::MAYBE::

Things in my life are the way they are, based on every choice I’ve made. They laid a road, end to end, that brought me here to this table today. Good or bad, for better or worse, here I sit; my greasy hair under a ball cap, my thoughts scattered and the censor in my brain telling me that what I’m writing now is not worth a damn.

I get sick of hearing my own voice tell my own stories. Are other people as sick of it as I am? I don’t want to write cute, or clever. As Hemingway says, write real, about what hurts. I’ve kerfed around the edges of the pain for years, never hitting it dead center. I guess that’s real if you’re digging a trench, but I’m sort of stuck down here, looking for truth. And trying to dig my way out.

I could write about birds. But then my brain goes to the parakeet we had at 1135 South Quaker. My mother named it Perry Como. He was blue, with black wing tips, and a spot of lime green between his eyes. Thinking of him now I can smell his birdseed and that cage with the newspapers in the bottom.

When they let Perry out of that cage, he flew up and sat on the curtain rods. Every time he flew his wings made a loud flapping sound that scared my little brother.

Sometimes my mother would open Perry’s cage door, and wait. When my brother came walking through the livingroom, suddenly Perry would swoop down. My brother would scream and dive under the table, clutching the legs and sobbing. My mother raised her eyebrows, took a drag off her cigarette, and laughed. That taught me some pretty twisted things about how people treat those they claim to love. So yeah … count that little nugget as a lob to the center of the pain from the trenches.

Or maybe I could write about being a teenager. And dating.

Maybe I could write about the night a boy came to pick me up, and he had a long fringe of bangs. My little sisters peaked around the door giggling, “It’s a Beatle!” My Dad growled, “Is that your hair, boy, or is that a wig?”

Or I could write about another time my date arrived to take me to the school dance. He drove his car, parked, and my Dad drove us to school in our ’51 two door Pontiac. The two door thing is relevant because my date and my Dad sat in the front, I climbed into the back. In my formal. The thing I’ll never forget is the hood ornament. It was a glowing orange Indian Chief. I locked my eyes on that thing all the way to school, trying to ignore the awkward silence.

Maybe I could write about the faith, and the sense of humor, that have carried me on angel wings through the darkest of days, the brokenest of hearts. How, even in those moments … my date with the Beatles hair, me sitting in the back seat of that car … even then, in the recesses of my mind, I knew: “this is the rich stuff of which stories are made. I will write about this one day.”

Maybe today, sitting here at this table, wearing my ballcap, is that time.

June 14, 2016 0

::Right or Wrong::

The messages we’re given in childhood are powerful. Until we get out into the world on our own, they define our reality. They define our normal. They tell us what’s expected of us, and what value we have. And behind those front doors, each family has its own brand of ‘normal’.

I was raised in a house where there was one right way to do everything. Often I discovered there was a right way after I’d done something the wrong way. Mattered not if I accomplished my goal. If I didn’t do it the right way, I got it wrong. And that “right” way could change without warning; I learned that early on. So, go ahead, knock yourself out. But don’t count on anything except maybe being blindsided by a new rule, a new way of you failing again.

This is a piece of the legacy inherited by a child of alcoholics. Eventually, once we’ve reached adulthood and if we’re aware enough and brave enough to launch the quest for self discovery, we catch a glimpse of how life is defined outside the hazed cocoon in which we grew up; the only “normal” we’ve ever known. So there’s an overriding sense of betrayal, or having been lied to about ‘what’s going on out there’, ‘how I fit in the world,’ or even ‘who I am’. And, at its center, ‘what love feels like’.

That’s not to say that drinkers are evil. They’re not. I truly believe that very person, in one way or another, is ‘trying to find their way’. But some people get so off track; are so myopic as to what they’re doing and the damage caused by it, that they’re pretty much a walking (or stumbling) wrecking ball.

I’ll admit there are certainly things ingrained in me from my childhood that I treasure. I have a very well calibrated moral compass. I’m not an angel by any stretch, but when I’ve veered off course, I know it.

This comes from a Spiritually driven center that was awakened in me very early on. I clung to it, and was convinced that ‘if I’m good enough’ good things will, ultimately, happen. There’s probably a piece of me that still believes it.

In Seminary we studied addiction. It was pointed out to us that addicts are “headed the wrong way down the right road.” They crave a different feeling, a different perspective. But they’ve employed chemical shortcuts to get there, which always end in failure. Because in order to keep the feelings gained from drugs or alcohol, you have to stay drugged or drunk. The process is deeply and heartbreakingly flawed. Those same good feelings are authentically available. But like all things of true value, we gotta do the deliberate, serious (and personal) work to ‘get there from here’.

And something else I learned in Seminary, is that there are quite possibly as many ways to do something as there are people to do it. Not right or wrong, based on approach. When I heard that it was not like a light went on in my head; it was more like a bomb went off.

For decades I held back on doing so many things, big and small, for fear I would do them wrong. It was earth changing when, after finally trying something, and doing it my way, there was no one there to tell me how wrong I was.

Maybe I was never really wrong, after all.

May 3, 2016 0

::All I Am::

There are certain things I’d never call myself. Beautiful, for example, is one. Extensively educated, at least in the formal sense of the word, is another. Lord knows I’ve learned a gracious plenty, but the really important lessons rarely happened in the classroom.

Life starts telling us who we are early on. As little ones, we’re blank slates, eager for the information. And we don’t know better than to swallow whole what adults tell us about ourselves.

When I was three years old, one of my dad’s friends, who I only knew as Cuz, called me “muscles.”

Even at that young age, it felt like a bad thing. I didn’t want muscles. I wanted blonde curls and blue eyes like my cousin Joanie. But there I was, a sturdy little girl with black ringlets and hazel eyes. A kid who in summer turned brown as a biscuit in ten minutes flat.

On the playground at school, the nuns would cluck disapprovingly as we lined up to go back inside. “Cecelia’s voice carries. You can hear her above all the other children.”

I remember, at around ten, being at my Nanny’s house in the summer. Old lady North, who lived the next street over, would come across the alley and in the back door for coffee. I dreaded that woman.

“Myers,” she’d say to my grandmother while studying me, “I think this child is an Indian.” Then she’d reach out and take hold of my upper arm. “She’s brown as an Indian,” she’d say. Nanny didn’t argue. She just passed the half and half, lit another Chesterfield, and changed the subject.

As innocuous as they may have been at the time, those descriptions from the grownups in my childhood delivered the bad news to my sense of self. They informed me about who I was.

And the fact that after so many years I can still go back to those moments, see those people, observe them observing me, tells me just how impactful the comments were.

It’s taken decades. But eventually and deliberately I let go of my tendency to be defined by what was said long ago. In fact, those statements serve me well now. They’ve made me pay attention.

When I talk to children, I’m purposeful with what I say to them about who they are. Because the words adults use have staying power; they will frame – for a while, or forever – how those kids feel about themselves.

And when they think back, I want to have contributed tender words about their own beautiful truths.

April 9, 2016 0

::Check Please::

Birthdays are interesting benchmarks. They roll around on the same date, year after year. As a kid, I generally looked forward to them. It meant “something” would happen; in the earliest years there were celebrations with cake.

Birthday number one was The Event. As the first-and-at-that-point-only child, family gathered round. Photographer Wilmot Dahlem was summoned.

I was put in the highchair, a cake was placed in front of me. I reached for the single candle and literally remember being told, “Nono, don’t touch that.” So, I did what any thinking one-year-old would do: I picked it up with my mouth.

Wilmot documented the moment

The next Birthday I remember is number three. I had a baby brother by then. That’s also the year I found Mama’s scissors when I was supposed to be taking a nap; I cut half my long hair off. Mama documented that one. The expression on that lady’s face tells the story.

My grandmother (Nanny) crocheted me a dress, with hat and purse for my Birthday that year. Wilmot took pictures of me in my dress.The short curls peaking out from under the crocheted hat … made my Mama cry.

As I got older and the number of siblings grew, it became more of a day when — eventually — all eyes glanced at me at some point during the day with, “Hey. It’s your Birthday.” Yes, I knew. I was “waiting for sixteen.” Then, “waiting for eighteen.”

When you’re a kid, waiting and pining to be older seems to be part of the M.O. But there’s a point; a moment. There’s a place in the sequential order of annual things when a body feels the urge to say, “I’ve had quite enough. Let’s stop this now; can we?” Well, no, comes the answer. Not really. Time, and tides, are gonna roll on. The only known way of stopping is leaving. And that’s generally not what one is thinking when it crosses the mind, on some advanced Birthday, to say, “Check please.”

I had such a Birthday yesterday. I felt full ready to call for the check … until a guy at the grocery store started chatting with me. I was standing in the aisle with the motor oil, and reached for the 5 W30 ‘high mileage’. The young man (and I say young because, at this point in my life, isn’t everyon else?) asked me a question about my car. I did a little fake laugh and told him my car needs the OCV replaced. That stopped him for a second; a woman who knows what an oil control valve is … rare bird. Then he complimented me on my sweater. Oy. I could see where this was going; I felt my face flush. I couldn’t look him in the eye. But I knew he had to have been born some year after my children. Holy crap. Nope. Moving on.

I grabbed the jug of oil, mumbled “Have a good night,” and went to self check out. I spied him heading toward the produce section, and was able to get a good look at him. Damnation; he was tall, a bit swarthy, he must work out. He was eye candy-ish … in a much-too-young-for-me-but-god-help-us-all-look-at-you sort of way.

I paid for my oil, walked out to my car, got in, and sat there for a minute. Just breathing. I considered how old I ‘am’ compared to how old I ‘feel’ … and pulled out of the parking lot thinking maybe, just maybe, I don’t need the check after all.

March 22, 2016 0

::My Lonesome Dove::

I got the news back today, and it was good. Bloodwork was off so they needed more tests. The liver. I’ve had issues in the past with my liver. Not of an alcoholic nature; I’m not a drinker. But other things that can plague such an organ, they were plaguing mine. So, bloodwork.

And the result is that — while things need watching — all is well.

I shared the good report with a dear friend and said “That’s a load off.” She said she was relieved because she knew I was concerned. But the funny thing is, I never was really concerned. It just weighed heavy. It occurs to me that not many people have that experience. And even fewer people are aware of the difference.

The weight of things can bear down on the joyfilled. And I am one of those.

Through the years there were life experiences that had my spirit bent nearly double. Moments when I found it difficult to breathe; moments when my joyful self wanted to forget how. When I ached to be done with it; climb out the window of this life and in the window of the next. To be honest, there’ve been times when, due to health or surgery, I faced a decision: stay, or go; I chose, each time, to stay.

The redemption that lives in the small moments is what saved me, restored me, brought me back. That is always what keeps me here.

So the blood test, in the grand scheme of things, is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less. A little window into one aspect of what’s going on with me. The rest finds its place somewhere in the personal, panoramic pages of my own ‘Lonesome Dove’ story.

I’ll live my life, in all its chaotic splendor, across my own prairie … until I don’t. But life, its own self, will go on. And that’s a weight I’m glad to carry.

March 20, 2016 0

::ANGEL TONGUE::

I am a vocal coach. I just read that sentence, and it sounds a little strange to me. Coach vocal. Voice. Coach voice. The definitions of “coach” are all over the place, from a “four wheeled, horse drawn carriage,” to coach as: “developing a person’s skills and knowledge so that their job performance improves, hopefully leading to the achievement of organizational objectives.”

Voice is defined as: “the sound or sounds uttered through the mouth of living creatures, especially of human beings in speaking, shouting, singing, etc.”

I’m sure Miriam or Webster or whoever it was that determined those definitions … I’m sure they were a sharp couple of guys. I mean, they know the definitions of EVERYthing, and actually put it in a book called a dictionary. But neither one of these guys has shown up to observe what happens when an individual is standing in front of me, aching to sing, but scared shitless to do it.

“I need you to sing something.”
“You mean, NOW?”

“Yes. Now. You can sing the alphabet, you can sing Happy Birthday, I really don’t care. I just need to hear your voice.”

And so it begins. Without exception, every . one . can . sing. I didn’t say everyone is a singing star, but singing is as natural a part of us as breathing. Yet so many tend to be paralyzed at the thought of letting their sound out for the world – or, for that matter, themselves – to hear.

Singing, “being of music,” is natural for us all; we speak the language of angels. So the fear is of speaking in the angel tongue. There resides in many a sense of unworthiness (untrue), of not measuring up (the big lie), born of a lifetime of people telling them they can’t do it well enough, and to stop (defamatorily inaccurate) . So I guess, woven into this work I do, is the psychology of gently leading people back to their own truth, and creating a space where they – when they’re ready – will step into it.

The body is a reed instrument. As with any reed instrument, playing it requires breath.

I tell every student that at the moment they popped out of their mama, with that first breath they gulped in Spirit; they have been doing it every moment ever since. Ironically, when they first start working with me, people often find it difficult to breathe. They become “breathless.” So we work on the process of permissions … to breathe (doing it already), to have a voice (has always been there), to raise that voice, to speak in tongue … angel tongue … the native language of the universe.

I just think Miriam and, for that matter, Webster, should sit in on a couple of my students’ sessions. I think they’d be surprised. Maybe they’d even sing.

March 14, 2016 0

::BLESSINGS::

There was a period, not sure how long, during my growing up when I remember being blessed. I’m not talking about blessings abounding, though looking back I’m able to see that some did. I’m talking about the ritual of Good Night.

After pajamas on, teeth brushed, I was summoned to stand before my mother. She rested her hands, softened and smelling of Jergens lotion and tobacco, on my head.

“I bless you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” she droned. Her breath carried the DNA of Brown Derby beer.

There were no kisses. No hugs. Just a blessing.

Then one night, after the blessing, I posed a timid question.

“Aren’t we supposed to kiss and hug, or something?”

“You got a blessing. Go to bed.”

So I guess, when thinking about “being blessed,” this memory peaks up to remind me that those blessings did happen.

Regardless of what she’d been smoking, or drinking, the blessing was its own thing. A spiritual lifeline thrown to a little girl by a mother who knew no other way to tell her she was loved.

Every night, for as long as it lasted, I grabbed that line and held on for dear life.

That lifeline became a lifeboat, one that has carried me from stark childhood to rocky marriage to the open sea of tender possibilities. I know now that sometimes a brokenhearted love lies hidden in the coldest blessing, aching to be thrown a line of its own.

March 7, 2016 2

::I See A Giraffe::

I see a giraffe. Big quiet eyes. Ears just so. Soft little horns. I can’t see his long neck. I know it’s there, beyond the card.

His neck that stretches high into the trees, so he can nibble on the tippy toppest leaves.

He’s a likeable giraffe. Loveable, even. But it’s hard to know that. His head is so very high up, one can barely look into his eyes to see his personality.

And it’s quite difficult to kiss a giraffe. The process goes thus:

You stand by the tree trunk, look up into the leaves, and you shout, very loudly,

“Mr. giraffe, I would so love to kiss you.” You hope he hears you. His head is buried up there in the tree, and you hear munching. You shout again, louder:

“Mr. Giraffe, I would really very much love to kiss you.” Still, no response. Munch munch. Try again. In fact, this time, try a slight English accent:

“Hiya, Mr. giraffe. Seems I’ve a kiss here wif your name on it. What say you, good sir?” You wait. He eats. You sigh. You walk away from the tree, to the sidewalk. You don’t see one sly eyeball peak at you through tree leaves.

You stand on the sidewalk, looking at the giraffe … you study his spindly legs, his switching tail, his long, long neck. You suck in as much air as you can hold, and you shout out. the loudest of your louds one last time. Oh, and the English accent has become quite thick:

“Mr. giraffe, is a bloke allowed to plant a kiss on your jaw at any point in time?” After waiting for what seems like forever but was really about a minute and a half, you shout, “Crikey!” as you turn and walk across the street. This, you decide, will never work.

“Uh. Excuse me.” You turn, and look. The giraffe is looking right at you. “Were you talking to me?”

“I … I would very much love to kiss you.” You’re on the opposite side of the street by now, but you start walking back toward the giraffe when he bellows,
“STOP!” You stop. “Back up!” You step backwards and onto the opposing sidewalk. “Wait.” You stand and stare. You wait.

The giraffe himself backs up, away from the tree. He swivels his head around on top of his neck. Then, ever so slowly, his neck bends down. Down. Down. He brings his neck down till it stretches across that street and he is face to face with you. You can feel his soft giraffe breath.

He leans toward your ear and whispers,

“You may kiss me now.”

February 13, 2016 0

::Every Little Piece::

People always ask me when I started to write. Especially songwriting.

I can think of points along my childhood and teen years, when I wrote to process feelings or moments; heartbreak. Confusion. Boys. But the truth is I’ve always, as long as I can remember, written it down.

I say that, and it strikes me quite odd that a tiny girl, not exposed to literary pursuits, would even think of writing.

I was a post war baby; my mother and daddy were young, beautiful, hard working. My daddy was a Navy man, and knew how to do just about everything. They were musical, and funny, but they were not the type to bury themselves in Tolstoy or Hemmingway. They had better things to do: roll up the rug in the dining room on Saturday afternoon and dance to Benny Goodman and Kay Starr records. Or sit on the front stoop at sunset, leaning into each other, beer in hand, and watch the kids ride their trikes in the driveway.

So how did I end up here, at this keyboard? Or way back there, at that Big Chief tablet with my Dixon Laddie #304?

I remember a moment when I was five. I was sitting on the swing in the back yard at 1563 North Marion. The sky was so blue, and I was so happy, I wanted to write a song about how I felt. I threw my head back, and instead of words coming out, I cried. My happy went heartbroken in that moment; I wept, because I knew I was too little to write a song that sounded like the ones on the radio.

And it’s interesting, isn’t it? How I remember that moment so clearly. How even as I think about it, I am “back there,” under that blue sky. In that back yard on that swing. My stomach even grabs for a second as the feelings I had then are here with me now.

So I guess you could say the writing thing has always been part of what I am. I remember in first grade, Sister Dianna was teaching us a song, and I was saying the words with her. She stopped, looked at me, and said,

“Mary Cecelia, do you know this song already?” No, I didn’t. I’d never heard it before. But somehow, I knew what would come next in the lyrics. Didn’t everybody? No, it turns out. They didn’t.

In third grade, Sister Mary Damien announced that the Highschool newspaper class was asking for poems from the grade school. They were going to publish one poem in the next edition of their paper. We were to turn our poems in the next day. My hear jumped, and my head started spinning with the tomes I would write.

That night at home, I took out my Big Chief tablet and my Laddie pencil, and I wrote. I wrote at least a half dozen one-stanza poems. I gave each stanza a name, and its own sheet of lined paper. I made the pages as neat as my third grade southpaw printing could get.

The next morning, I shuffled into the classroom with my classmates, laid my stack of poems on the corner of Sister’s desk, and took my seat. I watched her eagerly, hoping she would be proud of me.

Finally, Sister Damien walked over to her desk and picked up my pages. She leafed through them, then ripped them in half and threw them in the waste basket. As she did so she looked up at me briefly and stated,

“You were not to copy out of a book.”

My stomach lurched. My face turned hot. My eyes welled up. I was horrified, for several reasons:

First, it would never have crossed my mind to turn in someone else’s work; the fact that she thought I would do such a thing made me want to cry.

Second, even at seven years of age, I was in a panic: those were the only copies I had. I learned an important lesson that day: always make duplicates.

Third, though my classmates were laughing at me, I was more concerned with people thinking I had such a flawed moral compass. They clearly didn’t know me at all.

On another level, buried deep beneath my chaotic feelings, was a little voice that whispered,
“Hmmm. They must have been good. REALLY good. She thought you copied them out of a book.”

A backhanded compliment from a nun, saying my work was so good I could not have done it. I’ve lived a lifetime of twisted victories like that.

In fourth grade, we had music class two mornings a week. One morning the music teacher announced that there would be a music program, and that we would be in it. She then said to the class,
“We will need someone to sing the solo. Are there any solo singers in here?”

The entire class turned, without a sound, and pointed at me. All I’d ever done was sing with everyone else. I was completely unaware of my own voice. With all those fingers and eyes directed at me, I buried my face in my arms and cried.

Eventually I did sing the solo in the program that year. And I kept writing. There were times, big stretches in fact, when I was writing for my life. And music is the silver thread that’s always kept me tethered here.

In fact, writing and music have laced the pieces of my life together, helped me make sense of myself, this world, and the path I’m on. They still do.

I used to think maybe these things were pieces of generations past, pulling me back. But I’m starting to believe maybe they’re pieces of the future, pulling me forward.

Either way, I’ll take it. And I’ll write and sing the pieces of my life together, for as long as I’m here.

January 30, 2016 1

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