"MY MISTAKE"

I could hear them coming before they reached the front door, their treble clef voices trying to out-rank each other, the three of them chattering all at once. The door swung open and a waft of winter-weary air pushed out from the house, allowing Sophie, Parker and their friend Henry to enter with a crisp hint of Spring at their feet. Little Parker, four years old and desperately wanting to be seven, raised his voice. I listened from the kitchen.
"I broke this. Hey guys...I broke this! My mistake."
Before I could make my way out to see what he was talking about, they retrieved whatever they had come for and the door thumped shut behind them. I watched the reflection of their skipping forms gallop across the kitchen window.

As I finished the dishes, my eyes scanned the floor full of little kid treasures scattered across the playroom. Parker's home-made zoo of upside down wire baskets scotch-taped together with his menagerie of stuffed animals tucked into each cage; Little Ruby's princess dresses and pale pink heels strewn out from the dress-up box; Sophie's crayons scattered (at Ruby's hands) across the carpet, her thick magenta jump rope nesting among them like a sun-bathing snake: these were evidence of childhood pleasures.
One day a week I have the privilege of caring for my Connors grandkids the whole live-long day. I get to pour milk on their cereal, draw pictures and strap little dollies into pretend strollers. I kiss boo-boos and change diapers and wipe little noses when they're sick. I get to make up stories; get to read stories; get to live stories that can be told at the dinner table on Sunday evenings when we recount the charming moments of our week.
When John and Ashley decided that Ash would take the job teaching at Knowlton Elementary School this year, we all agreed to do what we could to make it work without too much disruption. Sophie is in first grade and loves having her mom right there with her. This morning she scratched her leg and wanted a band-aid. The box in the cupboard was empty.

"Soph, I have one in my desk at school. I'll get you one there." Ash asked if that was OK and Sophie nodded her head. They climbed into the van and drove off together. This will be a sweet story Sophie can one day tell her own children: how she went to school with the Fourth Grade teacher who was also her mom.
I offered to take Thursdays as my tending day. After a few weeks of tending at my own house I decided I needed to re-think things. When I'm at home I hear my home-work screaming at me. Things I have to write, create, fix, cook, mend and clean. They are very loud and obnoxious voices there at my house. And since Ruby will consider napping if she has her own crib, I decided to let go of my own tasks and completely give Thursdays (and occasional Fridays) to my little ones.
The tiny angel who sits on my shoulder whispered reassurance to me, telling me this is a good thing, everything at home can wait. I knew from the start that the Lord had led me to this decision. Because I decided to let this day be a gift my grandkids and I give each other, I can feel the seams of our family fabric cinching together, tightening our sense of devotion, comfort, mutual respect and pure love. I'm not just tending. I am building a family.
I remember driving one of my Young Women home one night after Mutual. "You have anything fun planned this week?" I asked.
"Ugh. Not really. We have to go to our grandparents."
"Isn't that fun?" I asked, somewhat surprised by her negativity.
She shrugged her shoulders and gazed out the window. "They never have liked us. We were always a bother when we were little. So now that we're teenagers they want us to have this warm fuzzy relationship with them and it just isn't there."
I hear that conversation over and over in my head.
I heard it at 3 am last night when I was just not sleeping well and I knew I’d be handling little ones for eight hours as soon as the sun rose. Its a different stewardship when you're not the actual mom.
It re-sets my brain to the starting place, reminding me what matters most in this old world. I am grateful for such voices in my head.
Right now I look around at these scattered toys while I tell myself to finish writing so I can clean up before Ash gets home... but what I hear in my head is that little interaction at the front door a few minutes ago. I hear Parker stretching his four year old voice to be heard over the first graders he's playing with. I hear him call out,
"I broke this. My mistake!"
It's kind of funny to hear a pipsqueak say "My mistake."
Funny and beautiful. It tells me that someone in his life has said it enough times for him to imitate. It makes me sort of weepy, sitting here on a typical sort of day, doing the sort of stuff I had done for decades in my own home.
I pause and close my eyes, thanking the Lord that these children have people in their lives who will acknowledge their mistakes; who will stop long enough to even notice them, who will admit them but not wallow in them. You can tell a lot about a kid's regular environment when you spend real chunks of time with them.
I glance at the colorful pleasures gifted to these little ones, spread across the floor beside me, bestowed on them by people who love them. And I am assured that the truest treasures are uncollectable. One nestles safely inside that little boy who can comfortably acknowledge: “My mistake,” and then happily go off to play.


The First Graders- Sophie & Henry

Park and Rubes



Parker, Sophie & Ruby



WOTD- RUSHING

The randomly generated word today is RUSHING (trying to get my brain muscles toned for Lent Writing starting on March 9)

RUSHING

We stood in the middle of the river, my old PF Flyer tenny runners clinging to my sockless feet, the laces knotted together where they had broken from overuse, the chilly water of the Snake rushing around my little girl ankles as I stood atop a water-worn rock in the shallows. Mom was slightly downstream. I watched as she raised her right arm and flicked her spinning rod like a sassy wave to a flirty boy. The weighted line squealed through the Idaho air. She instinctively drew the pole back when she felt the sinkers approaching the spot where she wanted the bait to land. The pitch of the plunk, when the metal hit the water, indicated the depth or stillness of the pool and the potential for a nice deep hole. I tried to imitate my mother. Tried to wave my arm with the same grace, to command the direction of the line, and stop it where I wanted. More often than not Mom ended up having to wade on out to the willows hanging over the water at the river bend and try to retrieve my line, searching the weave of willow limbs for the squirm of a worm. When she found it she followed the translucent thread out of the mess I’d put it in, and when it was finally free she tossed it out into the water. I could feel the jiggle of freedom tugging at my line and for a second I imagined it was a fish making my pole dance rather than my newly freed sinkers making their way over the rocks on the river bottom.

Before sunrise Mom and I had ventured out to the river while the others slept, the slick bottoms of last year’s gym shoes slipping in the dewy grasses that led to the bend between campgrounds F and G near Island Park, Idaho. My whole childhood, and even half of my adulthood, I lived under the impression that that particular fishing spot was known as Effergee. It wasn’t until I was teaching my own children to fish that I realized they were saying: “Let’s meet at F or G” when Mom and her sisters were making their fishing plans.

Once in the river Mom and I stood in silence, the only sounds being the rushing water, the rustling of a deep summer Idaho breeze in the willows near the river, and the hawks and owls nested in the tall pines deeper into the dry spaces. Occasionally a crisp new sound rang out when a critter made itself known, or when the sun finally rose and hit a certain spot in its traverse across the cerulean sky calling the fish to the surface for a fresh hatch of flies. Then the fish would start jumping, proving their existence despite their mysterious neglect of our juicy worms underwater, their entrances and exits making an earthy sort of Xylophonic song in the bass cleff range. That’s when the fly fishermen came out and invaded our quiet spot.

But in those wee tiny hours before the grass blades dried in the Idaho heat, the place was all ours. We traveled up and down stream, finding an accommodating trunk of a fallen tree on which we could rest, our threaded bait strategically planted in a mysterious bottom spot while we waited. Once situated we could cock our reels and sit a spell. That’s when we’d reach into our pockets for a refresher. My pocket usually bore one of two treasures, available in my childhood only in the summer on our trips to Idaho: Big Hunk or Chick-O-Stix. To this day both of those treats make me want to go fishing. Maybe my successes on the stream were due to a tinge of sweetness lacing my worms in those days. Whatever the cause may have been, the fish generally responded and through the morning we would call back and forth to each other with our Indian whoops and hollers: “wooo – wooo - wooo” . If I could write out music I could show you the pitches of the call, the last “wooo” rising in pitch a third above the fist two calls. Like the birds that wake me on bright summer mornings from the woody hollow outside my bedroom window now, the call was co

nsistent and melodic and it meant one thing. We’d hooked and landed a fish. This was the language of the river: Silence carrying the fullest portion of the serenade, with the rhythm section of nature keeping a soft frenetic beat behind the melody of silence, with an occasional natural whistle coming from the trees or the fishing lines as we cast them, our feet suctioning out of the water as we shifted our places on the river, and the native American calls of our forefathers eeking out of our bellies as we voiced guttural gratitude for the food accented with the pride of the catch.

By mid afternoon I was sleepy and hungry. We took our harvest, strung through the gills onto two flexible willow branches which had been looped and knotted and planted under a rock on the riverside, so the fish could remain cool in the water until we were done. I hooked the loop of fish over two bent fingers , carrying them like a purse to market. We rose up over the lip of the river bed, water from the river sloshing in my shoes, sucking in and out like an air pump as I walked, the water trapped in the canvas seeping out over the tops of and out across my sun tanned ankles.

Mom fried up the fish for dinner in the old black cast iron griddle, speckled trout drenched in flour with salt and pepper. Fried up in three large spoonfuls of Crisco. Evidence of our feat remained speckled all over the circle of rocks in the fire pit or on the lid of the Coleman stove. The aroma of pine and water and earth swirled through my nostrils as my happy belly relaxed in a full bodied sigh and I settled under an accommodating tree for a little respite. Never was rest so perfect.

In the depth of winter, back in Pittsburgh; far from the meandering Snake River and high country pines and Big Hunks, I yearned for the moment. I could only find it in my imagination, back in the place that usually comes when my eyes are wide open but I see nothing…those magic picture moments when we stare into space and go somewhere else. I did discover once, when I was on the outside of adolescence that if I held a knee-high stocking just so; where the toe was in the water of my mother’s washing machine but the knee was in my hand; if I held it just so at the right time in the washing cycle, the agitator would jerk back and forth in such a way that if I closed my eyes completely I could swear there was a fish on the end of my line…that I was standing in the middle of the Snake River in the deep of the summer when the water was low and rushing over my feet, when the sun was warm and throbbed against my skin like a maternal heartbeat…that even though logic told me I was standing against the cold metal washing machine in the basement laundry room of my childhood…in my heart I was planted upstream from my beautiful graceful dependable mother in our spot out at Effergee.

DEAR JESSE

Dear Jesse,

Don’t look back.

Set your eye and keep the pace as you bound up there to your heaven place.

I imagine you running, with 4 good legs, down the wooded hill and out across the sand toward the lake, never breaking stride as you leap into the air above the water, intent on a piece of driftwood tossed out past the sandbar. Somewhere mid-air the angels take you up.

Chelle stands there alone, looking eastward over the water, small waves lapping at her feet until the tide goes out and you are gone.

That’s what I imagine.

Thank you, Jesse.

Thank you for those loving eyes; liquid brown and full of trust. It takes a long, long time for humans to get that kind of eyes. You had them from birth. Little round mirrors of the one you love. Very few people get to look into another’s eyes and just breathe - no words, no motion, just a gaze that sings and whispers words we do not quite know how to speak. We see her best reflected in your eyes.

And your warmth. A steady throbbing warmth beside the sister we love but cannot hold. Distance is a demon! Knowing you could keep her warm; that by the end of the movie or the book or the dream, your breathing would somehow have aligned with hers, your heat infused into each other; this was peace to the ones who cherish her.

Thank you for waking her in the morning, and for fluttering about when she came home. For sensing when she was sad, or sick, or happy or tired. And for… I know this sounds strange… for being naughty now and then: just enough naughty that she had to set boundaries and keep you in them. It’s a healthy thing for us to help each other be good, even when it’s hard. It ties knots in the strings that bind the heart. It allowed our sister to use her innate gifts to nurture and tend someone who could not wholly do it for herself. It reminded her of her stewardship over you; not in any egotistical way, but in the sacred way of true servants and masters. You allowed her to give; and in the giving she received.

Dear Jesse, if you have any pull up there where you are, could you please exhale a deep warm breath and place it over our sister’s bed, so she will sense your presence in her dreams? Make her aching brief; her memories charmed enough to comfort rather than pierce. And if by chance you find yourself curled up beside Mom and Dad, would you pound your tail against heaven’s floor and tell us you are all just fine?

Snuggle with the ones we love and rest a while. Then run.

Run, Jesse!

Use your brand new freedom with no tumor and no pain. Run and leap and shake this earthy weight like water from your golden hair. Go explore the vast expanse of that place we try to imagine.

Run until you are happy-tired.

Find a cozy spot to make your bed,

and wait till she comes Home.



WOTD - LAVENDER

The random word of the day is LAVENDER:

My friend Carla has a lavender bush in her front yard. A large, hearty cluster of green which shoots, sparkler-like stems of purple-blue flowers now and then. Since I don’t live there, I don’t know its blooming cycle. I really must get a start from her so I can have some of my own. Her whole yard is a sight to see. It appears to civilized suburbanites that they have left their yard to run wild. They have received letters from the city about it. But to them it is beautiful. Xeriscaping with indigenous Utah plants, left to grow according to their own consciences and untrained by the human hand. It’s a water saving practice, and also a difference in philosophy about our stewardship over living things. We tend to prune; to keep things tight and cooperative. Carla likes to let things be and see where their own spirits want to take them. It is not unrighteous, and we should not judge her.

Carla feels inadequate. Her emotions juxtapose in her; one minute she wants to belong to the sisterhood of average-but-classy women who have their dignified Stampin’ Up type hobbies and tidy houses – the next she is dying a strip of her hair cerulean blue. The strip of blue makes her happy. So does Stampin’ Up. Our friend Larry put it perfectly one day. He said to her: “Carla, you want to remain anonymous while wearing Christmas lights.” Indeed.

Carla suffers from some illnesses, invisible to the naked eye. She talks lately about having only so many “spoons” on any given day; far less than the average person. The spoons represent things she can do, and when they are spent she is done. She is at the mercy of her invisible illnesses, the most painful of which is Fibromyalgia. Its hard to have something be so terribly painful and no one can see it. I think someone should sell bruise tattoos that we can apply on days when we just don’t want to deal with people judging us. I have a sense for how she feels.

I’ve known Carla a long time. We first shared the stage probably two decades ago. That’s when I first saw her. Actually, it was a wagon bed. A fundraiser for Farmington’s Clark Lane Historic District. She and Dave played their instruments and sang just before I did. They had the stage set up in the back of a wagon. I remember arriving, setting my guitar down and beginning to open it so I could tune. I reached for the neck of my instrument as they started to play. I paused, struck by the fullness and stunning beauty of their sound. I stood rather awestruck, wondering to myself who these people were and why didn’t I know about them? Were they from Farmington? If they were from Farmington, and they wrote their own music, why in the world did I not know them? What a cocky attitude, come to think of it.

Indeed, they were from Farmington. Her fluttering resonant voice, like butter heated to the prefect golden brown, had been warbling just across town all along while I scurried around in my own little space up north here, totally unaware. It reminds me that there is magic going on everywhere, we just don’t know about it. Dave’s music was no less shimmering, and their writing was so full of fresh inviting images I was stunned! I felt almost ashamed to take the stage after them.

When I was done we introduced ourselves.

“Hey,” Carla said, “a group of us get together in a song circle every month. Would you consider joining us?”

I was at the time heavily involved with the Utah Songwriters Association. As vice-president I oversaw seminars and workshops and hosted a monthly writers night in Salt Lake City. Still, the night I drove down Main Street and over to Eskelsen’s I was so nervous. I sat in a corner, trying to be invisible, and listened to the finest folk writers and musicians in Utah. They were skilled and friendly and I was shaking with nerves when it came my turn to sing a song. No one emitted any judgment. I only judged myself. I was a country song writer. A sell out, in my own evaluation. They wrote for the song itself, as opposed to the audience. It took me many years to not feel inferior in that group. But they are some of my closest and dearest musical friends now, and I cherish them.

Carla also hosted a small circle of women writers in a daytime gathering now and again. There were just a tiny handful of us. We’d gather at her house on a weekday morning and write. Sometimes with guitars, more often without.

One morning, after the girls had left and it was just Carla and me, she walked me out to the car. We stood beside her blooming lavender bush, the warm Farmington sun awakening the oils in the flowers. A gentle May breeze swept down the mountains to the east of us and crossed the foothills, whispering on down through the flatlands and out to us there in her yard. It brought the scent of Lavender to our nostrils and we both inhaled long and deep. “Oh my!” I exhaled, “you must keep your windows and doors open for that!” She bent over and snipped a couple stalks off, handing them to me. We stood there, amid the swirling aroma as she wept. Her mother had called, about what I don’t remember. Carla had forgotten to do something, and we had just spent the hours of that morning on writing instead of “accomplishing”. The weight of her neglect was heavy and she spilled out her feelings of inadequacy. Five children came through her, each of them as unique and free as the wild plants growing in her yard. I think they were sent to her because she understood that some things need to grow in their own way, even if the neighbors all have sterile trimmed green grass in their yards. Still, she beats herself up about it.

All my words of reassurance were not enough, and I left her still in tears, standing there beside her Lavender bush. I placed the stalks she had given me on the ash tray then aimed the air conditioner vent to pass over them. As I drove home I breathed the beauty of the moment and began the words to this song, Lavender Morning.

It may take Carla being released from her achy self-battered humanness to see herself clearly. She is good and kind and loving. Gifted voice. Genius mind. Tender heart. Capable hands. She awakens the senses; shakes the jar of daily life and enlivens the scenery, like sparklies in a water globe. She is a long loose braid swung over the shoulder; a worn pair of pale green bib overalls, the cuffs caked with horse manure and hay. She is a well loved piece of wood strung with steel wires. She is a carefully measured drop of this added to a few drops of that, all scented with fragrant earthy hand picked lavender.

Lavender Morning

Twas a Lavender morning

You opened the door and

You called to your sisters

Come gather and play

We turned from the dishes

We folded our aprons

Then danced with the breeze

On this Lavender day

CHORUS: Look how the garden

Bends to the sunlight

Delicate stems

Laden with Blue

No sweeter smell than

A lavender morning

No dearer soul than

Lavender you

Your mother may tell you

The children will suffer

They’ll watch as you’re wasting

The hours away

But look, they are smiling

And soon we’ll make supper

But first we must dance

On this Lavender day

Look how the garden

Bends to the sunlight

Delicate stems

Laden with Blue

No sweeter smell than

A Lavender morning

No dearer soul than

Lavender you


(Here are some pictures of our Saltwerks Circle friends circa 2003-2005)

The Eskeltones (Dave and Carla)

Nancy Hanson Wood and Dave Wood

Tom Shults

Doug Wintch



Weston Cann



John Connors



Karla Pattis (sans Larry?)



Tom & Gael Shults



Dave Edwards & Joey Dempster





 

Anke Summerhill



Kyle Wulle



Kate MacLeod

Our circle expands and contracts, with a few at the core who were here from the start.  Still, the music rings regardless of who creates it.



FINGER

My son John and I teach guitar classes in the lower level of the Farmington Arts Center: Thursday evenings; Beginner, Intermed and Advanced. Many of our advanced students have been with us nearly three years. I think I’ve taught them everything I know, so I have to learn new things every week to pass on to them. For instance this week I taught about modulating keys, and in the process had to do a little studying up on the circle of 5th’s. Johnny really knows more than I do; but we both have a rather distorted bank of knowledge in the guitar area since neither of us ever took lessons ourselves. Sort of reminds me of faith, or more accurately, testimony. We learn bits and pieces out of order, so the building blocks sit all skiwampusy, and sometimes they topple over and we have to start over again trying to figure out what we believe and why we believe it and how to work logic into emotion and such. Dave, having learned the gospel as an adult, line upon line in intelligent order, has the simplest most beautiful testimony I know. And he’s the brightest man I know, smarts-wise. And he’s the happiest man I know. He’s just not weighed down with too much logic in one area and not enough in another.

Johnny and I, at least in regard to guitar if not testimony, know quite a bit in some areas and not enough in others. But by teaching, we are learning. He’s a better learner than I, and it’s rather lovely I think, to be able to learn from one’s son like I am learning from John.

This week one of our beginner students, an adult woman playing a youth size Wal-Mart guitar, moaned aloud: “Is it possible to have fingers that are just too fat to play guitar?” I let her use my guitar for the lesson, since hers kept going out of tune. So I was trying to help teach with this youth size guitar, out of tune I might add, and I kept looking at my own hands. Short, stocky fingers with tell-tale age spots like so many Parrish women have. My fingernails are suffering from a long and demanding Christmas performance season. My sad paper-thin nails disintegrate from over-plucking guitar strings and I end up needing artificial nails on the picking hand when I play night after night. Those poor petite women in the nail shop were so distressed that I only wanted artificial nails on my right hand.

“No, you need nail on left hand to match.”

“Actually, I don’t”

“Sure you do! Here, let me just do little nails…to match!”

Drove ‘em crazy!

In the process of analyzing my most unattractive chubby age spotted hands Thursday night, I was struck in an instant with gratitude. It seriously hit so abruptly that my eyes welled up and I had to shake my head and focus on what Johnny was teaching so I wouldn’t go down into the well of emotion that is so hard for me to pull myself out of.

First I remembered this:

The Monday of Thanksgiving week, after a most spectacular evening performing in Libby Gardner Hall at the University of Utah, with my favorite musician friends playing and harmonizing beside me and a string quartet on the other side; with a 170 voice choir singing back-up (seriously…how amazing can reality get?) I chopped my finger at 1 am while trimming the flowers they had given me.

 We spent the remainder of that night in the ER getting 5 stitches in the index finger of my chording hand.

You’d have to be…or pretend to be…a guitar player to understand the gravity of that situation. I had booked almost two dozen performances for the coming month, and I had two concerts (both sold out) in less than one week. On the left hand the job of the finger tip is to smash that skinny little string against the neck of the guitar so hard that it rings clear with the note you want to play. Add to that the fact that I do quite a bit of hammering on and pulling off in my arrangements.

So Dave of the mighty faith gave me a blessing.

And I prayed.

And I played every gig, including both concerts, through December.

Thanks to God and LuLu’s Special Blend (my friend Carla’s blend of special oils- she really should sell that stuff!) and the Bone-Skin-Cartilage pills my friend Linda brought over, I watched my finger heal before my eyes.

By Christmas this is what that finger looked like, even with the stress of playing.

In fact, looking back on it, I believe the whole thing was a gift from the Lord to remind me that He is blessing me. Constantly. Without me noticing, usually. Only I noticed this time because I needed that finger to testify. When I sing; when I play; I testify. Even if only to myself.

I was reminded again that He has healed me often. My stiff electric rubber feet remind me. Sometimes the peripheral neuropathy I live with makes me sad. The sad usually only lasts a moment though, because I realize that in spite of the pain, I can walk! I can walk on my feet which once were paralyzed by Guillain Barre Syndrome. And I can move my once useless arms. And my hands, even with their age spots and chubby fingers, can move along the neck of my guitars and make music without hardly thinking. There was a time I thought I would never again be able to use my hands, let alone play guitar. Look at me now: I am strong enough to lift my little Ruby and swing her onto my hip! I can even sort of try to dance with Sophie, and semi-shoot a basketball with Timo (though I will never again in this life be able to do a jump shot. My whole basketball balance is gone.)

I know first hand (excuse the pun) that my Lord can heal me. Not that He always will. I trust that He is aware, because He has shown me inside in my center buzzy space and outside in places like the tip of my finger and the tips of new born nerve endings in my extremities. The day He decides not to heal me I will also trust Him. I pray to have the strength to take whatever comes whenever it comes, because even if God doesn’t intervene or rescue or heal; it is enough to know He can.

Ho Ho Ho

We ended up deciding to not do our Nativity this Christmas Eve for various reasons, opting instead to do Christmas day with all the kids and grandkids.  We met Sarah in Salt Lake to give her the pajama presents for the kids to open that night. They had driven all night to and from a wedding in Cedar City and we didn't want to add more driving to their lives. Then we stopped at John and Ashleys to leave the pj presents for their kids. Sophie and Park and Ruby were all in the tub, but ran out one by one to rip open the packages and clothe their freshly cleaned soft skinned bodies in new PJ's for the big night.  I also remembered to take them this vintage Santa Claus outfit I had found in a groovy little shop in Layton,

 along with a vinyl LP of How The Grinch Stole Christmas. 

 I had meant to give them to Johnny for his birthday in November.

Johnny put on the suit  and posed in front of the tree.  I think it confused Parker a little.

Johnny needs to fill out this suit, don't you think?

It reminded me of a Christmas Eve years ago when we lived at the old house.  The Volcanseks lived next door, and the twins, Jenny and Jonny, were at that age where they were not "believing" any more...maybe.  So Fred and I concocted a plan where I would dress up in my Santa costume (indeed, I have one of my own) and walk around the outside of their house with my old set of horse sleigh bells, just in case they needed a nudge to hold on to the possibility of Santa's existence. 

So late that night I dressed up.  Such a suit fits rather nicely on me.  I tiptoed out across the snowy common area dividing our houses and started ringing my bells, making sure I was visible from the bedroom window.  All the while I am sending messages into the universe, since this didn't seem to fit in the category of sending up prayers..."Let them see me...and let them believe....Let them see me...and let them believe."

Next thing I know Jenny's face is smashed up against the bedroom window.  I turn aside, lifting one leg after the other in the style of creeping discreetly,  attempting to look like I was on my way to the next house, jingling my sleigh bells and making my bowl-full-of-jelly belly jiggle.

And then she calls out...

"What's Cori Connors doing in a Santa suit?"

Shoulda used prayer.

ONE

The random word generator on my computer spit out this word today: One.

Here goes….

We were girls, the four of us, chipping away at life in our apartment on East Bruceton Road in Pleasant Hills, PA. George had left for college, and then a two-year mission in Brazil, so it was that way for a number of years: Mom and her three little girls, the tail end of her seven children. During those years, when I pushed and pulled myself into growing-up, I read Little Women in my bed at night by the light of a bayberry candle. My book was an old hardbound copy with thick soft pages. I had bought it at the annual discarded book sale at the Pleasant Hills Library. Its age commanded I flip the switch at the end of my bed and read by the light of a candle, the means by which I imagined Louisa Alcott had written it. The act itself bound me to the women in my household somehow, though they never knew it. My bed was tucked against the wall of my bedroom, with Libby’s bed doing the same on the other side of the room. I had rigged a contraption on the wall so I could turn out the light without having to get up. It involved string and eye screws and paper clips and tape. I could light my candle, arrange my pillow and blankets under my head just so, open my book to the marked page, then reach over and pull the string, which tugged at the switch by the door down at the end of my bed. The room would shift to a box of flickering shadows and I was soon up in the attic with Jo writing the script to her next masterpiece, or racing up the stairs to Beth’s bedside, her hair all matted with sweat and that sweet little Beth-smile assuring me she would be alright.

The scent of Bayberry candle, to this day, takes me back,

My days and nights were filled with women. So when that man-creature came home from four years at Yale and two years in Italy and proceeded to steal my woman-heart, I was on unfamiliar ground. Very sweet, exhilarating ground…but rather unknown to me as a freshly graduated eighteen-year-old Mormon girl in a community of males with other beliefs. (How I did enjoy his kisses!) (Still do!)

So my four sisters dressed in those frothy pastel colored bridesmaid dresses they would never again wear in their lives (except for Ann Marie’s wedding) and I stood in the middle of them in my lacy white dress with the hoop underneath the train. My world changed.

The next year, on David’s birthday, I gave him a copy of a little paperback children’s book called, Just Me & My Dad. I had stapled to the final page a little yellow carbon-copied paper from the BYU Health Center with the word “positive” handwritten next to the place that read “pregnancy test”. Eight months later we found ourselves walking through the aisles of Grand Central, the store in Orem which no longer exists, pausing every fifteen minutes so I could cling to the edge of a shelf and breathe my way through a contraction. At 10 pm we decided to walk around the hospital just in case, trying to make it to the magic midnight hour so we wouldn’t have to pay for another day in the hospital if we didn’t need to. Dave kept track of the contractions, their length and space between them, on a yellow legal pad, the increments of time filling three columns and three separate dates. Just after midnight, on November 19th, I finally laid on crisp white sheets on a bed. I focused on a fly trapped in the casing of the light over my bed: blew on that thing like there was no tomorrow in the Lamaze fashion of the day, intensely focused on the fly as my whole body focused on the baby knocking at the door. I had decided not to have an epidural. I was still the girl who thought Little Women should be read by candlelight to get the full effect, after all. Something about the intensity of the pain made the event take on a sacredness I would never have imagined. Perhaps it was the unity of purpose. Perhaps it was the way I tried to make Dave’s hand fuse to mine, and the way he let me, whole-heartedly. Maybe it was just the stillness of the hour, when the rest of the world was sleeping. Just after 3 am there was a grunt, and a sigh, and a quivering cry in the quiet of the room. In those days we never knew what we would get. It was like Christmas morning every time. So exciting and mysterious. I wonder if kids these days are missing out because they know the gender early enough to prepare the nursery and fill the closet with appropriate attire. In those days they sold a lot more yellow and green crib sheets.

The doctor held the wailing creature by the feet and pronounced a blessing on my head when he told me I had born a son. The nurse, (my former college room mate, Beth,) wrapped a warm blanket around him and placed him on my chest. David bent over and laid his head next to our son, forming a sort of triangle between our heads. His tears fell onto my gown. My tears streaked my cheeks, one hand touching the flesh of the new little boy my body knew so well, the other clenched with David’s. All was quiet and still, save the sound of our throbbing exhales and inhales as we tried to contain in meager human bodies the divinity of what had just occurred. Bless that doctor and nurse for letting us have that moment when time stood still. I have experienced many, many sacred things in my life. Holy events, in holy places. None have matched the sweetness or depth of that moment. I still consider it the most spiritual experience of my life.

That was the pivot; the sharp tip of the compass that draws the circle of our lives seems to rest on that point in my heart. I know it should logically rest on the day Dave and I knelt at the altar, and in many ways that is the truth. But emotionally, and I suspect David would agree, the turning point was that moment in the hospital when our son pressed the seal of our union into the book of life.

We did not know, on that day, that this would be our only son. For many years we did not know this. Three more times we dipped into the valley of the shadow of death and came up with holy treasure. All three times the nurses glued pink bows in their silky hairs when they wheeled them into my room. They have become my three little girls, and I am their Marme, and I cherish their sisterhood now; grateful for their goodness, their devotion, their well developed talents and testimony. They are such a gift to me, my girls.

But I have only one son. One blessed, beautiful, delightful son. He was the keeper of my heart as we walked forward from that day, now nearly 32 years ago, when I met him in the flesh. He was my reason for rising in the morning, and my joy in the afternoon. He made me laugh. He still makes me laugh. And he was willing to let me cry as well, not in anger or frustration, though there was surely plenty of that, but in tender heart-to-heart discussion in the silent hours of the night when the rest of the house was sleeping. He was a philosopher from the get go, and how blessed I was that he allowed me to answer his questions, that he even thought I might have answers to his heart quests. We shared music. We shared books. We cheered at ball games, applauded at performances, hung drawings on the fridge and the wall. Read aloud stirring passages written in his chiseled handwriting. I kept my bedroom window cracked open so I could hear his guitar playing waft up from his bedroom to mine.

He allowed his friends to share our space, and they allowed me to enter now and again, the sweet spot of teenage boys existence.

I was the middle girl of a group of girls, unfamiliar with the world of boys. They had always intimidated me. Scared me, even. My father’s hand, before it left us for good, had not been tender and welcoming; so I did not understand how it might be in a healthy boy’s world. My father could not show me; but my son did.
Thank you, Johnny.

My son.

My one.

My only.

My son.

If I had a scanner that worked I could show you pictures of John through the ages.

Alas, all I have on my computer are pictures of him performing or in various stages of growing his infamous Novem-beard and holding his own treasures.

WHAT SINGER-SONGWRITER DOESNT DREAM OF THIS?

I have this friend, Mark.  He's funny, and kind, and brilliant, and talented.  Gifted is a better word.  He's married to my friend Sarah, who is also funny and kind and gifted.  Mark does music ~ Sarah is a dancer.  I try to imagine my life without either of them and I'm telling you, it is a sorry picture without the Robinette's in it!

When our kids were young Sarah taught them ballet at the Clytie Adams School of Dance.  I sat with a couple thousand other parents at Weber State's Browning Center one year, watching my little girl twirl around in her cerullian blue tutu.  I was so charmed by the music they were dancing to that I searched the program for the composer.  In tiny script on the bottom of the back of the program it said the music was composed and performed by Mark Robinette. Since my kids' dance teacher was Sarah Robinette I assumed there was some relation.  I listened with more intent through the whole charming program.  At the end I made my way against the stream of people exiting the theatre, all the way down to the front where Sarah and Mark were standing. 

"Was that music composed by someone related to you?", I asked Sarah when I finally inched my way up to her. 

"Yes.  My husband, Mark!"  She nodded her head in his direction.  I stood patiently behind a crowd of people waiting to talk to him. 

"Hi," I said.  "Did you write the music for the little dancer's performances?"

Mark nodded.

"I just want you to know it was fabulous!"

He graciously responded, and I made some ridiculous comment like, "No, really, I'm a songwriter too and I need to tell you that was amazing!"

He smiled, I'm sure thinking who the heck is this person?

I realized how obnoxious I was acting, so I told him thanks and left.  But I kept that name...Mark Robinette...in the back of my head for future reference.

Turns out that following winter Mark was doing a sort of Sunday Service circuit of performances of this song someone asked him to sing with them.  A duet. He sang a part about Joesph and a gal sang the part of Mary.

At some point in the following year our paths crossed on neutral territory and we both figured out who the other one was. He had somehow heard my song that Chris LeDoux had recorded and had a sort of respect for that, and then he found out I had written Joseph and Mary.  And of course I was in awe of his work. 

Neither of us can even remember the first time we had an opportunity to work together.  Susan Tingey probably had something to do with it, but we're not quite sure.  Faulty memory banks.

But whomever it was that got us to make music together, I need to give them a big hug and a shout out, because my life was changed for good.

If you've seen me perform much you'll know Mark as that tall bass player standing beside me (when I'm lucky).  I get his sweet harmonies and deep instrumental resonance when I'm lucky and he's not booked for another gig with the Joe Muscolino Band or the Orchestra at Temple Square, or he's not producing a half time show for the Orange Bowl, or he's not handling sound and tech for an international convention of something-or-other.  He's one of the few people I know who is able to support his family solely on freelance music. He is gifted musically and in so many other ways and I adore him and Sarah!

So a few years ago Mark introduced me to his friend Michael Huff.  Michael played piano with us for a performance of The Little Prince, which Mark and I wrote for the ballet school (yup, I realize the full circle charm in the fact that I get to write and play for that ballet recital now!) Mike is amazing on keyboards! And he is so dang nice, too.  Turns out Michael Huff is gifted in the way Mark Robinette is gifted.  The cashier at Home Depot might not know this about them when they're checking out. It's like...uh, people...if you knew what these guys can do you would not be so casually dropping that box of nails in the bag...you'd be trying to act non-chalant while you watched their every move out of the corner of your eye! 

Last year Dave and I were invited to sing in a regional choir for General Conference.  The director of that choir was Dr. Michael Huff - (otherwise known as Mike).  Michael has his Doctorate in Choral Direction, and I'm here to tell you he is one AMAZING choir director.  There are some songs I cannot sing without tears because of what Michael taught us when he was "teaching us the song".  Truly, if you ever get the chance to sing under the baton of Dr, Huff you should jump!  If I was not Young Women's president right now I would be singing in his choir UTAH VOICES!  We went to their performance of Carmina Burana last spring and it blew us away!  But they rehearse on Wednesday evening, and that's when I have Young Womens.

Wait a minute....it looks like I DO get to sing with UTAH VOICES! 

(drum roll)

Michael asked if I would be a guest artist with his choir for their Thanksgiving Concert, sweetly titled "GIVE THANKS". I'll be singing some of my simple singer-songwriter fare in a couple weeks, at the beautiful Libby Gardner Hall on the U of U campus...with a 170 voice choir backing me up!  And a string ensemble!  And my friends (gifted musicians and songwriters also) Dave and Carla Eskelsen...and...of course...Mark Robinette.

What singer-songwriter doesn't dream of something like this?

I'm so excited!

(and a little bit nervous!)

So if you have read this far (boy, I sure do over-write!) and you are thinking you want a warm fuzzy inspiring way to start the Holiday season, come to the Utah Voices Concert on Monday Nov 22nd.  The music is sure to be delicious!

Details:

Give Thanks – A Thanksgiving/Holiday Concert

Date: Monday, November 22, 2010

Time: 7:30 PM

Runtime: Approximately 1 hour 30 minutes

Location: Libby Gardner Concert Hall (1375 Presidents Circle, Salt Lake City, UT)

Tickets: General Admission - $10 (order online here)

Details: Utah Voices welcomes singer-­‐songwriter Cori Connors (www.coriconnors.com) for an evening of music that will feature Cori Connors as well as the music of English composers, John Rutter and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Michael Huff is currently Director of Commercial Music at Utah State University, working with former Tabernacle Choir Director Craig Jessop.  If you know someone going to Utah State suggest they find a class...any class... Michael Huff is teaching!

Those Eyes

Look at those eyes! He’s gonna be a heart breaker, our Parker! Parker is the only son of my only son, John. He is a kind little 4 year old, sandwiched between two strong spirited sisters, Sophie and Ruby. Though both his parents and three of his grandparents have brown eyes, Parker’s eyes are blue. My eyes are blue. I’m just sayin’….

Parker goes to pre-school just down the road from our house. Mrs. T taught pre-school to his dad, and his aunties. She’s a good one! The other day I walked through the back gate and up the road to pick him up after school. We held hands as we walked along the sidewalk, talking about his friends and what he had done in class. Looked for cars and then crossed the street hand in hand, then when we reached the grass that leads to our back gate I moved in front of him. As we walked across the stepping stones this conversation began:

Park: Gummy?
Me: Yes, Park.
P: You have a big bum.
Me: I know.

We walked a bit more….

P: Gummy?
Me: Mmm, hmmm?
P: You have a big tummy, too.
Me: Yup, I do.

As we turned into the garage he moved in front of me….

P: Gummy?
Me: Yeah, buddy?
P: You also have a big face.

I stopped for a sec, then…

Me: Is that bad?

Parker stopped, too. Turned around, looked up into my eyes, cocked his head to the side and responded…

P: Nah, ith’s cute.

He turned and walked into the house. I followed him and we found some Play Dough.

I could have, had the spirit compelled me, taken this time to talk to Park about social grace, about how people are different and we should be careful with their feelings, etc. But he was wholly pure in what he had said. I was probably more comforted and warmed by his sincerity. There was not one ounce of malice or judgment in his comments. My size is simply an interesting fact to him. It has nothing to do with anything that matters.

I was pondering the interchange that night and I said a prayer that went something like this:

Me: Heavenly Father?
HF: Yes, Cori.
Me: I have a big bum.
HF: MmmHmmm
Me: and a big tummy AND a big face
HF: yes…
Me: Is that bad?
I didn’t see Him pause... didn’t see His eyes look into mine, nor hear Him answer. What I did sense was that He wanted to take my hand, walk into His realm and build something, maybe not with Play Dough, but build something with…something. I sensed that beating myself up about myself was going to keep me from enjoying the PlayDough of daily living. “Cute” is a relative term, and I suspect HF doesn’t really give much weight to anything like that. I’m just guessing about this. And though I’m also guessing about this, because I didn’t see them, I’m thinking today that His eyes were a heavenly blue.