Up Above My Head

I’ve got marriage and good guys on the brain, for several reasons.  One is the hit television series “Downton Abbey.”  Finally, in last night’s episode, Lady Mary and Matthew Crawley became engaged to one another, a destiny that PBS Masterpiece viewers everywhere have been hoping for.  Good riddance to the controlling Sir Richard Carlisle!  Also, servants Anna and Bates are happy to at last be Mr. and Mrs., though they do still have that pesky false murder conviction to overcome.  And Daisy, sweet Daisy, has finally accepted the love of her late husband and her kind father-in-law and understands that she loves them too. Mary, Anna, and Daisy all recognize and appreciate the truly good guys in their lives.  Good for them!

The “marriage and good guys” theme is dominating my family this month as well.  Four weeks ago, my niece Sarah became engaged, and three weeks later my niece Caroline (Sarah’s sister) accepted a marriage proposal.  They’ve each dated a variety of suitors over the years, and it has been interesting to observe the gradual realization, with certainty, that these particular young men, the two individuals who are now their fiancés, are indeed THE ones for Caroline and Sarah.  Their younger sister and my own three daughters, ranging in age from 19 to 24, are all at various stages of their own interest in eventually finding a life partner, meanwhile.  My mother, who married my father at age 25 on December 18, 1954, and lost him to Alzheimer’s Disease and its complications on the same date 52 years later, was with my nieces, sister, daughters and me this weekend as we joined together with others to celebrate the engagements, shop for wedding and bridesmaid dresses, and plan festivities.

All of this wedding planning and intergenerational activity has made me look back and ask myself, after 28 years of marriage, “How did I know that Jeff was THE one for me when I accepted his proposal in 1983?”  I didn’t, really.  But I knew he was a good guy - possibly the best guy I’d ever known that wasn’t my father.  I knew he was a sincere, caring, praying man who honored his commitments and drew his strength from a God who is stronger and more trustworthy than either of us and stronger than the challenges we would surely face.  I wouldn’t admit that I wasn’t sure I was ready for marriage, but it seemed prudent to accept this proposal.  Of course, we both thought we loved each other, and maybe we both did, but looking back, I realize how little we really knew about love.  In choosing to marry, we really were choosing to learn to love, with each other.  Our learning experience has been full of both failure and success and continues to this day!  I hope it never ends and that the dominant trend will be for the successes to increasingly outnumber the failures.

I mentioned that my father died of Alzheimer’s Disease and related maladies in December of 2006.  For the last several years of his life, he rarely spoke coherently, if at all.  He was unable to find the words he wanted, and his attempts usually produced only frustrated silence or pitifully unrecognizable babble.  It was impossible to know how much he was able to comprehend of the goings-on that occurred in his presence or whether he recognized those on whom he politely smiled.  Those years were sad and difficult for my family, but there is one memory from that time that I treasure and will always cherish.  I didn’t witness it, but my mother told me about it, and I can see it in my mind’s eye. 

My husband, passing through Birmingham on business one day, took the time to pay a visit to my parents, presenting my mom with a bouquet of flowers on his arrival.  The three of them sat in the den together for a while, my mother and my husband chatting jovially as my father looked on silently from his armchair with a confused but pleasant expression.  Jeff got up to go, shook my father’s hand, gave my mother a hug, told them both goodbye, and headed on his way.  As he left, my father pointed after him, smiled big, looked at my mother, and warmly spoke the first complete and coherent sentence he’d formed in many days:  “He’s a good guy!”  

Lost in Transmission

Text, tweet, post, comment.

Like, call, share, email.

Message, photo, youtube, listen.

Blog, chat, Skype.  Again.

Yes, we are in touch,

Unless you’re talking skin.

Isn’t it nice, usually?  I love a good, peaceful silence - quiet time for contemplation or rest.  I realize that the Edgar Lee Masters poem I just posted, however, doesn’t linger long on this type of silence but moves on to a heavier kind.  I wasn’t trying to get all morbid on my readers; I just like the truth about silence that’s told in that poem. 

After posting the poem, I started thinking about songs I know about silence.  “Silent Night” is a beautiful one.  Then there are “The Sounds of Silence” and “Silence is Golden,” which deal with ways in which silence can be disturbing.  Now I’m also remembering a song I wrote called “Sympathetic Silence,” inspired by a parenting article I read about the importance of quietly listening to your children when they’re sad and need to talk, not always offering up solutions, but allowing space for them to think, vent, cope, and problem-solve.  I thought it was good advice for any relationship and wrote the song from the perspective of anyone, child or adult, in need of some silent sympathy from a loved one:  “…Hold me in your loving arms; they will comfort me. / The light that shines from your eyes to mine will guide me silently. / Let me feel the warmth of your love wrap like a blanket around me. / There’s nothing I can’t rise above when your silent sympathy surrounds me.…”

The other night I read about Stanford University’s colorful and storied marching band, whose Fiesta Bowl performance I missed, but about whom I became curious after reading a friend’s Facebook post.  According to Wikipedia, the band played an arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner in 1963 that featured “the striking effect of a single trumpet playing the first half of the song, joined later by soft woodwinds and tuba, and finally bringing the full power of the brass only in the final verse. When it was played at the ‘Big Game’ against Cal, just eight days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, [the band director] said, ‘I’ve never heard such a loud silence.’”

Silence can be so powerful.  It can say so much.  Often it is the only effective, meaningful answer or complement to brilliant words or music or profound moments.  Sometimes it’s the one condition that is needed before brilliant words, music, or profound moments will flow. 

I enjoy watercolor painting.  As a visual artist, I compare silence to white space – unpainted areas of paper - within a painting’s composition.  The color that surrounds the white space makes the area that has not been painted take shape and mean something. 

I’m thinking maybe I’ve said enough about silence now, and it just might be time for me to shut up.  Which makes me think of just two more songs worth mentioning, both from the great genre of country/folk music:  Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Shut Up and Kiss Me” and Randy Travis’s “This is Me (You’re Not Talking to).”  I love them both, dealing with two different kinds of silences people might experience in a relationship.  I was going to share Randy’s song, in hopes it would encourage you to leave me a comment or send me a message, but the only video I could find is way too cheesy.  Therefore, I’ll share Mary Chapin’s song.  Please enjoy it, and consider me kissed and silenced, at least for the time being.

Since I’ve been so quiet for over a month now (on my blog, anyway), I thought I’d share one of my favorite poems, just so any followers I might have will know I’m still alive.  I discovered this poem in my English textbook in 9th grade.  It moved me then, and it still does.  

Silence

By Edgar Lee Masters

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,

And the silence of the city when it pauses,

And the silence of a man and a maid,

And the silence of the sick

When their eyes roam about the room.

And I ask: For the depths,

Of what use is language?

A beast of the field moans a few times

When death takes its young.

And we are voiceless in the presence of realities —

We cannot speak.

A curious boy asks an old soldier

Sitting in front of the grocery store,

“How did you lose your leg?”

And the old soldier is struck with silence,

Or his mind flies away

Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.

It comes back jocosely

And he says, “A bear bit it off.”

And the boy wonders, while the old soldier

Dumbly, feebly lives over

The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,

The shrieks of the slain,

And himself lying on the ground,

And the hospital surgeons, the knives,

And the long days in bed.

But if he could describe it all

He would be an artist.

But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds

Which he could not describe.

There is the silence of a great hatred,

And the silence of a great love,

And the silence of an embittered friendship.

There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,

Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,

Comes with visions not to be uttered

Into a realm of higher life.

There is the silence of defeat.

There is the silence of those unjustly punished;

And the silence of the dying whose hand

Suddenly grips yours.

There is the silence between father and son,

When the father cannot explain his life,

Even though he be misunderstood for it.

There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.

There is the silence of those who have failed;

And the vast silence that covers

Broken nations and vanquished leaders.

There is the silence of Lincoln,

Thinking of the poverty of his youth.

And the silence of Napoleon

After Waterloo.

And the silence of Jeanne d’Arc

Saying amid the flames, “Blessed Jesus” —

Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope.

And there is the silence of age,

Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it

In words intelligible to those who have not lived

The great range of life.

And there is the silence of the dead.

If we who are in life cannot speak

Of profound experiences,

Why do you marvel that the dead

Do not tell you of death?

Their silence shall be interpreted

As we approach them. 

I finished my last post with a childhood memory of riding in the family station wagon, and my mind hasn’t gotten out of the car since.  There’s something about driving or riding along with someone that makes more than just the car wheels turn.  Thoughts and conversation flow.  Silence is easy.  Distractions are few.  When you’re traveling with someone, whatever the distance or the mission, together you’re facing the world - the known and the unknown, the here and now and the possibilities ahead - and you’re bound by your discoveries and your experience, however mundane or exciting.

Some of the best, most thought-provoking and mind-opening conversations I’ve had with others have taken place in moving cars.  Other pleasant drives with loved ones have been characterized by almost absolute silence and a pervasive feeling of peacefulness.  Many of the most powerful vocal ensemble performances in which I’ve had the pleasure to sing alto or soprano have happened at 70 MPH on interstate highways.  In buses, cars, and vans, I’ve heard wonderful stories from my friends and family and have had the opportunity to tell mine and more.  Even on a drive as short as the two-mile trip to my daughter’s middle school from our home, I recall, I once relayed the entire saga of Les Miserables, inching through the morning carpool line as the soundtrack played, barely managing to finish sobbing out the fate of Eponine before Katherine had to spring from the car and sprint for the front door just as the bell rang, pained expression on her face.  (Poor Eponine.  Poor Katherine.)

I’ve been the kid in the carpool, and the mom driving it; the kid in a full car on family vacation, and the parent in the front seat; the child with her mom or dad all to herself for a drive or an adventure, and the mom cherishing the special time with just one of her children all to herself for a precious short while.  I’ve been one member of a chattering group of peers hitting the road for a highly anticipated “friend trip,” and one half of that couple making the long, quiet drive back home to the empty nest after delivering their grown-up baby to college.  Sometimes I’m the driver, sometimes a passenger, and sometimes I take drives in which my only companion is myself, happy for an opportunity to turn my thoughts around alone as the wheels roll and the world flies by.  Regardless of the destination, vehicle, companion, or journey’s length, isn’t it true that nothing quite matches the simple, timeless joy of sharing a drive on the open road with someone you love?  My friend Meg Tennant skillfully conveys this sentiment in her song “Driving With You,” which I hope to successfully post next, in my first attempt to upload a music file to my blog.

Why is it called “The Magic City,” anyway, you ask?  Well, as I learned from Ms. Lippman in my junior high Alabama History class, Birmingham earned that nickname due to its explosive growth during the period from 1881 to 1920.  (OK, I’m letting wikipedia help me with some of the details.)  Also called the “Pittsburgh of the South” (I remember that, too, Ms. Lippman), Birmingham’s major industries were iron and steel production and railroading from its founding in 1871 to the end of the 1960’s.  The manufacturing industry remains strong in the city, but the economy is much more diversified now to include banking, medical care, telecommunications, college education, and much more, making Birmingham one of the most important business centers in the Southeastern United States.  But to me, personally, the city’s magic has never had anything to do with all of these statistics.

I was young (6 years old) when my family moved to Birmingham in 1967, but sharp enough to understand that my mother was not excited about the move.  Both my parents had been quite happy in Atlanta, the city where they’d met and had recently had a nice house built for our family of six.  They’d heard plenty of negative reports about the uneducated redneck racists of Alabama and disturbing incidents that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement.  But my father, a phone company executive, was transferred there with the opening of the new South Central Bell headquarters in Birmingham, so off we went.  I’m sure my parents did much research, along with other phone company friends who were also being transferred, and carefully chose the part of town where we’d house-hunt, but in my six-year-old mind, we just moved - left one house, drove to another city where we spent one glorious night in a Ramada Inn (what kid doesn’t love hotel stays?), and then moved into the “new” house the next day.  The backyard had something called a “rock garden,” which I thought was very cool and also excited my mother.

I have lots of memories from my early days in Birmingham, each of which could be the basis for an entire story or blog post - losing, then joyfully finding, our dog who moved from Atlanta with us; being the “new girl” in Mrs. Murphy’s first-grade class at Brookwood Forest Elementary; meeting interesting new neighbors; learning things one had to know as an Alabamian - but the magical memory I have is that of discovering how hilly the area is - downright mountainous, in the foothills of the Appalachians - and the marvelous vistas we’d be surprised and delighted to suddenly come upon as we traveled its winding roads.

We had one of those long station wagons with the fake wood paneling on each side and a third, rear-facing seat in the back, which we called the “way back.”  For our family of six, all seats were usually used - parents in the front, two kids in the middle seat (imaginary line drawn down the middle that you better not cross), and two kids in the way back.  OR, three kids in the middle and one in the way back with the dog, which was how we traveled during the actual move drive to Birmingham, when we found out that our dog Snoopy was the type that gets carsick traveling long distances.  (Sorry, Billy - the one with him in the backseat when we made the interesting medical discovery…. but that’s another story, and I digress.)   

In fore-mentioned station wagon, my family explored the Birmingham area.  Sometimes at night, we’d round a bend and someone would gasp, “Oooh!  I see the city!”  We’d all look out the windows and see below us a sea of city lights twinkling from skyscrapers, homes, and moving cars, from the unexpected vantage point on which we’d suddenly found ourselves.  Often, the view was gone before we’d all seen it, as my father continued driving.  My siblings and I started to play a game in which whoever saw the city first claimed it as his or her own.  ”That’s my city!” we’d shout.  ”No, I saw it first!  It’s mine!” someone might reply.  We all tried to be the first to spot a panoramic view and delighted in each one we saw.  The mean, older, bully-sisters sometimes even tried, with varying degrees of success, to cover my brother’s and my eyes, saying “That’s MY city!  You can’t see it!”  This was truly torturous.  Of course, I’m smiling at the memory now, maybe even tearing up a bit, as I fondly and gratefully recall those wondrous days when my family moved to, and then lived together in, “The Magic City.”