THE KING OF THE BURLEY PARADE

Last year, during the period of Lent, I shared my daily writing called WORD OF THE DAY. That particular exercise was based on something Pat Pattison taught my songwriter friends and me years ago. Here are a few of the basics for that exercise:

- Choose a word (usually a noun)

- Remind yourself of all your senses, so you can write using all of them and therefore make stronger images

-set a timer for 10 minutes (so you don’t take all day writing. I sometimes ignore this part)

- start writing, allowing the WORD to be the jumping off place, the stimulus, so to speak. Stop when the timer dings.

I did WOTD (Word of the Day) writing for years with my friend and fellow songwriter, Tom Shults, among others. The first one to the computer in the morning selected a word and emailed it to the other, not for evaluation or comments, but because sending it to someone made us feel responsible and somewhat obligated to participate (which for us was crucial).

One day the WOTD was “tricycle”. This is what I wrote:

June 25, 2004 tricycle

On a simmering August morning last year, when my body had done enough healing to allow my legs to handle the gas pedal and brake, I happened upon a handwritten GARAGE SALE sign tied to the tailgate of a truck. Along Main Street, where Kaysville gives itself to Layton; just down from the Chinese fastfood that used to be Arctic Circle and looks as natural as I felt in Chinatown last weekend, a yard full of treasure hid behind a four foot hedge. I have a homing device. It turns my head from perfectly logical things to such signs. Since I reformed from the garage saler's disease I can logic myself past them now. But months of being bedridden altered the balance in me and I could not pass by. My sluggish reflexes awoke, my numb foot found the brake pedal and a good 1/4 inch of my tires melded to the asphalt. As I turned in to the driveway, back behind the 100 year old hedge, I fixated on a tricycle napping on the sidewalk, its front tire cocked to the side like a pigeon on a statue. It was red. 1950's red, with solid black rubber wheels and fully enfolding handlebars that begged me to be little again. It was mine. It was mine 40 years ago when I circled Vickie Jerrimello's carport on Elm Street. My legs were 15 months longer than Libby's, and when she rode it she had to stand on the back bumper step and push herself along with one foot. But my legs were 4 years old, and they could reach the pedals. I hurled back to Idaho, way back to when everyone I knew loved me and I didn't know it was bad to drink Dad's beer when he gave me a sip. Mama Jerimello was warming tortillas on her heavy black woodstove just inside the kitchen door. Her rolling pin beat like a drum against the kitchen table, and the heat of the summer fire wafted through the doorway as I pedaled by. Perhaps it was an early music lesson there in the driveway, Mama Jerimello keeping the drum steady, and my legs pumping up and down in time, the squeaking of the ungreased tires adding melody to the rhythm. We discovered, Lib and I, that she could stand on the back and wrap her arms around my waist and both ride! Her happy cheek pressed against my back, giggles bubbling from her lips, her fully alive red hair falling over my shoulder. Vickie had her own trike and no sister to share it with. And hers was smaller and so much less interesting.

So here it was, my trike. Well, just like mine. Just exactly like mine. Just completely content to sit and wait for some little legs to set it in motion. Only two months before I had been born into grandmotherhood, just stretching myself into the role. And Timo was so teeny. That middle aged woman in me told me to walk on by, it would take garage space and probably rust out completely by the time he could ride it. But the old woman and the child took hands and squished the stuffiness out of that middle aged beast, and the child held her still while the ancient one found $20. It is happy in my garage. And it will wait.

Tomorrow is Libby's 45th birthday and she can no longer wrap her arms around my waist! But if she could, I believe she still would. I am quite sure I would let her, if we could find a trike big enough.

Here’s what Tom wrote:

221-tricycle-6-25-04

Don't remember having one. But, I remember the day I got my first bike. A black, Gene Autry piece of pure speed. I have a flashbulb memory of begging and begging with eventual success. I could ride as fast as the wind with a script that evolved with every turn. Dirt roads out through the fields, dirt jumps, skids and shifts. All day and into that warm June night, all summer and into the fall. Cards in the spokes, streamers from the handlebars, Indian headdress with shorts cowboy boots and a vest for the Burley parade. I bet it's still in my

parents shed.

I could just imagine little Tommy Shults on this bike:

Then I wrote this song:

The King of the Burley Parade

He wore an Indian headdress with shorts and a red vest

A six shooter slung at his side

His boots were like pistons pumping the pedals

In the heat of the Fourth of July

And the asphalt was soft

And the band up ahead

Made the whole parade stop

So he circled instead

And his handlebar tassels all blue, white and red

Flew to the music they made

As he rode in the Burley Parade

Yippee Ki-yi-yay he is the king of the Burley Parade

It was a genuine Gene Autry demon of speed

With a top coat of shimmering pearl

It had all of the horsepower a cowboy could need

To go out and wrangle the world

It was a gift from his folks

On a bright Christmas morn

He put cards in the spokes

That clicked when they turned

He was seven years old with a summer to burn

As he rode in the hometown crusade

In the heart of the Burley Parade

Yippee Ki-yi-yay he is the king of the Burley Parade

Well he found it this morning out in the tool shed

He’d come home to find what was there

Forty years in the desert, it wasn’t frozen or rusty

Just dusty and needed some air

So he lifted it up

Put it out in the sun

And all of those years

From a boy to a man

He just washed them away till it sparkled again

And the memory was fondly replayed

When he rode in the Burley Parade

Yippee Ki-yi-yay

Yippee Ki-yi-yay

Yippee Ki-yi-yay he is the King of the Burley Parade

Here’s how the song sounds:

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COMMON GROUND

Life, by nature, requires us to redefine ourselves regularly. For quite a while, after each of my babies was born, they seemed to be here and not here at the same time. They aimed those deep black newborn eyes right at their new mama, but it seemed they were looking right through me. Their little brows wrinkled with interest, as if they were holding silent conversation with the angels. It took weeks, months, even years for them to come fully to the earth, and while I wanted them to be mine completely, there was a part of me that ached for them, knowing the weight of humanness and feeling sorry they had to carry it.

I’m not exactly sure at what age we first realize for ourselves that we’re individuals. I do, however, remember the moment I consciously and completely landed in my body. I was five years old, and we had just moved to Pittsburgh. There was an old rock YMCA building behind our back yard. Beside the building was an orchard of dwarf apple trees. Their branches hung low enough for me to stretch my neck and bury my nose in the pink tinged snowy blossoms that Spring. The aroma was intoxicating. I recall being conscious of my chest rising and falling as I inhaled deeper and deeper. In almost an instant I drew a deep breath and held it, my eyes open wide, and I looked down at my body. I lifted my left arm and grabbed it with my right hand. Held it there and stared at it. I am doubtful that I said any words, but I know I thought them: “I have a body!” The thought and the touch ignited such a joyful emotion I shiver thinking about it. In a flash of time I was back to being a child, running down the path toward home when Mom called me for dinner. I think that was the first day I let go of my heaven home and allowed my spirit to fill my body, all the way down to the tips of the toes. I could define myself as a little girl from that very moment.

At pivotal times that self-definition changed; when I crossed the threshold to young womanhood; when I got my first regular job; when I left home; married; bore children; raised children. I adjusted the description as I went.

The hardest adjustment, so far, came when the rooms to this house began to empty. One by one the children who had been such a part of my self definition; whose laughter and tears and arguments and cheers had reverberated through these walls, pointed their feet away from the back door and flew to their own destinies.

Empty. It’s a powerful word. It sounds like it feels. Empty rooms, empty chairs. Empty hours late at night, when the silence was deafening. I struggled to re-define who I was and what my role was now that the big busy was over.

What I discovered was the man sitting across the dinner table from me. He was not the man who slid the ring onto my finger all those years ago. His self definition had changed as well. Of course we knew each other…we lived together, slept together…we had raised children together, run political campaigns, lugged equipment to and from musical gigs…together. And yet I wondered if we knew, deeply, who it was we were bound to forever.

All of our children had graduated from high school except for Annie. She was a Senior. That’s when Guillain Barre Syndrome hit me. In a matter of days I was paralyzed in my legs, arms and part of my face. It was moving into my vital organs when it finally stopped. I don’t know why it stopped, whether it was Dr. Ericksen giving me massive does of steroids or not, but I did not end up dead or on life support. However I did end up spending quite a bit of time in hospitals and Dr offices. My sister Libby was constantly at my side while I underwent test after test to determine what was wrong. They drew 37 vials of blood, took samples of everything, pushed me into CAT scan and MRI machines, stuck needles into my wrists and feet then fired electrical currents through my body. They tapped into my spine, rapped my unresponsive reflexes over and over. Lib was a gift of a companion to me then, since Dave was out of town at the time. He was with our friends Mary and Gary, out on their sail boat in the middle of the Caribbean. When we finally reached him he found the first airport they could get to and flew home. For the next few months Dave lovingly and tenderly nurtured me. He did for me what I could not do for myself. And I had to let him. He filled the need with such love and devotion that it sealed our hearts together all over again. This was a gift. A gift from a divine source.
Dave and I have common history. We have common children, common family ties, common living quarters and a common faith. They all led to an uncommon love. I love him with all that is in me…down to the very tips of my toes.

When I wrote Common Ground, a love song for the father of my children, I thought about the Potter Brothers farm, right here at the bottom of Somerset Street. We passed by it every day for all the years we have lived here. It was just a common piece of earth. When the alfalfa was high and the Potters started up the engines on their tractors, the fresh aroma of new hay caused me to inhale…deeply…like I inhaled the smell of the apple blossoms in Pittsburgh. I felt the thrill of young love when the hay was cut, reminded that such amazing scents and sights came from a patch of common brown earth. The song opens with a young couple confessing their love for each other in that field, on that piece of common ground. The song progresses though the natural stages of a couple’s love…through marriage and child bearing and child rearing and then to this…the place where we sit across from each other and see only ourselves and no one else. When I say “there is no one else around” I mean the children, but I also mean that there is, and never has been, another man who has caught my eye or my interest. My love grows in this patch of life which is his and mine alone.


My favorite lines in this song are:
We gave our word (marriage) then gave it flesh (children)
Endured the worst, embraced the rest.

I’ve been told to embrace all of what life gives us. I tried that. But some of it is just plain not embraceable. Those are the things we simply endure.

When we were recording this song I teased Carla and Mark, who were at the sound board. I sang these words:

We gave our word, then gave it flesh
And you’re the worst, and I’m the best

Makes me smile remembering that.

So many of my songs are about the past, about things that have moved me or charmed me. Common Ground is one of the few that speaks my heart at this very moment. It makes me long for Dave, even if he is just in the other room. I thank the Lord of all good things for blinding him all those years ago, just so he might look my way.

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Common Ground

The night was young
The moon was up
The truth was out
We were in love

The field was thick
With autumn wheat
Your lips were warm
And soft and sweet

CHORUS: Oh I am there again with you
And there is no one else around
Where harvest wheat and passion grew
On common ground

We gave our word
Then gave it flesh
Endured the worst
Embraced the rest

And babies came
And babies grew
But they had wings
And off they flew

Now I am here again with you
And there is no one else around
Where love was born and where it grew
On common ground

BRIDGE: Between the place where we began and where we’re standing
There’s been a lot of common earth beneath our feet
And though the ground is worn, it still receives the planting
And offers up extraordinary wheat

The nest is large
And we are small
The nights grow long
But through it all
I feel your breath
Against my skin
And what was old
Is new again

Oh I am here and you should know
That there is no one else around
Oh my love will always grow
On this, our common ground

When I opened the files on my computer to retrieve this lyric I found this note about the day this song was completed:

Sept.7, 2003 4:22 AM Timothy (our first grandson) was blessed today; David was baptized 29 years ago today; and all of our children left for college this week.

Redefined.

IDAHO WIND

Safety. We fret about it, especially lately, what with terrorist activity, earthquakes and tsunamis, job losses, stock losses, and steadily increasing divorce rates. We long for that feeling of comfort and security we had, if we were lucky, when we were very small. It’s hard to find.

We can remove guns from our public buildings; we can stand in eternal lines while they scan for bombs and knives and nail clippers in our purses; we can store our food in the basement and pack a 72 Hour Emergency Kit to put by the back door; and this might bring a sense of preparedness and some security. But the deepest, surest safety lies in feeling confident in the people around us.

Constancy. Sister to Dependability. Something in my soul longs for steadiness; for just the right amount of repetition to make me feel like a warm bed and a down comforter and a hot meal at a familiar table are just around the corner.

Between kindergarten and second grade we moved five times. Two thousand five hundred miles. We left our oldest sister, and our German Shorthair Pointer, Schatze. We left the warm dry summer nights of Idaho and replaced them with hot wet, sticky breezeless nights in Pittsburgh. Our houses changed, our father left more and more often, we changed schools every year for the first three years, and to top it off I knew for positive sure my first grade teacher hated me.

So when school ended for the summer and we loaded into the station wagon pointing west, I felt like I was going home. Where home was safe.

My mother had six sisters who all made their homes in the west; all of them in Idaho in fact, except Aunt Edna who lived in Salt Lake City UT. Six sisters and two brothers, one of whom died before I was born. Her brothers Marion and Daniel had died before mom was born. Lots of mouths to feed in those days.

My mother’s sisters all lived in humble homes, half of them farmhouses, but their doors were always swung open wide when we came. There were always enough blankets and pillows for sleepy children; enough bread in the bread box; enough milk and eggs and home bottled peaches. I never slept better than on the lawn in an Idaho summer night, the stars twinkling in the pure clear indigo sky like silver glitter spilled on a velvet skirt; with the shadows of dishtowels hung on the clothes line flicking in the moonlight; and a chorus of throbbing cicadas pulsing against our whispered conversations. It felt delicious and cozy and safe.

Years passed and our lives shifted. I married and busied my life with children and music and service. Drove kids to art and dance and piano lessons; worked in our church and neighborhood communities; served as PTA president…all the good exhausting busyness of a blessed life. But once in a while we would pause and make the trip to Idaho; to meet the Aunts for a birthday lunch, or to soak a worm in an Idaho stream.

Always…always…it felt like going home.

When Mom’s oldest sister, Ruth, celebrated her 90th birthday, I wanted to somehow express to her my gratitude for the safety. I wanted her to know how important her steadiness was to a little girl in a shifting world. All of my aunts, really, represented such constancy to me and my siblings.

Gratitude always begins with awareness. And so I began remembering, in detail, what it was that was so powerful to me. I realized that what was so comforting and safe to me could be construed as boring to someone else. Blessedly, eternally boring. Unchanging and unchanged. Though at 90 she no longer lived in that little white farmhouse on the border of Blackfoot Idaho, I wanted Aunt Ruth to know that the steadiness remained locked in my heart and my memory. And I wanted to thank her.

So this is how I thanked her; her and Aunt Mae and Becky; and my angel aunts who had gone to heaven: Ruby, Edna, and Mary. I sat on the couch in my cousin Marilyn’s house surrounded by some of the people Ruth loved and who loved her, and I played this little song. The writer part of me wanted to find something that represented the constancy they gave us. The most constant thing about Idaho, just about anyone will tell you, is the wind.

                              Idaho Wind

This blacktop unravels here on the outskirts of town

Dust rises from gravel like the trail of a jet going down

We pull up in the shade of this tree that is ageless

It’s never not been here, it waves its leaves at us

The screen door slaps open, I smell toast cooking

Aunt Ruth’s in her kitchen, the curtains are flapping

Here in the window, here in the Idaho wind

CHORUS:

Idaho Wind sweeps through the desert and up through the sage and the pine

Idaho Wind sweetens the sheets and the pillows that hang on the line

And the willows bend low, and she is whispering through them

Deep waters flow and she’s calling me to them

Sure this is home, Sure as the Idaho Wind

II.

I’ve come here forever, certain of what I would find

Though lately I travel through memories locked in my mind

There’s the shell of a truck we pretended to drive in

The old barn our three little kittens were born in

We’re Indian maidens, our arrowheads hidden

We’re pioneer women, come searching for freedom

Our shawls drawn around us, here in the Idaho wind

CHORUS 2X

Calling me home, home to the Idaho Wind.

We no longer make the trip to that farmhouse. They sold it after Uncle Wayne died. But if I close my eyes I can feel the changing music of the station wagon tires as they leave the concrete of the freeway. The pitch lowers when the car wheels hit asphalt; then the asphalt turns to gravel and the gravel to sand and then, in a cloud of dust that swoops over our car like Marilyn Monroe’s dress, we are there….parked under the eternal tree, beside the barn and the old red truck sitting lifeless near the haystack…just a hop-skip-and a-jump from the sand dunes where our native Native American ancestors had roamed centuries before us. The aromas of Aunt Ruth’s cooking waft through the black netting on the wooden screen door. Aunt Ruth comes out to greet us, wiping her hands on her flowered apron as she hobbles, the screen door slapping like a horse whip behind her, her silvery hair swooped elegantly atop her head. I can sense my mother’s heart rate slowing to a steady rhythm, her blood softly throbbing through her veins like the creeks and rivers that pulse under low hanging willows. Safe - solid - sure.

Sure, this is home….sure as the Idaho wind.

ICE CREAM

I do like ice cream. Mmmmm. I went through a Blue Bunny Chocolate Roasted Almond phase. It reminded us of the old Isaly’s ice cream from Pittsburgh, and we couldn’t get enough. (Ah, you may be thinking…but you did get enough!) We had such a passion for the Isaly’s Toasted Almond Fudge we gave it a nick-name. We’d call Gram late at night, if our freezer was empty and ask “Got any T.A.F.?” She usually had some. All yummy chocolate almond ice cream was known as T.A.F., regardless of the brand.

This song, however, is not really and truly about “ice cream” and “baseball”. I call it my song of personal liberation.

I’ve fought the weight-monster all my life. Wicked wrestling, where I rarely win but always come away exhausted. I really don’t like myself on a diet. I don’t like other people either. And they tend to not like me (it often goes that way…people won’t like you if you don’t like them.) Therefore, I swore off diets. Combine swearing off diets with the little girl who came from a family situation where we needed to ask before we got a glass of milk; the family where we hovered around the wax paper on the countertop that had just been loaded with little globs of no-bake cookies. We poked our little fingers between the cookies and devoured every little stray piece of oatmeal and chocolate. We certainly did not starve, but when I finally got married, which is about he same time as I grew into an adult, I got all giddy when I thought about the freedom I had to just go on over there to that refrigerator and open it up. Sadly, I still get that little thrill, like it still shocks me that I can go ahead and have what I want when I want it.

We were talking about this last month when we went to the movies with the Eskelsens. We had a gig in St George and had stayed over at Brent and Dixie Hills fabulous house there. Had sort of a retreat the day after our gig. Since it was cold and raining we decided to go to a movie. I told Carla I still get such pleasure out of realizing that I can get popcorn if I want. When we were kids we were lucky to get to see a movie now and then. Popcorn was out of the question. I feel like I married some sort of king (actually, I did!) because we can afford to get popcorn at the movies…AND a drink…and I can fill my fridge with ice cream and eat it at 2 am if I want.

So thinking about all this freedom also made me realize that Dave did not get the better end of this deal, marrying me. Poor Dave. He did not marry a princess. But we have had a grand old time sitting on the bleachers at the ballgames of all four of our children, spitting sunflower seeds and yelling encouragement to the boys and girls and, occasionally, a suggestion to the umpire. And Dave does not mind when he occasionally comes home from work and I am still in my pj’s on the couch with my guitar. The gift he gives me is that I do not mind that he comes home and sees me still in my pj’s. How many wives can say that? Really, now!

Dave could have married someone with a little more…oh, what’s the word…hmmm…discipline/foresight/social awareness. He could have. But he didn’t. And, strange as it sounds, he likes me. AND…he’s taken a liking to ice cream.

A couplet in this song could be my mantra for life:

Tomorrow today is going to be yesterday

And I’d like to like where I’ve been

(I felt pretty groovy putting tomorrow, today and yesterday in the same line and having it make sense)

A delightful comment was posted on this blog a few days ago. It came from our dear friend Becky Bradbury Evans, who lives in Virginia with her good husband and charming little boys. Here’s what Becky said:

FYI- We were listening to your CD in the car on the way to church today and Jack never usually listens to my music, usually just zones or talks to himself and asks if he can watch movies. He piped up from the back seat, "Mommers, why do the people not let her have ice cream for dinner?" I didn't quite know what to say ;)

Gotta love it!

Here’s a recording of this little ditty, followed by the lyric, from my album PONTIAC ROCKET.

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          Ice Cream

I’ve taken a liking to ice cream
If not for this I would be thinner
But now that I’m grown no one can tell me
I can’t have ice cream for dinner

I’ve taken a liking to ball games
Long ones, that go extra innings
Where I yell at the ump, go numb on the rump
And it doesn’t much matter who’s winning

There was a time I’d call this undisciplined
Hey, that’s OK for back then
But tomorrow today is going to be yesterday
And I’d like to like where I’ve been

So I like to hang out in my PJ’s
This makes it easy to daydream
And I like the guy who also likes ballgames
And though he’s quite normal
He kinda likes me
And he’s taken a liking to ice cream

FIRSTBORN

I had been having trouble sleeping at night. Though I was able to fall asleep at my “normal” bedtime (midnight, I have discovered, is not normal, by the way) I ended up suddenly awakening just after 2 am. Every night. My eyes would pop open, I’d stare into the black and realize it was not morning, then turn my head to the clock to see that it was the same minute…something like 2:21…every single night. I don’t think mid-night waking up, in itself, is particularly unusual. What seemed unusual for me were the heavy feelings and crazy dark thoughts that accompanied the waking. That’s what wore me out. That’s what did me in. After weeks and weeks of sleepless nights my defenses buckled and I was a wreck. My muscles throbbed, my head hurt, my heart raced and radiated an ache that was as physical as it was emotional. When sunlight came, and the duties of the day, I was able to function, though I wonder in retrospect how well anyone could function under those circumstances. But those nights! How I dreaded those nights!

I bore all this silently, as silent as dysfunction can be, I guess. Truly, I’d like to see a flashback of the reality from the outside rather than the inside. We are rarely capable of completely hiding our pain, though I thought I suffered alone.

One night, after glancing at the familiar time stamp at my bedside, I lay staring into the space of our room; closed my eyes to escape, only to visit the swirling lights of the under-lids of my eyes. Have you ever closed your eyes and really tried to look at what was there?

Then the thoughts came. It’s thoughts that wear horns, not demons. They mocked me, taunting me for thinking I was capable of raising children, hissing that my kids would be better off without me. They could keep the steadiness of their dad, but really, shouldn’t they lose the mom? How crazy is that? I remember asking a friend once if she ever felt that way…if she ever felt that maybe her kids would be better off without her? I would not have asked the question if I hadn’t thought maybe everyone felt a little bit that way sometimes. So I was surprised when her response was so sure: “Absolutely not! No one could possibly love my kids, or know them, like I do.”

Well, that helped!

So on this particular night, at 2:21, I awoke once again to the darkness. My chest rose and fell in deeper waves as I lay there, tears rolling into the cups of my ears. I looked over at David, who was sleeping peacefully. Strangely comforted by seeing him sleeping, I rolled off the side of the bed and buried my head in my pillow. Since Guillain Barre Syndrome overcame me six years ago, leaving its residual peripheral neuropathy in my lower extremities, I have been unable to kneel. But back then, on this sleepless night, I understood the energy exchange that came with kneeling. We bow our heads to receive energy from above, and it pushes the negative energy out from the soles of our feet. I prayed for this to happen. But it swirled inside, like a whirlpool, in spite of my pleadings.

“Where are you?”

I wrinkled my forehead and exhaled the words. I have never felt too far from God, my whole life. That’s a gift. But this was a Gethsemane.

As I knelt there, wondering if He was there - wondering why, if He was there, he didn’t manifest himself to me - I remember thinking about a Sunday School lesson from years before. Strange, I know. But God moves in mysterious ways. I remembered Steve Geary, our teacher, starting his lesson with a question: “What does firstborn mean?”

Class members answered: firstborn son of Mary; firstborn son of God the Father, in spirit and flesh. I consciously wondered why such a memory would come to my mind at that time.

Then I understood. We usually get heavenly answers through the vehicle of other humans, and Steve Geary’s voice was the path for this message.

I realized, there at the side of my bed, that whatever I was experiencing, I was not alone in it, and this is why: It had been felt before. The weight of whatever it was had been hefted onto the shoulders of another, and He had carried it, along with the weight of all my other sins and sufferings, before I experienced it. He had carried it with sorrow, and with grace, and He knew firsthand what I was feeling. He might not take it away - but he sure knew how it felt. There is a magnetism in shared experience – we feel bound somehow to each other because of it. Holocaust survivors feel it with each other. High school classmates feel it with each other decades later. Cancer survivors; widows and widowers; mothers of autistic children…we identify with each other and feel at ease because perhaps we feel understood without having to give long explanations.

So it was with me and my Lord.

There was no instant miraculous change in the pattern for me. I woke at 2:21 again the next night. But I never did feel quite so alone. I was led to seek help. I found a good doctor. I talked to people I loved. Eventually, almost without noticing, I found myself awakening to the sound of the early chorus of birds outside my window one morning, having slept through the night.

Beyond the great, almost unspeakably great, gift of the Atonement…beyond the freedom it affords my soul and the hope it gives all of us…the sweet gift that our Savior handed us in the palms of his blood soaked hands was the shared experience. He knows us by heart.

Firstborn

I don’t know where it comes from

I don’t know where it goes

Comes on like a whisper

Then a hurricane blows

My head spinning round

My heart full of thunder

Then the storm rages on

And I feel so alone

There’s a pain in my heart

With a life of its own

And it’s taking me down

It’s pulling me under

Then strained by the struggle and stained by the tears

I fall on my knees to the floor

And I cry to my Lord, “Don’t you know what I’m feeling”

And He answers, He’s felt this before

CHORUS:

Firstborn of the Father, Lord of the Heavens,

Who came here to show us the way

Firstborn of Mary, laid on a cradle of hay

The first perfect light to conquer the darkness

The first at the garden, the first to go in

He loves me with His offering

My own sin and suffering

Were first born

Firstborn

By Him

Bridge: So stay with me Jesus, you’ve already born this

I know you have felt just the same

When you knelt in the garden and you carried this burden

You offered it all in my name

REPEAT CHORUS

Becky Garrett sings a beautiful version of this song, on her own album, "Gentle" and on the EFY album, Living the Legacy. It is available, with a slightly altered chorus, in a Best of EFY songbook as well. You can hear my version, as well as all the other songs on Sleepy Little Town, by scrolling down to the Music Player below.

THE WILLOW TREE

Though there is one more original song on the Sleepy Little Town album, I am sort of (well, actually more than “sort of”) emotionally spent. I’ll try to revisit the writing of the song Firstborn tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep.

For now, I’ll share with you a song few people have ever heard.

The Willow Tree was written for my daughter Kate. Not about her…but for her. Kate is my third child, the one we brought home in a Christmas stocking on Christmas Eve 1983. She was born on Winter Solstice, Dec 21st, around 8 in the evening; on the cusp of the changing of the seasons. She had a head full of lovely dark hair. My friend Janet Cox stopped by the next day to visit in the hospital. I was holding my new baby Kate and Janet commented on her dark hair as she came closer. “Oh, it looks like she had a little baby powder in her hair”, Janet reached out to brush it off. But there was no baby powder in Kate’s hair. It was…well, it was Kate’s hair! Kate has a patch of platinum hair at the crown of her head. I call it her dusting of snow, since she came the first day of winter. People think she bleaches it, but actually it was God who did that. It is part of her distinct look.

Before Kate ever talked she sang. She hummed the tunes to the lullabies I sang to her. I remember her humming herself to sleep in her car seat. Her pitch was dead-on. She came with a gift of music. She has many other gifts as well; she’s bright, she’s athletic; she’s hilariously funny; she’s tenderhearted and compassionate. She is a beautiful guitar player, and a gifted teacher. She would probably shake her head at this right now, the gifted teacher part, because she is currently teaching in a Middle School in Houston TX , on assignment for Teach for America. She is in the last half of her second year. Whew! What a job she has. I’ll just tell you that she has confiscated knives, seen dozens of kids hauled off in police cars, watched a school bus go up in flames in the school parking lot, and had three i-phones stolen. But she persists. She learned persistence early on, and it was really drummed into her character when she served a mission in Hong Kong for 18 months. She has degrees in Linguistics and International Studies and a minor in Chinese. She teaches ESL students in Houston…and there is not a single Asian in her school.

Anyway, I wrote The Willow Tree after we watched Kate perform in one of her high school musicals. She had a couple solos and duets, and her stage presence was beautiful. But that voice was what got to all of us. She has great range, and depth. I made her record this one night, against her wishes, when she was in high school. She might not be too happy I am posting it here.

The Willow Tree is a random song I just felt like writing, about a willow tree, but not really about a willow tree. It’s really about a once-upon-a-love heartache, where the singer waits under the anonymous shelter of a willow for her love to return. I’ve always been drawn to willows; all willows; the ones that caught my fishing line along the riverbanks in Idaho; and the large trailing ones that hovered over me in my pretending days. What a great place to play, under the canopy of a willow tree. I think of willows as heartbroken trees - like they tried to be strong oaks with sturdy branches aiming toward heaven, but they could not sustain the stretch. Sometimes all of us are willow-ish.

Here’s the lyric:

The Willow Tree

Sweet is the water flow
Out of the melting snow
In the heart of Spring

Green is the morning light
From the underside
Of the willow tree

Now that the warm has come
I watch her stretch her arms
As if she rises from sleeping
She may have tried it once
Holding her branches up
But they keep falling down weeping

Soon, soon you’ll come back to me
Back where you planted me
By the willow tree

And here’s Kate, when she was 17 years old, singing it. I’ve also included a couple other songs she recorded after one of our album sessions last summer. Kate sang harmony on my last two albums. If I am really, really lucky she comes home for Thanksgiving and sings in my Christmas concerts with me! Kate recorded these two songs, Baby Mine and Summertime, for her Gram’s birthday present (Gram is her biggest fan). These are one time through recordings, with no edits, and yes, that's her on the guitar, too:

Go To FileFactory.com

YOU WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS

She had been swept up to heaven on a hot August day. Her spirit left her body at the roadside, by a mangle of metal. I think she must have paused on the way up to peek in on her son and his little family in the clouds. She had driven us to the Saginaw Airport before the sun rose through the Michigan misty morning; embraced us at the gate; kissed the cheeks of each of her grandchildren; stood at the large spanse of window separating us from her as we walked out to the plane; stood and waved until we were in the air. I still see the picture of her waving as we lifted up and drifted away. She never made it back to her cottage.

The phone was ringing as I walked in the door from the garage. “Hi Dad!” I said, “How are you?” Dave’s dad had remained in Pittsburgh when Helen and all of us went to the cottage that last week. Helen had finally built her dream haven on the shores of Lake Huron. The kids had splashed in the cool water and crafted sandcastles all week. On the rainy days we drove into East Tawas City and shopped. We nibbled on fudge between our shots at Hubie’s Miniature Golf. Watched VCR movies late at night in the little TV room. Pretended to be Col. Mustard, Miss Scarlet and Professor Plum in a nightly Clue tournament on the dining room table. Our last night there we had invited the aunts and their families to a Taco fest at the cottage. Helen’s sisters owned cottages up and down the beach from hers. Helen had never had a taco in her 64 years of life, so we introduced her to them. It was her last meal.

“Cori, is Dave there?” Dad was gentle and quiet. I handed the phone to Dave, who had just walked in with some luggage. I watched his eyes widen, his brow purse, his shoulders curl in as his eyes searched upward and his legs gave out beneath him. He slid down the front of the refrigerator door and cried, “Oh my God, No Dad, No!” I watched and heard him as panic rose. I had known Dave for 17 years and had never once heard him take the name of the Lord in vain. I knew something had to be terribly, terribly wrong. His family uses the Lord’s name casually, not out of purposeful disrespect by any means, but I know that is what he grew up with. When he committed his life to the Lord as an adult he changed his language. So I knew, when the child rose up through his tummy, then his heart, then his voice, that something bad must have happened. It had.

We boarded another plane and flew toward the rising sun. Stood with our young children as they tried to sing Love One Another at the small service in the funeral home. A larger mass had been held in Michigan, but we had an intimate final service there in Pittsburgh where she is buried. It was the first powerful dose of pain for our children. They carry it still, like a badge of initiation into adult matters. Annie sobbed to her older siblings: “It’s not fair! You got her longer than I did!” She was 9. John was 15.

The following months were difficult ones. David grieved silently. He became painfully quiet and his eyes had lost some of their sparkle. Worried about him; about our kids; about Dave’s family, I was unable to sleep at night. The kids struggled through school and adjusting to living in this new house we had just built. We had moved the furniture out when we went to Michigan that summer so they could finish the hardwood floors. When the call came the echoes of our cries kept bouncing back to our ears from the empty space; off the rock of the fireplace and the Hickory wood floors. It seemed we couldn’t stop the echoing.

Someone told me that we would need to spend a Christmas in our new house to make it feel like home. So I worked at making it feel like the old house did, using the same decorations, burning the same candles, playing the same music. Still, when everyone else was asleep, I wandered out to the family room and flicked on the colored lights of the Christmas tree, lit the fire in the fireplace and tried to calm my spirit. I missed the old space of home. I missed my neighbors. I missed the mindless comfort of knowing things were constant and unchanging. I missed Helen.

One winter morning, after I had drifted off to sleep on the couch in the family room, I awoke just as the rosy light of an early winter sunrise splashed across the snow in the wooded hollow next to our house. I looked at the reflection of Christmas tree lights in the window as the sun rose up, over the mountains to the east of us, chasing shadows down toward the Great Salt Lake. It was early; earlier than my body likes to rise. But it was exactly the time of day Helen loved most. If she had been able to visit for just a minute, she would have stood there at the window and watched the birthing of the morning. She would have whispered to me, “Oh, how I loved this.”

Thus began this song:

You Would Have Loved This

The winter left her blanket here this morning
A soft and gentle coverlet of white
Unfolded in the shadows of the dawn
It sparkled in the early morning light

You would have loved this
You would have loved this
This was your favorite time of day

The greenery is laid across the mantle
And ornaments are hanging on the tree
And cradled in the windowsill’s a candle
A beacon in the night to call you back to me

You would have loved this
You would have loved this
This was your favorite time of year

And though I understand one day again I’ll see you
I long to touch your hand, hear your voice, feel you…

You would have loved this
You would have loved this
Oh, how you loved.


You Would Have Loved This was written on guitar, but it is the magical piano work of my friend and studio engineer, Mark Stephenson, that makes this song speak. You can hear Mark’s playing here. He could feel what I meant to say in the song, and he translated it into such a lovely arrangement. I hear the sun rising in the quiet of the morning in the opening strains of the song. They set me right back on the couch of the family room of this house I have since grown to love. The song is therapy to me, and it is peace.

My publisher in LA is really good at his job. Very skilled, and devoted to the songs in his catalogue. He has pitched this tune with great passion. A few years ago he called and said an artist in Finland was recording it. I Googled her name. Here’s what came up:

Tarja Turunen was at the time an international superstar in a band called Nightwish…a heavy metal band ~. I called Justin in LA:

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “Please tell me you are joking!” (No offense to heavy metal rockers out there...it's just that I'm a humble folk singer)

In the world of recording and songwriting, if a song has been released on any public recording, then any artist is entitled to record that song, as long as they apply for a mechanical license and pay their royalties. So I was quite worried that this heavy metal thrasher would murder my song, taking away the sweetness of story behind it for whomever heard it. I just could not imagine it!

Turns out Tarja Turunen had left Nightwish, and the heavy metal recording scene. She turned to classical music instead. I know, who does that kind of thing? But apparently she did it pretty well. The song was released as the first single from her Christmas Album. It ended up at #5 on the charts. The album went platinum in sales. She performed it live and on television and sang it with great tenderness and proper emotion. You can hear Tarja sing it here:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePddnctayEc

Or you can see her sing it live here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW7iwxTBjk8

The introduction, in Finnish, is Tarja paying tribute to her mother, who had died a couple years ago. It warms my heart to think that this tune connected her to her mother as it connected, and still connects me, to my mother-in-law.

Two days ago I got another royalty check in the mail. They are not huge, something less than a $100, but they come regularly. It was royalty payment from performances in Russia. Tarja introduces it in Finnish; she sings it in English; but somehow they understand it in Russian. Thank you, Lord, for letting me speak the universal language of music.

Other artists have also covered this song. You can go to www.YouTube.com and search You Would Have Loved This to see the variety.  Of course I suspect this is something only a writer would do.

POSTSCRIPT: Thank you to Eressa for her comment below, and for the link to her blog about Tarja Turunen.  I feel very honored to have had Tarja perform this song with such grace.  By the way, Tarja is still an international superstar, and she hasn't left the metal scene at all, but continues combining both her classical career along with the metal world.  Thanks Eressa.

DOWN THE ROAD TO HOME

Down the Road to Home

Looking back I can recall
A powdered sugar snow is falling
I’m seventeen, it’s Christmas Eve
And I can hear my childhood call, so
Out into the night I go, bundled in a woven memory
Up the hill and down the road to home

I used to know this place by heart
I could close my eyes and find it
We moved away, I shut the door
And left the little girl behind
What causes now this wall to break
An avalanche of tears and memory
Up the hill and down the road to home

Echoing across the yard is girlish laughter
Every step grows more familiar now
The window has a frosted pane
The backyard is a wonderland
And I am eight years old again somehow

I sit a while beneath the tree
That used to be my best companion
An evergreen, her branches lean
Against the wind and hold me in
And breathing deep I know this air
I’m planted here, there’ll always be
A part of me that knows the road to home

Go up the hill and down the road to home

Here’s the thing: I love to sing, and I love to write, and I know that in both categories I am pretty good but not great. But here’s another thing: It’s OK, and here’s why:

When I sing a song like Down the Road to Home, I get to relive a moment in this amazing state of humanness I am currently experiencing, and it does something almost indefinable to me. Like, if my life was a bolt of fabric, the thread of autobiographical songs is the basting stitch that holds the pieces together while I am designing the dress. It holds the past to the present without overtaking it. Writing and performing with sincerity allows me to go back over and over again, without being insane. At least not completely insane.

The first line of this song lets me to jump almost immediately into the present tense of the past. Words like “Looking back….” allow one to do such things. There is no “was” in the rest of the song.

Truth is, I was seventeen on this particular night. It was close to Christmas, though I don’t remember if it was absolutely Christmas Eve. My sisters and I had argued about something, who knows what, and I took my usual emotional path of escape. I walked out. It was very late, and mom was working, and I “ran away”. My poor sisters! Since I was very young I reacted to anger or hurt by running away from home. Even when I was adolescent and had absolutely no intention of truly leaving for more than 25 minutes, my sisters ran after me: “Oh Cori, please don’t go! We’re sorry, please, please, please come back!” Thinking of it at this moment it cinches my heart to theirs all over again. Who would not want the people they love begging them to never leave?

This night, when my toes were hanging over the edge of childhood, I needed to be alone with my tears. We had moved from the home of my childhood innocence the summer Dad disappeared. I was 14 then. We had moved into a first floor apartment at the bottom of East Bruceton Road. The town we lived in was called Pleasant Hills, because that is what it was: a bunch of pleasant rolling hills with ribbons of asphalt running across them and sturdy brick houses planted deep in the lots that lined the roads. It was snowing, a sifting kind of snow, like powdered sugar that is shaken through a sieve. I walked in the moonlight toward the sidewalks of my early youth; past the Municipal building and up East Bruceton Road toward Pleasant Hills Elementary School. Stood on the corner pretending to wait for the crossing guard to guide me over to the other side. Listened to the Presbyterian Church bells play a Christmas Hymn at midnight. Felt the cold wet of tears stripe my cheeks as I walked, my unsheltered hands tucked under my arm pits and over my quivering heart. My feet pointed down the road toward home: my Home, where someone else lived now. Past the rock Library and the Methodist Church, past Richter’s house on the corner, past my ex-best friend Cheryl’s house, and Principal Stoops’ house and finally to Kotsko’s house where we had been invited that one summer to their niece’s birthday party and they gave each one of us our very own upside-down ice-cream cone clowns. Next door. The gate to the castle, the hallway to my past. I was home.

I stood in the driveway and looked up into the branches of the old maple tree, filling with layers of snow now. I had climbed that tree before we moved, up to the very top, where I discovered a hollow bowl of trunk, like a sacred cup, filled with rainwater. It was a summer of discovery, though I don’t know exactly what it was I discovered. I wrote a love note to the world, on a piece of blue lined school paper. Folded it into the triangular shape of a “football” like we flicked with our fingers toward each other at the lunch table in Middle School. Drew a peace sign on the front, then climbed that tall maple and left it in the dip at the top, determining that it would eventually disintegrate and infuse my love through the air to all people.

I sat on the stoop by the front door, quiet; so quiet I could hear the snow landing on the branches of the evergreen near the kitchen window. The pine tree looked so much smaller than I had remembered. When I was very little I would hunker down in the dry pine needles under her branches and pretend I was a pioneer woman trying to keep my family warm in a winter blizzard. That tree was such a safe place for me. Crazy as it sounds, I tried to crawl under the tree that night, mind you this was after midnight, right there near the front door of someone else’s house. I did not fit, and the snow of the thick green branches flowed down onto my back like an avalanche. Instead, I wrapped my arms around the trunk of our Crabapple tree. Such a tree every child should have! We pretended for hours and hours in that tree. I broke my arm, one of three different times, swinging from that tree. I hugged it like it was breathing and I needed its warmth.

The back yard, layered into the rolling hillside on three levels, took my footsteps sweetly, welcoming my feet to pierce her virgin snow. I paused at the kitchen door to look in the window. Single paned windows reflected my frozen image, framed with geometric crystals of frost on the corners. It was too dark and I could not see inside. Oh, I ached to see inside. I looked past my reflection to the small girl who used to live there; to her sisters and her brothers and her parents and a time when there were no long term worries, just the wondering questions of what’s for dinner and will we get to go to Jefferson Swim Club this summer?

I sat in the snow down by where the incinerator used to be, on the lowest level of the back yard, until my tears were spent and I noticed my bum was cold. Somehow, I think, an angel kissed me on the forehead and told me to head back home.

Home.

Home, where my sisters prayed I was ok; where mom arrived from a long day’s work, tired and yet loving; where they heated a cup of chicken noodle soup on the stove top when I returned. I must have needed to touch, one last time, the place where I had incubated, where I had been warmed, even with all the awful that nested with the beautiful. I needed to re-visit it so I could move on, so I could let go.

I used to know that place by heart, and when I hear or sing this song, in some sublimely intimate way, I still do.

Note to anyone reading this blog: I apologize for writing such long entries where I dramatically over-use the word "I".  Truth be known, these posts exhaust me.  It is going on 3 am and I have completely thrown askew any normal sense of time since I started this Lent writing.  I write for myself, and perhaps some distant grand-daughter who may one day happen upon one of my recordings and wonder what her grandmother thought when she was writing her songs.  You are invited to join me in the trip down memory lane, though I don't expect it will be all that compellingly interesting to anyone other than me, and maybe my sisters. It's just that I made a promise to do this; so I am. I had not realized, before focusing so intently on my albums, that these songs were so heavy! I promise, after Lent, I will write something light and humorous and benign.  Maybe check back then.

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.