THANK YOU, GOD, FOR CAROL BURNETT

The last time my dad left he didn’t come back. He took his clothes and his razor and his beer out of the fridge, but the thing that sealed the deal was that he took the TV. I was too young and naïve to understand that he also took 100% of his income, but that’s another sorry story.

It really only smarted on Saturday mornings, the TV part. 

That spring, just after President’s Day, a miracle happened right before our very eyes. Mom had taken us with her to JC Penney down at Southland Shopping Center on Rt. 51 to get our brother George a new Sunday shirt. While she shopped, Ann Marie, Libby and I hung out in the front of the store where they had set up a President’s Day display, honoring George Washington. A sprawling artificial cherry tree filled the display window, it’s hovering branches laden with plastic cherries. 

“Guess the number of cherries and win a prize!” 

My sisters and I read the sign and immediately started counting. Something must have distracted me, because by the time mom came and gathered us up, I was sitting on the floor leaning my back against the cold cement wall. My younger sister Libby had faithfully counted those cherries, one by one. I kept track of the hundreds for her. Our older sister, Ann Marie, used some sort of mathematical equation and came up with a number way past what I thought would ever be there. We took a handful of paper entry forms and put our names, phone number, and our guesses on them, stuffing them into a fancy box with George Washington’s wood- toothed smile on top.

That next week, while Mom, George and Ann Marie were at their church youth group activity, the phone rang. I have a vivid memory of picking up the phone that hung on our kitchen wall. They asked for Corinne Hansen, I replied that I was she (Mom taught us to always answer “This is she”, though that always felt strangely stiff to me. I did it anyway.) That’s when they informed me that I had won the second prize in the JC Penny Cherry Tree contest. A brand spankin’ new TV! (I KNOW! It was a miracle!)

Mom took me down to JC Penney’s a few days later. I wore my best skirt and fresh new knee high socks with my saddle shoes cuz they said they’d have a newspaper photographer there.

Mom let me put the TV in our bedroom. It was a black and white portable with a handle on top and a ten-inch screen. We set it on the sewing stool against the wall in the room Libby and I shared. There were rules about when we could watch it, and we were generally rule keepers. When your father is a big rule breaker, and you love your mom, you try to be a rule keeper. 

Without blubbering all the detail, you should maybe know that there were some pretty sad things that happened to the twelve-year-old girl who was me, back then. Things that make a girl grow up sooner than she should have to. Things that still make me cry. I carried a big ole’ sad beneath my budding chest. This I kept to myself, only sharing tidbits with my confidant and playmate, Libby. I only shared enough to let the steam out of the valve, wanting to keep her from the boiling water.

We watched Petticoat Junction and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and I Dream of Jeanie, and of course Saturday morning cartoons on our new TV. In those days, if you wanted to watch a show, you had to be planted in place when it aired. There was no On Demand; not even a Pause or Rewind. The TV Guide that came with the Sunday paper was your friend.

One night we sat on the floor at the end of my bed, about two feet from the 10” screen, watching Carol Burnett. We got to laughing, so hard that I almost wet my pants, which of course made us laugh more. I pulled my knees up under my chin, feeling my heart pumping against my chest with throbbing laughter. At some point, I noticed a warm tear running down my cheek. I’ve always had an unusual ability to see myself, sometimes, as if I was outside of myself, looking in. That tear put me in that spot, and I wondered on some sub-terrainian, level why I should be crying. This was not a tear of laughter. I know those, too. This was something else.

I watched Carol and Harvey and Tim singing their songs and acting out their sketches and this thing rose up in me that felt like sorrow. It felt like sorrow that was hunkered down in there, underneath my belly, finally felt safe enough to come up. So it flowed on out of my eyes, I guess. 

You may not believe it, but I said a prayer there, in front of my portable television. With my legs cinched between my heart and my folded arms I lowered my head, wiping my eyes against the skin of my knees so Lib wouldn’t see me crying. I buried my face in my knees and I thanked my Lord for Carol Burnett. For making me laugh. (Mom had also taught us that we could pray any time. We didn’t have to be kneeling by our beds, we could just plain talk to God whenever we felt like it.) That night I felt a love for Carol Burnett so deep that I thanked God for her, and I asked Him to bless her. 

Even now, when I see a sketch with Carol Burnett in it, I want to cry. Not because she makes me sad, not at all. It felt, to me, like Carol saw my little life, right through that television screen, and she nodded and smiled and said, “it’s ok, you’ll be ok, let’s just find something to laugh about for a minute and give your heart a rest.”

There is a piece of divinity in good clean comedy. I wish more comedians would access it. When part of someone’s wound is also the fodder for the raw caustic comedians of today, the laughter swirls in its own swill. But Carol, and Tim, and Harvey, Lyle and Vicki – whether they knew it or not – they were healing balm to a young girl’s heart. I pray for them still.

I’m so glad we had this time together

Just to have a laugh or sing a song

Seems we just get started and before you know it

Comes the time we have to say, so long.

Goodnight everybody.