Resurrection row

I was born in Cincinnati. My father sang Barbershop and made sure the local pool got built. Mom taught me to paint and read and how to make puppet plays and beautiful cakes. Mrs. Wynn showed me how to make mistakes. I taught myself to dream.

Gramma carried Europe on her tongue and pitted cherries for Swiss pies. Grampa built his stone house under white pines and taught his sons construction.

When we moved from Loveland to a tony suburb in New Jersey, I played piano and thought about in groups and out groups and not fitting in. Girl Scouts was not cool but it was fun, with tent camping and folk songs sung in children’s homes.

My best friend and I laughed a lot. We made it through high school by sheer grit and common sense. She embraced my nerdiness and even became a scout.

One day I found myself in college with a mind I hadn’t noticed rising. My first three classes were German, art and film. I went on to study God. My prof inspired us all, then died of cancer. We never quite forgave him but we understood his pain exceeded ours.

My duckiness evolved to something else. Not so much a swan as something sisterly, and brave.

Guitar was just another thing to get my hands on and make things with. I learned three chords or so and felt inclined to try my voice at Dylan, Prine and Cohen mixed with oldies like The Sloop John B. and Go Down Moses. But I made no sense of who was writing what. I never factored nomenclature into songs; it seemed enough to sing them.

Years later, there I was all married and pregnant and a mommy peeling paper off the kitchen wall and the radio wanted to be turned off and my hand scribbled words on a scrap of mail and a song was born and I liked it and figured that was that, but of course it wasn’t.

It was only my mind getting hungry for her heart. My heart. My self.

Which should be the end of story. But all these songs later, I’m looking back and seeing something I hadn’t realized was here. I’m the same nerdy, friendly, complicated girl who’s good at certain things, bad at others, pleased to get my hands on something no one needs to notice. But they’re welcomed if they do.

Photo credit Walt Campbell