often on sunday mornings, when we get to the offertory slot, jim, the guitar player in the band, and i will look at each other and one of us will make a letter shape with our hands to denote a key…the key of a piece we will improvise on as we go. and then we are off and running. although it is often me (with the piano as my music-making-instrument) either one of us drives the piece. jim loves minor keys – they are so emotional – so he is in his glory if we pick something minor. no matter what, we don’t know where it’s going before we start. but there’s a moment we both feel that it is jelling and we take turns leading and yielding, surprised by the direction and the story, so to speak.
the path forward is like that, i suppose. you don’t quite know until you start. and sometimes, it takes you by surprise. just when you think you have it figured out, the key changes. you lead, you yield, you take a chance not knowing. and sometimes, it comes out alright. especially if it’s in a minor key.
if you scroll through our phone camera log, you will find sooo many of these…pictures of our feet posing, posing, posing, traveling, traveling, traveling. there are pictures on beaches, in the car, in the woods, in paris, in snow on a-basin, on the train, on the subway, on the gondola, on the pontoon boat, on crab meadow sand, on the trail in telluride and aspen and minturn, in the river in ridgway, in boston, in boca grande, in san francisco, in northport, in columbia, in chicago, in brussels, at the coffeehouse in breckenridge, at the pub in silverton, at the harbor, at the airport, at the waterfront in buffalo, at the park in savannah, at our friends’ houses, at our wedding, at home. we document our traveling – our lives – with lots of other photos as well, but there is always one of our feet…in frye boots, in sandals, in flipflops, in heels (well, i’m in heels, not d), in hiking boots, barefoot. i’m not really sure how that started, but it has become an important tradition for us…saving the moment of our experience.
years ago when i was performing upstate ny, there was a guy who had this foot-thing. he asked after the concert if he could have a photo of my feet (he wanted them either barefooted or socked) on the piano pedals. uh….no. i was pretty weirded out, but not as weirded out as i was when he started sending letters to the label (in very very painstakingly-precise penmanship that resembled type from a typewriter) asking for these pictures. repeatedly. when i got a thanksgiving card that expressed how thankful he was for “all our times together” and how he “looked forward to all the times to come” i called the authorities. some things are just too weird.
sometimes i think about that guy when we take pictures of our feet. yikes. but oh, i love the places we go. and i love documenting the steps we take to get us there – into the heart of each memory.
“congratulations! today is your day. you’re off to great places! you’re off and away! you have brains in your head. you have feet in your shoes. you can steer yourself any direction you choose.” oh, the places you’ll go (dr. seuss)
my poppo would sit in the chair and gaze out at the lake behind their house. in the house before that, he would sit out on the lanai and gaze at the pool. in previous houses, he had chairs or his workbench, where he would sit or stand and gaze, clearly thinking, thinking, thinking.
now, when you’ve gotten to 91, there’s plenty to think about, many memories, many stages of life, many ways the world has changed. my poppo was a POW in world war II, escaping and coming back at a time that PTSD had little to no attention given to it. the atrocities he had experienced were his alone to process, with the help of my sweet momma, if he felt that he could burden her with it. my parents lost a child, a little girl named barbara lynn, who would be my oldest sister – even older than my sister sharyn! – while my dad was still missing in action, a little person, a part of him, he never met. i know that as they established themselves as a family, there were challenges that befell them, joys that they cherished, times of much sorrow, small moments and large moments of laughter and goodness. plenty to think about.
i always wondered what my poppo was thinking about, quietly sitting or puttering. sometimes i would ask, but other times i would respect his quiet-ness. now that i am getting older, i find myself spending time quietly thinking. memories, moments, decisions, good things, sad things, questions, things that make me cringe, things that make me laugh aloud. i think about what’s coming up…what is planned, what will remain a mystery. i wonder. i give thanks. i pray. pondering is a good thing. it’s necessary.
each time now when i sit outside or inside curled in a chair and find myself just staring off into space, i can’t help but think about my daddy. and i kind of feel him right there, quietly staring with me. pondering.
anyone who knows us knows that we love our coffee. every night we literally look forward to coffee the next morning; we even talk about it.
it’s no different when we travel. friends, in incredibly thoughtful gestures, have given us starbucks cards that we load onto the phone (proudly, i might add, since that speaks to our APP savvy…ok, slight APP savvy.) we drive a few hours and start looking for the signs – on the highway – or on the APP (which i have to say is sometimes frustrating since – it seems – the APP locator doesn’t differentiate what direction you are going and sometimes displays a starbucks cafe twenty miles away….and we get excited….only to realize it is twenty miles BEHIND us.) but i digress….
pretty much every time we stop to get our double espresso (knowing sandy sue is rolling her eyes) we take a picture. most of the time we send that picture (there are COUNTless photos of coffee cups on our phones) to our dear friend 20, although jen and others have received these oh-so-meaningful photos. double espressos are good (called “doppio” if you want to seem really hip at the starbucks) because they make it possible to have lots of caffeine without having to stop at every rest area or small convenience store you pass while you are traveling long-distance.
we also love to find independent coffeehouses. one day in asheville, north carolina we literally stumbled into a great little coffeehouse while trying to navigate through a town under construction after a stressful morning drive. i found a lucky parking spot, parallel parked into it and said, “let’s go find some coffee. i neeeeeed coffee.” we got out of the car, looked around us, trying to figure out which way to walk and stared right into the window of a granola-organic cafe with sweet little mugs of espresso and great gluten-free vegan sandwiches. ahh. bliss.
if you’re traveling and want to keep in touch with us, text us some “cheers from….” with your coffee cups. we can relate.
and today…a nod and so much love to my big brother, who loved coffee even more than i do. i’ve missed you for 26 years. i’ll always miss you.
opportunities. to drink in life. they happen every day. sometimes we scoop them up, with the scooping-zeal of a small child building a sand castle. sometimes we choose to sleep through.
this chicken nugget was inspired by a late-late-night-laying-on-the-rocks-by-the-lake viewing a meteor shower. it was one of those moments we chose.
i remember one freezing cold wisconsin winter evening. i was driving My Girl to an oboe lesson in town. in a crazy-fun moment we opened the sunroof, put on our sunglasses and played loud summer music. we laughed and it was indelibly etched into my memory bank. it could be cold or it could be a faux-summer drink-in-life. another day we drove across the state, donned southern accents and strode around an eau claire, wisconsin country music festival, pretending to be from “naaaaashville” but here in wisconsin because we had “kin” who lived here. the accents and pretending stuck with us all day and the memory still makes me giggle.
there was the time that i had to rent a vehicle while mine was being repaired. the only thing available was a big (and i mean big!) pickup truck with a extra-long bed lined with rubber. My Boy was little at the time and he (an avid car/truck fan at the time) couldn’t get over how big the pickup was and remarked that the bed was so big you could sleep in it. that night, unbeknownst to him, i carried out extra comforters and sleeping bags, pillows and flashlights and pulled the pickup further up the driveway. when it was time for sleep and he was saying goodnight, i asked him where he was going. he replied, “upstairs. to bed.” laughing, i led him outside to where i had set up our camp, in the bed of that rented pickup under the stars and dewy night sky.
sometimes you just have to say a loud affirming YES to opportunity. scoop it up. my goal is to do that even more. less sleep. more scooping.
delicate wings, barely visible…a reminder that each of us has them…right there…ready and waiting. sometimes we search inside for answers; this painting tells that story for me. we stoke up the fortitude. we call on peace to enter our souls. we ask our heart to hold on. we forge through what will invariably challenge us. but our wings, gossamer and full of grace, gifted to us by a magnificent Love, give us the lift. we know that no one can clip those wings. they belong to us and we can soar back (or forward) into ourselves. when we are ready.
to view or purchase david’s painting on his gallery site, click below:
but the real question is, what IS an exact science? virtually nothing.
have you ever stood in your life’s moment – right now – and looked back a decade or two or maybe three and thought, “i never would have thought i’d be here/i’d be doing this”?? just a couple days ago, michele said, “if you had told me twenty years ago that i would be playing a gong for a room full of people, i would have said you were crazy!” and yet, she had just had this remarkable experience playing for others, born of practice and study and a new-found love of the instrument.
magic is not an exact science. art is not an exact science – in any of its forms. science is not an exact science. it all makes us realize that, indeed, life is not an exact science.
so if you are an over-thinker like me, this is tough – to trust where you’re going. there are too many details that get in the way of the overall picture. d is a global thinker…he looks at the bigger picture, he calls it “from 30,000 feet”. i need to be able to envision each foot to get there….ok, maybe not EACH one, but i need a few more details lined up in order to believe something is possible. that disparity gets us in trouble sometimes. we talk about something and are having two different conversations within the same conversation. mostly, we usually agree on the ultimate Thing, but getting there is, well, sometimes cloaked in a tad bit of disagreement.
who was it that said, “everything will be ok in the end. and if it’s not ok, it’s not the end” ??? such brilliance! and optimism! i suppose we gauge so much of what might happen on what happened Before. we have pre-judgments about how something will turn out; we have reluctance to start; we think, “i’ve already DONE this and it didn’t work.”
i am at a crossroads. after 15 albums, i haven’t recorded an album in 8 years, haven’t recorded a new vocal album in 16. 16! where does the time go? albums are very expensive projects, not only financially, but emotionally. as i have already talked about numerous times, there is financial pressure on independent artists now like never before. streaming and illegal downloading has lead to a literal trickle of income, despite millions of “listens”.
so – where do i go from here? songs have been waiting; the piano beckons. something in me resists, afraid of not recouping even what it costs at the front end for something new to be released. part of me wants to believe – believe that it’s time to release something new, in this new time of my career. put it out there and not be concerned with how it is received, how many cds are purchased, how many paid downloads vs how many times it is streamed or pirated. but that won’t pay any bills, won’t afford a living. i am having trouble seeing the 30,000 foot view. not to mention all the feet in-between here and there.
like you, in some arena of your life, i am trying to trust. that whatever decision i make it will be ok in the end. and, if it’s not ok, it’s not the end.
the crystal clear water was cool around my feet, cold actually. the current pulled at my flipflops, necessary – for the rocks below were slippery and i didn’t have the cool sandals My Girl had on. the hot-hot high altitude sun blazed into my hair; it made me think i should have worn that new packable hat i got last year.
i scanned the horizon, a 360 of mountains and trees and sagebrush and blue-blue sky. and this river. going on and on. as far as i could see, it meandered through the landscape i was reluctant to leave.
and i stood in the water. never-minding the feeling of almost-numbness of my feet. because in this moment, i could feel. the very hot of a brilliant sun, the very cold of snow-capped mountain runoff. this time of cloudless sky and the murmur of the river. this time of being with my daughter. this time of dreaming and imagining and creating scenarios in my mind that would allow me to stay in this very spot. this time of (in this case, metaphoric) cloud-gazing.
every good cloud-gaze creates a story. every good cloud-gaze builds a memory. every good cloud-gaze gives you pause to breathe. it’s the same with your feet in the river, your blanket on the beach, your chair in front of the bonfire, your boots on the trail. make time, i say.
over and over and over we are reminded. every second counts. it even gets trite sometimes. but then, once again, something makes time come crashing to a halt, where everything moves in slow motion and we are crushed with the inevitability of a change we didn’t anticipate, plan for, dream of or, even, want.
i wrote this song when heidi told me about waiting for the results of her mammogram, ultrasound, biopsy. she spoke of the moment her doctor called; she asked him to hold on and she walked to the mirror to look at herself before her whole life changed. THOSE WORDS impacted me enormously. i couldn’t get the vision out of my mind and wrote this for her. we went on to use this song when we performed (heidi – breast cancer survivor and inspirational speaker, me – writing songs and music to wrap through and around the events) as part of cancer survivor celebrations, walks, runs, hospital and pharmaceutical recognitions, susan g komen foundation, y-me breast cancer organization, american cancer society, gilda radner’s gilda club, young survival coalition, the san antonio breast cancer symposium, bristol-myers squibb tour of hope, living beyond breast cancer…
but this song goes beyond cancer survivorship. time can change and our lives can turn in more ways than we care to think about. there are many challenges, in many categories. the older i get, the more i see it.
on our roadtrip through the i-can’t-get-enough-of-it rocky mountains and intensely beautiful southwest, we talked about one second moving into the next. (don’t worry – lots of time we talk about things like twizzlers or our obsession with mission chips or we talk the scion into going up steep mountains.) and we talked about how, no matter what happens in a moment, it would be in our very best interest to linger in each one and then move into the next moment without carrying the stuff of the previous one. “it’s all new,” we agreed.
each individual moment counts. each one is different. yes, each one…each moment…trite as it sounds…is a gift.
download IN A SPLIT SECOND – track 11 on AS SURE AS THE SUN on iTUNES and CDBaby
reverse threading 