3-10-2018 MY AUNT BECKY

The text came too late. We had already crossed the border. I had sent a message to our cousin Gail, telling her we were on our way. "When you reach the border, call us and we'll sing the song", she had said, but I didn't get the message until we were already in Malad pass. Still, when we had approached the big blue sign at the state line, my sisters and I had ceased our car conversation, mid-sentence, and began to sing:

It is tradition to sing the Idaho state song when we cross the border. It's almost sacrilege not to. I don't have any idea what the Utah state song is. Or Pennsylvania, for that matter. But everybody I know who is from Idaho knows the Idaho State Song. It has wonderful harmonies. I consider myself lucky when I cross the border with my sisters and we split into parts. I always think I can hear my mother's voice singing along when we cross.

When we received word that our Aunt Becky was in labor, the kind that delivers spirits back to Heaven, my sisters Ann Marie and Libby and my brother-in-law Michael cancelled all other plans and hopped in the car, heading northward to Idaho Falls. We reminisced through the three-hour drive, cinching the ties that bind us to the people and the place we love.

We spent the whole afternoon, until the sun began to fall, around the bed of my mother's younger sister,Rebecca, the last of the seven Parrish girls. Woven into that bedside circle were our cousins, Becky's children, who feel like sisters to us. The Miskin girls were the only cousins our age. Mom and Becky were the youngest in their family. By the time I was old enough to make memories, my other cousins were grown. Even though there was no one exactly my age or my grade in school, we were close enough in age to go fishing and listen to music and do chores together when we visited each summer. 

Because we lived thousands of miles away from all of our cousins, we did not have the regular interaction of Sunday dinners and shared holidays. But there are real advantages to seeing each other only once a year. When we did make the cross-country trip to Idaho we were able to stay with our cousins, 24-7, for a week or two in the summer. Sharing the wee moments in someone's space binds you to them in unique ways, and I am grateful for it.

There is a rare recipe of aesthetics - physical, emotional, spiritual- that converge when I remember pulling up in front of that little brick house in Ucon, Idaho, where the Miskin family lived. Hot and weary from a 2,500 mile drive, we climbed out of the back of our station wagon, our legs all rubbery, our hair  matted and sweaty, our cotton travel clothes wrinkled. My cousin Mary Lou said yesterday she remembered running barefoot across the gravel road to greet us. Every stop at the home of every one of our aunts felt safe to me. But the stop outside the home of my Aunt Becky was joy. We felt not only loved, but wanted. We were wounded ducklings, waddling in the safe shadow of our mother, and being wanted was as fresh and renewing as ice-water on a dry summer day.

Sitting at Aunt Becky's bedside, yesterday, playing music and sharing familiar stories, one of my cousins pulled out a book of poetry Aunt Becky had written. This one holds our truth.

As my Aunt Becky's breathing became more shallow yesterday, we gathered our broken hearts and hugged our cousins, knowing it was their sacred hour now, where the inner circle gathers-in and huddles, giving her strength to rise. We allowed each other a holy moment to be with her alone, in her little space. One by one my sisters and I kissed her forehead, then her cheeks, then her forehead again, our tears falling on her snowy hair. A kiss for her, and one to spare, and one for her to give our angel mother.
We took the quiet journey southward, back to our homes, back across the Idaho border. Around midnight the call came. 
The last of those seven Parrish sisters leapt into her heaven place. My sorrow at her passing is surpassed by the thought of an awesome family reunion taking place. My Uncle Richard has his bride, my mother has all her sisters, and my Grandma Lizzie, who had passed when Becky was only nine years old, finally has her whole dynamic brood under her wing.
These are tears of joy.  

For the next week, until we lay our Aunt Becky's body to rest, I will dedicate my Lent writing to snippets of memory that include her. 

3-9-18 OVEN

My sister Ann Marie is here in Farmington. For the last 3 decades, when she has been in Utah,  it has been to visit. And I guess, since she is returning to her home in Granite Bay CA next week, she really is visiting. But what makes this time different is that she and her husband Michael are staying in their own house up the street from us. A few months ago AM and Mike took the giant step of purchasing a home in Utah, where they love the people but she  has had a passionate non-love relationship with driving in snow. Utah, occasionally, has snow. But, in spite of that drawback, they decided they might want to think about moving closer to family, reuniting the trio known once upon a time as the "Three Little Girls". (We have, quite literally, outgrown that name.)

Nearly two years ago Michael retired as an oral surgeon, and Ann Marie resigned her part time position as an audiologist.Then they immediately went to London England to serve an 18 month mission for our church. When we visited them in London, reuniting the three little girls for an adventure across the pond, Michael got it in his head that we should be spending more time together. So our Real Estate sister, Libby, found this house and the rest is recent history.

Michael and Ann Marie have an awful lot of love and history in California, so I wondered just how real the possibility of them moving here might be. I suspect they wondered the same...thus, the visit this week.
To our joy and delight, they told us two days ago that they had made the decision to go ahead and make the leap.
Last night, after teaching guitar all day, I stopped by their new house on the way home. Thanks to my sister Libby,they have, in their brand new new digs, a bed, a couch, two chairs, a dining table and a Bosch mixer. These are the necessities for survival. Besides, of course, the essentials like pumpkin seeds, baking ingredients, toilet paper and paper towels...oh, and a TV Libby and Dave installed last week. 
Last night, when I walked in to say hi, I knew immediately that this was her house. Wafting through the door as I entered came the aroma of freshly baked oatmeal cookies. There on the counter was Ann Marie's Bosch half-filled with cookie dough. And on the stove top,  retrieved from the blue lined ovens that I don't believed had ever been used, were cookie sheets full of one of her specialties: Rob's Oatmeal Cookies. 

My sister AM is a nurturer by nature. She always has been. And one of the surest and simplest methods of nurture for her is brought to fruition in her ovens.

Those ovens are going to magnificently fill the measure of their creation. It makes me happy for them. It makes me happy for us!

Welcome to Farmington sister-o-mine!

3-8-18 CHORUS

I don't recall the obstetrician slapping the bottom of any of my babies. They just came out crying. I think they worked so hard to get out of there, or into here, that they just naturally drew in air and exhaled it with gusto. The throbbing of my heart, the embracing of my arms, the warmth of new flesh on my mushy bread-dough belly, the distinct fragrance of fresh blood and new life: all of these combined to cause a unique euphoria that can hardly be described. There must be a major release of serotonin or dopamine in the brain, that feel-good chemical we yearn for. There's a strange convergence of responses after delivering a baby without anesthesia. The pain and the physical work of labor and delivery results in an almost incomparable exhaustion. Couple that with the exhilaration of producing the miraculous creature that just emerged from within, and you have, what I consider to be, the deepest sense of creative fulfillment available to humankind. I believe it was the closest I have come to divinity in my human state. I am in awe that our Maker has enough confidence in us to allow us to participate in this process. 

I love the idea of the Great Creator empowering us to be creators; entrusting us with the processes of divinity.

We are, all of us, invited to be partakers of this holy practice: to create. We all have gifts associated with this godly trait. Finding them is part of our quest. Refining them, after we have found them,is a lifelong challenge.

As far back as I can remember I have embraced the creator in me. From clothespin dolls to glittered balloon models; kitchen recipes to hot-glued costumes, my hands enjoy creating. The fun factor is always high when I am creating; almost as high as the mess factor. But the closest I have come to that sense of fulfillment that came with bearing children is in the creation of songs. Very few labors require such focused effort from me. Maybe it's because I generally deal with ADD symptoms and I shift focus like a bumper car on a crowded day at Lagoon amusement park. I generally can't stay awake to read more than 20 minutes at a time. My mind just wants to wander. And I'm a disaster at organizing stuff because of my spastic attention span. But organizing words, and ideas, that's another matter. I can sit in my family room for 6 hours straight working on a song. I cannot figure out why I can do this, but it is my truth, even if there is no logical explanation.

The crafting of a strong lyric is, no joke, a real labor. A strong lyric is going to look like it was easy. It should flow naturally, like it always existed, but to get it there is some crazy mysteriously hard work! Music has it's difficulty as well, but the HARD, for me, is in the word-smithing. So when a song finally emerges in it's completed state, with all it's parts working, like a newborn who passes its APGAR test, it is glorious. 

We humans occupy this earth in such masses that we forget the wonder of our individual existence. Every single one of us began as imperceivable cells that multiplied and were added upon until we emerged wet and warm and screaming with life. If we really thought about it we would be pausing in awestruck wonder when we pass each other on the street, recognizing the glory of creation.

When I teach songwriting workshops I talk about song structure. Most popular songs use what is called a verse-chorus song form, meaning there are verses and a chorus. The verses vary, but the chorus generally remains the same. And, I tell my students, the chorus is the king. All verses bow down to the king. Or you can consider the chorus "home" and all verses are roads that lead to home.

However you describe it, the gist of the matter is that the Chorus is what we end up walking away with, the part we remember and repeat most often. And usually within the chorus is a thing we call the "hook", or the chain of words that are the most catchy or the most meaningful part of the song. Often the hook is also the title of the song. Pay attention and see if you can figure out the hook of some of your favorite songs.

Anyway, I got to thinking the other day, as I was working on a new song, that the best songs have nice, strong, relatively short choruses with repeating hooks. I got to thinking that I am like the song. My life is my song. I have lived a series of verses in my extended life, but each verse brings me back to my chorus. I have been pondering, without any absolute conclusion, this question:

What is my chorus?

I think it is something I will probably be working on for a while, like the song I've been chiseling away at this week. I noticed in my writing notebook that the first version of this particular as-yet-unfinished song was written in 2003. So far I have been pregnant with this song for 15 years! Sheesh! Get born already, song!

You'll see, on a typical song lyric sheet, a format that indicates  Verse 1, then the CHORUS. Then you'll see Verse 2 and these words:

REPEAT CHORUS. The best songs have REPEAT CHORUS two or three times.

I am, in so many ways, a work in progress; a song yet to be sung. But today I realized that it's about time I nail down my chorus. By now I should pretty much know what this tune is about, so that I can easily go to REPEAT CHORUS now and again. I'm not exactly sure what words will best express the chorus of my life, but I'm quite certain I want the word "love" in the hook.

3-7-18 PIVOT

Never play serious basketball in a pair of suede Wallabee shoes. I speak from experience.

After school, when I should have been doing homework, I curled my elbow around my basketball and headed out the side door of the Pleasant Hills Apartment building. Across the parking lot, down the sidewalk, to the basketball hoops over by the Municipal Building. No one ever tutored me in how to shoot a basketball, and I never did seriously watch how real players shot. That ignorance, coupled with an elbow which was secretly deformed under my skin, made my jump shot a little funny looking, though at the time I thought it felt perfectly normal. Despite the lack of form, the ball eventually taught itself to find the basket, and even learned how to make that sweet little vacuum of a swoosh when it dropped straight from the heavens through the net. I was evidence of repetition paying off. I could shoot, and I could dribble, but that was about it.

My junior year at Thomas Jefferson High School they decided to start up a women's basketball team. Before 1975 it was a man's world at TJ High. So when they announced that there would be a new girls team, with try outs coming up, I started to get my game on. Well, sort of.  Problem was, I didn't have a pair of basketball shoes.  So I played in my square toed leather Wallabees, pivoting out there on the asphalt of the city building, my crepe souls grabbing the ground. I dribbled away from the basket, turned to make a hook shot, lifted my left knee up as I shot, heard the swish, and came down on the edge of the sole of my non-basketball shoe. My ankle rolled out and I ended up in a heap on the ground. I hobbled back to the apartment, took off my shoe, saw the colors of the rainbow magically appearing under my white flesh, and decided that a warm bath would probably make it feel better.

Seriously. I thought that.

So of course my ankle swelled up like a startled blowfish and the next day I could not walk. My armpits and forearms ached for the next month as I inched my way through the halls of TJ between classes. Girl's basketball tryouts came and went. But some of the boys who played on a neighboring court at the Municipal building had told the coach about my swooshy shooting, so in a moment of divine intervention Coach Mathias stopped me in the hall and told me to come join the team when my ankle was healed enough. It was one of those moments you think will never happen to a puny nobody like me. Somebody wanted ME. I didn't have to even ask. I didn't have to even try to convince them.  Wowzers.

So I joined up with the team after a few weeks. My mom bought me a pair of honest to goodness tennis shoes. I trotted out from the locker room and turned myself against my human nature, running next to my team mates, up and down the wooden floor of the gym. Starting at the outside border of the court, we ran to the first painted line, pivoted, ran back to the start, pivoted, then ran to line 2, pivoted, back to the start, pivot, line three…and so on. We called these exercises "suicides." The term was fitting.

My poor ankle did not like pivoting. Not one bit. It still does not like pivoting. For that matter, it does not like running. And though I could shoot from the uneven asphalt outside our apartment building, I was pretty bad at playing an actual game of basketball. I kept the old bench warm that year.

Still, I savor the thought of a group of cool high school boys telling the coach about Cori Hansen and her jump shot. That was worth three months of suicides.

3-6-18 INCINERATOR

Back in the old days, before recycle bins had a place in every driveway and garage; back in the days when the steel mills belched incessantly up and down the rivers that wind through the Pennsylvania hillsides, we burned our garbage. Our house was situated on the side of a hill, like every other house in Pleasant Hills, PA. Our back yard was layered, not like a wedding cake, more like the underbelly of a waterfall. Falling Water, the famous Frank Lloyd Wright house, was built on a landscape like this. After dinner, if it was your chore that week, you would get to take the paper bag full of dry garbage and trudge on down the levels of steps to the incinerator. Ours was a garbage can sized thick wire burning bin, set in the middle of a dry dirt circle. Ashes formed a ring around the bin. When you stepped on them the scent of old dried up ketchup, burnt glue and tin can labels and waxy buttermilk carton rose up, all pungent and smoky. If I close my eyes and inhale slowly, I can conjure up the smell right now. That scent, on a particularly smoggy day, made you grab a damp dish towel on the way out the kitchen door. You'd fold it into a semi-triangle and position it over your nose like a Spaghetti Western cowboy. The fabric would bulge out and suck in with each breath. You learned to breathe short and shallow on those days. The air literally stung your throat and had to have stressed the lungs. 

The incinerator area of every household has unfolded the story of civilization through centuries of time. When we visit old natural history museums, like Plymouth Plantation, Jamestown and Williamsburg, their Visitor Center movies inevitably tell how archaeologists deciphered the habits and practises of old societies, just by finding their incinerator piles. Layer on layer of history, broken and pieced together after they were dug out of piles of ash and dirt. Broken tea cups; tines of forks, knife blades; a porcelain doll's head, or a dresser pull. Pieces of bowls and mugs, with dregs of drinks crusted in the corners, seeds and bones and other evidence of lifestyle.

I often wonder what they will know of us 200 years from now. Perhaps by then all electronics will have been fried and we will be back to earthbound low-tech basics. They will find these flat metal notebooks that flip open, the glass on one side all shattered and little black buttons with letters and numbers useless and cold. They'll dig into some massive junk pile and find little subway tile shaped pieces with shattered glass as well. Millions of them. They may start using them to insulate the walls of their public buildings. All that we thought we were will have been preserved in those items, but it will all be lost in one massive electronic burst. Who knows what will have become of us humans.

At that point the cloud will have reverted to the floating collection of water against a blue sky.People will plant seeds and grow their food. They will write their stories and store them in books.

For now, we place our words and our money and our history in what we think is the safe place, the "cloud" of information. It could all go up in a puff of smoke, like the leftovers from our kitchen on Tuesday and Saturday nights, when it was our evening to burn back there in the lower level of the backyard of my childhood. Eventually everything we have and everything we are, physically, will end up being incinerated. It's the way of all things on this earth. It's not evil by nature. It may become evil by intent, but it's not inherently evil.

Like all good things: ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

3-5-18 GIG

Sixty years ago today I got my body. WooHoo! My mom facilitated the gig for me in Grandma Eaton's Maternity Home there in the little town of Shelley, Idaho. I was the last of my mother's children to be born in a house. Grandma Eaton, the midwife who wasn't really our grandma, retired before my sister Libby was born 15 months after me, so Lib was delivered in an honest to goodness hospital in Idaho Falls. Thanks, Mom, from all of us!

It's pretty darn awesome to have lived this long! Life is such a great gig. It may not always be pleasurable, but it really is never boring.

We musicians use the term gig just about every day. A gig to us is basically an engagement to play or sing or perform. There really is no better term for what we do. "Performance" is sometimes too big, too... stuffy. And a concert is a concert, not a gig. The thing about doing gigs is that they represent the awesome variety of jobs we have. We play in all sorts of places, for all sorts of people.

Being a folk musician/ singer-songwriter is not the kind of job that's going to make anyone rich, unless you're Joni Mitchell in the 70's. It's also the kind of work that is not likely to make anyone famous.

One day, a few years back, Dave and I were paying our respects to the family of a friend who had passed away It was a rainy day in Kaysville, Utah. As we were leaving, there was a sudden downpour, so I stood under a little porch overhang while Dave ran to get the car. Two other women stood there waiting for their rides as well. We were clustered so close together, and no one was saying anything, so I said:

"Hi. My name is Cori." I was about to ask them how they knew the deceased, but one of the women spoke up and said, "Oh, we know who you are." I responded with "Oh, how do I know you?"

She answered, "Oh you don't know us. We're nobodies. And you're famous." I laughed and said, "Oh yeah, I'm famous in Kaysville, Utah" The other woman spoke up and said, "No, you're probably famous in Farmington, too!"

By then our rides had pulled up and the women dispersed before I even got their names. But I have since then had to regularly keep a check on my ego as I pondered the greatness of being famous in Kaysville AND Farmington Utah. (our two little towns are right next door to each other).

I was fortunate today to have an afternoon gig at a relatively small retirement home in Bountiful. A few times a month I sling my guitar over my shoulder and head to places where people have a hard time getting out to enjoy music. Heart and Soul is a non-profit organization I have been blessed to be part of for roughly 20 years. Today I walked into this charming assisted-living home and about a dozen beautiful white haired women sat in a half circle around a large fireplace waiting for me. I talked and I sang and they sang along and clapped and were just wonderful. I remember this one particular woman who sat directly in front of me. Whenever my eyes met hers, as I was singing, she would mouth the word "Beautiful" to me. What a lovely thing for her to do. Encouragement for a stranger, repeating over and over in that unlikely place, was a perfect gift. I told them that it was my birthday, and they apologized that I had to come sing on my special day. I responded that I consider it an awesome blessing to be able to gig at the age of 60, and still have anyone want to hear me! They were so loving and gracious. It was a delightful gig for me.

Tonight three of my sisters and my brother, brother in law, and Dave all took me to dinner at Ruth's Chris Steak House. I had never been to Ruth's Chris (isn't that an awkward name?). I'd heard it was delicious fare, but expensive, and I am relatively cheap, so I would always pick somewhere more affordable to visit. But for this big B-day I conceded and let myself be pampered. We had a great night. I realize what a treasure it is to be able to share a table with my siblings. They showered me with tokens of love, and we gobbled up the goodness and the laughter and the cherished company. When we were done our server brought out a sweet Happy Birthday dessert. What a feast of love and deliciousness! After I had opened gifts the manager of the restaurant came over and asked if we had enjoyed our dinner. We all cheered, thanking them for the great food and service. He said, "Well Happy Birthday! The hits just keep coming, don't they?" Then he told us that one of their guests at the restaurant tonight happened to be a fan of my music and had already paid for our dinner. 

Say WHAT!?

"Really," he repeated, "Your dinners have already been paid for, with the tip, and we hope you have a wonderful birthday."

My jaw dropped. Like, this:

We  all looked at each other, saying, "OK, did you do this?" Suspecting that one of us secretly tried to cover the bill, which was basically the same monetary amount as two airfares to New York and back.

When I saw the shock and awe on everyones faces I realized he had spoken truth. Someone HAD paid for my birthday dinner. And they had not only anonymously paid for my birthday dinner, they had also paid for the dinners of the people I hold dear.

Whomever you are, you have just put my 60th birthday OVER THE TOP in the magical category!

As I was riding home I was pondering how amazing it felt to have this secret wonderful thing just happen, and I thought that it was magnified by the fact that he or she had acknowledged that these people who have loved me my whole life are part of my music. They have been roadies to my gigs, suffered through various iterations of songs as I have written them. They have gone without dinner because I usually gig at night, and without clean clothes when I've been making albums. They have decorated stages with me at midnight, and sold CD's, and assigned preferred seating, and loved and encouraged me when I needed it most. So the delight of having had someone acknowledge in such a magical way that even simple folk music can be a team effort, well that made my heart almost burst.

I'm still quite stunned by it all. And so honored. And so grateful. 

Whomever you are; wherever you are; HERE'S TO YOU! This is a memory I will always cherish!

And I promise not to let it go to my head too much. I mean, now I am famous not only in Kaysville and Farmington, but at Ruth's Chris as well!

Happy Birthday to me!

3-4-18 SHAKE IT OFF

One day a farmer’s donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried piteously for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the well needed to be covered up anyway; it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey.

He invited all his neighbours to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement, he quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well. He was astonished at what he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something amazing. He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer’s neighbours continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up.

Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and happily trotted off!

Sunday Lent blog posts are not original. 

I select stories and quotes I have liked 

and thought you'd like, too.

3-3-18 SEIZE

Though I am generally not a fan of accepting challenges, and I am a regular failure at setting and keeping goals, I am rather enjoying the success I'm currently feeling by reading the Book of Mormon in 90 days with roughly 500 of my closest friends, who are also my neighbors, who, in Davis County Utah are also members of our local church congregation. We have just completed the book of Alma, where we've come to know awesome super-hero legionnaires and their evil nemeses. Captain Moroni, in an endeavor to stir the hearts and the courage of his army, tore his cape in half and wrote upon it "The Title of Liberty."

He raised it on a pole and swept it across the air, a standard for all to behold when their courage and focus were faltering. Moroni, and Heleman, and Teancum and others, for the sake of their life and liberty, their wives and children and all that they held dear, seized upon their enemies, capturing them if possible, overcoming them with death if necessary. I am not a fan of war. But I am a fan of liberty.

I'm one of the rare humans who can say that I have never had to be part of a seizure. This is cause to rejoice. 

Who knows, however, what tomorrow may bring.

Instead, I am grateful to be able to say I am more familiar with this kind of Sees-ure:

When Dave finished reviewing probable cause warrants and other judicial duties at 1 o'clock this morning, and I had just completed my Lent writing for the day, he disappeared to our bedroom and came out with this:

Sees the day!

"Happy March 3rd!" he said. 

"Well OK!" I replied. Indeed, let us See's the day!

I'm sure glad he's on my side.

3-2-18 LOST

Tonight, after a busy day, I went to check messages on my phone and it was nowhere to be found. We searched our house, my sister's house, the garage, and the car. I even checked the refrigerator (it's been that kind of day). We are familiar with the routine, which goes something like this:

"Have you seen my phone?"

"Nope."

"Will you call it for me?"

Dave dials my number. We tiptoe around the house listening for the ring.

My voice mail answers.

He hangs up and dials again.

I tiptoe out to the garage, then open the car door.

He hangs up and calls Libby, who goes through the same process at her house.

Finally we get on the iPad and make use of the Find My iPhone app.

After a few guesses as to which email address I used to sign up for my apple ID, and then trying various passwords from various iterations of usage, I sign in to my Apple account and use the app. Up comes a photograph of an aerial view of a neighborhood. Zooming in, we discover it is in our daughter Annie's family room, where I had earlier this evening been playing with her kids.

It still blows me away to think that such information is readily available. I do not need a government password to retrieve these details. This is every-day common man stuff, right at our fingertips. Even in Kenya, Africa, where children do not have shoes to wear, nearly everyone has a cell phone.

I was just thinking though, in relation to the magical "find my iPhone" application, that the whole idea of instantly finding what is lost is awesome. For some reason my mind went to an image of my daughter Annie, when she was a teenager. In my memory, we are standing in the kitchen, her head is on my shoulder, and her tears are soaking into my blouse. She has always been good at asking me to comfort her when she needs it. It's one of her gifts.

"What is troubling you?" I ask. 

"I don't know. I shouldn't be sad. I just am. I ache inside and I don't know why."

"Did something happen?"

"No."

"Are you worried about something?"

"No."

"OK."

Something inside urges me to stop asking questions. Just love, and hold, and let her cry. So that's what I do, until the flood recedes and she is able to breathe in her own space.

I understand. There was a time when I was that girl and my mother's arms comforted me in the same way.

Sometimes we just hurt inside, for no logical reason.

That's when we really could use a spiritual, or at least emotional app: 

"Find My Heart."

Wouldn't that be nice? 

Then again, when would we get the opportunity to comfort, or be comforted? Sometimes there is value in being lost.

3-1-18 JO

The flame at my bedside bent when the heater turned on, warm recycled air swirling the small strand of smoke away from the candlewick. I shifted my book, adjusting my back as it leaned against the feather pillows stacked against my headboard. The movement of air brought the scent of beeswax over to me, making more sweet the image of Jo writing away up there in her attic. 

When I was 16 I read Little Women every night in my bed, by candlelight. I had purchased an old musty hardback with cottony-soft pages that held the print so sweetly I felt myself being drawn straight into the paper. I can't believe I didn't burn down our whole apartment complex because I was prone to fall asleep reading. I still am.

Besides the beautiful selection of words Louisa May Alcott chose to string together in her writing, the story line and characters in Little Women struck a strong harmonious chord with me. I was one of a clan of sisters, being loved and encouraged and disciplined by a strong woman, just like in the book. One of those March sisters was a would-be writer named Jo, who was a passionate soul with a bit of a rebellious streak. She was a master at pretending and directing the fanciful notions of everyone around her.

I fell in love with Jo. I became Jo, truth be known. I was that would-be writer who saw the world through the eye of the poet; dark's were terribly dark - but light was divine. 

When I was still quite young, before we moved down to the apartments and well before I had heard of Little Women, I had created my own "Jo space" up in the attic of the English Tudor house that was the home of my childhood. A set of pull-down stairs,  more like a ladder, rested in the ceiling of our upstairs hallway. On solitary summer afternoons I pulled a stool out of the bedroom, stood on top of it, and reached up to the pull rope dangling from the panel.I would jump from the stool, gripping the knob on the end of the rope, and the weight of my body would release the ladder, lowering me to the floor in the process. The aroma or dust and heat came hurling down as the dark chamber of our attic space opened above me. Up there, in the stale heat, I placed a little desk in front of one tiny window. Since there was only one window there never was much cross breeze ventilation, but I cranked it open anyway, allowing the sounds of nature to create their soundtrack to my writings and the light of day to illuminate each page. I sat at my desk, a stack of notepaper in front of me, and pretended to dip my pencil in an ink well, like old fashioned honest-to-goodness authors did. I worked until the heat was too much to bear then I slipped down the wooden rungs backwards into the coolness of ninety degree temperatures and 85% humidity known as Pittsburgh, PA before air conditioning.

When I found my copy of Little Women at a garage sale years later, it was almost spiritual to me that Jo also wrote in her attic.

I should have named one of my girls Jo. I don't know why I didn't even think of it.

I couldn't have known then that just five years later I would be a young mother of two, living in New York, and my life would intersect with another Jo; a woman just as powerful and magical and masterful as Jo March.

Her name is Sally Jo. Sally Jo Winebrenner, who naturally carried the charm of the American north-east like Jo March did. Born and raised in the charming town of Pittsford New York, along the canal, in a place where old, old trees hung their branches over white picket fences, and the late autumn days were scented with mulching leaves and fermenting apples. I first heard her name in church, right after we moved there. 

We had moved to New York right out of law school, knowing we would live there for one full year. David had accepted a federal circuit court clerkship where the judge heard arguments in Manhattan, but his chambers were in Rochester, upstate from New York City. We rented a home in Pittsford, a little town that was one corkscrew strand in the crazy spaghetti bowl of roadways away from the city of Rochester. Dave spent three weeks of every month working in Rochester. Then one week of every month he and his fellow law clerk, Jay Powell, travelled with Judge Van Graafeiland to hear cases in Manhattan. 

That day in church, when I first heard Sally Jo's name, I had been sitting in Relief Society, our women's meeting, and they announced that our weeknight activity would be at her house. I knew absolutely no one, but mustered my courage and found the address that Wednesday night. Driving up to her place was an awakening. It was massive. It has been nearly forty years since that time, so I may not remember all the details correctly, but I believe the place had once been a nunnery or a monastery.  Sally Jo and her uber-talented husband, Bob, had purchased the place and were in the process of magnifying it. They were, and still are, masterful in their gifts for transforming places. Mind you, this was well before the insurgence of shows like House Flippers and Fixer Upper and everything HGTV. Our social activity was a tour of their estate. I was instantly charmed. Beyond charmed! I could see into the soul of that woman before I ever even met her. Maybe it was the closeness of that Little Women spirit that still resided in me. The home was exquisitely crafted, remodeled without breaking an ounce of the spirit that dwelt there, and decorated like the March family would have felt at home even if they could never have afforded some of the lovely decor. If I could choose to manifest my inner decorator in the blink of an eye, I would be Sally Jo. What a place! And what a feeling in that place! Warm and welcoming and not one ounce of "stuffy". But the most lovely part of Sally Jo came when I actually met her face to face. She carries that natural aura that speaks without words; "Well, hello again, ancient friend of my soul! Nice to see you after all this time." Like, we had never met before but surely we knew untellable stories about each other. She had a way of making everyone feel like her best friend, including a 21 year-old girl with one baby on her hip and one in her belly. She held, and still holds, that timelessness spirit that makes her feel like best friend and mother and sister all at once.

Sally Jo and Bob and their own brood of
four little women and a little man
(grown up and multiplied now)

Not long after I met Sally Jo she was called as Young Women's President in our ward in Pittsford, leading a group of teenage girls in Sunday meetings and regular weekday activities. She asked for me to be her first counselor. I accepted, humbly, and my life was forever changed, not only by those beautiful girls whom I came to love, but by the confidence and training and nurturing friendship of Sally Jo. Our presidency would meet at my house, after my second baby was born, so I didn't have to go out. I can still picture Sal sitting at the head of our kitchen table, one of my babies in her lap as she conducted our planning meetings. She has this way of moving through the days like they are sweet gifts, and if you are part of her day then you are part of her sweet gift.

Sally Jo and Bob were consummate hosts on a Sunday evening in upstate New York. They would open up the doors to their beautiful estate and we would sift in and out of their home, lemonades in hand, finding soft easy chairs or comfy lounge chairs out in the setting sunlight. Inevitably Sally Jo or Bob would put a guitar in my hands and ask me to sing. It was the first time such a thing had ever happened to me, besides my own mother requesting a song. Sal would always graciously ask if I had written anything new. I wonder if... oh, never mind... I KNOW there was divine direction given for my own sake, because their encouragement and confidence in my music changed my life. The realization of their impact becomes more clear every time I think of it. 

At the end of our clerkship year the Winebrenner's had a going-away gathering for us out there on the lawn of that place we loved. They presented us with a beautiful hand bound journal, which had been exquisitely wrapped by Dick Ahern, another master of magical creativity. (The place was crawling with them, I tell you!) I treasure that book, which is now filled, every single page, with the memories of the coming years, which are now my past. That baby, born in Rochester General Hospital on March 5th, 1980, is now a mother of four, and a doctor, and an artist and an athlete and a beautiful singer. Back then, she was a bundle of potential in a soft pink baby blanket.

Bob and Sally Jo do sparkle!

In many ways, I too felt like I went to New York as a newborn. New to marriage, and motherhood, and new to maturity and adult Christian discipleship. I felt like God bundled me up and sent me to Pittsford New York to be placed gently in the arms of Sally Jo Winebrenner, who lovingly nurtured me, and tutored me, and encouraged and understood me like I wanted to be understood. I spent barely a year in that blessed spot with her, and I will love her forever.

I am who I am partly because of Jo March, and partly because of Sally Jo Winebrenner.

Yup. Shoulda named a baby Jo, don't you think?

Oh, and as the maker of all things magical would have it, I just now remembered that today is Sally Jo's birthday, at least I think so. Serious Karma! 

Happy Day of Birth, old friend!