With Gingham and Gratitude

A few hours after I wrote that last post, my grandmother fell and struck her head and has since passed away, the last of my grandparents and the one who has always been too big for me to be able to write about.  Dear Grammy.  ♥

Unresponsive after the fall, Grammy survived more than another week, while the rest of us waited and wondered if today would be The Day.  Yes, we were told, it will be today, then today would become tomorrow, and Grammy was still with us, but no, now they say certainly sometime tonight, but then a new day would dawn, and now they're sure it will be in the wee hours of the morning, but no, another night and day would pass.  'So touch-and-go, but I took quite a gamble and ordered a teddy bear one afternoon for next-day delivery to the hospital.  My uncle opened the box and quickly placed the bear into her arms, my family texted me, and my aunt rubbed its fur against Gram so she could feel how soft it was.  Grammy passed just a few hours later. 

Just as I felt when Sommer died and when my paternal grandfather died, I remain shocked that such a big personality could somehow no longer be here with us.  Surely, someone larger than life is larger than death too?  Some part of the heart will never understand.

I began writing what would become a eulogy on New Year's Eve--such were the holidays this year--and I was determined from the start to read it at her service, shyness be damned.  And last week, standing in front of everyone at the funeral home wearing a pink gingham skirt Grammy would have raced me across the store in her walker to beat me to, I did just that, my voice only breaking on the very last word.  I was nauseous with dread while waiting for the pastor, my uncle, and my aunt to finish speaking, but as soon as I began walking to the podium, I felt a calm come over me and I knew I'd be okay.  I'm prouder of the fact that I not only managed to do this, but also that I did it well--I received many compliments on both my writing and my delivery--than of anything else I've done so far in my life; it means that much to me and was that hard for me to do.  And Grammy would have understood that and would have been pumping her fists in the air for her quiet granddaughter with every finished sentence and section from me, I know.

This is what I said:

When someone close to me died years ago, Grammy told me, "Write!  Write!  It will help ease the pain of the loss."   I've been taking her advice the past couple weeks, and this is some of what I've written so far. 

My earliest memory is actually of Grammy.  She is in the kitchen with me asking me if I'm excited about turning four.  I've always loved that my first memory is of a grandparent--and of a grandparent asking if I'm excited about something. . .what a celebratory note to begin on, you know?  :)  And how apt that it was Grammy asking me if I was excited, because we all know that Grammy could make things exciting--for better or worse, right?!  :)  Excitement to me as a four-year-old with Grammy meant that when she helped Mom make my breakfast, she'd slice my toast on the diagonal and call it "party toast."  We both liked Nabisco Nilla Wafers and would eat them together.  She made a brown velvet coat and hat set for one of my dolls, and she made a beige shawl for one too.  I still have all the clothes.  

Well, I turned four in the spring of 1981, and as many of you here remember, those were the days of the big family badminton tournaments in my parents' yard.   Grammy loved to tell the story of how during one especially spirited game, she landed badly and broke her ankle, and as my dad and various relatives made a little "arm chair" and carried her off the court--"the court!"  :)--my Italian great-grandmother who lived next door to us at the time muttered as Gram was carried past, "Crazy woman!!"  :)  Grammy loved that story; she thought it was a hoot and told the story with pride.  "Crazy woman!"  :) 

I once showed her a Peanuts cartoon I had clipped from the newspaper.  It depicted Charlie Brown in bed with thought balloons all around him, and the thought balloons were a repeated image of the little red-haired girl--his long-time crush, you know--asking HIM to dance.  The word balloon above Charlie Brown's head read, "Sometimes it's nice just to lie in bed at night and remember something good that's happened to you."  Grammy loved that.  "Oh, VAL!  Isn't that WONDERFUL!"  She loved it.  I think of Grammy and all my grandparents as some of the "something goods" in my own life, but Grammy was one of a kind.  I remember telling my best friend in high school that I couldn't really describe Grammy--She'd just have to meet her.  Grammy was too big to put into words, really, but here are a few I've come up with so far, just bullet points of things about her that make me happy or that instantly say "Grammy" to me:

•  hats, overalls, scarves, denim, and the colors beige, tan, pink, gray, and olive green
• pink legal pad paper
• pink Geraniums
• gifts wrapped in white tissue paper--I never saw Grammy use wrapping paper; It was always white tissue, and her gifts were beautiful.
• her spindly handwriting
• raspberry squares
• chocolate brownies with black walnuts
• baked beans at family picnics
• the smell of strong coffee
• Rod Stewart's song "Forever Young"--because Grammy told me once that a friend of hers once told her that every time he heard it, he thought of her.  Every time I've heard it since she told me that, I've thought of her too.
• the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"--because Mom's always said it was one of Grammy's favorite songs
• Grammy liked pretty things, and especially pretty pink things:  Pink lemonade, pink hard candy, and even pink salad dressing.  I remember one visit as a kid. . .seeing a glass jar on her counter with pale pink watermelon candy in it and thinking, "Wow!  How great to be an adult!  You even get to have pink CANDY!"  It was enchanting to me.  And then I found raspberry vinaigrette dressing in her fridge, pale pink dressing in a bottle, and asked her, "Do you even LIKE all these flavors, or do you just like having pink groceries?!"  :)  (Gram assured me she really liked them all.)  :)  
• She liked Winnie the Pooh.  And like Pooh, when she got hungry, she was known to say, "'Time to get a little smackerel of somethin.'"  
• And finally, in a story I almost can't believe I'm going to share in front of the Reverend. . .Jim Palmer, the hunky baseball player from the 70s and 80s--He used to do ads for Jockey underwear.  As he got older, he did endorsements for mortgages and home equity blah-blah--drier things, right--and one day when one of the more boring Jim Palmer commercials came on TV, Grammy shocked my teenage self by saying, "I like ya a lot, Jim Palmer.  But I like ya a lot better when you're in your underwear!"  :)  She was one of a kind.

My best friend in high school didn't get to meet Grammy.  She died a few months before our high school graduation.   Grammy sent me a card a few days after she learned of Sommer's death--and many of you know how perfect Grammy's cards always were.  She had the knack of finding the PERFECT card with the PERFECT illustration and the PERFECT verse, and this one was no different.  The outside showed a dark-haired girl in a dress, tights, and black Mary Jane shoes with her head bowed, and it read:  "Endure.  Keep yourself for days of happiness."  I'm actually going to wrap up what I want to say here today by sharing with you what Grammy wrote to me inside the card.  I thought of it over New Year's and dug it out, knowing it would be as perfect now as it was back then.  In Grammy's words, then:

"Dear, dear Val--

How I ache for you today, I can think of little else.  Looked so forward to meeting Sommer.  Life is so hard and it's okay to yell, 'It's not fair.'

You know, Val, Nana used to say, 'Just be happy for that part of your life and what this person brought into your life--and you into hers.'  I understand you can't handle the memories now.  Guess I've never understood how a loving God could cause so much heartache and I personally have questioned him many times!

Just remember that every person in the world is a dream of God.  Life is a gift, day in and day out.  There is a quote I like from Golda Meir:  'Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.'  

Remember that I love you beyond all reason.

Gram."

A fellow granddaughter sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" a cappella to conclude Grammy's funeral.  Unbeknownst to me, she had told her mom the week before that she was going to sing it, and sometime soon after she did, I texted her mom to ask if my cousin would be willing and able to sing, and I suggested "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."  My aunt loved that her daughter had came up with it on her own.  My cousin sang beautifully.  She is a local theater director, so her talent and composure were not surprising, but I think we all were remembering as we watched her how she used to put on pretend concerts on Grammy's front porch as a six-year-old, with Grammy's honey dipper as a microphone.  Just as I had held it together until my voice broke on my last word, she got through the song perfectly but then collapsed into sobs in her mom's arms as soon as she stepped away from the podium.  But we did it.  She and I were also the only ones who decided to wear pink gingham to the service--Grammy also loved pink gingham--so when we first saw each other's outfits, we laughed in surprise and delight.  'So wondrous how these little things align.  "Mom would be so proud of her gingham girls," my mom told us before we left the funeral home.  And she truly would.  I'm sure she IS.  ♥ 

Aunt Laurie and I were roommates at the hotel last week, and before we went to bed the night of the funeral, I sat at the desk writing in my journal while she finished packing her luggage for the return trip home.  One of the things that crossed my mind was that I hadn't seen a heart that day.  I had really thought I would.  I'd found a heart on the floor at work the week before,

had found one reflected in a stack of clean dishes I had put away before heading home for the funeral trip, 

and I had spotted another--a breadcrumb heart--on my plate at the family supper just the evening before,

but none of them were really the best heart, you know, and I was just surprised there hadn't been a more obvious one that day.  I didn't say anything about it, it was just one of a million things on my mind, and soon, I too was getting ready to climb into bed.  As Aunt Laurie folded up her coat to place it on the top of her now-tidy stack of luggage, she pulled something out of one of its pockets and laughed.  "I never know what I'll find in my pockets," she said and walked over to me holding out the whatever-it-was.  "I have no idea where this came from, but you can have it, Valerie."  And into my hand--chills!--she slipped a folded white paper heart.  

I went to bed having been given my heart after all, then--!--and hours later was in the car again heading home--with my pink gingham skirt packed away and Grammy's new bear now tucked in beside me. 

"When you finally fly away," Rod Stewart sings, "I'll be hoping that I served you well."  And Grammy has, and I think I did.   And I am, indeed, grateful for it all.  

~ We are how we treat each other, and nothing more ~

I've had this song on repeat-play most of the day here.  'Love, love, love.   ♥  

♥

~I'm looking out for angels, just trying to find some peace~

George Michael's music has been so much of the soundtrack of my life.  His sweet, pure voice!  ♥  I cried some yesterday after learning he'd died.  Just last month I had emailed my friend Kent and mentioned my love of George Michael.

"Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" is playing on MTV the last days of my first grade school year and I am dancing around the living room with my toddler brother.  Mom tells me she thinks the song is cute too and mentions that she heard that the song originated with a note one of the singers had left for his mom, so forever and always, I will associate it with not only George Michael's and co-singer Andrew Ridgeley's moms, but also with my own mom and with these cozy days in my favorite blue house, as if we'd all been here together, laughing as we sang the silly, sunshiny verses.  ♫  "Wake me up before you go-go, 'cause I'm not plannin' on goin' solo. . ."  ♪  I am imagining myself dazzling the TV audience of "Solid Gold" while I dance around the coffee table now.  ♫ "You take the grey skies out of my way, you make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day. . . ." ♪  And George's clear, gorgeous voice repeating, ♫ "WAAAAAKE me up!" ♪ at the start of the verse as the song continues. . . .  ♫  "Wake me up before you go-go, don't leave me hangin' on like a yo-yo" ♪ through my giggles to my brother--Like a yo-yo!  Ha!--as I twirl around.  And that most-satisfying-to-sing-along-with line:  ♫ "Taaaaake me dancin' toniiiiiiiiiiiiiiight."  ♪  So ends first grade. 

"Careless Whisper" is second grade and one of the first music videos that informs my imaginings of what Adult Life might someday be like:  The sparkling lights of a city at night, summery fun on sailboats, stunning sunsets. . . .Well, Adult Life looks promising, even if "guilty feet have got no rhythm."  Poor, sad, beautiful George in the video, though, and I just can't look away.  

Soon the opening drumbeats of "Everything She Wants" are everything.  And it turns out, they will forever have the power to transport me instantly back to1985.  Instantly.  Play this for me when I'm ninety years old and I will immediately report that I am really finishing second grade, my older brother is finishing fifth, little Brian just turned three, and gymnast Mary Lou Retton's Wheaties commercial and the Saturday morning cartoons are my favorite things.  At eight years old, I don't understand the song's lyrics, but I love its sound and George's soaring ♫ "I work! So haaaaaard! for youuuuuuuuuuu!"  ♪  Instant '85, that. 


"Last Christmas" is forever one of my favorite Christmastime songs.   When I called Mom last night and and told her of George Michael's death, one of her first comments was, "But that song!  It isn't Christmas until we hear that song every year!"  Just last week, while we were together for our early Christmas, it came on the radio while she was baking and I was wrapping presents, and in unison we called out to each other, "There it is!"  :)  ♫  "Once bitten and twice shy, " ♪ Angel-Voice sings.  "I keep my distance, but you still catch my eye.  Tell me, Baby, do you recognize me?  Well, it's been a year, it doesn't surprise me." ♫  Dear heartbroken George, but he's determined to live and learn and love again.  'Love this song.  ♫  "This year, to save me from tears, I'll give [my heart] to someone special." ♪  'Love, love, love this song.  

By the time I am devouring the Laura Ingalls Wilder book series and Laura's budding relationship with Almanzo in the fifth grade, I am more than ready for George Michael and Aretha Franklin's romantic duet, "I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me)."  It has been one of my top-five favorite songs since I first heard it on a cassette tape my mom bought me called "Hot Hits."  So many of the songs on that best-of album will be some of the 80s' greatest--"Mary's Prayer" by the group Danny Wilson,  "Don't Dream (It's Over)" by Crowded House, "Human" by Human League--but I rewind the tape over and over again to listen to George Michael and Aretha Franklin and vow that if I ever have a wedding, I want this song to be played at the party after.  This was something of which eleven-year-old Val is sure.  Watch and listen.  It will be one of the finest things to come out of the 80s, with too many great lyrics and perfectly-hit notes to recount here.  Pure joy, this song, start to finish.  It will be an anthem for me while I fall in love, while I recover from broken hearts, whenever I'm struggling my way out of bouts of depression, and whenever I just feel like belting out a song around the house.   Pure joy as George sings,  ♫ "I don't regret a single moment--Looking back--When I think of all those disappointments, I just laugh, I just laugh. . . ."  ♪   

And pure joy at George's sassy shimmy at Aretha around the two-minute-and-fifty-four-seconds mark of the video, because you just know he feels this song--he gets it--and because he and Aretha are so clearly enjoying and respecting each other's talents here too.  In interviews I find when older, I will read that singing with Aretha was a dream come true for him, so no wonder it shows in the song and video.  It all just glows with sweetness and triumph.  I love that this song exists, period.  

At a sleepover at my friend Apryl's house the next summer,  we laugh ourselves into hysterics when she tells me that her parents bought her George Michael's new album, Faith, but told her not to listen to it because they think one of the songs on it is too raunchy for kids.  "Then why did they buy it?!"  I shriek through my laughter, and "I know!" she shrieks back, and we giggle over that the rest of the night.  "Are you allowed to listen to anything on it?"  I ask.  (Because:  "Faith," "One More Try," "Monkey". .  .Come on, Apryl's Parents!  These are great songs!  [How can anyone listen to "Faith" and "Monkey" and not feel like dancing?  How can anyone listen to "One More Try" and not marvel at his voice?  That note around the three-minutes-and-twenty-three seconds mark!!])  But no.  They have bought it for her because they know she likes him and wants his new album, but she is not to listen to it.  That will still make me laugh twenty-nine years later.  We remain innocent enough in these final days of elementary school that hearing the song in question--even analyzing its lyrics, between more giggles and shrieks, of course--wouldn't mean anything to us.  And anyway, we don't listen to George Michael to decode lyrics.  He just makes good music.  We like listening to him sing.  We like watching him dance.  We like singing and dancing along with him.  

(The sexiness of both his trademark stubble and of his voice during every single "BAY-BEE!" of "Faith" don't register with me at age eleven, but a future Val will say in regard to both:  Hubba hubba.  :)  )    

Junior high, high school, and college are all marked by his beautiful Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1.  His cover of Queen's "Somebody to Love" for a Freddie Mercury tribute concert in the 1990s is his voice and showmanship at their finest.  Both the rehearsal of the song and the performance itself are online, and both are powerful.  Watch the rehearsal and catch David Bowie listening, obviously impressed, at side-stage.  Delight, as I do, in Queen guitarist Brian May laughing with George after one-minute-and-forty-four-seconds.  Watch the show itself and enjoy both the high note seemingly-effortlessly reached at the four-minute mark and George's strut every time he turns toward the band between lines. 

"Waiting for That Day" is one of the gentle and bittersweet songs I can't help but keep torturing myself by listening to after my best friend Sommer's death, these last few months before high school graduation.  ♪  "My memory," George sings clear as a bell while I weep, "serves me far too well."  ♫  "Freedom" finds me in my early twenties dancing around my off-campus apartment as I finish packing while waiting for my parents to arrive to take me home at the end of a rough school year.  ♪  "Now I'm gonna get myself happy. . . ."  ♫  Yes, do that, George.  Let's all do that.  Because by the late 1990s, he is making the news more for tabloid-ey personal issues than for his music, which is a shame--"[It] was my own stupid fault, as usual" he famously acknowledges in an interview about one arrest--since he seems to have the type of sensitive but troubled personality that somehow finds him only ever hurting and sabotaging himself.  But his talent is pure, and he always seems like a goodhearted soul, and I always love him.  As part of a rare televised interview,  he shyly gives a brief tour of his garden and of a few rooms in his home, and it pleases me whenever I think of it after to imagine that maybe at this moment--or this Christmas--or this spring--George Michael is both healthy and happy in his idyllic English cottage-- 

--curled up with his dogs and a good book in one of these chairs by the fireplace--

--or beginning a new song at this old piano.

And it has been nice to imagine that.  He is one of my "80s people" with whom I'd have loved to have shared my finished memoir someday.  And I have to believe that he somehow already knows all this, even all about Mom and I with "Last Christmas" and Apryl's parents with her forbidden album-gift and our fits of giggles over it.  Tonight I find myself still hoping, more than ever, that he is reveling in well-being and joy, and that he has finally found what seemed to be hard-fought-for peace.  I hold on to my mental picture of him sitting at his piano and see him safe and sound and singing a new song.   'Cause I gotta have faith, faith, faith. . . .

♥

Happy Easter

Merry Christmas Eve

My favorite day of the year.  This Christmas Eve feels strange both because of my sleep/work schedule and because of the weather:  I just woke up a little after 4 pm after having worked last night, and it is still 51° outside as I write this at 7:30 pm.  We have a fan on in here and all the windows  wide open and I have yet to turn on the stove or oven for supper-cooking and cookie-baking.  Odd day.  Mike and I both got to see our families this past week although each visit was too brief.  And yes, Mom and Dad loved their "Alice Otter."  Mom squealed and squealed while pulling the white tissue paper away from it as she opened the package, and she was as tickled with Alice's doily-cap as I was.  :)  Mike and I also made her and Dad a cd of "their" songs from 1968 when they finally met for the first time when he was on leave from the service and a few others of their favorite songs--"Wichita Lineman" by Glen Campbell, "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells,  "Both Sides Now" by Judy Collins, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye, "For Once in My Life" by Stevie Wonder, "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young, "Cherish" by Kool and the Gang, and a few more--and that was a big hit with them too.  ♥  I managed to get tomorrow off work, as well, so it will be a late and happy night of cooking, baking, Emmet Otter-watching, and gift-wrapping here.  I eagerly await the moment it will suddenly--just like that!--feel like Christmas.  So far tonight, it feels more like just a happy and festive night off from work, but the moment is coming. . . .A merry Christmas to everyone celebrating, and a peaceful night and weekend to you all.  ♥

Tuesday Mish-Mash

I'm enjoying another cozy rainy day here, and from the looks of Stuffed ever-rearranging himself in his nest of old quilts, I'm guessing he's happy too.  I'm thinking pot pies for supper, to use up a mish-mash of ingredients in the freezer.  And I'm making an effort to whittle down some of the things I've saved in my email over the years.  A few items from my Miscellaneous folder of found quotes, ideas, tips, stories, and General Things I Love and Don't Want to Lose:

• In a CNN story online this summer about how eating apples helps you live longer, someone concurred in the comment section:  "I've been eating seven apples a day since 1811.  I'm over 200 years old and going strong."  :)  Mike and I laughed over that off and on the next few nights, it's so silly.  :)
• Whenever I get to visit Vermont, Jericho is on my must-explore list.  Have any of you visited?  It sounds fascinating and just beautiful.
• When I started this blog, I was working in a deli and bakery to save some money for my move here, and one of the store's resident curmudgeon customers huffed his way up to the counter and asked for however-much white Cooper cheese.  I told him that we were out of the white Cooper just then, but that we had yellow.  "Ohhhh," he growled at me.  "The whole world's gone to hell!"  That still makes me laugh.  "The whole world's gone to hell" became a catchphrase between me and my coworkers and me and my parents for the next couple weeks.  
• I love Sean Hayes' song "Powerful Stuff," and I emailed myself a link to this live performance of it in May 2012.  ♥  ♫  "Every day, do like a flower does.  Sun rises and she opens up.  Sun rises and she sings. . . ."  ♪  Mmmmmmmmmm.  Gorgeous song, gorgeous voice, gorgeous lyrics
• In the text of an interview with historian David McCullough I emailed myself in 2007, McCullough is asked by the interviewer what he hopes to accomplish in his then-new book 1776.  "Most important of all," he responds, "I hope I've conveyed that no one knew how things were going to turn out.  All the signs were that they didn't stand a chance, that the war was over and that we had lost.  It was the darkest time in the history of our country.  The prospects for the United States of America never looked so bleak.  But because a handful of very brave people refused to see it that way, we are the beneficiaries.  Without them, the Declaration of Independence would be only that, a declaration, words on paper."  He goes on to say that, "Ingratitude is a shabby human failing."  Beautifully put.  
• I'm a sucker for a good how-to-clean-your-home-with-[lemons/vinegar/in this case, Alka-Seltzer] and emailed myself this article years ago.  I use the sink-drain-cleaning tip often.
• In 2005, wise and witty Julie of the blog "A Little Pregnant" shared this gem of a conversation that took place in the New Orleans airport that summer.  The paragraph begins with "I miss Southern women," and ends with "That, my friends, is grace."  Indeed.  ♥
•  When I was a kid, thirteen or younger, I had a dream in which I was standing inside my grandparents' bedroom with my grandmother.  She was showing me a pearl necklace as the dream began, and as I looked at it with her as she held it in her hands, she said, "God has a necklace of pearls.  Every time one falls (from the chain), a human life is restored in its place."  That was the entire dream.  I woke up then and wrote it down, but I would have remembered what she said anyway.  
• This banana bread recipe makes the best I've ever had.  There is a container of sour cream in it, and the loaf pans are dusted with a cinnamon-sugar mixture.  Otherwise, it's a basic recipe.  But ohhhhh!  Truly!  Banana Bread Heaven!  ♥

There!  Back to sorting here, then on to pot pie-baking.  'Hope you all are having a good day.  Thank you again for your sweet comments on my autumn walk post too.  ♥

Downtown

Yesterday was gorgeous here with temperatures only in the 60s, and when an errand took five minutes when I'd been prepared to be tied up with it possibly an entire hour, I decided to walk around downtown awhile afterward.  It couldn't have been a prettier morning.  The sun made the city sparkle instead of swelter, more leaves had turned color, there was enough of a breeze to make the Goldenrod along the river dance but not enough to make walking difficult, and everyone around me seemed to be in the same high spirits.  And I found charming graffiti!  And an equally charming heart-shaped pizza slice.  These are days, indeed.  ♥ 

Road Trip for Radiohead

Mike and I returned home yesterday from an overnight stay in Ohio, where we saw Mike's favorite band, Radiohead, outdoors at the gorgeous Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls. They unexpectedly played one of our songs from 2007, the hauntingly pretty "House of Cards," ♥ and unlike on the lawn at the Tom Petty concert a couple years ago, none of the drunken kids around us stumbled all over our blanket sloshing beer all over me. Another plus. :) The usual motion sickness got me down on the way out there, but after an emergency Dramamine-stop and some lunch, I could listen to Mike without feeling annoyed and could look out our rental car's window without getting dizzy. :) Our motel room Wednesday was clean and comfortable, and I slept the best I had in ages that night, although when we first walked in, Mike and I just looked at it and then at each other and said, "Isn't this the motel room people always get in the movies when they meet up for an illicit affair?" It was that room. "Where did you tell your husband you'd be tonight?" Mike asked me with a "heh-heh" and a wink as I unpacked.  A short-but-sweet getaway to kick off summer 2012.