GIVE THANKS

Last Thanksgiving there hung from the chandelier over our dining table a swooping strand of construction paper rings inner-locked in a chain of gratitude. My niece, Emily, had cut the colorful strips and placed them before us. The children wrote charming little sentiments. Adults strained to limit their gratitude to one sentence. The chain hung over the table for a good week.

The day we hung that colorful strand; after the clanking of pans and the clinking of ice in water goblets; after the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was over and the television was turned off; after the kids had all found their name cards and settled into their seats; we paused. Our mother, who presided over the company of 52 people gathered that day, had taught us how to pause.

We think it’s our duty as parents to teach our children how to do things, and this is true, we should teach, and learn, how to do. But we were gifted with a mother who also taught us when to be still.

"Be still and know I am God." I can hear her voice speak it in my head. She has whispered reassurance to me when I’ve been troubled, since I was very small. She was, and still is, a poet. She speaks with a poet’s lilt, and she sees with a poet’s eyes. She taught us that “being” is more important than “doing.”

Mom never was one to have the TV on when we were growing up, or even music for that matter. Music was not background noise in our house. It was something you sat down and listened to, with intelligence and heart. If you felt compelled to dance, well that was ok, but to interrupt with conversation about anything other than the music itself, that was disrespectful to the magic of the muse which was trying too communicate with you. Even now I have a hard time when I am riding with someone in a car and the driver turns on the radio, then starts up a conversation. It hurts my brain, maybe because I feel so compelled to pay attention to the music. I’m not so bad with TV; it’s sort of white noise to me. There is something, however, wholly magic in silence; purposeful silence. Mom saw the power of silence filling the spaces between the verbs of life. I have tried to teach our children the same, for they are all poets and a poet without chunks of private, idling quietness is frustrated.

So we pause at the table, amid the aromas of the feast and the energy of so many people with so much love between them. We pause; we listen; then we pray.

I realized a few years ago that I was in one of the sweet spots of life. I had lived long enough to understand what mattered and what didn’t matter so much. I loved a man with whom I was wholly comfortable, who loved me and accepted me with my flaws but also knew my potential. I was surrounded by children who were making intelligent and heartfelt choices that would not permanently hurt them or the people they loved. I understood the odds of such favorable circumstances were very rare. Not that we were unfamiliar with distress and sorrow. We knew, however, the beautiful advantages we had acquired because of the strength gained in our struggles. We were on the cusp of welcoming a new generation of children to our family table. And our mother was yet with us, to oversee with her calm assurances.

Overcome, late one night during that season, with the realization that I could not thank God enough, I heard the spirit whispering, “Try.”

          Give Thanks

Give Thanks

For the feast upon this table

For this land where we are able now

To bow our heads and pray

Give Thanks

For the warmth that’s all around us

For the love that does abound

As we are gathered here today

For the dancing flame in the fireplace

Setting all the room aglow

For the laughing eyes on a child’s face

Looking through the sifting snow

Give Thanks

There’s the woman here who bore me

There’s the man that I adore

And there are young ones with our name

All hands

Come together now in love

A circle here, and more above

Join in one eternal chain

Like the paper strands on the Christmas Tree

That the children’s hands have made

There is future here, there is history

And we are bound to both by grace

So Give Thanks

To the Lord of all this goodness

For the struggles that improve us

There is evidence He loves us

Give Thanks

Give Thanks

Give Thanks

Like colorful strands of paper, we link ourselves to a long familial chain, going all the way up to Father Adam and, before him, the Father of Father’s. I picture the circles of those who we had loved and lost, hanging above me. And, too, I foresee bright new links further down the line when I am gone.

There is future here; there is history; and we are bound to both by Grace.

Chubby little fingers of those who bear my name scrawl newly learned letters across a strip of colored paper. I imagine my aging hands rolling that paper into the pause of space inside my own circle.

I tape each child securely into our chain.

I watch my chest rise and fall with emotion;

and I give thanks.

Give Thanks and Heavenly Choirs are both published in sheet music.  They are available in my milk box, and  also found in  Hal Leonard  and Warner Brother's Christmas piano compilations.  Yup, right there with the tunes of Irving Berlin and Mel Torme.  My publisher told me to set the books out at Christmas time, so if perchance someone saw them on the piano they could be impressed and I could respond; "What, that? Oh, that's just a little tune I wrote, it's nothing really."

You can hear a recording of this song in the music box at the bottom of the page.  Scroll to, and then click on, GIVE THANKS in the first player.

JOSEPH & MARY

Each December we dig into our Christmas closet and decide what decorating mood we are in this year. Dave would laugh at me using the word “we” in this context. I am customarily the decorator, and he is the designated lugger. I am such a sentimentalist that I keep everything (this does not apply solely to Christmas items). The décor will change at our house from year to year. A few things, however, are pretty constant: we will have a live tree we bought from Robinsons Tree Farm, all fresh aromatic. Dave will string colored lights in and out of the branches, the lights that few people use any more but which were the joy of my childhood. We will swoop real mercury glass beads from branch to branch. Colorful glass bulbs from generations past will be hung three or four deep on every branch, along with ornaments from our family’s past, along with baby shoes hung with ribbon, along with tickets from meaningful concerts either our children performed in or I performed in. There will be a long hammered nail tied with a red ribbon hung deep-in, near the trunk…a gift from Gram to remind us of what that Baby became and what he did for us. We will apply, strand by strand, old lead icicles, which will reflect the colorful lights as well as the flickering fire in the fireplace; and when the tree comes down after Epiphany we will remove those icicles one at a time so we can re-use them next year. We will hang greenery over the arched bay windows, and put a candle in each windowsill. Wreaths of dangling cedar will hang in each of the front windows, with red bows that lilt in the winter breezes. I will arrange my large collection of Santa’s on the rock fireplace mantle. And from that mantle will hang long skinny knitted stockings like our great grandparents wore. One stocking, however, will seem out of place among the others. It is much larger, and a bright Christmas red, with the letters K,A, T, I, E strewn across the white trim at the top. This is the stocking in which be snuggled our new baby, Kate when we brought her home from the hospital on Christmas Eve 1983. Our blessed Christmas child!

There will always be a tall wooden Santa Claus, the one I purchased at the Sundance Outlet after Christmas about 15 years ago. He cheerily holds stacks of CD’s in our entry hall. We become a retail venue at Christmas time. I used to sell my CDs in stores, like Deseret Book, but I realized that few people bought them if they had not heard them, so I decided to just sell them myself through the internet mostly (www.coriconnors.com) and at the front door. The last few years I have sold them from the front porch milk box. It’s a beautiful piece of Americana, a matter of mutual trust: Take what you want and leave a check in the box. It works really well. I should have named my label Milk Box Records. The Santa in the entry hall always has a good stash if the milk box becomes empty.

One other item is always part of our Christmas décor. It is a large Italian sculpture I bought at the 5 Hour Store years ago: a figure of Joseph the carpenter standing with his saw in one hand and his arm around his young son, Jesus. The sculpture sits on the old Masonic altar in the family room. I usually set it atop a bed of rope cedar, the little fans of green swoop up over their sandal-clad feet of the boy Jesus, sort of foreshadowing the palms that would be laid at the feet of the man-Jesus years later.

I love this sculpture. They both appear so calm; so comfortable with each other. It feels like peace.

I have felt a particular tenderness toward Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus. I am touched that he would accept the call. His was a heavy burden to bear. It wasn’t his child. It wasn’t his child. And yet he allowed himself to be the father. I have always loved and respected Mary, and revere her as we all should. But it took me watching my husband accept and embrace the burden of fatherhood for me to know what a beautiful man Joseph must have been. There isn’t much written about him, at least that I could find. So when a church Relief Society teacher asked if I could do a song about Joseph and Mary, I struggled to find something. I do not read music, so looking through sheet music was not going to work for me. Maybe that’s why I ended up being a songwriter.

I was in my early twenties when I wrote this song, and at the time I did not think of myself as a singer. So I wrote it, then asked the two real singers in our church to perform it. Dave Thomas and Gailyn Volcansek sang it just beautifully. I thought that would be the end of it. The song had filled the measure of its creation.

I don’t recall when Dave and I first sang this song together. We sure have done it a lot though. Every time I look into his eyes and see him feeling the fullness of his love, as if he really was Joseph and I was Mary. I’ve sung the song many times with other people as well, but it is never the same. This song is meant to be sung by husband and wife. At least so I thought.

I have been invited many times to go hear other people sing this song as well. I am especially touched when my children sing it. The first time I was asked to come hear a choir sing it I thought, “Are you kidding? This song is an intimate duet. It will never work with a choir.” But I sat there and wept at how lovely it sounded; at how tenderly the men sang their part; at the emotion flowing from some of the men’s eyes as they sang.

“I want to take care of you,” their eyes said, “but I cannot. Please God, help me take care of her.”

I was touched by the sweetness of the women, offering reassurance… “Joseph, this will do…. It’s even better here because it is pure and free from the touch of human hands….only fresh hay and good clean dirt and the gentle bray of our faithful donkey. Really, it’s fine. Come, help me now.”

I have born four children with my husband at my side. I’ve born them without the aid of pain killers. I have grasped my husband’s hand and felt him clasping mine with all his might, wishing he could infuse his strength into me. Both of us in tears, both of us overcome with the sacredness of the process. Both overwhelmed with the intensity of love that filled that space and time. I cannot recall a moment in my human existence when I have felt more divine as when my firstborn son sprung from within and touched the light of this earth. He bore me into motherhood, as Jesus did Mary.

Joseph and Mary is not the most well-written song. It only has four chords, and they repeat predictably. When I wrote it I had to use a tape recorder to hear what the Joseph part sounded like so the Mary part could overlap pleasingly. (What an interesting experiment that was.) It is not a masterpiece of music composition, or of lyric for that matter. But somehow it touches me, and that’s enough. It draws me closer to Dave every time we sing it. Maybe it’s an example of something being greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe it’s just my heart pretending how Mary might have felt, and how Joseph might have felt, and loving them all the more because I can imagine what they did.

I promise (myself, mostly) to have sheet music for this song available for my Christmas concerts this coming Thanksgiving weekend. (There now…it’s in print…no backing out!) I will thank the Lord if I am blessed, one more year, to have the man I love sing this song with me.

Joseph and Mary

Dear Lord, hear this prayer

The child comes soon

She is tired and ready

Yet no one has a room

Guide my feet dear God

I have given it my all

She deserves more than I have

She deserves more than a stall

Joseph, this will do

I don’t need a quilted bed

Just a gentle word from you

And a place to lay my head

It is good that we are here

Where no human hands defiled

Smooth the hay and let me lie

And welcome in the child

Tag: To welcome in the child

You can hear Dave and me singing this song by scrolling down to the music box with songs from the album SLEEPY LITTLE TOWN. Click on the song Joseph and Mary.

WISE MEN SEEK HIM STILL

In an attempt to make our children aware that our cushy lives were not the norm, we called Davis County Volunteer Services every December and found a family who was struggling to make ends meet. We shopped and wrapped and gathered our presents in a pile, then loaded them in bags and into the car. I recall one year when the kids were old enough to finally get the real gist of what we were doing. We drove up to a little house set deep into a field along Gentile Street in Layton. It was late evening, the only light around the house being the reflection of a sliver of the moon after we turned out our headlights and turned onto the gravel driveway. The kids hefted big black bags full of the gifts, one child on each side, and quietly laid them on the front porch. We all looked at each other, nodded our heads, John rang the doorbell and we RAN! Four little noses pressed against the car windows to see who opened the door. I don’t remember if they saw anyone, but I remember the heart-pumping good energy of the act. I have no idea if it really had any effect on the kids. But it did change me.

I have been changing now for five decades. (True confessions of a birthday girl.)  It takes effort to let oneself be changed. It can get to feeling pretty safe keeping things at status quo, which is of course a lie contrived by He Who Wants Us To Be Stagnant. Sometimes it takes a whole big lot of effort to make good change happen. Best, in my experience, to start with little things, and it is usually best and most comfortably achieved when we serve others. Reminder to self.

It also takes effort to hear the whisperings of divine voices. We generally, in our humanness, pick how we want to serve according to our own comfort level. That’s not bad, by any means. It’s still service. But higher level service is directed by those heavenly voices alone. It takes true wisdom to hear them.

Wise Men Seek Him Still is pretty self explanatory in its lyric. It’s actually pretty fun to be a songwriter because it is perfectly appropriate to pretend. I pretend to be on a camel. I pretend to actually know the scriptures and prophecy. I pretend to see the baby Jesus. I get to add little thoughts like the baby having the looks of his mother and the vision of his Father. Pretty fun, though it does take a lot of manipulating to make it fit in meter and rhyme. I was able in verse 2 to preserve the memory of going to the edge of town with my children and doing an anonymous good thing. I keep my kids little when I put them in a song.

An editor from the Church News called the year after the album came out and asked if they could use the lyric to this song on their cover. Of course I said yes. It made me feel good that someone “got it”. Not that it’s that hard to get, but I just sometimes wonder if anyone does. I have confidence issues, sadly.

I plug along in this life, honestly feeling like I am jerking forward and backward atop a lumbering camel. I hope, regardless of how comfortable or uncomfortable the journey is, I still try to use wisdom in my choices.

WISE MEN SEEK HIM STILL

(with chords...capo as probably used but I am not remembering right now)

G D

They made their way through the desert sand

Em C

Till they came upon the holy land

G D G C D

A little town, oh little town of Bethlehem

G D

They turned away from everything

Em C

To pay their tithes to the newborn king

G D G Gsus G

They were bound for a little town called Bethlehem

C D

They knew the signs and from their youth

G F#/D Em

They searched the skies for light and truth

Am7 D G Gsus G

They covered every valley, every hill

C D

To a gentle child in a humble place

G F#/D

His Father’s eyes, his mother’s face

Am7 C D D sus D

And wise men seek him still

So I make my way to the edge of town

Through the Christmas lights and the Christmas sounds

To the humble door of the tired and poor and give to them

And in the giving I receive

And works give life to my belief

Like men of old who learned to mold their will

And through his words I’ll know his face

Who lived and died in a state of grace

And wise men seek him still

Through the desert sands or the drifting snow

Where the Spirit leads, that’s where I will go

Like men of old who left their gold in Bethlehem.

SLEEPY LITTLE TOWN

We stopped in Burley Idaho for gas and dinner. Merlyn and I were headed back to Utah after a recording session. My brother, John Hansen, lives in Boise. He was producing our album Out of the Blue and the studio, engineer and musicians live there (including John, guitar player extraordinaire). Merlyn and I made the 5 hour trek to Boise on weekends when Merlyn was not working and when Dave was home to handle our kids. What great memories we have of those recording sessions! We finished the album in Nashville after Robby, our engineer, moved there. Great memories there as well. But I digress….

It was a wintry day, the ever-present Idaho wind whistling through the windows of the car. We drove down the main drag in Burley looking for a Wendy’s or Arby’s. The streets of those old Idaho towns are wide; wide enough, I suppose, for teams of horses pulling large wagons to fit side by side. They paved the roads the same width when horses turned into cars. Hanging above us, swinging in the fierce Idaho wind, were long strands of Christmas lights. These lights, as opposed to the feminine twinkle lights of the suburbs, were full size light bulbs - not big pointy Christmas lights, but Edison-like round topped light bulbs, in all different colors. I suspect this is a necessary thing in Burley, with that wind and all. It was so charming to me. I looked down the thick ribbon of Main Street and watched the zigzag of color shift with the moving air, rising and falling like kids on roller coasters. It seemed so old fashioned and comforting; so Christmassy.

The rest of the way home I felt the glow of those lights as the snow swept across the barren highway back to Utah. I got to thinking about the Christmas decorations of my childhood. Of the Salvation Army Bell Ringer outside of the entrance to South Hills Village; of the tinsel hanging in the aisles of DiStefano’s Drug Store; the aroma of peppermint and end caps full of Chia Pets at Woolworths, and the sprays of decorations hung from the lamp posts and telephone poles along portions of Route 51 and Old Clairton Road. I thought about the beauty of a generation that embraced allowing a Nativity Scene to be set up in front of City Hall. I thought about standing on risers on a December night, singing that high-high soprano part to the Halleluiah Chorus, hearing the echo of altos across the Thomas Jefferson High School stage answering us – seeing my sister among them, a hot tear springing through my lower eyelashes as the music swelled and I could see our teacher Mr. Rotella being moved by it. My throat closes in when I cry, making singing painful and unpleasant to the ear. I wish, how I wish, I cried pretty when I sang!

When I started writing Sleepy Little Town all these memories swirled in my space. It was a sweet trip home. I remembered, in the process of writing, how it felt to be away from home for that first Christmas. Dave and I were engaged, so I flew home for a couple days to meet his parents. But my family had decided to spend Christmas in CA with my sisters Sherry and Sue. I remember boarding the plane, it may have been Christmas Eve day, and aching with the thought of leaving Dave. I remember writing on a TWA cocktail napkin, a little love letter to him. I ached also for the scenes of my childhood, realizing the door was closing on some part of me and I might not be allowed to open it again.

The next Christmas Dave and I spent in our little house in Provo Utah. I was working at 7-11 and they would not give me any time off for the holidays. We bought a stubby little evergreen and placed it in the corner of the living room. I covered it with red bows and little puff ball ornaments and ceramic figures I had made at the BYU Craft Center. I remembered lying on the couch in the living room, listening to an 8 track tape of Nat King Cole’s Christmas album, longing for the people I love, aching in the middle place just below the heart and above the belly. They were gathered without me, and though I longed to fill it, there was indeed and empty chair at their table.

We rarely realize, when we are in the middle of life, how sacred and rare the every-day is. We come to cherish the good and simple things because they repeat. Repetition is essential in this human existence. There is something very eternal about it. We repeat what matters to us; and by looking at what we have repeated in our lives we can tell, in retrospect, what mattered to us. Every writer knows the value of repetition. So does God. We repeat the sacrament, we pray always, we forgive 70 times 7. When I hear the ring of a Salvation Army bell I try to dig in my pocket and find some money. Anything. We tend to use credit cards so much these days that I am afraid they will soon do away with the bell ringer outside the grocery store. I feed the bucket in an attempt to keep the repetition going. I tried to incorporate that feeling of repetition in the opening guitar lines of Sleepy Little Town. The bass line alternates with a bit of discord on the second chord. That’s intentional…it reminds me of the ding dong of a church bell, without being too obvious.

This is a love song for my hometown, Pleasant Hills, PA. It is also a love song for the town of my children’s memory, Farmington UT. Wherever your home is, you are blessed, as I am, to have any sweet memories of Christmas past. Of course we love the people who mean so much to us. But I thank the Lord, also, for the places that wrap themselves around us as we journey back Home.

Sleepy Little Town

Sleepy little town,
Strung with Christmas lights
Wrap your love around the one
Who’s missing you tonight
There’s and empty chair
At your table now
If God would grant me just one prayer
I would be there somehow

But miles and miles of winter white
Keep me from my home tonight
And this Christmas we’re apart
But visions of you warm my heart

At the Five and Dime
That I know so well
Twinkle lights keep rhythm with
The Salvation Army bell

And outside City Hall
Past the manger bed
Families gather, children wait
For the man in Christmas red

And all these miles of winter white
Keep me from your arms tonight
Though this Christmas we’re apart
I hold you here within my heart

The high school choir will sing again
O Little Town of Bethlehem
I didn’t know when I sang there too
I’d be missing you like I’m missing you

Sleepy Little Town…Sleepy Little Town…
My Sleepy Little Town

By the way, the photographs in the insert to the album Sleepy Little Town are of my family.  The cover photo was taken before I was born, in the room above the drug store in Shelley, Idaho.  My two oldest sisters, Sherry and Sue, are in that photo. Inside are pictures of myself and all my siblings and my children, as well as a photo of my mother-in-law, Helen. My friend Doug Wintch once told me a music album is like a photo album of your life at the moment. I was concerned that by the time a recording was done I could to the songs better.  He told me to let go and leave it be...it represents a portion of my life, just like a photo album would. Wise man, that Doug, and a darn good songwriter.

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.