caerula's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- a little nostalgia goes a long way What with one thing and another, I've been terribly nostalgic lately, and it seems to be going around on diaryland, so it's not just me. Friday we had the school carnival, on the playground where I spent years sitting in the swings and reading, paying no attention to the kids around me and honing my loner skills, which would be put into good use through my years there. Saturday at my mom's we found a bunch of VCR tapes that had my school plays and graduation on them, and we tried to watch some of them. I got through a couple, and then my graduation tape had my high school best friend, since blown talent and genius and wit on drugs; three relatives on it that are now dead. two from cancer and one from blowing his brain out; and an adorable little 2-year-old who we now call Future Serial Killer, without a whole lot of irony. That was a bit much. And then "L'il Abner," my first school play, and I looked at myself and how cute and confident I was on stage, and how much I was going through hating myself in real life, and just was so filled with regret that I couldn�t stand it. On that graduation tape, I was 17; I was going to the University of Michigan in the fall; I had so much to look forward too, and instead for that entire summer and the year and a half I spent at Michigan I was miserable. But that girl with the fancy curled hair down to her waist and black short and black-and-red off the shoulder top had no idea. She thought her life could only change for the better, and it took her two years to realize how miserable she was, and that only she could change it. How much of my life have I screwed up because I didn't believe in myself? Am I doing the same thing now? Of course I can't answer that; you can't have hindsight until afterward. That's just the way it works, for good or ill. I never imagined then that I'd lose touch with Don, and that he would lose touch with reality. Never saw that Uncle A was a paranoid schizophrenic who would shoot himself within 5 years. Never foresaw Uncle D and Grandpa dying within a year of each other from the same kind of cancer, both having worked all their lives in the same business, roof-laying, working in the sun day after day with hot tar and asbestos. Would I have wanted to know any of those things? No. But there's always that what if. If we'd kept in touch, could I have talked Don out of dropping out of school and disappearing into the underground Ann Arbor drug scene? If any of us had paid more attention, would we have seen that Uncle A needed help? Could we, knowing Uncle D's and Grandpa's history, have encouraged them to go to the doctor when they first started feeling rough? Should we have paid more attention to how Aunt P treated her son, seen the way he was ignored and shoved aside, and paid more attention to make up for it, so that he wouldn't be a juvenile delinquent now? I don't know. I just don't know. Christ, I meant this to be an upbeat entry; I've certainly lacked in those lately. I felt good this morning, for once; I still feel decent. Two pounds lighter on the scale, and I'm wearing skinny pants. But this morning when I got in the car, what was in the CD player was the "Songs for Jennifer" CD my mom made me when I got married. And it just, oh, geez, made me so sad and happy and everything all at once, and made me think about about things. My life, according to my mom. What a picture. My mom knows me pretty well, and most of them are choices I would have made myself. But some I wonder about. Is that really how she saw me then? First up are two songs a 21-yr-old first time mom would have found so sweet and wonderful: Jenny Rebecca, which is the song I was actually named for, from a little-known musical called "To Whom it May Concern." She didn't get it from that, she got it from a diaper commercial that was around when she was pregnant. But it makes me cry, a little, as I think about my barely-grown-up mom looking at my new-born self, and thinking about those lyrics � "�4 days old, how do you like the world so far�Jenny Rebecca, 4 days old, what a lucky lucky girl you are�For you have swings to be swung on, trees to be climbed up/Days to be young on, toys you can wind up/Grass to be lying on, sun up above/Pillows for crying on, when you're in love�Dolls to be caring for, love to be giving/Dreams to be daring for, long as you're living." And I think of my mom hoping for all those things for me, and I have to wonder if I've ever let her down in that regard. And then there's "Turn Around", an incredibly sappy song by the Kingtson Trio that my mom has always loved, and which we used to tease her about. But now that I understand a little more what parents feel watching their kids grow up, and the feeling I get looking at pictures of three-year-old YMB, I tear up when I hear it. "Turn around you're a baby, turn around and you're grown..." Damn hormones. Then one of my favorite songs, representing, I think, my high school and college years � "This Shirt," by Mary Chapin Carpenter. It's a song about not letting go of things, good and bad, and that has always been one of the hardest things in the world for me, letting go when I should, hanging on when I shouldn�t. And then, kind of an in joke, the old "Wishin' and Hopin' " song, but the Ani DiFranco version from "My Best Friend's Wedding." Because that�s the kind of girl my mom was, and the kind of girl she consciously raised us not to be � "wear your hair just for him, do the things he likes to do" etc. But there's also a message there � you won't get anything, no matter what it is, just wishing and hoping and praying for it. And then another old favorite, and so apropos � "Carolina in my Mind" by James Taylor. I heard tons of James Taylor growing up in the 70s, from my older cousins, and didn't always understand the lyrics but loved the soothing quality of his voice. And then I did go to Carolina, and I loved it. And I've been back many times in my mind. And then, the first year there, I had my heart broken for real, for the first time, and soon after was spring break, when my parents came to visit, so they got to witness all the trauma first-hand. On this CD, that time is, I think, represented by "I Know Him by Heart" by Vonda Shepherd, who is awesome even if she did spend all that time on "Ally McBeal." Mom is new-fashioned enough to accept that we don't need a man to be fulfilled, but old-fashioned enough to be convinced that there really was someone out there for me. So I think that's what this is about: "Am I living an illusion? Wanting something I can't see/If I compromise, I'd be living lies / Pretending he's not meant to be / Cause I know my heart's worth saving And I know that he'll be waiting / So I'll hold on and I'll stay strong 'till then / Cause I know he's out there somewhere / Just beyond my reach / Though I've never really touched him / Or ever heard him speak /Though we've never been together / We've never been apart / No we've never met /Haven't found him yet / But I know him by heart / No we've never met / Haven't found him yet / But I know him by heart." And this makes me sad a little, too, and also happy, because I did meet him, but it never turns out like you think it's going to. I'm reminded of the line from "Sleepless in Seattle," � "You don't want to be in love, you want to be in love in a movie!" I spent much of my early romantic life with those kind of fancies, and so of course no one measured up. How many wasted chances I had. And then, for the night I met Blue, "What are You Doing New Year's Eve?" A lovely song, and the nice Harry Connick version, and what else are you gonna do for someone who picks up her future husband in a bar on New Year's Eve? And a song for me, having some fun, finally, and joy in a relationship � Eric Carmen, "Make me Lose Control." Don't laugh, I loved that song in high school, and I still do - can't believe my mom remembered it. "Jennifer's playing Stand By Me and she knows every single word by heart/Was love always this good, or could this be just a start?" Then, of course, we had our year of long-distance relationshipping. For that, we have another Vonda Shepherd song, "Chances Are", really quite a lovely song despite the presence of Robert Downey Jr. in it. My mom is still into country music a little, and since I spent a year denying I was really all that seriously involved with Blue, she stuck in Shania Twain's twangy "No One Needs to Know."It's true, everyone I knew said this was "the one" while I was busy convincing myself "no, no, I don't want to get married, no, it's way to complicated, la la la, I'm not in love, nope, not me." All right mom, I get it. You all knew before I did. Ha ha. Then we have "Tom Dick and Harry" from "Kiss Me Kate," which I thought was a nice touch. Love the show, love that song, although I've never thought of myself as "a maid who would marry and would no longer tarry, a maid mad to marry and will take double-quick any Tom Dick or Harry, any Tom, Harry or Dick." Still, it's a great song. And then we got engaged, and here's another goofy but kind of catchy country song, "She Said Yes" from someone named Chad Brock � a chance, fateful meeting, love at first site, and marriage. "How could I know in just a minute that I'd be face to face with my own destiny? � She said yes, and I said wow, she said 'when?' and I said 'How about right now?' Love can't wait, and then I asked if she believed in fate, and she said yes." And then it was right there, we were getting married, and we have, in quick succession, a goofy old Five Satins song, "To the Aisle"(we did dawdle there for a bit, in the planning stages), "I'm Getting Married in the Morning" (of course), and, natch, "Going to the Chapel" (which we all sang loudly in the van on the way to the actual wedding). Our wedding music � no blah old "Here Comes the Bride," but we still stuck with tradition and used "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." The first song we danced to: "The Way You Look Tonight." Ever since I saw "Swing Time" on cable and fell in love with Fred Astaire, I've said that will be the song I dance to at my wedding. And it was, and we did. "I will get a glow just thinking of you..." Another song we danced to, and wish for us: "Grow Old Along with Me." This song means more to me now, after a couple of years of marriage, then it did at our happy shiny wedding. "Spending our lives together�man and wife together�world without end, world without end. Grow old along with me, whatever fate decrees, we will see it through, for our love is true�God bless our love�God bless our love." And more and more I've been able to realize and accept how blessed I am, and how lucky, despite all the crap, despite the stress and arguing about money and everything not being just like we thought it would. Due to our early and increasingly traumatic and stressful relationship, "To Make You Feel My Love" has always sort of been "our" song, and that's next on the CD. Cheesy, yes, a little, but it is a Bob Dylan song. At Kitty's wedding, after we had just gotten engaged, Blue and I danced to it, and he cried. I've never forgotten that. It always seemed appropriate to us, and now, too, I think, considering recent developments � "When the rain's blowing in your face and the whole world is on your case, I would offer you a warm embrace, to make you feel my love�The storms are raging on the rollin' sea and on the highway of regret, the winds of change are blowing wild and free �" And Mom finishes off with, as she has also done with my sisters' wedding CDs, "Take Good Care of My Baby." Which always makes me smile, and tear up a little, because of course we always will be her babies. And although of course that's not what the song is about, there are the bits, like "Ah take good care of my baby/Now don't you ever make her cry/Just let your love surround her/Make a rainbow all around her/Don't let her see a cloudy sky" that make me feel a little bit of what my parents must feel with us all married and out on our own. They always took care of us, and still do sometimes, but by and large have to trust us to ourselves and to the men we've chosen to love. I don't have a daughter, but I can almost, almost feel it. And that's it. My love life, in music, according to my mother. And not every choice she made is one I would have necessarily included, but I love it, because it's me as my mother sees me, and she loves me. And god, I'm making myself cry here. I'd better go to lunch. 1:19 p.m. - June 12, 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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