Sunday, April 24, 2005
We are our mother's children
Many thanx to my cousin, Suzii, for posting this photo to her blog, (which I will link).
There aren't a lot of moments in my life when I am not trying to figure myself out. My husband, of course, laughs at me and says that any man is crazy to try to understand his woman, to which I reply, "Women don't even understand women." He thinks I'm being funny. I'm dead serious. So, you will find as you scroll through my myriads of "blah blah blah" that much of what I write is based on "finding myself". I have made many discoveries in this quest for uncovering the hidden mysteries of me. One that I find to be the largest, most important aspect of myself is one of the things that women cringe to learn, but I have unearthed this find with great excitement, as one would unearth the tomb of one of the great Pharoahs of Egypt. I am my mother. And my grandmother. And all the women in my family that came before me. What's more, as I live today, I can say with certainty that THEY ARE ME. I say that with tears of joy in my eyes, because the women in my family were women of great faith and inner beauty, and I am proud to be a part of that.
I used to sit and ponder on where I got my love and ability for music, and it always escaped me, because my family never reached for fame or fortune in music, they never made money at it. However, as I look back at "it all", I realize that it was never just "listened to". In my family it was a participation thing. We sang all the time. My grammy and her sister, Auntie Pearl, and a friend of theirs' from church, Sister Hill, had a radio show in California, where they would preach the gospel. Grammy played the piano by ear, so she would play and they would all sing the old gospel hymns. "I come to the Garden alone, while the dew is still on the Roses..." Oh, that folk sound I miss so much. Gramy loved music. She would play the radio in her old red VW bug named "Sweet William" and she'd keep the rhythm by tapping her foot on the accelerator. Aunt Jackie and my mom would sing those same songs, and as I grew and learned music, I would sing songs with my mother. They weren't the hymns though. Often, we would sing silly songs in harmony, "By the light of the Silvery Moon", or "We Were sailing along on moonlight bay"...We should have taken it to a theatre because we were hilarious, but we sang it well. I started piano at four because Grammy and Mom wanted me to play, even if only to play in church. Well, Grammy, I've played for many a church, and on many a stage, and I even played at the Great Library of Alexandria.
I don't know what it was that created that love of music in my Grandmother. It might have been her parents, but from what I understand, they were pretty stiff-lipped people. Perhaps it was her religion, the various churches that she attended and played piano in. I would like to think that, like my mother and myself, music made her soul sing. That singing and playing the piano made the blood run in her veins and the air go in and out of her lungs. I believe that singing for her, as for me, was the closest thing to being in the presence of God. For my mother, who is not the performer, I know that listening to music puts her in the same frame. It sends her to a place she can never be otherwise, and inspires in her great things. My mother used to paint and draw beautiful pictures before her arthritis made it difficult. I grew up loving the smell of turpentine and pencil shavings. This was my mother's form of music.
Creativity is alive and well in the women of this family. We've all been poets and singers and artists under the guise of old hillbilly women and mothers, and in my case, "wanton" women. ("wanton" is a sarcastic term which will be explained someday.) I never realized how much creativity there really was, and how much of it influenced me...because I draw, and sing, and play and act and write. Thank you Mom, for putting up with all the mistakes I made on the piano growing up, and for believing in me when others didn't. My Grammy is with God now, but I know she will understand when I say Thank you for loving the great-grandchildren that you never would see so much that you started singing a song of love that will never end.
There aren't a lot of moments in my life when I am not trying to figure myself out. My husband, of course, laughs at me and says that any man is crazy to try to understand his woman, to which I reply, "Women don't even understand women." He thinks I'm being funny. I'm dead serious. So, you will find as you scroll through my myriads of "blah blah blah" that much of what I write is based on "finding myself". I have made many discoveries in this quest for uncovering the hidden mysteries of me. One that I find to be the largest, most important aspect of myself is one of the things that women cringe to learn, but I have unearthed this find with great excitement, as one would unearth the tomb of one of the great Pharoahs of Egypt. I am my mother. And my grandmother. And all the women in my family that came before me. What's more, as I live today, I can say with certainty that THEY ARE ME. I say that with tears of joy in my eyes, because the women in my family were women of great faith and inner beauty, and I am proud to be a part of that.
I used to sit and ponder on where I got my love and ability for music, and it always escaped me, because my family never reached for fame or fortune in music, they never made money at it. However, as I look back at "it all", I realize that it was never just "listened to". In my family it was a participation thing. We sang all the time. My grammy and her sister, Auntie Pearl, and a friend of theirs' from church, Sister Hill, had a radio show in California, where they would preach the gospel. Grammy played the piano by ear, so she would play and they would all sing the old gospel hymns. "I come to the Garden alone, while the dew is still on the Roses..." Oh, that folk sound I miss so much. Gramy loved music. She would play the radio in her old red VW bug named "Sweet William" and she'd keep the rhythm by tapping her foot on the accelerator. Aunt Jackie and my mom would sing those same songs, and as I grew and learned music, I would sing songs with my mother. They weren't the hymns though. Often, we would sing silly songs in harmony, "By the light of the Silvery Moon", or "We Were sailing along on moonlight bay"...We should have taken it to a theatre because we were hilarious, but we sang it well. I started piano at four because Grammy and Mom wanted me to play, even if only to play in church. Well, Grammy, I've played for many a church, and on many a stage, and I even played at the Great Library of Alexandria.
I don't know what it was that created that love of music in my Grandmother. It might have been her parents, but from what I understand, they were pretty stiff-lipped people. Perhaps it was her religion, the various churches that she attended and played piano in. I would like to think that, like my mother and myself, music made her soul sing. That singing and playing the piano made the blood run in her veins and the air go in and out of her lungs. I believe that singing for her, as for me, was the closest thing to being in the presence of God. For my mother, who is not the performer, I know that listening to music puts her in the same frame. It sends her to a place she can never be otherwise, and inspires in her great things. My mother used to paint and draw beautiful pictures before her arthritis made it difficult. I grew up loving the smell of turpentine and pencil shavings. This was my mother's form of music.
Creativity is alive and well in the women of this family. We've all been poets and singers and artists under the guise of old hillbilly women and mothers, and in my case, "wanton" women. ("wanton" is a sarcastic term which will be explained someday.) I never realized how much creativity there really was, and how much of it influenced me...because I draw, and sing, and play and act and write. Thank you Mom, for putting up with all the mistakes I made on the piano growing up, and for believing in me when others didn't. My Grammy is with God now, but I know she will understand when I say Thank you for loving the great-grandchildren that you never would see so much that you started singing a song of love that will never end.
