IS IT SNOWING TONIGHT

There is a picture, in our drawer full of pictures, which always tugs at my heart when I see it. John and Sarah are 2 and 3 years old. They stand leaning against the legs of their grandparents, Don and Helen Connors. The grandparents’ arms fall down over their little loves’ hearts. They are standing near the jet way in the Pittsburgh Airport. Minutes later we boarded the plane and took their only grandchildren 2,000 miles away; permanently.

I have ached ever since, for them…for us…for these kids. It took a lot of planning and a lot of money and a chunk of time to get to see each other from that point forward. The casual comfort of repetition was taken from Don and Helen when we decided to move to Utah from Pittsburgh. We were NEVER going to live in Utah. We were NEVER going to be numbered among typical “Utah Mormons”. Eeek, indeed! And then the phone call came offering Dave a job with a Wall Street law firm, only he could have that practice and not have to work in Manhattan. It was what he had dreamed of professionally. When LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby & McRae decided to open a Salt Lake City office, they searched BYU and U of U law school archives for graduates with particular training. Ideally they wanted someone with Ivy League training (Dave graduated from Yale); major law firm training (he had practiced with renowned and well respected Pittsburgh firms); and the cherry of a federal clerkship (2nd District Court of Appeals…based in NYC)…they found Dave’s name. I still remember the phone call, listening as I stood at the kitchen counter to one side of a strange conversation.

“What was THAT?” I asked.

“A New York firm, opening an office in Salt Lake City. They want to talk to me”

“I didn’t hear you say yes, did I?”

M-Hm. Yes. I had heard him say yes. “I just think we should consider all options,” he said, all full of that blasted Dave Connors logic.

We had already decided to move to Washington DC, McLean VA to be exact. We had just one week earlier made a trip and found the house we wanted. Kirkpatrick Lockhart, the firm with which he practiced in Pgh, was opening a branch there.

Best laid plans.

So we ended up coming to Utah, which in retrospect was a gift of a decision, but in the process we ripped the only grandchildren of Dave’s parents away from them. And to make matters worse, it seemed to slap the face of family religious tradition for them. They never, ever said as much, but I felt it through my own imagination. Dave came from centuries of faithful Catholics. He attended Catholic school until high school. He was an altar boy. His dad was president of the local diocesan school board. He was a good boy, as he is a good man, and there was a time when he actually considered entering the priesthood of the Catholic Church. So imagine how it must have felt for his parents to hear him say, “I’d like to join the Mormon Church.” It had that strange cult-like reputation there and then, as I suppose it still has. So I imagine it wasn’t thrilling for them, in their truest deepest place, when he returned from his mission, (he had graduated from Yale the week before he left for Italy) and went to BYU law school. Less thrilling, I suspect, when he called and said he was going to marry an 18 year old freshman Mormon girl, in the temple. The only positive thing must have been that I was from Pittsburgh, too.

Moving to “Zion” felt like joining the cult. I love it now, but I did not then.

IS IT SNOWING TONIGHT was written on an August night, truth be known. I was watching our kids play in the yard and I got to pondering Dave’s family and how sad I felt that they were missing seeing their grandkids grow up. I thought, too, how sad that these kids would not know their grandparents in the day-to-day comfortable sort of way I would have preferred. In the pondering, images of Dave’s home came to mind. He grew up in a rock house that rests on the border of South Park, a beautiful state park in south-west PA. Deep, wooded acreage was Dave’s playground. Deer visited regularly. Of course Helen did not help matters because she set food out for them. “They look so pretty in the snow, and so hungry.” On a snowy winter morning Helen would open the window in the dining room and toss birdseed out onto the roof of the porch by the pool in their back yard. Stunningly beautiful cardinals came to feast, then nestled in the trees for a while. Their plump deep red breasts looked like Christmas berries against the white of the snow and the green of the pine trees. In recalling these images, this Christmas tune came bubbling up. I wanted our kids to think about their grandparents who lived all those miles away. I wanted them to see the images of their world. We never visited in the winter, what with school and all, so they did not know the beauty of that season there. I tried to paint it for them, and in the effort I became homesick.

Home in the hills of West Pennsylvania…wishing it wasn’t so far.

Once, years after this song was written, I was singing it at a gig with Merlyn. We performed almost nightly at Christmastime. Sometimes twice in one night. We were singing this song and I started to giggle. I caught myself before I ruined the song, but Merlyn asked afterward what that was about. I told her I had never considered the fact that Dave’s dad was named Don.

“And…?” Merlyn asked.

“Well, it sort of changes the meaning of the line: Do the redbirds still come for the food you toss from the window at dawn (Don).” I pictured Helen opening the window and tossing out a plate of eggs and bacon, with a side of buttered toast.

When I am really missing them, the missing being more permanent these days, that image helps pull me out of the sorrow which overwhelms the performance.

Some other family owns that beautiful back yard now, and the rock house in front of it. The setting is left in the memory box. Mom and Dad are both gone.

I wonder if it snows in Heaven?

IS IT SNOWING TONIGHT

Is it snowing tonight where you are
Are the evergreens covered in white
Are you warming your love by the fire
As you gather together tonight
There are presents surrounding my tree
And I’m dreaming and longing to be
Home in the hills of west Pennsylvania
Wishing it wasn’t so far
Is it snowing tonight where you are?

Is it peaceful and still in the wood
Has the doe come to feed with her fawn
Do the redbirds still come for the food
You toss from the window at dawn
I am here in my miles away world
Telling my boy and my girls
Of home in the hills of west Pennsylvania
Under the same sacred star
Is it snowing tonight where you are?

Ah, home in the hills of west Pennsylvania
Wishing you weren’t so far
Is it snowing tonight where you are?

WHO IS THIS BABE

I suspect it’s not just me, though I could be wrong, who goes through ebbing and flowing of faith. Gratefully, like the vast oceans of the earth, my testimony never completely leaves. But it does have its tides. Sometimes I move through my humanness with such peace and confidence in all I’ve learned about God that I feel his hand tucked into the small of my back, sort of like Libby when she helped our mom up the stairs when she was still walking but her back was giving out.

Other times I wonder who I am, and why I do what I do, because I am not particularly fond of it all.

There is one thing, however, that never seems to change, regardless of the position of my tide. I believe without a doubt that Jesus Christ is the master of this world, and the only way to return to my heavenly home when I am done here. I think I came with that belief, and it never left the way so many other childlike things do. I cannot express adequately how grateful I am for this gift. Lots of peripheral beliefs have their comings and goings, but not this one.

Every Sunday I go to church. I get myself cleaned up and put on those danged stockings, gather up my teaching supplies and head out…for years with a gaggle of children in tow. We sit in our seats in the back, because we are always just a wee bit late, and we sing the songs from the hymnbook and bow our heads for the prayers and try to pay attention to each speaker. All of that is fine. But the most essential part of the whole 3 hour block is the ten minutes of silence that follow the Sacrament prayers. I can gauge my spiritual health by what those ten minutes do to me. Sometimes I just let it pass: I chew and swallow the bread and wash it down with the water. Not the best of times. But other times, when I allow my soul to be still, I feel my teeth crushing the bread and I imagine the crushing in Gethsemane. I let the water sit on my tongue and fall down through my throat, like the blood from the spear-wound fell to the earth, like the watery blood of His pores covered His flesh in the garden.

I was in this place when I wrote Who Is This Babe. I felt His hand in the small of my back.

Pondering the people who are said to have attended the birth of the Savior, I wrote this song from the perspective of a shepherd  girl who came to the stable. She had some questions:

Who is this baby, and why is he here in a stable instead of home in a cradle, and why is his mother not in her bed? Why are these other people here…why am I here…and what is it that makes me feel like I should kneel right now?

Verse II tells the story of how the shepherds knew about the baby. The star appearing, the angels visiting, the wonderful sounds of angel choirs. I imagined the shepherds caught in the rapture of the music, taking out their flutes and cymbals and tambourines and dancing along there on the hillside. It was a sweet image to me.

In verse III the shepherd finds her faith. Like me, before the sacrament table, she accepts the reality of what will happen, as I accept the beauty of what did happen. She prays for this child to feel peace, knowing that life itself brings sorrow, but unaware at that time how deep the sorrow would be.

The B section, the part where the music sounds like a chorus, but the lyric changes as the song progresses (thus, it is a B section instead of a chorus…songwriting symantecs)…the B section at the end of the song is my testimony.

Come lay your souls now at this stable

No gilded robes here, where He is laid

King of the World, Power of the Heavens

Comes to the earth, comes as a babe.

I am touched that the King of Kings would choose to come the same way all of us did, as a baby. That He walked the path we all walk, though sinless in the journey, so He could say He knows our suffering. He did not come into a castle, with royal servants taking care. He came in the most humble of all places, to the most humble of all people; the only pageantry being a band of angels who sang with dancing shepherds.

I remember the first time I sang this for someone. This is always a very difficult thing for me, singing a new song for someone. I first sang it for Merlyn, and for Mom and Libby when they were over visiting. I sat on the couch in the family room at the old house (what would songwriting be without a couch?). I got choked up at that last B section. We all sat there and bawled. They too, are believers. I still get choked up at that part. The music rises, which beckons that sort of thing anyway, but the honesty of the lyric as it sits in my personal life is what reminds me. I am speaking to myself, and to those I love. Come with me, I say, come with me and see this baby. He is going to change our lives. And He has.

WHO IS THIS BABE

Who is this babe laid in a manger

Why have these men come to adore him?

What is that glow shining around him

What makes me fall humbly before him

Where is his home, where is his cradle

And why has his mother no place to sleep

Here is my cloak, make her a pillow

Soft with the warm wool of my sheep.


Who made the star up in the heavens

Break through the night, wake from their dreaming

Shepherds afar, to Bethlehem driven

Wrapped in the light and glorious singing

Angels come down, tell of a savior

Wonderful sounds ring at his birth

We take our flutes, cymbals and tambourines

Join with the choir, heaven and earth

Peace to this boy, sleep little stranger

There will be joy and there will come sorrow

But through this night rest in your manger

Make us your home until tomorrow

Come lay your souls now at this stable

No gilded robes here, where he is laid

King of the World, Power of the Heavens

Comes to the earth, comes as a babe

Halleluia, Oh Halleluia

Here with these shepherds, here he is laid

King of the World, Power of the Heavens

Comes to the earth, comes as a babe.

You can hear WHO IS THIS BABE, and other songs from these blog posts, in the music player you'll find if you scroll down.

FLEXIBLE FLYER

The sun was long-gone-down. I curled into the red couch in the family room while John did his homework at the kitchen table, my old Martin guitar tucked against my chest, fiddling with the same simple chords I tend to use in every song I write. Sad, I know. I really am a limited guitar player. John is much better than I am now.

So I was sitting there playing the G chord, then the E minor, then the A minor 7th, bringing the bend toward sorrow that minor chords tend to bring if we rest on them long enough. The counterpoint melody flicked off the tips of the fingers on my chording hand and I could feel that emotional rise that told me a song was coming. I usually write in complete privacy, I’m sort of possessive that way, but for some reason this night I was comforted by having my teenage son a few feet away from me. I share with him, more than anyone in my immediate family, save perhaps my brother John, a little drill hole in the brain where new songs incubate. We do not necessarily create together much, but I know he understands the process and respects it. I sensed emotional safety with him there. Maybe my angels knew I would need him for this one.

Flexible Flyer is a song that took its own direct path of creation. I think it was my job to get out of the way. This is why it’s good for me to write late at night. I am tired, and the frenetic energy of the world buzzing about has settled in for a rest, so my mind is free. That portion of me that wants control is also weary, so it gets out of the way, too.

When I am really in the writing groove I have the most surreal experience with time. It’s almost like I hover over myself in a timeless place. I can go hours and hours without moving from my spot. I notice the chiming of the clock on the wall. It seems to dong constantly, though in any other portion of any other day it seems to tick slowly away, playing its music in regular well spaced intervals. For someone who generally struggles with ADD (minus the H…which I could sort of use at this point in my life) it is very strange for me to be able to remain so micro-focused for so long. I worked on this song intensely for about 4 or 5 hours. Everyone, including John, had gone to bed. Around 4 am I found a little hand-held tape recorder and recorded what I had written. This is typical for me. I record so I won’t forget, since I do not know the mechanics of writing music on paper. More recently I call my home phone and leave the song I am moodling on the answering machine. There are currently 7 or 8 snips of songs on our answering machine. I am running out of space for messages! Dave got me an iPhone for Christmas, so the most recent song I am currently working on is recorded on that, which should help matters here at home. I am just so dang disorganized I can never find where I recorded something and I discovered that I always knew where the phone was.

Anyway, I recorded on cassette the first draft of Flexible Flyer. It had come at me with such emotional intensity I was exhausted when the little demo was done. I set my guitar down and laid my head on the arm pillow on the couch. Tucked my knees up as far as my belly would let them come, and listened to the song I had just written. I laid there and wept . Wept and wept, like I am right now. I wept for that little girl, and I wept for that young father, and I wept for both of us as the people we became. I had written many songs before Flexible Flyer, and I have written many since, but none has served the kind of therapeutic release for me, as this song did. This song remains the only song I have ever written that came out intact. I have not edited, nor rewritten.

Someone once told me they really liked this song. They thought it was cute, and made them think about sledding with their dad when they were a kid. I smiled and thanked them. I guess its maybe like the parables Jesus used to teach. If people didn’t need the lesson, at least it was a nice story. But for those ready to dive deeper, there is more there.

We have, in some shoebox over at Gram and Libby’s house, a stack of little home movie reels from my childhood. When I was small there were no video cameras. There were no video’s, or DVDs; no YouTube. What we had, to preserve little moments in personal history, were these black and white home movies. We had to borrow someone’s projector and watch them on the living room wall. No sound. Just the running commentary of whomever was watching in the room with us.

I found that old movie of a winter day in Shelley Idaho, when I was maybe 2 or 3 years old. I’m wearing a little bunting snow suit, and my father stands before me as I sit on the front porch. He helps me put on my boots. The next portion of the film shows our dad, in his old letterman jacket and a checkered hat, running down Elm Street, a cigarette in one hand and the rope to the sled in the other. He stops sharply and my brother’s little body, lying belly-down on the bed of the sled, swings off the side with the intensity of the motion. Next portion of film gives us a large snowman, our little hands pressing snow into the bottom while Dad works on the top, the smoke from his cigarette swirling up above the snowman as if he has a pipe in his mouth. Then the film ends. Because it was film on a strip of celluloid, the roll flapped against the feeder as the reel wound down. Light flickered with the flapping film until someone turned it off, leaving the fan running to cool the lamp.

I found the movie in my head, because I had kept it stored there for years.
There was a little blonde haired girl, holding her arms up to her young father. There was a handsome man, reaching down to lift her. I knew he loved me. He called me his Sport. I could feel his love.

But time widened the small fork in the road of our lives. We moved to Pittsburgh. He spent more and more time away. He drank too much, and smoked too much. I learned the pattern of excess well. Good thing I am a faithful Mormon because, honestly, I think I would have the same issues. I have never had a drink, except for the occasional sips of beer Dad gave me in a Tupperware cup when I was very small. Something in me told me to stay far, far away.

For Fathers Day one year I made Dad a card out of construction paper. I traced my left hand and wrote this message:

Happy Father’s Day to Dad, my left hand nearest my heart.

One night, I don’t know how much time had passed, maybe months, maybe years, maybe days; Mom and Dad had a fight. Dad left. He came home drunk hours later. I could hear his car in the driveway. Worried that he might hurt Mom, I ran down the stairs and locked the front door. He saw me through the glass and yelled at me. “Open the door Cori. Come on, open it. Cori, open the DAMN DOOR!” I ran up stairs and buried my head under my pillow. Eventually I heard the muffled sound of his car door slamming, and the screech of his wheels.

I don’t recall how many days it was before he was back. I knew he was there because I could smell cigarette smoke, but his door was closed. Next morning I found the card I had made him slipped under my bedroom door, ripped in pieces.

Something in me, probably an angel who knew who I would become, told me to give it back. So I taped the card together and wrote a note that went something like this:

Dad,
You better take this card back because I know you love me, and I love you. You can pretend you don’t, but I know better.
Cori

He never mentioned it to me.

Dad was gone off and on through the next few years, until one time he just plain never returned. My brother found him years later in Arizona, and worked on building a relationship with him. I figured he would find me if he was well, that he would beg forgiveness, that we would rebuild what had fallen over. I was not ready if he wasn’t.

I waited a long time. I still wait.

Flexible Flyer ends with this image: I am that little girl, giggling like little girls should when their daddies play with them. He tosses me up into the air, like playful daddies do, only I never do come down.

Floating there over your head
I’m a flexible flyer.

My father passed away a few years ago. The sheriff found him in his bed. He had left a manila envelope with my name on it with someone, either my brother George or Dave (who served as my mother’s attorney) to be given to me at their discretion. I don’t remember when I got it, either before or after his death. It would not have mattered. In it were two pieces of paper. One was a purple piece of construction paper taped together with crackling strips of scotch tape. The other was a letter in 5th grade handwriting.

Nothing more.

One day, with Christ as the mediator, I believe I will find my father again. For now, I just float....

Flexible Flyer

I found that old home made movie
When I was small and you were manly
That was a time you must have loved me
Didn’t you
There’s the road we used to live on
A snow had fallen, soft and virgin
You paused on the steps and pulled my boots on
Didn’t you

Now on the front room wall I see you running
A breath of smoke in some lost December
Twisting into the darkness
Higher and higher
Am I that girl in the eskimo bunting
I close my eyes and I beg to remember you
Pulling me over the snow
On a Flexible Flyer

My brothers raced you in the snowfall
Ducking down behind a snow wall
You raised your arm to rifle a snowball
Didn’t you
Nothing more—a flapping picture
Nothing left but melted laughter
We lost the before, you offered no after
I close my eyes and I try to recall
The scent on your chin, your hands on my waist
Tossing me into the air
Higher and higher
Somewhere inside in a place very small
We’re a frame of film in suspended space
Floating there over your head
I’m a flexible flyer
Floating there over your head
I’m a flexible flyer

HEAVENLY CHOIRS

Tonight we had our New Beginnings program for Young Women's. It was such a sweet thing to be with the girls in our ward, and to see them step up and do things that might not be completely comfortable for them, but which are nonetheless good for them. I adore all our girls, and am especially moved by our beautiful Laurels, the 16-18 year olds in our church. I love working with them. I have to admit I am a bit exhausted (is it possible to be a bit exhausted?) right now though. I don't know why I feel so much more of the weight of responsibility as president, than I did as an advisor all those years, especially when I know how everything we do is a team effort. I love my calling, mostly because I love the girls and the other leaders with whom I serve, but it does make me tired.

Our church has a lay ministry. We all take turns doing our part, under the Lord's guidance. I've had some really great church callings. Some pretty unusual ones, too. I served for a few years as Relief Society President in the Davis County Jail. That was great. I'll write about that when we get to songs on Pontiac Rocket. I served for three years as Historian of the Bountiful temple. My job was to keep a record of some of the sweet things that happened there. That, by the way, is a sealed journal that is kept in the temple. One of my all time favorite callings was as Primary Chorister. My sister Libby has that job now. We sit in Sacrament Meeting and little kids come up to us, walk right past me, and climb into her lap. They love her. Probably because they know she loves them.

Many years ago, when our kids were little, when I was serving as Jr Primary Chorister, we decided to create a neighborhood Nativity. We wrote a simple script, based of course, on the scriptural account of Jesus' birth. Mostly we dressed the kids up in warm Nativity-like clothes and let them act out the story in the back yard of one of our neighbors. Mostly they told the story through songs. Childrens songs, with a few traditional Carols. We needed a couple songs for a couple places in the story, so Dave Thomas wrote the Inn Keepers song, and I wrote Heavenly Choirs, for the angel choir to sing at the very end.

Every December we rehearsed with the kids in Primary on Sunday mornings. Then on an evening close to Christmas we huddled together as neighbors and grandparents and friends, watching through teary eyes our little ones walking across the snow, pretending it was the desert. We did it in our back yard at the old house for a few years. We did it in the front yard of the current house, too. And in other neighbors' yards. It is a sweet neighborhood tradition, crossing invisible religious lines, and I cherish it.

Each December, when I go in to teach the kids Heavenly Choirs, I get choked up listening to their angelic voices as they pour their hearts into the song. It's a simple tune, and a simple lyric, and they seem to understand it.

Every year my friend Ruth Gatrell encourages me to enter songs in the Utah Composer Guild Contest. Every year I tell her I don’t think so this year. Then every year I give in. I've won the contest a number of times in varying categories, and a few years ago Saints on the Seas won the Grand Prize. One year I entered Heavenly Choirs in the Children's Song category. The judge that year gave this critique:
"What is your scriptural basis for this song? Nowhere in scripture does it say there were children in any angelic choirs."

It didn't win.

O-kay. I didn't mean to falsify anything, or write new scripture, or claim to have any divine inspiration. All I said was that Jesus loves children (I'm pretty sure about this) and that if He got to pick who might sing in His choir He would likely have wanted at least a few little ones. Besides, I made sure to have the caveat..."so I imagine".

Anyway.

This song was on the very first album I ever made. Merlyn and I travelled to Logan and recorded in John Carter's basement a little cassette called Is It Snowing Tonight. The kids who sang on that recording included seven-year-old John Connors, five-year-old Sarah Connors and three year old Kate Connors. Annie was too little. I haven't listened to that recording for years. But I do remember being able to recognize my children's voices when I heard it, and it warms my heart.

We recorded it again for the CD Sleepy Little Town. Annie sang on that one. So did some of the girls who sat, years later, in my class in Young Women’s. They might have grown up. Their voices might have deepened. But they are still, to me, little angels with tinssel halo's standing in the snow , singing this song with all their hearts.

HEAVENLY CHOIRS
G Bm C G
Heavenly choirs must have had children

C G Am D
Singing along when they came to the earth

G Bm C G
Jesus, I know, loves little children

C G D D7 G
So I imagine they sang at his birth


C D G
Halleluia, Halleluia

Em Bm C Dsus D
Had I been there, I would have sung

C D Em
Halleluia, Halleluia

C G D7 G G7
Praise to the Lord, praise to his Son

C G D D7 G
Praise to the Lord, praise to his Son.

Guitar tag: G Bm C G C G Am D G

There you go, even bonus guitar chords. They are placed just perfectly over the lyric where the chord should change, I swear, but when I publish the blog post they get scrunched together. Use your intelligence or instinct to see where the chords change if you want to play this on guitar or piano or, say...banjo. Capo up to a comfortable key.You can hear the song in the green music box below.

LITTLE DID I KNOW

One summer evening, when we were visiting Dave’s family in Pittsburgh, probably seven or eight years after we had moved out to Utah, I took four-year-old Annie with me to visit my old elementary school. The rest of the clan had trekked down Route 51 to Three Rivers Stadium and a Pirates baseball game. Annie was still too wiggly to sit through nine innings, so I told her I would take her to my old playground. We drove from Bethel Park to Pleasant Hills, up Old Clairton Road and past my house. Past the Methodist Church and the rock Library and up the hill and through the pine trees to the old two story building that once housed my day dreams. I was stunned to see that it had not changed; not hardly at all. The windows of the schoolhouse were still rippled, the ancient poured glass reflecting a softening light of evening. The backstop was rusty, and still bent where it had been when I played kickball there. The see saw, the monkey bars, the swings: all remained preserved, like they had sprung to life from that place in the corner of my mind where I store memories. We did it all, Annie and me. I bent my knees up to my chest and sat in the swing next to her. I held her waist as she hung her way across the bars. We tried to see saw, though the see was a little heavier than the saw. None of the Big Toy flashiness of the new playgrounds in our growing town of Farmington; this was the real McCoy playground equipment to last three generations of time.
Just as the air caught the chill of a waning sun, Annie turned towards the front of the school yard and squealed: “What was THAT?” She ran toward the dark shade of large hovering trees on the other side of the school. I ran after her, asking what it was she thought she saw.
“That!”
I looked and couldn’t really see anything unusual.
“What did you see Annie?”
“Oooo, look at the sparkles!”
Annie stopped pumping her little knobby legs and stood, arms out, under the big old tree. Her eyes glowed with interest and excitement as she stretched out her arms, grasping at the air.
“What are they Mama?”
Then it hit me. I had not noticed them, perhaps because they had become part of the regular scenery of my childhood all those years ago, and I had sadly lost the eyes to notice.
“Fireflies!"
I caught one in my cupped hands, parting my fingers just barely enough for her to see the light glowing off and on; off and on. She giggled uncontrollably, amazed that there were creatures in the real world that did this kind of thing.
“Can we take some home to Utah?”
I felt a heart-tug at the question, realizing that my childhood was never to be her childhood, and so much of what I hold dear was not going to be part of her little world. That’s how it goes, and how it is supposed to go I guess, from one generation to the next. Nonetheless, I could not help but wish upon her and her brother and sisters a childhood with jars full of fireflies; of Barbies in the basement; of thick slabs of the Pittsburgh Press waiting on the front porch on Thanksgiving morning. What would be the Children’s Palace toy store of her childhood? Would she want, or ever have, an Easy Bake Oven? Would the tiny acorns of the scrub oak trees in Farmington satisfy like the ones from the giant oaks of Pennsylvania did?
I looked at Annie and longed for that innocence. That repeated presence of wide-eyed revelation, when so much was so new. She surely carries her own magical childhood memories now, but they are hers, not mine. I grieve the disappearance of what was so clearly, charmingly typical of my own youth.

“When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to get older
And now that I’m older I’d like to be small
Some things I know now I wish I’d forgotten
Some things I’ve forgotten I’d like to recall”

That evening with Annie, frolicking on the playground of Pleasant Hills Elementary School, followed by a trip to DiStefano’s Drug Store where we bought, no joke, a pack of candy cigarettes, a strip of wax pop bottle candies, and a roll of Necco wafers…that evening reminded me of what I had forgotten.

Children of my heart: Do not be too anxious to grow up. Like the line from the song Toyland: Once you dwell within it you may never return again.

Years later, the memories triggered by the place I called home made their way into a song…which made its way onto a Christmas Album called Sleepy Little Town:

LITTLE DID I KNOW
Thanksgiving evening
My brothers and my sisters
laid our tummies on the living room floor
Pouring through the paper
With crayons and markers
Circling the toys we wanted that year

Little did I know then
Life would bring a Mousetrap
When all I really wanted was an Etch-a-Sketch
Little did I know then
So little did I know then
What I wouldn’t give now to know that much

Well the Easy Bake Oven
Was a red-circle item
Santa would be groovy if he brought me that
Of course he could always bring clothes for my Barbie
A Camelot outfit with a Guinevere hat

Little did I know then
I never would be Barbie
Heaven didn’t give me the stuff for such
Little did I know then
So little did I know then
What I wouldn’t give now to know that much

When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to get older
And now that I’m older I’d like to be small
Some things I know now, I wish I’d forgotten
Some things I’ve forgotten I’d like to recall

Like how to do cartwheels
And gather up acorns
A jar full of fireflies on a summer night
The very first snowfall
Christmas vacation
Anticipation on the holy night

Little did I know then
Little did I need then
Just what I could reach out my hand and touch
Little did I know then
So little did I know then
What I wouldn’t give now to know that much

You can hear this song, if you'd like, by scrolling down to the pale green music box with Songs from Sleepy Little Town.

MY BOO

Today I will forgo writing about one of my songs, though I will put a surprise treat at the end of this post. I feel it appropriate to write, instead, about one of my most divine creations. (Well, not really mine, but I was part of it.)

Thirty years ago I received a most fabulous birthday gift. We were living in New York while Dave clerked for Judge Van Graafielland in the U.S. Second District Court of Appeals. Johnny was 15 months old and kept me on my proverbial toes while Dave worked his 12 hour days. I had just come home from a Young Women’s meeting and laid on the couch to rest my weary swollen feet while I watched a re-run of Heart to Heart. Dave went to play basketball at the church. During the first set of commercials I felt contractions, which was not all that unusual at that point in my pregnancies. But as the show progressed I noticed that I was having pretty serious contractions at every commercial break. Every 15 minutes. By the time Dave got home I was on the couch sobbing.
“What’s wrong?” he whispered, all sweaty from his workout.
I finally got the words out:
“Weeeeee’re haaaaaaving a baaaaaaaaaby.”
I know it probably sounds unbelievable to anyone reading this, but I had been in a sort of denial about this fact for the previous 8 months. We had not really planned on this quick turn-around time frame. Johnny had been barely six months old and I had been nursing and exercising my buns off (literally) and I wasn’t losing any weight and I was SO tired. Turns out I was SO pregnant.
I went along enjoying my one little boy, aware on a conscious level that another was on the way, but it took those serious contractions for it to hit me that it was true, there were going to be 2 diapers to change, 2 cries to comfort, 4 little hands to wash and mostly still 1 of us at home to do all of it. Besides I was only 21 years old and wasn’t I too young for all of this?
Too bad. No going back. Those contractions continued through the night. I blew on a little nebula on the astronomical poster hanging on the wall of the bedroom in our rental house (the people left it furnished for us.) All night long. Pursed my lips and practiced my Lamaze until finally at 8 am the next morning I said “We’d better get going!”
We barely made it to the hospital, and Dave almost missed it because he had to admit me. Sarah was born 3 weeks early, on my 22nd birthday. What a gift! She has always been, from the earliest years, very conscious of the fact that her birthday is also mine. Even at 4 years old she made the kids at her birthday party sing Happy Birthday to me.
In one week she will be 30 years old. How can that be? Amazing.
Amazing…does not begin to describe it. Not that she will be 30, though that is worth celebrating. But what is amazing is that at 30 years old she had completed 24 straight years of education and now…this very day…she is DONE!
Today, as she was finishing up her final shift in her final residency rotation in the Pediatric ICU unit at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, she heard the doors to the unit open. She turned and saw her husband, Dave, with their two little munchkins Timothy and Anna Bella shuffling down the hall toward her. A magnificently large bouquet of colored balloons hovered over them like a joy-cloud. Dave carried two dozen roses (one for every year of school, from 1st grade to this day) and a large sheet cake with these words:
Congratulations Dr. Petersen!
Timo and Anna tried to stay grounded in spite of 36 helium mylar balloons pulling them upward…one for each patient in Mommy’s unit. What a picture.
Sarah has finally done it. She has accomplished this goal she set when she was a little girl.
“I’m gonna be a doctor”, she’d say, and people would smile and exclaim “Good for you, honey!” But few people really and truly expected she would do it.
The few… the proud… the Connors’…knew better. This was the girl who, knowing she had promised to stop sucking her thumb when she turned five, plucked the withered thumb out from her mouth on March 5th, 1985, tucked it between her knees in her bed, and never sucked it again.
Seventeen years later, after 4 years of undergraduate studies with Bachelor of Arts (painting) and Bachelor of Science (pre-med) degrees, she was admitted to the U of U Medical school. I still remember the exact dressing room at Target where I screamed out loud when she called to tell me she had been admitted.
She started med school pregnant (our Timo) and finished med school pregnant (our Bella) and I have to tell you it was not smooth sailing for them. Her hormones were not happy campers, and Sarah suffered more than anyone knows, from serious post-partum struggles. It makes my heart hurt when I recall all she has been through. But she stuck it out! And Dave hung in there with her, allowing himself to delay his own career so that the kids had a parent home raising them. What a picture I have imprinted in my mind: a good dependable man whose little ones feel safe with him, walking toward a beautiful woman in a white coat, holding out an armload of roses and leaning over to kiss the woman he loves. Two little gigglers wrapping one of each of their arms around her legs while their other hands hold their happy balloons.
Timo and Anna walked the circle of the PICU unit, stopping at each doorway, where they handed the nurse a balloon for the child-patient on the other side of the glass doors. Many of those children were unconscious, but their parents smiled, or cried, or both, when they saw those little 3 and 6 year-old kids stretch out their hands to offer the gift from Doctor Mommy.
Sarah called this evening as she and her little family were walking out of the hospital. The kids wanted to stop and play on the playground one last time. “Thanks Mom.” Her voice caught with emotion. “Thanks for all of it.” I knew what she meant. We both wept there on the phone.
I am thinking, at this moment, that there is an angel in heaven who is clapping her wings right now. Probably more than one. For sure more than one. I feel the air move around me and I know it must be them. They gave her their name, and their blood, and their rich history. She gives them honor.
Congratulations, my Sarah Bella Boo.


Here's the song of the day for ya! 3 year old Anna Bella Petersen (with a little help from her Daddy.)

GET BACK ON THAT PONY

I can hear the sudden crash of metal on metal; feel the seatbelt cinch tight at my hips as my flesh wrapped around the strap across my chest. Even after all these years such vivid memories play out in slow motion. I had been driving down Main Street, Farmington, when a car crossed into my lane, plowing into me head-on at the intersection at Shepard Lane. I had been listening to a newly written song, demoed in my basement studio, as I made my way to my monthly Utah Songwriters meeting. I remember undoing my seatbelt and leaning forward to turn off the stereo, when a knife-like stab went through my chest. Fearing a heart attack, I sat back in my seat, praying for direction. I pressed my fist to the horn, hoping someone would hear and come help, since I had seen, briefly, the occupants of the other car and I knew they were elderly. Within seconds an EMT was at my side, talking me out of panic, checking me for shock. They placed me on a board and took me by ambulance to the hospital, where a few hours later I was released with a broken collar bone, cracked rib, bruised sternum and knee, as well as torn ligaments in my hand and arm among other injuries. Nothing life threatening. Just painful. I was unable to lie down, the injuries to my chest intensifying under the weight of gravity, so for the next six weeks I sat in a chair while the miracle of healing spun through my flesh and bones. My mom was visiting my sisters in California, so Dave drove over to her place and lugged her big blue leather easy chair down her stairs, into the back of the van, then over to our house and up the stairs to our bedroom. I lived in that chair for all those weeks. I remember being frustrated that I HAD to sit for long periods of time, at a stage in my life when I had 4 young kids and lots to do, and yet I could not even play my guitar. The arm, hand and chest injuries kept me from that pleasure. So while I sat there I got to thinking. I got to thinking about driving again. The more I thought about it the more I worried. I’d close my eyes to rest and I could hear the thunderous crash repeat itself like the cymbal in a discordant symphony. As time passed and I became able to walk comfortably, then considered driving, the fear turned to panic. As I sat there I analyzed the emotion. The writer in me recognized it as a universal theme, so I started a lyric. I turned the car into a horse (you can do such things as a songwriter) and it started like this:

Seven years old on a grey palomino
I sat up tall with my face to the wind….

I remembered my Uncle Archie and Uncle Jim’s horses, and our once-a-year leg straining, butt bruising romps on Blaze and the other ponies in the corral. I clamped my legs so tight around the horse’s middle it probably gave the beast a hernia. None of us wanted to get bucked off. But inevitably one of us did, and the uncles always did the same thing. First they laughed. They paused for a second till they were sure we saw them, then they made their way over to us lying there in the muck; picked us up and patted off our rumps, then put their big leather covered hands around our waists and hoisted us back on the beast.
That became Verse I.
Fortunately, I knew enough about what I didn’t know and I looked up Palomino. I needed a four syllable horse, and that was the only one I could think of. So when I looked it up in the dictionary it said:
Palomino: a yellow horse.
I changed the lyric, turning the pony from gray to gold. Good thing I looked, huh? If you’re going to fake that you know about horses, you should at least fake intelligently.

The chorus led to the hook (main theme of the song, power line and usually title) which was…you guessed it… “Get back on that pony and ride.”

Verse II brought new light to the chorus. Love. Love…the universal theme of 98% of the songs you hear every day. Love lets us down. Sometimes hard. Sometimes so hard we don’t want to try it again. That was Verse II.

Then back to the chorus.

I had gotten this far on the yellow legal pad on which I was writing the lyric, when I finally felt able to hold my guitar and start writing the music. I had the melody in my head, but the chords gave it life. I was sitting on my bed, my leg tucked under me and my arm propped on a pillow as I played, and I was feeling pretty good about the way it was all unfolding, when the phone rang. I answered it, recognizing immediately that the voice on the other end was that of my publisher, Dude McLean. We chatted a minute, reconnecting after months, and I asked if we had heard anything more from Linda Ronstadt’s record label. Linda’s sound engineer had told Dude months earlier that Linda had completed the recording of my song The Builder, and we were waiting for a release date.

“Bad news,” he said.

Turns out Linda had had a falling-out with her producer of many years, Peter Asher. They had parted ways. She also left Elektra Records, and with it the project she had recently completed. Elektra owned the rights to the recording, so when she left, the album was placed on some random shelf at Elektra records, unreleased and unheard. I faked that it was ok, that’s just how life goes. But after we hung up, I paused there on the side of my bed, trying to process what had just happened and how much hope I had placed on that one little event in my songwriting career. It would have been my first major cut, with a major artist on a major label. Everybody knew Linda Ronstadt. It would give me instant credibility. That little demon that hovers over my left shoulder whispered, “Ha Ha, told you so. You are just a simple housewife in small-town Utah and you will never make it as a songwriter. I told you to quit trying. See…you would not feel so bad about this if you hadn’t put so much hope on it to begin with. Quit now, and save yourself the shame and hurt in the future.” I heard this in my head, and I am sorry to say I believed it for a second. I sat there, my eyes blurred with emotion, and looked at that yellow legal pad on the bed in front of me. Then I saw the lyric:

“Stand up again, shake it off if you can, then get back on that pony and ride.”

That’s when I wrote the bridge:

“I’m not sayin’ forget what you lost
I suppose there’s a purpose in pain
But what we make of ourselves has a cost
And it’s paid every time we take hold of the reigns”

Then VERSE III, a message to myself.

Merlyn and I recorded this song for the album, Out of the Blue. The whole album was a compilation of demos, songs to be pitched one day.

Months later I was frantically dressing for an afternoon PTA meeting. My sister Ann Marie was visiting. The phone rang, and I asked her to get it, please. She called up the stairs:
“Can you take this call?”
“Who is it?”
“It’s Chris.”
“Chris who?”
“Chris LeDoux”
“Chris WHO?!”
“LeDoux.”
“I’ll take it!” I took the phone and sure enough, it was Chris LeDoux, the cowboy rodeo champion singer and songwriter who was making quite a splash at Capitol Records in Nashville. He had just come off a long tour with Garth Brooks and was preparing to record a new album.
“I was wondering,” he said softly, “ …I was wondering if you’d mind if I sang your song on my new album?” He went on to tell me how much he loved what it said, and how it was said, and that he had a yellow pony when he was small and his dad used to pick him up and put him back on when it bucked him off in the hills of Wyoming. (Good thing I made that pony gold!)
He sang the song with much tenderness. He released it on his album Under This Old Hat and again in his retrospective Box Set.
One evening we drove to Salt Lake City, my family and me, and we walked into the Delta center for a Chris LeDoux concert. It was a rockin’ show! Chris was a wild bareback cowboy sort of entertainer. But the lights went low at a certain point, and the pace slowed, and the melodic strains written on the side of my bed started up, echoing against the large cement walls of that auditorium.
“This is my favorite song”, he said, “written by a woman from right here in Utah named Cori Connors.” My family and Merlyn cheered, and so did the rest of the audience, though I am not so naïve as to think they were cheering for something other than their home state.
He began to sing. I watched a young couple sitting in front of us sink down into their seats, her head leaned over onto his shoulder. Then slowly, around the perimeter of the stage and up into the rafters of the Delta Center, I saw Bic lighters waving in the darkness to the beat of the song.
That’s how you know you have really made it; when people wave their Bic lighters to your ballad! Though now days it would be the lights of their cell phones, or the Bic lighter app on our iPhones.
What a great memory.
Chris was always so gracious. A true gentleman and true to his word. Because of him I started my publishing company, Seven Roses Music. I’ll tell you the story about that name sometime. Right now it is nearly 3 am and this little song-story is WAY too long.
But remembering it has been awfully sweet.

GET BACK ON THAT PONY
Seven years old on a gold palomino
I sat up tall with my face to the wind
I’d seen them prance at the circus in Reno
So I dug in my boot heels and pulled on the reigns

CHORUS: And Blaze, he took off a runnin’
He tossed me down on the side
Then my uncle Jim picked me up once again
Said, get back on that pony and ride
Get back on that pony and ride

So lift up your head boy I know how you’re feeling
You say you won’t ride with a chance you might lose
You’ve fallen from love and your head is still reeling
Your heart and your pride have been shaken and bruised

CHORUS II: Like Blaze, she took off a runnin’
Love tossed you down on the side
But stand up again, shake it off if your can
Then get back on that pony and ride
Get back on that pony and ride

Bridge: I’m not saying forget what you lost
I suppose there’s a purpose in pain
But what we make of ourselves has a cost
And it’s paid every time we take hold of the reigns

So dust off your blue jeans, get back in the saddle
Freedom’s a chance to begin with an end
Getting back up there is half of the battle
And love, like a pony, should race with the wind

CHORUS III: Like Blaze, it takes off a runnin’
And it may toss you down on the side
But stand up again, shake it off if you can
Then get back on that pony and ride;
Get back on that pony and ride;
Get back on that pony and ride.

You can hear my version of Get back on that Pony by scrolling down to the blue music player with songs from Out of the Blue. Here's a YouTube version of Chris singing it (with someone's home made video pictures).
Sadly, Chris LeDoux died a few years ago, from liver cancer. A loss to all of us.

HOW BEAUTIFUL THE DANCE

It was a rare, rainy Utah day, with a socked-in kind of permanent drizzle, like the springtime of my childhood in Pennsylvania. I was in the nursery at the old-old house on Kensington Street, tidying up a bit while the baby played in her crib. We never did have a “real” nursery, even with 4 babies. I was young and unable to justify spending money on beautifying the baby’s sleeping space. I regret this.

The nursery was a small room, attached to the master bedroom, with French doors dividing the two spaces. It had a used crib, and the old antique rocker I bought at auction when we first moved out here, the one I had re-upholstered in 5 Hour Store leather a few years back. It currently sits in our family room. The upholstery was in pretty bad shape then. The big old metal springs had sprung out of the seat, so I plopped a pillow on top of the springs and that is where I nursed my babies each night. It had nice wide, flat arms that held my elbow as I held the baby, and it had a high leather roll at the top, where I rested my head as I patted my little one’s back and hummed music into her ear. There was also a little four drawer dresser and a diaper pail, and the little square rolling cart from our law school days which held Dave’s old stereo. I’m pretty sure there were also piles of stuff in the corner. I am sad to say that piles of stuff have been haunting me all my life.

So, on one of those days when my conscience yelled loud enough that my feet responded, I made an attempt to address the “piles of stuff” in the nursery. One of my big problems is that I think too much. I think about this thing or that thing, as I pass my fingers over it, and I decide I should put it back in the pile because I might need it someday. So it’s best for me to divert my mind so I won’t over analyze. I pushed the power button on the stereo and found a radio station with palatable pop-rock music. This was the 80’s, and I could not bear the techno-mania that had overtaken the airwaves, but the station I finally found was filled with the more delicious music of the 60’s and 70’s.

I was steadily moving through my pile of stuff when the strains of an old Jim Croce tune shot through the air.

“Well, I know it’s kind of late, I hope I didn’t wake ya
But what I have to say can’t wait, I know you’ll understand….”

I instantly felt that familiar little tingle of young love as it rose up from the inside out. I shivered with warmth and the burn of unbeckoned tears washed over my eyes.

“…every time I tried to tell you the words just came out wrong
So I’ll have to say I love you in a song.”

I sat myself in the seat of that old sprung rocker and allowed myself to weep. The weeping with a slow exhale, where memories flicker through like a movie and you don’t want it to end. I saw myself at the dance on evening #2 of a young adults conference at Slippery Rock college, 6 weeks after my high school graduation. Dave Connors was there, fresh off his mission to Italy. He was so handsome, with his dark hair and olive skin and square shoulders, and he was always in the center of a swarm of girls that weekend. They flirted with him, unabashedly. It was a real turn off to me, though I thought he was painfully beautiful. I kept my distance just to be out of the swarm. But somehow he saw me, and he asked if I’d like to dance. I was shocked, seriously, that he would even look at me. We danced the dance of untrained youth, a slow one, and I can feel almost exactly that thrill of his hand on my waist, his other hand lifted palm-up expecting mine to join it.
You have to know that I was not an “experienced” girl in the love department. I had hardly dated in high school, and I didn’t have any experience with how to effectively interact with a guy when those kind of feelings shot like bottle rockets through the invisible space around us. Dave, on the other hand, knew that stuff pretty well.
As the final strains of the music ended, Dave lifted my hand and kissed my fingers.
I swooned. Almost fell over there on the gym floor. But my pride made me fake it. He asked me to dance again, but it was the last dance and I had promised it to another. I really, really, really wanted to break that promise! That was my first true lesson in being sure before you make promises. I thought I’d lost my chance, that the swarm would consume him and he would never notice me again. But back at the dorms he waited in the lobby and asked if I had brought my guitar. Of course I had. And so had he. We sat in the lobby of the dorm into the wee hours, playing guitars together. I was smitten. Painfully smitten. Sure that someone of his caliber would never consider someone from my world in any serious sort of way.
I was wrong. Blessedly, thankfully, fabulously wrong.
Two weeks later Dave drove out to Utah with my brother so he could begin his education at BYU law school. A week after that I drove out to Utah with Ann Marie’s fience-of-the-month so I could begin my undergraduate education. Dave and I were engaged three months later. He never did play his guitar much after that first night in the dorms at Slippery Rock. But for Valentines Day, when we were engaged, he gave me this fine gift. He had bought the sheet music to Jim Croce’s tune, “I’ll Have to Say I Love You in a Song” and had taught himself how to play it. It was the sweetest, most touching gift, his fingers sweeping over the strings, his head slightly cocked to the side as he sang the words. His beautiful brown eyes looking straight into mine, those sweet luminous orbs resting in small pools of water by the time the song ended.

So when Jim Croce’s guitar started repeating the tune on the stereo that day, I was swept off my feet again. HOW BEAUTIFUL THE DANCE is an old song, written when I was probably 25 years old. I would not write it that way now. I tell my lyric writing students to rewrite songs like this. It’s not truly conversational. You would never say, in conversation, “for cold am I….” And melancholy is a cliché term. But the song filled a space in our lives, and it fits like a snapshot of us when we dressed in the fashion of the 80’s. Wouldn’t be caught dead in that now, but it was fine for then, and it is part of who we were…so it is part of who we are.

“So kiss my hand, then kiss my lips, then say a soft “I do”
Though there are days I question it, the words have still been true.”

It was how I felt then. And how I feel now.

HOW BEAUTIFUL THE DANCE

It’s cold outside and drizzling,
But warmer
than it seems
For cold am I, imagining
In melancholy dreams
Comes a
song in stereo,
One that warms me through
Comes a flood of memory
When I first danced with you
When I first danced with you

I can
feel you take my hand again
And I can see you smile
As you lead me
‘cross the wooden floor
I loved you all the while

So kiss my hand,
then kiss my lips
Then say a soft “I do”
Though there are days I
question it,
The words have still been true
Kids are growing rapidly
And we’re settled it
But play a song you sang for me
And the
feelings come again
The feelings come again

Though the songs we hear
are different now
The words are still romance
Though the steps we take
have changed somehow
How beautiful the dance

SONG OF THE HEART

SONG OF THE HEART
If all the world could sing a song in one great choir
Every common man and king
And every child would sing along to lift us higher
And even Heaven came to sing

Build: Would we find a common language
That’s understood by everyone
Well I suppose there is a song already written
And every day that song is sung

CHORUS:
It’s sung by a woman who stands in an apron
Stirring a supper in ¾ time
It’s sung by a daddy cuddling his baby
A rock-a-bye rhythm in lullaby rhyme
One in the name of sweet Savior, Jesus
Sung by a prisoner who needs a new start
Though each one is different
They’re strangely familiar
They’re singing the song of the heart

If we could look beyond the wars that come between us
And we could play a simple part
And take away our common fears, what would that leave us
The music of the heart

Build: Then we’d find a common language
That’s understood by everyone
And I know there is a song, already written
And every day that song is sung

REPEAT CHORUS
(sung by a soldier, who’s doing his part)

They’re singing the song of the heart

It struck me, when my kids were little and I was trying to fit my education as a songwriter in between diaper changes, that the best music I might ever create would be silently set to the rhythms of daily life. Some little spirit whispered to mine that I was not alone; that most people just lived their lives in survival mode, and whatever struggles I might be enduring were not exclusive nor particularly unique. Here in America we had entered a war, the Gulf War, and at the same time I was reading the beautiful words of Victor Hugo in the 5 volumes of Les Miserables. The “prisoner” part of this song is a tribute to Jean ValJean…who needed a new start. And the soldier was every American who tented in the blistering desert of an unpopular middle-eastern conflict.
I do like thinking of the whole world singing in one great choir…kings and commoners. As I dove into that thought I realized that while our spoken languages might be different, the language of the heart is universal.

I have thickened Thanksgiving gravy in ¾ time ever since. I stand before the fire as my sisters do across mountains and oceans - regardless of the day, or what is boiling in our pots - keeping time with our heartbeats. I close my eyes and hear the lovely silent chorus.

JUST LIKE A MAN

There are six strong, fairly-independent women in my family; the family I was sent to by the maker of my soul. The strength came from a mixture of genes and environment. The independence came from necessity. I wonder what kind of shift in personality-balance would appear in my mom if her mother had not died when Mom was an adolescent; had her father not remarried a woman who was herself a teenager and didn’t want to take care of another woman’s kids; if she had not lost her steady place and had not been forced to move from house to house through her teenage years. What if she had married men of integrity? What if there had not been a big ugly war that took her new husband away so that when he returned they did not know each other any more? We are all just recipes: a list of ingredients combined with a process, and sometimes we are delicious and sometimes not so yummy. Like a batch of buttermilk biscuits, the ones we learned to make in Jr High Home Ec, sometimes things get a little overworked in the “process” and the final result is maybe a little tough in texture. Only, unlike buttermilk biscuits, there is a tender spot in the very center that will never turn hard. That’s mom.

Her five daughters learned how to deal with tough. At least in the “men” category. We passed through the birth canal of rejection at young ages, mostly thanks to our fathers. Mom had two husbands. Both betrayed their promises. I am not saying everything is one sided, I know its not. After all, she was already an independent woman when they met her. But in the end, at the very end of the story of our family, there is still a mother with her children gathered around her and the father is gone.

So we women-of-the-woman have “men” issues.

Even with the most perfect of possible husbands sharing my table and my bed and my messy garage, I fight the tendency to think women are superior by nature. I’m not even sure if that is the correct way to put it into words. It’s more that we fight the slight expectation of disappointment in male behavior. That’s it, I think. Sadly, we are still a little surprised when a man actually does what he says he’s going to do. I do not think this is accessing our divine feminine nature. I am hoping to rise above this as I get closer to heaven.
But we are still earth bound. Sometimes our heavy feet are stuck in the earthy mire, so to speak. Poor David serves as a missionary for maleness in our family. He’s hanging in there, hoping to convert us eventually. Our brothers, by the way, are excluded from any of this insane analysis since they got the same rejection we girls did, if not more.

My oldest sister, Sherry, is the tender soul who learned independence of necessity. In the way-back-memory of my heart I can see her lifting me from my crib and patting my back. She was the oldest of the seven of us kids. I was child #6. She was the only child of the father-gone-to-war for a few years, and she was doted over and adored by her very-young independent mother. Then these other kids came. Sherry's her nature is to nurture, and she cared for and loved us all like a mother hen. She made me feel secure. Our mom worked full time, so Sherry was truly our nurturer. When I was five years old we moved from our little house in a little Idaho town to the big city of Pittsburgh PA. I remember walking up the steps to the airplane and looking back. I remember the heart ache and the tears as I pressed my nose against the window of the plane and watched my oldest sister become smaller and smaller, her arm waving fiercely, until she disappeared in a cloud. She was old enough for college then, so she remained in Idaho and paid her own way through college…alone. It makes me weep to think of it, her young heart separated from those who adored her and needed her.

Through the years I thought of Sherry as the woman who had it all. She was beautiful. She was smart. She had a good job and she did it well. She ended up as a Speech Language Pathologist in the San Francisco area. She lived in glamorous apartments and condos. We loved going to visit in the summers, after our trips to Idaho. Swimming in the apartment pool on MacArthur Drive, visiting the Nut Tree, buying fresh crab and hot sour dough bread on the Wharf, the barking of the seals laying a deep resonant bass line to the chorus of people speaking varying languages near the docks. I loved visiting Cost Plus. It was perhaps my first love, in the category of bargain shopping, and I can still see the colors and smell the smells of those large warehouse buildings in my memory. We boiled ramen noodles years before they were available on grocery store shelves. We hung beads from our bedroom doors and wrapped presents in groovy oriental Cost Plus paper. Oh I loved visiting my sister! When I was 18 and a freshman at BYU I took my boyfriend to her condo in Alameda for Thanksgiving. It overlooked the beach. It was there that the boy asked me to marry him. We walked along the beach that night, the waves lapping over our feet as they made their way back out to the sea, lost in the magic of young love and a large empty canvas of future. I did not think of him as a man, not in the painful-man-memories way. He was innocent and pure hearted and, while he was very masculine, he was my “boy”. Like I said…we have “man” issues.
Sheesh…talk about true confessions in blogging!
Anyway, my sister Sherry finally came upon a man to whom she thought she could give her heart. We all celebrated this. David baptized him in the waters of an Idaho river one summer day and we all thought this was heaven-sent and magical. But, it turns out, he could only keep up appearances for so long. Our strong, independent sister had exposed that tiny soft spot deep in the center of her heart.
He crushed it.
JUST LIKE A MAN was written for this sister I love. An attempt to feel what she might have felt.
It’s not a typical song for me. When I released it on my second album people were not super receptive. “Who is this person?” they must have thought, “and what is this bitterness?”
I’m not so sure it is bitterness.
It’s hurt.
Repeated.

JUST LIKE A MAN
She wrapped her love like a ribbon ‘round
her heart
And gave it to him
And he took the love she had given, tore it
apart
Ain’t itjust lik e a man


And she took the fall like a woman
Down in her
heart and soul
And he took in all of her loving
Then he let her go
He’ll find another
Ain’t it just like a man

He made a game
of her feelin’
She put her ace in his hand
Then he walked away without dealin’
Oh, ain’t it just like a man

She spends the evening alone now
Finding herself a friend
And he
has another to hold now
Fooling himself again
Look at who’s lonely
Ain’t it just like a man

He looks at love like a ribbon won for a prize
Ain’t it just like a man

Life is long. And life is short. Depends on which end you are standing in. From the backside, a life lived in peace with oneself makes for a gentler place to exist. It’s nice to have someone to count on. Sometimes that someone you can count on is yourself.

You can hear JUST LIKE A MAN by scrolling down to the Music Player with the album title OUT OF THE BLUE. Click on the song.