. Time was moving up-tempo. This town remains a holdout of the early 20th century Victorian style homes. Some grand. Some not. A sleepy little place heavily treed with pin oak and live oak laced with lazily hanging Spanish moss. I had come here many times to look at antique furniture in the many shops dotted around this town without a stoplight.
We skirted around to a lesser highway and headed north again. We shortly crossed a sunken prairie that floods during the rainy months. I knew from history that it had been a part of a great waterway that bisected the state and, at one time, was a viaduct to move goods. The mile to cross this prairie shocked me into the memory of my son. He was living off this road not far from the northern edge of it.
The bus headed uphill off the prairie and I sat up preparing to catch a glimpse of my son’s home. My eyes filled as we closed in on his home. I had to look quick. Would he be home? Or at work? I thought the bus was moving too fast. I wanted to scream, “Slow down, dammit! Don’t you see? I have to see his car!” There! There it is! My son was home. Does he know I’m this close? Does he care? No, I doubt it—on both counts. We are estranged, my biggest loss of all.
As tears uncontrollably flowed, I realized the façade of strength I had so pretentiously put up most of my adult life was creaking with weariness. I quickly looked around at the other passengers, but no one noticed my moment of weakness. They too were in their own thoughts of their destination. They could care less about me as I cared little about them, at least for now. No, that’s not right. I was consumed with myself, as I had been most of my adult life.
Soon I caught glimpses of the university, Taco Bell (where I stopped from time to time when I had
been this way in the past). Not long after, the city limits were reached and farm after farm raced by. Thoughts of my horse “Bell”, a thorough-bred/draft horse, appeared. She, too, had to be given up, sold I’m sure. The hours we spent training, the understood relationship we established—how dog-like in many ways, but so very different. Bell possessed such a good mind. I loved to go to the barn, open the gate and whistle out in the dark pasture of morning. She, knowing its feeding time, came galloping as the ground groaned with her weight and speed. These were special moments and painful to remember.
Home was nearing, I knew by the surroundings it must be, and I began to count just how many homes I had actually lived in since birth. My father was a Navy man so with that in the mix, and my unstable life on my own, it was upward of 30+. Wow! Was it really that many? One thing for sure is that this would be my final home. Angst filled me rapidly. I began to shred once more. The façade was creaking once again. I leaned back as best I could, set my bag beside me and closed my eyes trying to calm my deteriorating control.
I went from home to home in my mind thinking of, and recalling, one salient good memory from each. It was not hard until I got to my 40th year of life. I had to stop there. The precipice had been reached about that time and so began the slippery slope. I kept hearing “home” in my mind, even Dorothy’s mantra to go back to Kansas came through. “There’s no place like home.” Then out loud, perhaps too loud, I said, “I have no home. I have no home.” Across the aisle, a man, maybe 30, said, “We all have no home, dude.” Sheepishly, I turned and looked out my window.
Then I heard it, “We’re home, dawgs!” I looked and there it was. Home. Sure enough, steel, concrete, barbed wire, gun towers—my last home. Oh, there would be other homes, but they would all look similar to this until my life light ceased.
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