24. MASTER'S HANDS

“Have you considered getting one like Dave’s?”

Mark sat across from me in the studio.  We were talking guitars, and concerts; reviewing how our last gig had gone; reliving the sweetness of certain moments, and lamenting or laughing about others.  The topic of my guitars and how they come across, the sound travelling through that space between my fingers and the listener’s ears, has been broached more than once.  For years Mark Robinette, who plays bass with me, writes with me, and is a brother not of my mother; along with his twin brother Eric, who masterfully massages the sound board to mix and blend auditory ingredients into a palatable concoction; have been trying to get my guitar to sound like it ought to when amplified. 

“It’s not the instrument”, I contend.  “It’s the player.  Sorry guys.”

But they argue otherwise, and we try different pickups and mics, knowing my weaknesses on stage.  The average ear may not even notice it.  But we have to live with ourselves.

“Have you considered getting a guitar like Dave’s?” Mark repeated.

Dave Eskelsen plays a sweet guitar.  Seriously sweet.

“I love Dave’s guitar.  It sounds as sweet as any guitar I’ve heard.  But I don’t think it’s the instrument, Mark.  It’s the Dave.” 

I think Dave Eskelsen could play an old Stella with rusted strings and it would sound sweet.  It’s the touch of the master’s hand.

Dave himself, along with his equally gifted wife, Carla, who is a sister not of my mother, have wished a Stika guitar on me for at least a decade, maybe two.  They both play them; custom made creatures of wood that sing and ring and vibrate with clarity and warmth.  But they’re Dave and Carla Eskelsen, for goodness sakes!  They will make anything sound good!

Then one night this winter, a few months back, we drove through a blinding snowstorm up to Brigham City to do a gig.  We lugged our instruments in, set up equipment and began a sound check.  When the Eskelsens gig with me they are the heart of my band, making my little songs feel full and happy. Dave plays a lot, and sings occasionally, and Carla sings harmony and occasionally plays her dulcimer, drum and auto harp. Carla rarely plays her guitar lately,  because of pain in her hands.  But for this Art in the City Concert Series gig they were opening the show and had a set of their own, singing their own fabulous songs.  For that, the Eskeltones, as we affectionately call them, played two guitars: both Stika’s.

The audience was beginning to arrive as they ended the sound check. They had tested everything but Carla’s guitar. Carla asked where her instrument was, and Dave looked up from tuning his guitar, staring her straight in the eyes with that deer in the headlights look, his mouth opened as if he were going to say something, only it froze half open.

“Your guitar.  Yes, your guitar.  Your guitar is on the steps of the entry hall at home.”

This is not typical Dave Eskelsen language.  Dave is…well, he’s a Dave. Much like my Dave.  So dependable; so steady; so logical and count-on-able.  In all the years I’ve known them, decades now, I’ve never known him to forget an instrument.  We were 80 miles from home and that instrument was not going to make it to this gig.  So I handed them my guitar and told them to wing it.  It’s a good instrument, finest quality machines can make, and it works well for me.  Carla, stunned, was on the verge of losing it.  She can sometimes be delicate, even though she can shovel manure for hours in knee high boots like the best of men. So, even though Dave plays many more notes on his instrument than she does, he handed her his Stika and strapped my guitar against his chest.  The night unfolded beautifully.  No one would know that neither of them was playing their own instrument.  Their songs are so stunning, and delivery so warm that we got lost in the stories they told in their songs.  But I sat there, curious about Dave Eskelsen playing my instrument, getting the chance for the first time, really, to hear it from the outside looking in.  And it is true, Dave has magical hands for getting a sweet lilting sound from any instrument.  But because I know their songs so well, I could see where the music that flowed from his guitar hovered just barely on the underside of magic.  That’s when the idea planted itself in my head.

I wanted a Stika guitar.

Ken Stika has been building guitars for over thirty years.  He owned and operated the Great Salt Lake Guitar Company in Provo, UT until very recently, when he sold it to his son Reo, who has learned the trade from his father. Ken decided to devote himself full time to the building of instruments rather than the running of a store. His guitars are all completely hand made, hewn and cut and shaped and sanded, assembled and polished like children of a good strong parent.  He had so many back orders that he needed to work on them full time.    Before I could meet with him and make an order the news came that Ken had cancer.  Esophageal Cancer.  Those who know and love Ken gathered round, rubbed their hands together and held them up, palms out, before him…willing him to overcome, trying with all their strength to shift their own energy into him and make him well.  But his foot was already on the path and the hill had a steep downhill grade and he had to keep on walking that path through those therapies in cancer that make people ache in their bellies and lose their hair.  Their soft, snowy white hair. But Ken is not a whiner, and he is a philosopher, and he is a believer in living life while you have it.  So he smiles and continues to work. But the word was that Ken was no longer taking orders for guitars.  They were, in fact, just hoping he could complete the orders he already had.

Yesterday I had a gig in Orem, UT, the city next door to Provo.  Dave and I had been in St. George for judicial meetings on Thursday and Friday.  Orem is between our home in Farmington and St George, so we arranged our return trip to include stopping in Orem to perform in a benefit concert at Mountain View High.  We left St George early, deciding to just get on the road and drive the 5 hours in the earlier part of the day.  So it ended up that we arrived in Utah County a few hours before the time arranged for our sound check. We hadn’t eaten a meal yet, and we thought maybe we’d get dinner somewhere before the gig.

“Let’s stop in at Ken Stika’s” I said, the words falling out of my mouth as I stared out the window of our car, the road cutting through a vast mountain desert, the low rolling mountains looking all chaffed and bushy, uneven tufts of cedar and sage covering them like a massive rugged old mountain man who needs a shave.  A good long drive lets the mind go where it wants, and mine was on an evening spent in the back room of the Great Salt Lake Guitar Company where we had held a song circle the week before.

I don’t know Ken very well.  I only knew him, really, through the people I love who know him:  Dave and Carla, and Tom Shults, and Larry Pattis. And I knew him by reputation of course.  But mostly I knew his instruments.  His instruments speak well of him. I hear his handiwork whispering from back there, behind me on stage, where Dave E. dresses my little songs in such finery I hardly recognized them at first.  Now, when I sing those songs without Dave’s sweetening, the songs feel all naked and exposed and I worry that they’ll be embarrassed up there before an audience. I hear Ken in those sweetening's.  And I hear pieces of Ken in  Carla’s song Mary Tallman, when Carla wails “A way-a-hey-a” in her best Navajo, her hands dancing against the strings like there are moccasins on her fingertips. I know Ken through his instruments as much as through his friends.    


We walked into the shop yesterday, a typically lovely March afternoon.  Walking down the narrow space between workbenches we heard above us the squealing of saws, and the thumping of mallets.  Ken was there.  We could feel it.  Upstairs in his workspace, shaving the time away in full labor, pushing through the birth process.  The fellow manning the store told us Reo had just stepped out for a short lunch, he’d be right back.


“We just want to see that little concert size Stika in the case,” we said. We knew it was sold, but thought maybe since Ken wasn’t taking orders we would see if Reo could build one; wanted to see how it felt.  He said we’d better wait for Reo to get back.  Though the case has no lock on it, he didn’t feel right opening it. His reverence for the handmade pieces was evident. 

“Do you have a Stika?” I asked.

“Oh no. I wish!  I could never afford one.”

“Well at least you get to play them here, right?”

“Oh no, I’ve never played one.  Don’t want to fall in love with something I can’t have, if you know what I mean.”

He was obviously a student, and I did know what he meant. 

Reo walked in and opened the case and handed me the sweet little thing. And, to my great surprise, he said “This one’s not spoken for.”

“Seriously?  I thought there was no hope!”

“There’s always hope.”

So we ducked into that sweet room where the humidity is just right and the guitars on the wall feel content in their space.  Sat there and tuned it up and tickled the strings lightly, like my fingers and the instrument were schoolchildren meeting each other for the first time, my fingers feeling like the timid new girl in class and the lovely guitar was a confident but friendly boy who could kick the ball all the way to the fence in kickball and was always in the center of a circle of friends. As I warmed to the possibility of owning such a creature, I played with more intent.  Just then Ken walked in the room, another instrument in his hands.  I could feel the energy shift when he entered.  He greeted us with his gentle friendly smile.  I stopped playing and let him tell me about his children, his lovely wooden children.  Like Gepetto alluding to Pinocchio, he spoke of the wood in each, the shape and the talents they each had.  One was new, and bight and precise in her speaking.  The other, the one he had carried into the room, had been up in his workshop since 2003.

“I’ve had six guitars up there in my shop for years now.  Each of them had some flaw that made me not feel comfortable releasing them.  I’m eight months into a two month sentence, handed down from my doctor. And I figured, since I’m still here, I’d get those instruments to the place they were meant to be.”

He handed me a beautiful creation he had named Sanpete, after the place where the mahogany came from. 

“I was born in Sanpete County, you know.  There’s something about that wood that is pretty sweet to me.  People will order their $6000 Brazilian Rosewood instruments and I’m happy to make them, but I always tell them that if it were me I’d go for the Sanpete mahogany.  I just think it sounds better.”  

I can hear his voice saying those words, not 24 hours ago. I can see him sitting across from me, one knee swung over the other in those soft comfy jeans, his arms crossed in front of his chest, leaning forward in that simple grey tee shirt, his eyes happy to be seeing whatever they rested upon, his snowy white curls of newborn hair adorning his head like a halo under the lights of the showroom. 

You’d have to know me well enough to understand how unusual it was for me to play anything at all in front of someone in a guitar shop…let alone the maker! How uncommon it was to actually play like I meant it, not wishing I was good enough to show off. My purest intent, yesterday, was to hear what the instrument wanted to tell me, regardless of who else heard it.  And to top it off, I started to sing.  I am not one to pick up an instrument and start playing anywhere, and I am even less likely to just up and sing without being asked to.  But I guess the guitar itself must have requested it, because I shocked myself and opened my mouth and started singing along.  I think it needed to know how well it played with my voice, and someone somewhere wanted me to know it as well.  My Dave and Ken sat there for nearly two hours, while I took turns playing those two instruments, and a third one…a twelve fret…who put himself in the running as well.  There were aspects of each of them that were brilliant.  Ken had Reo change the strings on two of them, making sure they were in top form so we could make an intelligent and heartfelt decision.  30 seconds of a song on one, then the same song on the others, pondering and discussing and listening and trying on love.  It was like speed dating for guitars.

In the end we settled on that sweet little Sanpete Ken had rescued from his spot up there in his shop.  I actually get teary now, thinking about him reviving that piece.  Admire him for never releasing an instrument that is not perfectly suited for performance.  But adore him for resuscitating those who were breathless up there in his workroom. I pause from this writing and bow my head at my computer, thanking the Lord that Ken has used his gifts, and that he uses them well to serve others.  Thanking Him for the extra spoonful of time Ken has been given to finish his work, to allow this wood to fill the finest measure of its creation. Thank Him for sending us to Provo yesterday, and for Ken being there, and Reo, and for the beautiful interchange we could see between a father and his son, the comfort they seem to have with each other and the mutual respect, and the mentoring.  And, unbelievable as it seemed before yesterday afternoon, that I got to walk out of that place with my own beautiful new instrument.  I felt like an adoptive parent leaving the birth mother, my head tucked into the baby cradled in my arms, swearing to the mother and the child that I would take good care; that I would love and nurture and always respect and cherish the one who gave her birth. 

I played that Stika last night in that benefit concert.  Ken hadn’t wanted me to.  He was so worried that we were not used to each other yet, that maybe the new strings would buck against being in tune. But she played perfectly, and felt completely comfortable in my arms, like we have known each other forever.

I think about some tree stump down there in Sanpete county;  some old forgotten stump of a tree in some unknown place.  I think about wood, and its purposes, and the variety of ways a tree can give new life to itself.  I imagine, if I were that tree, the dreams I could have!  What grandeur we contrive in dreams.  And I imagine how stunned that tree would be; how honored and grateful I would be, if I knew that Ken Stika had used my wood for such a purpose as this.  That under the skilled hands of a craftsman and artist my wood could fill the finest measure of its creation. 

Beautifully crafted, fully loved, he makes of things the best they can be, then releases them to a new life. He has a master’s hands.

Prayers to my God, and to whatever higher power Ken addresses:  prayers that when the planes and clamps and steel wool sit still on his workbench, and when his last breath is finally released,  that Ken will find himself as comfortable and loved in the Master’s hands as he has crafted his instrument to feel in mine.

To see a short video about Ken Stika click HERE.

23. IMPOSTER

Maybe it’s just me.  Maybe it’s my own kind of insecurity.  Or maybe everyone else is good at faking it.  Maybe I’m not the only fake.

Not “fake’ in the sense of being untrue to people, like the girls in school we called fakes, who were two faced and undependable. 

And certainly not fake in the sense that I look lovely on the outside and pure rotten on the inside.  My outsides to not make a nice façade.

What I mean is that, more often than not, I find myself doing something, and maybe even being kind of successful at it, and right when I am about at the height of the thrill of it that little voice pops into my head that says, “Cut it out, Cori.  You know you’re just an imposter!”

I hate that voice. In reality it must be a love/hate because I listen to it.  If I really hated it I would send it away.  Then again, maybe I don’t really love it; maybe I just believe it. Credible, just not lovable. Like my high school basketball coach. He believed in me enough to pick me for the team, but not enough to play me. Love/hate.

I have this battle all the time.  Daily, and nightly.  When I am wearing different hats, or no hat at all.

On the stage:

With that voice echoing in my head I step back from myself, see the sparkle dim in my eyes, watch my head fall and my voice soften.  My fingers fumble against the guitar strings and I start to think about my size rather than my song and then I just want to tell everyone thank you for coming and sorry I took your time and you can have your money back.

At my desk:  

I’m feeling the swirl of images falling freely as my fingers tap the keyboard and the muse is flowing. I stop mid sentence, looking for the right words, hear a small distant laughter.  I pause to listen as, rising like a chant, a large full voiced chorus of condescension finds my eardrum: “Seriously, shouldn’t you be doing something more useful like cleaning your bedroom? Or planting a garden? You only THINK you’re a writer.  What you’re really doing is avoiding doing what you should be doing cuz you don’t really want to do it. Get your room clean and THEN see if you’re a writer.”  That’s when the images stop coming and my fingers fumble again and my words turn two dimensional and flat. Like they are now.

At my stove:

I stir my soup, confident that I know how to simmer a chicken till its tender, strain the broth till its clear, add the right proportion of flavors and vegetables and the juice of one whole lemon, and at what point to add the noodles.  I know all this stuff.  Still, when I took a pot to my sick neighbor a few days ago I walked out doubting myself. “I forgot to taste it,” I told my sister as we walked down the sidewalk.  Beat myself for ignoring a primary rule of cooking in my impostor kitchen. “It’s probably too bland.”

Where I worship:

I stand at the pulpit, or in front of my sisters-in-the-gospel, and testify with all my heart.  Truly my whole heart.  And the next week I tell myself I must not have meant it.  I must have been caught in the peak of a performance and was only faking that kind of unabashed belief.  I lift my hand and allow myself to take the bread and sip the water because I hope the Lord will forgive the impostor until she stops faking. 

Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief.

I guess, to survive, I just keep going back to that place in me who thinks that her God knows her better than she knows herself.  I hope He knows what he’s doing…what I’m doing…cuz I’m tellin’ ya…I don’t! Mostly I only know what I’ve done. 

Maybe, when I think about it…maybe the “what we’ve done" part doesn’t even matter all that much.  How interesting would that be! Maybe there is no accounting for what we have done, in the literal sense.  Maybe that stack of checked boxes…the “what I have done’s” only serves the purpose of making us who we have become.

The do’s lead to the be’s.

And maybe…my, there are a lot of maybe’s in this little self analysis…maybe when I’ve figured out what the “be” is supposed to be, I can forget about the “do’s” I’ve been faking.  Maybe I have to be looking back before I am allowed to stop feeling like an imposter.   

22. JACK

There’s a hum in the air in a room with a casket. More like a low pitched drone; inaudible to most people.  But I notice it: as if there are a thousand whispering angels.  

We stood in the small space of the funeral home in Pittsburgh, Dave’s father lying so still in that box of a bed, looking out of place against the tufted silk.  However surreal it seems, I know it is likely good for us to see the ones we love this way when they are done with their bodies.  We need to know that they are gone, and the coldness of the shell testifies of the warmth of the soul. I just feel a great tenderness toward my faith at times like this, when it is not hard for me to imagine a spirit in flight.  I imagine how I might feel without that faith, understanding it is a gift, and I am always sent to my figurative knees in gratitude that I believe.  In my imaginings the place of non-belief is so painfully empty, I’ve concluded that even if I didn’t truly believe I would try to pretend just to be out of that place. If I die and find out I was wrong, well then my life would have been happier in the pretending.  So I guess I prefer erring on the side of belief, if nothing else, because it makes living taste sweeter.

In that space of juxtaposition; where grief meets celebration; where loss greets a river of long unseen friends and relatives; where anticipation dances with memory; and the taste of tears mixes with the freshness of freshly cut roses; that is where we married the emotions of excitement and sorrow.

“Uncle Jack! Aunt Pat!” We were so happy to see them.  But so sad to have to see them here.

Uncle Jack is David’s father’s only brother.  Two or three years older than Don, he still lived in Saginaw where he was a pharmacist with his own drug store; you know, the classic drug store with the soda fountain and shelves of penny candy, where the smell of bubble gum mixed with the distinct scent of medicine and molded rubber, where Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Moon River play over a mono sound system in the back of the store. Dave saw his Uncle Jack’s small family every year at Thanksgiving, when they made the nine hour trip from Pittsburgh to Grandma and Grandpa Connors’ tiny half of a duplex on the corner of Elm Street in Saginaw.  A cozy family feast steaming with memory.

I had only been with Jack and Pat a few times.  Since Dave’s grandparents had died, we didn’t stop in Saginaw much.  But they were there when Jill was married on the beach in Tawas, and when Helen died. 

Uncle Jack had that same warmth Dave’s dad had; the general kindness in his eyes, and the friendly greeting for all. 

The first time I met Dave’s parents I was so nervous: eighteen years old and about to take their beautiful son away from them.  We were newly engaged, and it was Christmastime.  I remember standing in the kitchen doorway, his mom trying her hardest to be excited to meet me; his little sister Chelle being a great comfort to me because at ten years old she naturally had the heart of a child. As we stood there talking, Dave’s dad came into the room, took my hand, drew me in, kissed my cheek, and I loved him from the start.

So when we saw Uncle Jack walk in the room at the funeral home that same feeling of welcome came bubbling up and it made me miss Dad all the more.  I find it so interesting how we can be in such pain with grief, but still able to laugh.  And we did laugh with Uncle Jack.  Not in any irreverent way.  In a way of reminiscence.  I pulled our son John over to greet his great uncle. 

“John Connors,” I said, “You remember John Connors, don’t you?”

Of course they knew each other; I just wanted to play with those words.

I turned to Jack, saying that I assumed Jack was short for John (even though in reality Jack is no shorter).

“Actually, my birth name was Jack.  My mother named me Jack. But when I decided to leave school and sign up for service in the Second World War, I was too young to register without a release. My high school principal, who was also our priest, had to sign for me in order to enlist.  In the space for my name he wrote John Connors.  I told him my name was actually Jack, and the priest said, ‘Son, you’re going off to war.  You might not return.  You’ll need all the help heaven can give you.  As far as I know there are no Catholic saints with the name of Jack.  But there is a Saint John.’ ”

There are, in fact, a number of St. John’s. It’s a good name to take at any age.

Dave and I stopped in Saginaw a few years ago after a trip to Michigan in October, to close up the cottage for the winter.  We called the Connors’ home from our cell phone.  Aunt Pat answered.  She said Uncle Jack would be just about finishing up a shift at the drug store.  He was close to eighty years old.

We walked into the store, back to the pharmacy counter, and asked for him.  He came out in his white coat, saw us, and that same radiant smile twinkled from his eyes, the way it did from Dave’s dad that day we met: that uncontrived enthusiasm that makes people feel important even if they aren’t.  That kind of twinkle is ageless. Jack has it still.  And though Don’s eyes were closed to all the world that day we buried him, I think somewhere not too far away they are twinkling still.

21. BACKSTAGE

When your only stage is the pulpit, and your only performance a short talk about Jesus, or a simple song, you miss out on one of the best parts of any show: backstage.

I came on music gradually.  Untrained and certainly unskilled in the art of performance. When it was my turn to play I hurried on through the dark chambers behind the stage, got to the light and rather nervously did my part, then scurried off.  It has only been in recent years that I have learned to cherish the moments in the wings.

Backstage differs from the green room…the place where performers nibble on goodies and settle into soft couches, look into mirrors and warm their vocal cords.  Where you joke with friends or converse casually with other performers awaiting their turn on stage.  You can talk, and even guffaw in the green room.  Backstage, you have to whisper. I don’t spend a lot of time in green rooms.  I’m not on that level, nor am I in those kind of shows where there is a large chunk of time to wait.

But I do know a bit about backstage.  The dark, dusty place where the stage crew glares at you cuz you’re in their way and they are trying to get their work done.  Where you have to be careful not to step on a cord, or lean against a wall and release a scrim, or flip a switch.  Backstage, where the props from some other show hunker in a pile atop a long table, where little recital dancers trace patterns with their toes, their faces planted on the ground, their brains reciting the dance in their heads as their hands and feet whisper a fast-forward version in tiny swoops and swirls.  Back there where the stage manager, dressed in black, bosses other people dressed in black, her clipboard pressed into her abs like Romeo’s knife. 

Backstage for a musician is likely very different from that of an actor. Most often my backstage is pretty quiet.  Our shows are not that complex. We come on, and we don’t come off till the show is over.  We don’t usually need a stage manager.  My favorite shows are the ones I produce myself, because I have so much more control over who I get to play with and where I get to play and even what the stage looks like.  And my favorite backstage moments are my Christmas shows, there on that little Farmington Arts Center stage. There’s a little room in the wings,  just large enough for the group of musicians, our instrument cases, enough folding chairs for all of us and Eric, our engineer, and whatever guests swoop in and out.  There’s enough room, as well, for a long narrow table, upon which I set bottles of water and a bowl of Clementine oranges, a tin of European shortbread cookies, some chips and Ashley’s famous artichoke dip, all warm and creamy ready to be scooped into the mouth  facilitated by a thin tortilla chip. I avoid the dip before the show, knowing what all that cream cheese and butter will do to my throat.  My bandmates don’t care. They made a sign once and set it on the table:

The artichoke dip is usually cold or gone by the time I will allow myself to have some.  But that’s ok, because for one of the few nights of my life I am satisfied so much by the aesthetic of the evening that I don’t care for the pleasure of food.  I should sing every night.

But in actuality, it isn’t just the singing.  It’s the goodness of the audience.  I can feel the good energy they send to me.  The lights on me keep them in the dark, from my perspective, but I can sense their kindness, and can feel their hearts beating with mine as I spill my life right there in front of them then wipe it up on my figurative knees.

Backstage, at least for every show I produce, after everyone is together and we have laughed and reviewed and warmed up and shaken off our nerves, we cluster in a circle and bow our heads, thanking the Lord for this chance we have to speak, asking his angels to be with us, asking them to be with our audience.  The people I choose to play with are believers, on some level at least.

I have never felt wholly compelled to write religious music, unless I am commissioned to write something for some particular purpose.  I want my songs to work as well in a festival as they will in a church.  So it’s a fine line I walk when I write.  But just because it’s not religious doesn’t mean it is not spiritual, at least in the sense that we are all spiritual beings who are having a human experience.  And so, especially at Christmas, I think I stand as a witness of some sort. At least I hope I do.  Not a preacher, just a witness. And I feel Him with me when I witness.  And I like it best when the people who hear don’t know I am witnessing.  They just feel…something…and it’s strangely reminiscent, like the scent of their grandmother’s perfume.  They feel something when they smell it on that lady in front of them in the grocery line, but they just don’t know what it is that’s making them feel that way. They don’t remember in their brains, but their hearts do.

And that is the truest desire of my heart, musically: that my audience will sit back and close their eyes and see images that conjure up feelings that are strangely reminiscent; like they must have experienced this, they just don’t remember when.  And when they remember their hearts are soft and pliable and the hard shell that living in this hard boiled world gives them is cracked somewhere.  And through that crack comes a feeling…warm and comfortable and safe.  And they are reminded in the deepest place of remembering.

Merlyn and I sang in Boise once, in a bar.  We used to do that fairly often with my amazing brother John Hansen, who is a musical icon up there.  We sang songs people don’t usually hear in bars.  And yet they were happy and pleasant and we went back often.

One night, after singing, as we were packing up our gear, a long haired fellow, looking rather like he belonged in the band ZZ Tops, came up to me. 

“Thank you”, he said, his breath stinging of alcohol, his body leaning to the side as he stood.  

“You’re welcome!” I responded, “Did you like it?”

“Thank you”, he repeated again.

 I smiled. 

“You reminded me that I had grandparents….”

He paused for a long exhaling breath.  Then, drawing in new air, he continued;

“You reminded me that I had grandparents who loved me.  I had forgotten that.  Thank you.”  He started weeping, perhaps from the excess of drink.

A year later, when Merlyn and I went back to Boise for an album release concert, the same fellow waited in the back alley for us to come out to our car.  We knew him by now, and greeted him by name.  He told us how much he enjoyed the concert, and we chit chatted about this or that, I don’t really remember.  But then, as I lifted my guitar into the car, he addressed Merlyn and me:

“I just wanted you to know that I have been sober for six months now.  And your music had something to do with that.”

I know, firsthand, about alcohol and addiction and what it does to people and the people who love them.  I know it takes a million things to make recovery work.  But if I had even a teeny tiny part in his desire for healing I thank the Lord for planting me there with him.  And for planting those songs in my head.  And for placing the feelings in my heart, and that guitar in my hands. For placing that beautiful friend and artist, Merlyn, at my side, and my brother on the other side.

There is no back stage in bars.  No artichoke dip and no huddled prayers.  Just silent ones in our hearts as we step up on that little riser.

So when I get the chance to do a show and spend a few minutes backstage, with other performers, and with the stage crew, and often with my roadie, Dave, I cherish the moment, there in the dark, anticipating the gift of an audience and the warmth of strong bright lights.

   

20. BROWNIE

I’ve had my Kate on my mind lately.  It’s not all that unusual to have her on my mind.  I’ve been missing her, since she is that great big chunk of states away from us, all the way down in Texas. Maybe it’s because its time for spring break and I’ve sort of paced myself to go  only-so-long without hugging her.  She’s not coming home for spring break this year.  She’s decided she needs a nap.  A long one. One as long as spring break.

Kate teaches in a KIPP charter school in Houston, after being sent to Houston with Teach for America.  She teaches 6^th grade reading.  She is among the 1% “white or other” in their school demographic.  It’s a world apart from the Wonder Bread community she grew up in.  She loves and hates it at the same time: loves the kids, hates their life struggles; hates the imbalance in opportunity, loves the thirst for learning she sees every once in a while. She works more hours than should be legally allowed, and does little else.  I’m praying she is guided to a place of balance.

Dave and I went to visit Kate last September.  We got to spend time with her kids, and in her little apartment with her roommates. We had met some of her students the summer before when they had come to Moab for their class trip.  Really!  Moab Utah from Houston Texas!  In busses. Every one of her students qualifies for Title One subsidies, they have very little, and they still figured out as a school how to afford to come to see the wonderful crimson soil of southern Utah. The kids earned their way, and because they earned their own way, they owned their experience.  KIPP schools are amazing schools!

They camped in tents in a campground along the riverbank. Dave and I drove the 5 hours to see them one evening, taking my guitar, a small sound system, and 10 dozen home made frosted brownies.  We spent a little while that Sunday evening with the kids gathered around an imaginary campfire, since the forest service was forbidding fires at the time due to dry weather. We shared the old standards like Kumbaya, but also slapped our legs and hollered the call and response of Boom Chicka Boom; they frantically pointed to different body parts in succession in I Think I’m Going Crazy, and calmed their spirits with the meaningful lyric of One Tin Soldier.  They sang along, their flashlights illuminating the little songbooks I had made for them.  When we were done we served up our yummy thickly frosted brownies on soft napkins.  They gobbled them up, thanking us and resisting with all they had the urge to beg for more, at the request of their teachers.

One of the fathers, chaperoning for the week, came up to us as we tore down the sound equipment. In somewhat broken English he  thanked us.

 “All my life,” he said, “I’ve heard about people singing around a campfire.  I never dreamed that my daughter and I would ever get the chance to actually do it.  Thank you.”

So when Dave and I visited them in their own school in Houston we decided to make them some more brownies.  It’s the Gummy way, after all.  (They call me Gummy, like my grandkids do, and it makes me feel important and loved.)  Since Kate didn’t have good thick sheet cake pans we went to the store and bought some.  We baked all evening, and frosted when they were cool.  Nice buttery smooth chocolate frosting in peaks and swirls atop chewy chocolate yumminess. When school was over and the kids who had earned their reward for the week were gathered in Miss Connors’ room, we served up the treats.  They stood in line, their hands stretched out like Oliver in the gruel line at the orphanage. We handed them their treats and watched them savor each bite, wonderful sounds of pleasure emitting from their throats, giggles and smiles all around.  David stood on one side and I stood on the other, facilitating the massive distribution to nearly 100 kids.  When we were done, and the kids had gathered their backpacks and were headed out the door for the day, one boy turned to Dave and thanked him.  He didn’t ask for another…they were gone by then.  But the boy softly said, in his Latino accent, “I wish I had saved some.  I want my brother to taste this.  We never had a brownie before.”

I stand at the doorway into my pantry, scanning the shelves for something to cook for dinner, and I see the bins of potential treats and pleasures lining the shelves, all waiting for a turn to delight any or all of us.  Sometimes I don’t get them used up before they are outdated and I casually toss them into the garbage, unspent.  I stand there and I can hear the voice of that 6^th grade boy wistfully wishing he had one more brownie to give to his brother, just so he could taste it.

It’s a healthy whispering in my head.  It reminds me to be grateful.  To be gracious.  And to be generous.  To be understanding and tolerant.  To be willing to hope, and to sacrifice… even sacrifice by beloved daughter to a place so distant from the comfort of home.  She is nobleness.  She is goodness. She is love.

19. LIZZIE

I try not to think about it.  Still, it keeps rising to the cognitive part of my brain and I’ll be driving in my car or standing in the kitchen or talking to my sister and there it is. 

I realized, since my birthday last week, that I am now the age of my grandmother when she died. She hadn’t seen it coming; no one had.  Just a pain in the belly, really, like everybody gets.  Only it got worse, until finally they went to the emergency room at the small hospital in Soda Springs.  She never left the hospital.

My mom was only 14 years old then. Aunt Becky was 9.  They were the youngest of four sons and seven daughters.

So I never met her, in this life at least and the Lizzie Parrish I know is mostly found in black and white, with tidy little frames around her.  She speaks to me in muted whispers, from back there behind the glossy finish on the few photos we have of her, stacked in a shoe box with other relatives I knew and did not know.  I copied a few of my favorite pictures and planted them in places I pass daily; an attempt to memorize her at least and beckon her spirit to visit at most.

  I keep one of my favorites in an oval frame on the clapboard panel to the side of my fridge.  Her sober expression cannot belie the humor of her place in the Blackfoot Grange Kitchen Band.  See how central she is, there in the middle of that cluster of farmer wives as they posed on the steps before they marched in a parade? 

See how she sets her spoons on the upended drum of a kitchen pan?  In any band, musical or not, someone has to set the beat.  I listen for her beat as I work in my kitchen, glancing at her daily.  I stand at my stove and stir in 4/4 time.

 My mom says she has an indelible image of her mom at the old black cook stove on the ranch in Idaho, cooking non-stop for her eleven children, her husband George, the ranch hands, and any other guest George had decided to invite to their table. 

My mother was a typical adolescent when her mom died, so her memories of her are skewed by her perspective.  She remembers her mom looking so tired.  She recalls the sweat beaded on her forehead as she stood over that hot stove in the dry heat of Idaho summers, her apron cinched around her waist, her well spent breasts leaning over the ridge, her legs bound by thick flesh toned stockings, her weary ankles swelling over the rims of her thick black shoes.

 I stand at my stove in my bare feet, with my air conditioner pumping cool air into my kitchen, my apron hanging loosely over my own ample belly.  My stove needs no wood, no ashes need to be swept out before I start the fire.  I simply twist a knob and a nice hot flame appears, one which I can adjust at will. I wonder if she might have smiled more if she’d had my kitchen.

Mom tells me that her mother had a most lovely, lilting singing voice.  She was often called upon to comfort with song at funerals and in other gatherings.  A beautiful alto voice.  I sit in my quiet space sometimes and listen for her harmony to my songs, but I can barely feel it and never really hear it.  Just imagine it, I guess.

 I imagine her cleaning up the mess in the kitchen, untying her apron and hanging it on the hook by the door, pumping some water into a pan and washing herself in the privacy of her bedroom. A basin of water and some home made soap, the water cooling her brow, the fine little hairs on the rim of her thick black mane curling innocently around her weepy forehead.  I imagine her drawing a brush through her hair, down past her shoulders, back from her face.  She twists the whole of it in a loose bun at the back of her neck.  Dips the cloth into the basin of water and wrings it out, smoothing it over the skin in her armpits and under her breasts.  She washes like this most often, a full bath being reserved for once a week. Clean garments, and a starched Sunday Dress.  She hums as she readies, warming her vocal cords.  She lifts the small celluloid framed mirror to her face, turns her head from side to side to check the back of her hair, steps back to make sure all the buttons are buttoned, then places the mirror face down on the tatted doily atop her wooden dresser. She presses her stockinged feet into her Sunday heels and walks through the kitchen to the front door, her heels clicking against the wood as she calls instructions to her children; reminders to feed the chickens and gather the eggs; to sweep the floor and mop it down before sundown so the wood can dry; to get to that basket of ironing while the stove is still hot. She lifts a basket of food for the luncheon following the funeral, balances it on her hip, and walks out and down the lane to the church.  There, standing behind the casket, her song becomes a facilitator for grief, a coverlet of comfort in a rain of tears.

Last Saturday I stood at a pulpit and comforted with song at the funeral of a friend’s mother. This is not an uncommon thing for me, singing at funerals.  I stood there looking out at the grieving congregation and that thought bubbled up once again…the one about Lizzie dying when she was my age. Interestingly, I did not shake it off; didn’t even try.  I let it sit there on the lower shelf of thought, in my multi layered brain space.  I guess I wanted to sing to her, too, somehow.  I wanted her to know that I keep her here…in my memory…even though I have not met her, not in this life at least. 

Lizzie Wood Parrish is a collage of photos and images and stories piled together in my head; gathered from those who knew her, all of them from those who loved her. It was not difficult for me to take that collection from my brain and set it in my heart. 

I wonder what she might have thought of me, if we had known each other, both of us middle aged contemporaries.  I like to think we would have been friends.  I like to think that I could skim my wooden spoon over the ridges of a washboard as she taps a steady beat on her kitchen pot and we would be right in synch, our feet pounding against the pavement in perfect time as we march - side by side.

18. BUTTER

My brother says that the secret to the yummy in my cooking, if there is yummy, is to take all the ingredients and mix them together then add a stick of butter.
He's not too far off.

           
Parker sat on the black slatted stool at my kitchen island, his toes kicking the clapboard in front of them, his little five-year-old fingers holding an English Muffin, his eyes focused on keeping the balance right so that the lovely pools of butter filling the crevices and crannies in the toasted muffin would not run out before his sweet little set of Kindergartner teeth got to them.  I was at the sink, watching him delight in this new experience: his first English Muffin. 

“Gummy”…(that’s what he calls me…what all my grand kids call me)…”Gummy, this doesn’t look like a muffin.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t buddy.  Not like the muffins your mama makes.  This is how they make them in England, where your daddy went on his mission.”

I didn’t know if that was the truth, actually.

I listened as he gobbled and hummed, his throat instinctively emitting glottal tones of pleasure. 

“Mmmm.”

I knew exactly what he meant. 

“I know, buddy, how do you like it?”

“Ith’s really good,  Can I have another?”

So, as all good Gummies should, I took another muffin and caressed it in my fingertips until the two pieces broke from each other, their nice peaks and valleys fully intact and ready to fill the measure of their creation. I popped the two pieces into the toaster oven, tapped the button to start, and watched the glow of warmth appear through the oven window. The kitchen smelled like a winter morning on the best days of my childhood, that comforting aroma of toasted bread calling everyone to the kitchen table.

The timer went DING and the light disappeared.  I opened the toaster door and evaluated the muffins, deciding they needed about 45 seconds more to get the perfect gilt to the peaks.  So in they went, again.

When they were just right I slid them from the rack onto a plate, then slathered a nice chunk of good cold creamery butter on top, easing the chunk with my knife across the yeasty landscape until the chunk had disappeared and a series of golden mountain lakes appeared, like springtime in the Rockies. I slid the plate under Parker’s nose.

He scooped them up, nibbling and gobbling as the sounds of pleasure continued.

I turned to put the butter back in the cupboard when he said it:  Those words I knew were truth.  Truth I had learned in my own heart of hearts.

“Gummy…”  He said, pausing to take another bite.

 I waited.

“…melted butter ith GOOD!”

I stood at the sink, smiling at my boy, feeling like we had made this sacred passage together, like he had himself discovered the truth without anyone having to testify to him.

Our best truths are discovered seemingly by accident. They are nibbled in tasty little bites:

A sprinkle of kindness, a spoonful of humility, a sip of trust, a chewy chunk of tolerance.

Parker and his miniature siblings and cousins taste life in bite size portions and I am blessed to sometimes present those portions to them, and to even partake with them. Each new discovery is a testament to this old creature of myself, a witness that we are not simple little line drawings, but complex mosaics laid down one little pebble at a time.

You get old.  You become accustomed. You forget. Until these little reminders speak up.

And then you remember what you forgot you knew. Indeed, my little friend, melted butter IS good! 

17. CARAMEL FINGERS

This deliciousness is based on a recipe I found in a French cookbook years ago.  I mean seriously French; like not in English and with metric measurements. And not necessarily American ingredients either. So this is what I came up with after experimenting for a few years. Mmmm. A Connors standard for all memorable occasions.

Caramel Fingers

Cori Connors

Shortbread base:

1 ½  C butter, softened (unsalted preferred, but salted is ok too)
3/4 c sugar
4 ½  c flour

Mix in mixer, then pour into wax paper lined x-large cookie sheet.  Press in with rolling pin or side of a round glass.  Prick evenly with fork all over.  Bake till golden- 350 degrees 15 - 20 mins.  Remove from oven and place another cookie sheet on top of the cooked shortbread, as if stacking into each other, so the bottom of the clean cookie sheet rests on top of the shortbread. Flip over, remove wax paper, and let cool, then flip back into original pan.

 Caramel:

14 oz Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 c sugar
1 c butter
2 T Karo
1t vanilla
semi sweet chocolate chips 
sliced almonds optional)

Melt butter, add sugar and Eagle Brand, then karo and vanilla.  Stir on med heat for 12-15 minutes, making sure the bottom does not burn. Should be a golden brown and thickened. Pour on top of shortbread and spread evenly.  If you want to create a variety for a nice looking (and tasting) serving tray, then while the caramel is still warm sprinkle a handful of thinky sliced almonds over about 1/3 of the pan.  Let the whole pan cool.  Then melt chocolate chips, white or dark or both, and cover caramel.  Lately I like to drizzle it instead of spread it.  They cut better and look nice.  (Melt  2/3 c. chips, put in baggie, snip corner, drizzle over some or all of caramel fingers.) Cool then cut into 1 1/2 " X 3" cookies. Alternate toppings to give it a checkerboard look on your serving tray.

*****************

And if you have a St Paddy's Day hankerin' for plain old shortbread, just make the base, sprinkle with sugar before baking, and cut it in strips when cooled. 

So yummy.

16. SONG CIRCLE

The walls were lined with instruments; beautiful, shapely, wooden maidens in staggered lines covering vertical planes, defining the space that held the circle.  I took my place in the circle, feet forward, facing in, my faithful, dependable, sweet toned Collings cradled in my arms. The circle rang with music and laughter and a healthy measure of tears, all those emotions rising and falling as each of us took our turns in the song circle. When it wasn’t my turn I closed my eyes and held my body still, letting the songs infuse through my skin and into my bones where they echo still. When it was my turn, I allowed myself to free the songs that hovered in my chest, unsung, for such a long time.  Old songs I have not sung for a while.

The circle held old friends and new, Dave and Carla, and Tom and Gael, Ken and Rio and a dozen others.  Brian walked in in his green wool coat near the end, his hands carrying no instrument, his throat sore from a late winter cold.  Old songs and new, delivered like courses of dinner in a smorgasbord restaurant, some of them ringing simple and earthy, some with dropped bass tuning delivering chewy red meat, and others twinkling like small petit fours for dessert. There were people in our circle who just wandered in, seeing the doors to the Great Salt Lake Guitar Company being open at such a late hour and wondering what was going on there in the back room. A couple fellas from eastern states, in town for a racquetball tournament, had heard about the circle and decided to stop in and offer up a tune or two.  Ken told stories about riding the rails, about meeting the woman who would become his wife and asking her to ride, knowing there was something uniquely divine about her when she said yes.  Stories about losing a pair of pants on the bed of a flat car, the speed of the train conspiring with the wind. Of riding through the night just to chase the sunrise. Tom talked about his recent obsession with dulcimers.  Gael talked about how the perimeter of their bedroom was covered with them.  It was Tom’s 60^th birthday and The Eskeltone's offered a rousing rendition of a non-traditional birthday tune in folksinger fashion. One of the band members playing in a club down the street stopped in and gave us a tune during one of their breaks. We sang alone and we sang along. The one universal truth underlying each song was the guitar, each of us caressing our own like they were our our little ones on meet the teacher day before school starts. We sang into the late night until we decided the 70 mile drive home was hovering low over our heads. All the while the instruments balancing from their necks on the walls absorbed the stories and stored them in the grain of their wood.  My own guitar holds many stories from such circles, deep in her belly.  Sometimes I ask her to give them back to me in the form of new song, but she is rather selfish with them and will not give them up to me.

I am blessed to have found myself in many such circles.  Blessed to have had good friends who refused to let me believe my own demons who insisted I did not belong.  I am soft and fleshy, but still, like those wooden guitars covering the walls of that fabulous store in Provo, I am the product of every tune I have ever heard, every poem sung and unsung. Whether I am conscious of it or not, they are in me.  We cannot not be changed by such things being repeated and repeated.  Like a musical sacrament, I come to such sacred tables reverently and gratefully.  The circle, in that square space, reminds me of the emblems on the Bountiful Temple.  They’re all around that place, if you look: in the iron fence outside; in motifs on the painted walls; in cornices and in the carpet and in the ceiling; in the stained glass windows.  The circle in the square: God in Man.

I am a part of many circles.  We all are. Circles we are drawn to, and others we cannot remove ourselves from.  Circles that move, and some which are silent and still. We are, in actuality, a crocheted piece of work, circle in circle interlocking one with another until we become a flexible fabric of our past.

I loved tonight’s song circle.  Love God’s circles, too.  Grateful to belong and grateful, too, that circles never end.

15. FRIED HAIR

I texted Lisa from my bed first thing in the morning:

“Lis.  My hair needs some damage.  When can you do it?”

Lisa’s been coiffing my locks for years now.  She’s married to my good friend and producer/engineer Mark Stephenson.  I always enjoy being with her. She knows me and my hair pretty well by now.

We’ve figured out, through years of trial and error, that my hair does best when it’s damaged.  It cooperates better after being hammered with a perm and some bleach then color.  In spite of knowing this, I have in the last year or so let my hair color return to home base and have decided against the perm.  It was fine…until all the previously permed hair grew out and was cut off, bit by bit.  Then I was back to the silky fine hair I was born with, which was perfect when I was growing up and kept it long and flowing.  The two sisters who straddle me in our family have lovely thick bouncy hair; one red, and one brunette. I was the blond headed middle sister who balanced the trio. 

Very early in our lives we found a coordinating set of Barbies under our Christmas tree.  Our hair colors may have matched…but that was about it.

 “Little did I know then, I never would be Barbie”

I find it interesting that my hair responds best to my curling iron when its damaged.  It’s so much more cooperative. But I do have to be patient: let it air dry, then piece by piece heat it up with my big barreled curling iron.  When I’ve applied tension and heat to each piece, then I can brush it all out and it ends up looking more like it has substance than curl. 

My first perm experience was over at Aunt Mary’s house, down the long dusty driveway and back to the little white farm house situated back by the apple trees in Blackfoot Idaho.  Mom called through the screen door and Aunt Mary can bounding out, pulling me into her embrace and burying my face in her ample bosom.  I sat on the step stool high chair and jiggled my leg as she worked, holding my nose against the chemical stink.  Little colored rods wound with little girl hair stacked in rows atop my head.  Aunt Mary gabbed with Mom the whole time.  My thoughts kept shifting between their conversation, the stinging in my throat from the chemicals, and thoughts of running out to the barn when we were done and visiting the dairy cows or climbing up the short craggy old apple trees.  It seemed to take an eternity. And when it was don I looked ridiculous! Like I had stuck my fingers in an electric socket. I don’t remember how long the perm held, but I did feel rather self conscious about it.

I hadn’t known then what I know now: that damaged hair is more submissive  and cooperative than pristine healthy hair.  At least for me.  And to top it off, Lisa told me that I should do my concerts with dirty hair because it held its shape even better under hot spot lights.

Who knew?

I need to remind some of the perfectionist people in my life that sometimes it works better when the goods are slightly damaged.  Not destroyed, just damaged.  We are more easily molded when we see ourselves as imperfect and a bit needy. A little fried in the fire of adversity, so that when the Master applies His heat and pressure, we become more completely the beauties we were designed to be.