Friday Flash 55 — on my mother's birthday

W H Terrace by Willem Haenraets


I would take her there
to sip or sup, to celebrate
a sumptuous meal with
laughter.
Always laughter.

She would be bright and saucy,
her effervescence welcoming
strangers to join us
(my reason for a larger table).

The terracotta terrace would reflect
a happy birthday song, then
toasts in her honor and
laughter.
Always laughter.

My post in exactly 55 words written for Friday Flash 55.
Visit G-Man and his Mr. Knowitall community for more weekly 55s.

My mother was born on this day long ago. What I miss most is laughing with her.

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Critique and Craft: Stream-of-Consciousness Writing • Ghosts

Ghosts

I am collecting ghosts.

Favorite cat was by the porcelain goose on the top

shelf near The Bumper Book, the book that holds

the ghost of my toddler self. I walked by and

smiled that smile that goes inside to me

and not out to the world. Another day, one was

in the bathroom sitting by the Italian sun bust— right

where she sat for my favorite picture of her—white

Feather-fluff, tail wrapped around her toes.

She seems porcelain now too.

There at the same sink I felt a touch so tender
on my elbow tonight—even turned to address my man

but there was no one there. 

Another message from an unknown sender.  

Mama lives in my laptop, the place 

she’d love most if she were still alive.

I’d show her all the tricks and she’d have the

Web mastered in no time, like she mastered

dealing cards, then Business, and quilting, calligraphy,

the art of love, and anything else she put her mind to.

She had no master. 

             Do I? 

Of course not. I am her daughter, the one who cried

in fear of shadows in my bedroom late at night and

nestled against her breast as she held me close—

never-ever saying that I did not

see what I saw. 

                                        MLydiaM ~ May 2012

Written for Critique and Craft—Stream-of-Consciousness Writing at dVerse Poets.

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I Tell Myself the Story: a poem

Birth by Neville Longmore

I Tell Myself the Story

She is no longer here to tell me the story of my birth

on my birthday but the birthday will come nevertheless —

quietly, inevitably — margin notes in the book of hours

that she and I no longer share. Shhh-it is

almost here again and I must tell myself the story

that is more her story than my own:

How she longed for a babe long and long, and

how unexpectedly, finally, she was expecting one.

I came into that quiet room silenced by nurses who 

stood motionless, in awe of her singular work of

Pain-and-Breathing, Breathing-into-Silence. Shhh, one

whispered then. Shhh, she is having one now! Shhhe

heard their voices from the wave she was surfing

as it swelled and crashed, then contracted back —

hissing in the book of hours that waves share

with the moon and moondance mothers

like mine, who rejected the fog of sleep on the

shore for her sacred Power-over-Pain. Shhhells —

some small as babies' ears, some large as wombs —

whished and hummed to the rhythm of her breathing,

rolling along the bottom of the sea. Fish the colors

of rainbows burst like bubbles in her mind.

Whales clicked and moaned on her behalf, while

she without sounds, with eyes closed in meditation,

she with wistful longing for long and long,

breathed me onto page one of our book of hours.

MLydiaM ~ January 2012 

Submitted for Poetics at dVerse Poets. This week we are asked by Sheila Moore to consider Onomato: "Write a poem using at least one onomatopoeia." 

Note: The book my mother read and used as her birth coach at age 35 was: 

Childbirth without Fear: The Principles and Practice of Natural Childbirth.

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Old Postcard Wednesday--Weaverville, California, in the "Trinity Alps"

(If you have arrived looking for my Mag 80 it follows this OPW post...or click it. )

I was going to scan a postcard of the rugged Pacific Ocean coastline this week, as my husband and I will be at the Oregon coast on Thursday to celebrate our 16th anniversary. Because I am tired right now my thought was to post this card of the ocean and a simple Zen poem or haiku about the sea. The site I chose has numerous poems in that genre but I wasn't finding anything about the ocean as I scrolled. Then my eyes landed on the poem below (that has absolutely nothing to do with the ocean) and I felt it was a little message from my mother to post instead the Weaverville postcard that was right behind the Pacific Ocean card in my grandmother's card box.

My grandmother waited out the Great Depression up in Trinity Canyon with my mother (who was just out of high school) and my aunt (then a little girl) on some property owned by one of my uncles. They called it "the ranch," but the house was really a shack with an outhouse down the path. My mother nearly lost her mind at first, having come from Santa Monica, California, where they left all friends behind, and perhaps would have if not for trips on the winding road down to Weaverville. There they bought necessities not grown in their garden at "the ranch," and found a semblance of a social life through the Grange nearby. She grew to love Trinity County, where Trinity Canyon in the "Trinity Alps" and Weaverville gave her a hardy outlook on life that included her survival instinct and deep respect for forested mountain areas.

In October 2009 I posted a different Weaverville postcard and told my favorite story of my mother's Trinity County experience that includes the wonderful song Red River Valley. You can find it here. And, after the death of my aunt in 2008, I wrote a post about her life, including more on the years spent at Trinity County. That post has a photo of my mother and my aunt on a hike in Trinity Canyon, and I have decided to post it again here as an introduction to the poem about Trinity Canyon.

Trinity Canyon by Mike Garafalo

Shivering rafters
pull to shore–
the river moves on.

One by one
jumping into the deep pool–
a swinging rope.

Honking horns
echo down the canyon walls–
falling rain.

zig-zag walk
along the rocky riverside–
falling pine needle

I'm sitting, still.
The chanting canyon stream
is moving mountains.


While doing research about Trinity County and Weaverville, my eyes quickly scanning the search lists, I saw two words that really made me take a deep sigh: Lost Horizon. As that 1937 film about finding the mythical Shangri-La was my mother's favorite movie of all time (I am not kidding here, it really did just come tripping into my search), I will simply post the article that a Weaverville realtor shares on her website...and will wish you all a wonderful Wednesday and a terrific Thursday.

Incidentally, my mother would have gone absolutely nuts over this article but it was published four years after her death....

Unassuming Shrangri-La in Trinity Alps Weaveville blends mystic East, Old West in Gold Rush alchemy
- John Flinn, SF Chronicle Staff Writer, Sunday, August 1, 2004

Weaverville (Trinity County) -- In 1941, James Hilton, the British author of "Lost Horizon," was on a lecture tour of the United States. Inevitable, a reporter asked him: In all your wanderings, what's the closest you've found to a real-life Shrangri-La?
 
"A little town in northern California," the writer responded, presumably with a wistful, far-away look in his eye. "A little town called Weaverville."

I thought the comparison was pushing it a bit, but I started to wonder as I drove into this pretty alpine hamlet, which is cradled by snow-tipped peaks, and found a weathered string of Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags flapping along the main street. Then a pair of saffron-robed Buddhist monks, from the nearby Chagdud Gompa, came strolling out of a natural food store.

Maybe Hilton was on to something after all.

For most visitors, though, Weaverville's chief lures are that it's a wonderfully preserved Gold Rush town and gateway to the exquisite Trinity Alps, a miniature Sierra Nevada between Redding and Eureka.

Its Old West downtown has changed hardly at all since Hilton's visit, although a new conglomeration of strip malls and fast-food outlets is metastasizing a mile to the east along Highway 299.

In the red-brick downtown, the swinging doors of saloons still open onto wood-plank sidewalks, locust trees still line Main Street, and white metal staircases still spiral upward to wrought-iron balconies. . . .

Downtown's most intriguing feature -- and something that contributes to the Shangri-La aura -- is the Taoist Joss House, the oldest Chinese temple in continuous use in the state. It was originally built in the 1850's, when Weaverville had a sizable Chinese population from Guangdong Province, with their own stores, barbershops, theaters and gambling houses. The temple was rebuilt in 1874 after a fire and hasn't changed much in appearance since then. It's now a state park. . .

Rising straight above town are the Trinity Alps, a compact and inviting mountain range filled with soaring pine forests, frothing streams, turquoise lands and castle-like granite peaks, some sporting tiny glaciers. The summits aren't nearly as lofty as the Sierra Nevada -- the highest, Thompson Peak, tops out at a mere 9,002 feet -- but because of the range's northerly latitude, its timberline high country begins at an easy-to-breathe altitude of 6,000 feet.

The Trinities are a renowned fly-fishing venue, and popular backpacking trails such as Canyon Creek get a lot of traffic on summer weekends, but it doesn't take much effort to carve out a little piece for yourself.

At the edge of town, I turned onto a dirt road that switch-backed up the side of a mountain for 9 somewhat jouncy miles -- it was fine in an all - wheel-drive Subaru Outback, and I'm told that, with a little care, normal passenger cars can make it -- to a fire lookout with 360-degree, king-of-the world views.

From a nearby turnout, I set out with my dog Tucker on a hiking trail that angled up to a little notch on a ridge and then descended sharply to a rocky amphitheater containing East Weaver Lake. Ringed with wildflowers and craggy buttresses, it was an unbeatable spot for a leisurely picnic, a long swim (Tucker)  and a siesta on  a sun-warmed granite slab (me). At an alpine lake this easy to reach in the Sierra, I would have had to elbow my way through a mob of hikers just to reach the shore. In the Trinity Alps, Tucker and I had it all to ourselves.

Back in town, I bought an ice cream and went for a stroll through the town's leafy back streets, past tidy old miner's cottages, a few of them festooned with strings of sun-bleached prayer flags. I wondered about a former colleague who had retired here years ago. Weaverville, I decided, would be a pretty great place to grow old -- or perhaps to not grow old at all.


John Flinn, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, August 1, 2004

: : :

More about the movie Lost Horizon at imdb.

This post describes yet another in my growing collection of ICMs (Ironies and Cosmic Messages).
Others: here, and here, and here.

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Late Night Memories of Late Night Grand Hotel

This is my favorite song by Nanci Griffith, who is one of my favorite singers. Ten years ago I brought the CD with us when we drove over to the coast to scatter my mother's ashes at sea, because this particular song could have been written about my mother and I identified it with her in the strongest of ways.

The appointment to be on board the whale-watching boat was scheduled for early afternoon and it was our intention to do the scattering and then drive home as we had not made arrangements for the dogs, who were waiting there for us.

We arrived at Depoe Bay to find the weather brisk and stormy and went to the charter boat kiosk to pay for our rides, only to be told that, "The bar is closed." Conditions were too dangerous for any captain to take any boat from the small bay out into the wild open ocean, i.e. "crossing the bar." The situation was repeated this year in late October, as described in a news article: First Storm of the Season Closes Bar Entrances and when I read that it brought back memories of our challenge ten years ago. Here is how we handled the change of plans.....

We asked if they might be able to take us out the following day and we were told there were no guarantees, that this was a heavy storm. We needed to call them the next morning to get a report on conditions. Michael suggested that I stay the night and that he would return home to care for the pets and we would hope for the best in 24 hours time. We had dinner there before he left, bringing my mother's ashes into the restaurant with us under my coat because we didn't want to leave them in the car. Thus, the "three" of us had a final lovely dining experience at the coast, something we had enjoyed many times together. We thought that quite funny.

I got a room at the motel where my mother and I had shared many great weekends together prior to my marriage with Michael. It was our place...beautiful rooms with ocean view, great indoor swimming pool, and hot sauna. Michael returned home and I was left alone with my mother's ashes, a small boombox, and my Nanci Griffith CD. I set my mother's ashes on the small round table in front of the windows and opened the windows wide to let the ocean sounds compete with Late Night Grand Hotel until it became too cold with them open. Then, with the room warming to a familiar coziness I repeated this one song over and over and over, not able to get enough of it, and each time feeling a stronger connection with my mother. So like her, so like her life. And I was sad that was true for her, but also proud of her for stepping into the role life gave her and for playing it so well.

The evening was exactly what I needed for our final farewell before the scattering that did in fact take place the following afternoon. I can honestly say that it was the most powerful and fulfilling night I have ever spent in a motel.


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Butterfly: a poem (Mag 38)

THREE MEDLARS WITH A BUTTERFLY by Adriaen Coorte
(C) 1705


Butterfly
      ~For Mama

Ten years since colored leaves fell gracefully
outside your window while you watched
your final day fade from peachy glow
to silvery gloaming to black velvet
night. Then my hand let go your
hand with sleep coming on
and in thin dawn I woke
when your flight was
just here and now -
there - and there,
and where
ever and
ever.

© MLydiaM October 2010

This poem is my offering for Mag 38. The photo prompt below was posted at Magpie Tales one day after 

I posted my poem, which seems altogether prescient so I am cheating a little bit. 

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Dear Margaret Remembered

THIS IS IN HONOR of my mother, Margaret, on her birthday. The Dutchman was one of her favorite songs in the last three decades of her life after hearing it first when Bob Shane, lead singer of The Kingston Trio, singled her out from a crowd during a lounge-act performance in Reno. He asked her name, and after she replied "Margaret," he sang this song to her. Her paternal roots were indeed Dutch (Van Swearingen originally). She longed all her life for the kind of love memorialized in this song, but it was not to be.



Note: The video I originally posted with this was removed by its owner. The replacement above (created by this person at youtube) is beautiful.


Of note: After my mother's death in 2000 my sister requested the two bookcases, one shown in this photo behind my mother. We split the books, so some in this image are now on my bookshelves. The painting hanging on the wall behind her is now on a wall in my house. It is titled The Isle of Capri and I treasure it.

:::

I posted about the significance of The Dutchman to my mother here as one in my series of posts titled 
Songs My Mother Taught Me.

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I receive an ICM from my mother the night after Mother's Day

flame by Lisa KC

    A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated aromatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How can we pass most swiftly from point to point and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?
    To burn always with this hard gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.

~Walter Pater* (1839-1894)

After Michael had gone to bed Monday night I fell sound asleep while watching TV with Feather and Willow stretched out in my lap, the three of us there in the recliner that was once my mother's recliner, the one I was sleeping on beside her bed the morning that she died.

A gentle stroke drew across my right cheekbone up to my temple hairline to waken me. Drowsy and dazed from being out cold, with the local news jabbering in front of me, I knew that I had just been touched so lovingly. In seconds I began to discount it, then a wash of comfort reclaimed the moment and I figured it must have been my mother's touch.

I later selected from my bookshelf a vintage book (so old there is no copyright date - only noted as DONOHUE, HENNEBERRY & CO., 407-425 DEARBORN STREET, CHICAGO) that belonged to my mother's mother. From the pages of The Pleasures of Life, by Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., the above quote demanded my attention.

Chalk up the happenings of the last few hours as being among those ICMs (Ironies and Cosmic Messages) I have written about receiving in the past. They come unbidden, and almost always when I am most in need of compassion.




________________
*Several online sources, including this one, indicate a one-word difference in the first sentence of the quote. They say, ". . . variegated, dramatic life" instead of  " . . . "variegated, aromatic life."  I chose to use exactly what was in front of me in the pages of the book cited.

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Old Postcard Wednesday--Tahoe Tavern, Lake Tahoe

Please visit Owen's blog to read his contemplative poem in a post titled Haiti Shaken . . .  It includes amazing B&W photos of his trip there in 1997.

The internationally famous Tahoe Tavern was built in 1901. The Tahoe Tavern was designed by Walter Danforth Bliss for the Duane Bliss family. Walter Bliss was also the architect for the Ehrman Mansion; this explains why the two structures are similar in appearance.

In 1906 a 60 room annex south of the main hotel was built. A second floor was added in 1907 that included a casino with bowling alley, novelty and barbershops, and a ballroom with stage.
Other construction projects in 1907 made the Tavern an almost self-sustaining entity with a physician's office, a laundry, a steam plant and a water system, which brought piped water from above Tahoe City.

In 1925, a $250,000 "luxurious, elegant" new wing was added. The casino also added the bar the same year and in 1926, the coffee shop, sundeck and pleasure pier with rocked-in boat wells were built. With the advent of automobiles, it was necessary to add garages, which were constructed in 1927, along with tennis courts and a livery stable.

One could, upon arriving in Truckee on the mainline railroad, transfer to the narrow gauge line and travel to the Tavern in Tahoe City for $1.50. You would ride the passenger car, which was behind the ever-present freight cars. After dropping its passengers at the Tavern station, the train would go out on the long Tavern pier to meet the Steamer "Tahoe", which made the daily mail run around the lake in eight hours. . .

The Tahoe Tavern burned down in the 1960s. After the fire the structure was torn down. The Moana Development Corporation then purchased the property and constructed the present condominiums in three phases between 1966 and 1969.

Today the pool and rock stairway on the middle meadow stand as a reminder of the original historic Tahoe Tavern.

 ~The History of Tahoe Tavern from Tahoe Tavern Properties website
(home page at website has slide show of current properties and stunning lake views)

The postcard was sent by my mother to her mom after having spent a day off work at a friend's "Tahoe home 'midst the pines & how we enjoyed it." It was 1955, and she was twice divorced and working in Reno as a blackjack dealer six days a week. Her one day off was given over to us and play, frequently at Tahoe or at various hot springs pools around the area.

She signed my sister's name and my name to the greeting because we were not writing yet, and, in fact, I was too young to remember that particular day in the sun midst the pines. But I remember the Tahoe Tavern from many other day trips and family vacations as the years went by.

And I remember the look in my mother's eyes each time we would pass by the old place, and then she and I would exchange glances in an understanding moment that assured her...yes, I well knew that she and my father worked at the Tahoe Tavern and had separate employee quarters there when their love was young and passionate and carefree, before I came along, before my father's alcoholism destroyed all of it. Sometimes, in that moment of memory for her -- that had become a transferred story to me -- her excitement for what once was could be felt in the car as an energy force all its own and it was in those times that I knew she would later that night create a private moment with me so she could retell. Relive. Relive the memories of him coming to her desk in the management office to suggest that they take blankets to the sand and be together on warm summer nights, waking in morning's light with the slapping of small waves on shore and running back to the area in Tahoe Tavern where breakfast was served to employees before the new day's work began.

I never had a love quite as insane with intensity as theirs was.
Such a pity.......such a blessing.

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Songs My Mother Taught Me . . . Dem Bones

Happy Halloween, everyone.

This outstanding-in-its-field scarecrow is along the country road about eight miles from Silverton. I took the shot on my way home from my solo beach trip a few weeks ago.

Well, of course, one of the songs my mother taught me was Dem Bones! She had the cutest way of performing it in the kitchen when I was a kid. This is the 16th in an undetermined number of songs my mother taught me that I posted this month in her memory, and with it the series is closed. 





Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians sing in a youtube video uploaded by gerdenshed


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Songs My Mother Taught Me . . . On the Street Where You Live

I've had a good time this month posting songs my mother taught me as a tribute to her. Now I'm down to the final two days of the month (and, yes, I actually do have one for Halloween) with one of my favorite songs saved for this post.......and I'm feeling burned out. So just a few words to say that I don't remember who sang On the Street Where You Live on the record my mother had. As I listened to many at youtube this one by Vic Damone sounded the most familiar. Evidently he had a popular hit with it after it became famous in My Fair Lady. I don't remember seeing My Fair Lady at the theater with my mother, and remember instead viewing it on TV later.

My mother liked On the Street Where You Live because she was a romantic and she no doubt had relationship memories or fantasies about the song. I absolutely loved the song and often requested she play it. I dreamed my way onto adventurous streets, down alleys with ivy-coated walls, past brick apartments with important-looking entries, along smooth pathways that peaked into gardens and uneven sidewalks that showed off the architecture of imaginary neighborhoods that - during the daytime - took on the intoxicating smell of bus fumes and snow in July, and - at nighttime - glowed golden behind drawn shades where silhouettes moved slowly to jazz sounds and one dog barked before being let inside. Back then the enticement for me of On the Street Where You Live had much more to do with visions of STREETS than with the YOUs who might live on them. Now the enticement is the great song itself, everything about it.

On the Street Where You Live - lyrics

I have often walked down this street before;
But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before.
All at once am I Several stories high.
Knowing I'm on the street where you live.
Are there lilac trees in the heart of town?
Can you hear a lark in any other part of town?
Does enchantment pour Out of ev'ry door?
No, it's just on the street where you live!
And oh! The towering feeling
Just to know somehow you are near.
The overpowering feeling
That any second you may suddenly appear!
People stop and stare. They don't bother me.
For there's no where else on earth that I would rather be.
Let the time go by, I won't care if I
Can be here on the street where you live.




I must include the video of Dean Martin singing On the Street Where You Live for the simple fact that my mother adored this man. I didn't understand it. I think it had something to do with his being (or acting as if he were) a high-functioning drunk, the kind of drunk she wished my father could have been. These days, as a woman older than my mother was during her "crush days" on Dean Martin, I understand his appeal. I also really like his version of this song.









top photo: NY East Village from The Weblicist of Manhattan


{This is the 15th in an undetermined number of songs my mother taught me I'm posting this month in her memory. For background, please visit the post containing the first song, Ivory Tower.} 
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Songs My Mother Taught Me . . . Que Sera, Sera

There probably aren't many women who were little girls in the 1950s who didn't learn this song, and I'd venture to guess that most learned it from their mothers.....or at least sang it with their mothers.

My mother always tried to keep life up beat. She was into positivity long before it was a movement. But I could tell that this song made her a bit sad and it made me sad too.  It all seemed a little too loosey-goosey to me, the concept of having little or no self-determination. Even back then I had a strong sense that the final verse about having "children of my own" didn't apply to me and I didn't like the constraints set up in the song. If it was about the future happening as it will then why did the verses seem like a blueprint?

I didn't realize until I began thinking about this song to post, and paying attention to the feelings it stirred inside me, how little I cared for Que Sera, Sera ......even if it was one of the songs my mother taught me.





Que Sera, Sera
from The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
words by Ray Evans and music by Jay Livingston


When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother
What will I be?
Will I be pretty?
Will I be rich?
Here's what she said to me:


Que sera, sera.
Whatever will be, will be.
The future's not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
What will be, will be.


When I grew up and fell in love
I asked my sweetheart
What lies ahead?
Will we have rainbows
Day after day?
Here's what my sweetheart said:


Que sera, sera.
Whatever will be, will be.
The future's not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
What will be, will be.


Now I have children of my own.
They ask their mother,
What will I be?
Will I be handsome?
Will I be rich?
I tell them tenderly:


Que sera, sera.
Whatever will be, will be.
The future's not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
What will be, will be.
Que sera, sera.


I find the video below, with quasi-version of Que Sera and hint of Doris Day's voice filtering around it, both frightening and invigorating at once. The line towards the end of the video: "It's your responsibility to do something about it" is more along my way of thinking. If I see something that needs to be done and I can do it, then I must do it. If I see where I can make a difference, large or small, then I must commit to make that difference. I shouldn't think manana regarding a responsibility, unless sleeping on an idea will bring more clarity and therefore a better result. The word endangered should send me into action, and it usually does. Just tossing it all to the wind and saying whatever will be will be doesn't work and we should see that by now.



Que Sera by Wax Tailor, aka JC Le Saout




{This is the 14th in an undetermined number of songs my mother taught me I'm posting this month in her memory. For background, please visit the post containing the first song, Ivory Tower.} 

art: Escher, Crystal Ball

International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources RED LIST OF THREATENED SPECIES  (Don't sing Que Sera, Sera to any of these!)

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Old Postcard Wednesday--Irish Brigade Monument, Father Corby Statue, Gettysburg, PA--combined this week with Songs My Mother Taught Me . . . How Are Things in Glocca Morra

Glocca Morra is a fictional Irish village that seems very real in the play and movie, Finian's Rainbow. The Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War was all too real, the horror of which we might only wish was fictional.

Gettysburg has never been high on my list of U.S. sites to visit, but after looking at this antique souvenir booklet of postcards from Gettysburg kept by my grandmother I realize that I would want to see it if I was traveling anywhere near its vicinity. This postcard from the booklet seemed to beg to be selected for posting in conjunction with one of the songs my mother taught me: How Are Things in Glocca Morra. The song always puts a lump in my throat, and even more so when I think of young Irish-American soldiers fighting at Gettysburg and possibly dying with images of Ireland as last thoughts in this life.

The best birthday I had as a kid was when I turned ten years old. My mother told me to invite school friends -- I think there were eight girls -- for my special party. She then clued their mothers in on the festivities, but it was kept a surprise from my friends and me until we arrived at the University of Nevada theater to see a stage production of Finian's Rainbow. It was so marvelous, like being in a dream I never wanted to end. I thought How Are Things in Glocca Morra was the most beautiful song about the most beautiful place I'd ever imagined. It was sheer excitement for a group of girls, and was topped off afterward when we went to Harold's Club, where my mother had reservations in the 3rd floor restaurant that allowed children accompanied by adults (rules were more stringent then than in casinos now). Harold's Club had the best bakery in town and it made the most delectable banana nut cake. That's what I remember eating, although lunch preceded cake. Years later, when I was a student at the University of Nevada, I had a part time job in a local savings and loan that had a practice of providing a cake each month to celebrate the birthdays of all employees born that month. I was in charge of getting the cakes from Harold's Club bakery, then still considered supreme for fine cakes. Can you guess what kind of cake I ordered when my birthday month came around?

As the luck of the Irish would have it I discovered, while working on this post late Tuesday night, that the first Broadway revival of Finian's Rainbow is set to open Thursday.....as in the day following this Old Postcard Wednesday! The production website -- finiansonbroadway -- is exciting, with video previews. I also enjoyed an introspective essay about the show at Daily Kos, in part:

"Look to the Rainbow," the return of Finian

I rarely get a chance to go to Broadway shows anymore, but am planning to schlep into NYC, and stand in line for tickets to see the first Broadway revival of Finian's Rainbow, a musical that debuted in 1947, the year I was born.

The Irish Examiner has an interesting review of the show, scheduled to open on October 29th at the Saint James, which speaks pointedly to why the show hasn't graced the main stage in 63 years, even though it produced songs that have since become standards, like "Old Devil Moon", "How Are Things in Glocca Morra," and "Look to the Rainbow?" . . .

I had written the majority of this post Tuesday afternoon, describing the selection for the postcard this week, my tenth birthday party, etc., and then spent the evening with Michael before returning to finish it late at night. Discovering that the revival of Finian's is opening this week, and this occurring on the anniversary of my mother's death, is one of those ICM's (Ironies/Cosmic Messages) I wrote about in an earlier post that relate to her. ICM's are random and magical occurences that have comforted and amused me since my mom's passing, especially in the month between her birthday and death.

Now I'm finishing this post feeling ........ comforted and amused!







HOW ARE THINGS IN GLOCCA MORRA - lyrics
From Finian's Rainbow
(Words by E.Y. Harburg / Music by Burton Lane)


I hear a bird, Londonderry bird,
It well may be he's bringing me a cheering word.
I hear a breeze, a River Shanon breeze,
It well may be it's followed me across the seas.
Then tell me please:

How are things in Glocca Morra?
Is that little brook still leaping there?
Does it still run down to Donny cove?
Through Killybegs, Kilkerry and Kildare?

How are things in Glocca Mora?
Is that willow tree still weeping there?
Does that lassie with the twinklin' eye
Come smilin' by and does she walk away,

Sad and dreamy there not to see me there?
So I ask each weepin' willow and each brook along the way,
And each lass that comes a-sighin" Too ra lay
How are things in Glocca Morra this fine day?




I also love the version by fleetingdays on his "Italian 1970's Pearlized "White" Gem (Quad reed) Chemnitzer Concertina Solo."  *Click* to hear the sweet sounds.

{This is the 13th in an undetermined number of songs my mother taught me I'm posting this month in her memory. For background, please visit the post containing the first song, Ivory Tower.} 

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Songs My Mother Taught Me . . . To Each His Own

{This is the 11th in an undetermined number of songs my mother taught me I'm posting this month in her memory. For background, please visit the post containing the first song, Ivory Tower.}

To Each His Own was original music written by Victor Young for the 1946 movie of the same name, something I just learned while researching for this post. I only knew it as my mother's favorite song. Now I realize that it was her song for my father; maybe it was even "their song," since they were together in 1946 when it was recorded by five different artists/groups that year, all of them hits.

When I was little I liked looking at her albums when she was at work. There were a few album covers that I found particularly enchanting and perplexing and I played the records to unlock the mysteries of the cover photos and artwork. One was an album by The Ink Spots (another I will probably write about this week as I am wrapping up my October tribute of songs my mother taught me).  My mother also had the 45 rpm record of this song and played it so frequently that it seems in my mind a soundtrack for my hours growing from 3- to 4- to 5-years old. [Note: since first posting this the video of The Ink Spots version was deleted. I am replacing it with Al Martino's version, which was actually more popular.]

When I was a young teen my mother received a gift in the mail from an old friend who had shared days of heartbreak and divorce in the mid-1950s, a woman who had moved to California years before but with whom she stayed in touch. She opened the package to find a metal music box that had a shallow bowl for loose powder, with a small puff, under the lid on top. The turn-key was on the bottom and, when wound, played this tune. It still does...... although I must find someone who repairs old music boxes as it no longer winds fully so the song begins at wind-down-slow and ends after a few lines. The music box now in my possession seems nearly alive to me as it bravely chimes sparse notes of my mother's favorite song, To Each His Own.

- In 1946 there were five Top 10 versions- Eddy Howard (#1).The Ink Spots (#1)
Freddy Martin (#1), The Modernaires with Paula Kelly (#3),and Tony Martin (#4)
- also charted by The Platters # 21 in 1960
- also charted by The Tymes at # 78 in 1964
- also charted by Frankie Laine at # 82 in 1968
- also charted by Al Martino on his Greatest Hits album and it appears again on The Godfather III soundtrack album

To Each His Own- lyrics

A rose must remain with the sun and the rain

Or its lovely promise won't come true

To each his own, to each his own

And my own is you

What good is a song if the words just don't belong?

And a dream must be a dream for two

No good alone, to each his own

For me there's you

CHORUS

If a flame is to grow there must be a glow

To open each door there's a key

I need you, I know, I can't let you go

Your touch means too much to me

Two lips must insist on two more to be kissed

Or they'll never know what love can do

To each his own, I've found my own

One and only you

REPEAT FROM CHORUS

Songs My Mother Taught Me . . . Mairzy Doats

lamb in pen spring 2007 by marezlove

{This is the tenth in an undetermined number of songs my mother taught me I'm posting this month in her memory. For background, please visit the post containing the first song, Ivory Tower.}

I love this song my mother taught me when I was a little kid(!) I can actually remember the first time my mother sang it for me and the excited twisty feeling of my brain working to switch off the nonsense words and plug into their becoming words with meaning, words that I knew. Quite likely, my first "Ah-Ha!" moment was learning Mairzy Doats.

To hear the original Mairzy Doats recorded in 1944
by Merry Macs......click!

MAIRZY DOATS (Merry Macs) - lyrics

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
Yes! Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey
Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy"

Oh! Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you-oo?
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?



It is not true that the younger generation doesn't sing these kinds of silly songs anymore. The little girl, named Kennedy, in this video is adorable singing Mairzy Doats. Embedding has been disabled so you'll need to click the link to hear her version.  The same is true with the video featuring two boys and their lamb named Ivy who sing the song at the beginning of this video.

Be silly. Be honest. Be kind. 

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Long live silly songs.

-Lydia

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Songs My Mother Taught Me . . . The Dutchman

{This is the ninth in an undetermined number of songs my mother taught me I'm posting this month in her memory. For background, please visit the post containing the first song, Ivory Tower.} 

There are three songs my mother taught me that sprung from, ironically, my own generation - but went unnoticed by me when they were first released. I may not have time in this month of remembrance of her to post the other two, but I sure couldn't miss The Dutchman.

My mother, whose name was Margaret, was one-half Dutch on her father's side (Van Swearingen). She never traveled abroad so did not visit The Netherlands, although she had an opportunity to tour there with a group from her office before she retired and opted to not spend the $1000 it cost then. What a pity. She regretted it for the rest of her life.

About ten years before she retired she was promoted to office manager of a satellite state employment office outside Reno (she left casino work after 17 years as a blackjack dealer and reinvented herself in the business world). She was divorced from my step-father by then, both my sister and I were in our first marriages, and she went through a phase of partying with the people from her office after work. John Ascuaga's Nugget in Sparks was close to the office and with its variety of restaurants, lounges, and areas of entertainment it became the favorite haunt of the group...and also of my mother alone when the rest of them had gone home to spouses and families. She preferred the smaller lounge with stage and enjoyed the acts there that ranged from home-grown talent to nationally-known acts, many that had been big-name acts in the past.

One of those once big-name acts, still enjoying a large and strong fan base, was The Kingston Trio. When my mother learned that they were to perform at the small stage lounge she encouraged her group of co-workers/friends to attend the opening night's performance.

My mother attracted people like a magnet. She had a winning smile, expressive brown eyes, and a body that moved to music so when she appreciated someone -- from someone she supervised to a skilled musician on a stage -- she exuded that appreciation. Drew them to her. She caught the attention of Bob Shane, the lead of The Kingston Trio, who asked for her name after a song. "Margaret," her voice traveled to the stage. "Oh," said Bob Shane, "then here is your song." They sang The Dutchman. My mother swooned and returned nightly during the Trio's stint at the Nugget. Bob Shane came to her table to meet her during one of their breaks and my mother swooned more, and he must have loved receiving the true adoration common in times gone by. Each night while the group played The Nugget when Shane saw my mother in the audience he would begin The Dutchman, adding, "This is for Margaret."

Below is a screengrab from The Kingston Trio website showing Bob Shane (center) as he looked during the time my mother enjoyed him singing The Dutchman........

Bob Shane has retired from The Kingston Trio (after suffering a heart attack in 2004). I know this because last year they came for one performance to the beautifully-refurbished Elsinore Theater in Salem, Oregon. Mike and I went but realized in the opening song that Bob Shane was not up there on the stage. The concert was wonderful anyway, with Bill Zorn (formerly of The Lamplighters) performing as lead.

The song was significant for my mother because someone made it special for her, because her name is in the song, and because of her Dutch ancestory. It was also significant, I believe, because the song's story was so unlike her own life. Married four times, and an eternal romantic, she was alone for the last 30 years of her life. There was a great love relationship during part of that time, but she never remarried. She said to me in later years that she guessed she "did better alone." Yes, and no. She would have loved being the Dutchman's Margaret of this song, sharing unconditional love after having shared a real partnership throughout a long marriage.

During my mother's final illness I bought a CD by Scottish singer John McDermott that contained this song my mother taught me.  
The Dutchman. We played it often during her last weeks.
She listened to it with her eyes closed.


Here is the quintessential version sung by the late Steve Goodman.

"The Dutchman" is a song written by Michael Peter Smith in 1968 and popularized by Steve Goodman. At the time Smith wrote the song, he had never visited The Netherlands.

The song is about an elderly couple living in Amsterdam, Margaret and the title character. The unnamed Dutchman is suffering from shell shock which he received during the war, while Margaret cares for him with a sadness over what has happened to him over the years. It's a story of unconditional love. - Wikipedia

The Dutchman - lyrics

The Dutchman's not the kind of man
To keep his thumb jammed in the dam
That holds his dreams in
But that's a secret only Margaret knows
When Amsterdam is golden in the morning
Margaret brings him breakfast
She believes him
He thinks the tulips bloom beneath the snow
He's mad as he can be but Margaret only sees that sometimes
Sometimes she sees her unborn children in his eyes
(chorus)
Let us go to the banks of the ocean
Where the walls rise above the Zuider Zee
Long ago I used to be a young man
And dear Margaret remembers that for me
The Dutchman still wears wooden shoes
His cap and coat are patched with love
That Margaret sewed in
Sometimes he thinks he's still in Rotterdam
He watches tugboats down canals
And calls out to them when he thinks he knows the captain
'Til Margaret comes to take him home again
Through unforgiving streets that trip him
Though she holds his arm
Sometimes he thinks that he's alone and calls her name
(chorus)
The windmills whirl the winter in
She winds his muffler tighter
They sit in the kitchen
Some tea with whiskey keeps away the dew
He sees her for a moment calls her name
She makes the bed up humming some old love song
She learned it when the tune was very new
He hums a line or two
They hum together in the night
The Dutchman falls asleep and Margaret blows the candle out
(chorus)

For fun: Dutch Windmills 3D Screensaver - information here. 


For inspiration:  The biography of Steve Goodman (1948-1984) --  

No one performed/performs The Dutchman as well as he did.

Painting: The Mill at Wijk-Bij-Duurstede by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682)

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