It’s been quiet here, on the western front, with regards to my soon-to-be-born ukulele CD, “Smile, Smile, Smile,” probably because this thing has seemed, at times, like the “never-ending” story. Two years in the making. Well that’s what happens when life happens. Like…I have to work, you know. That means doing gigs and teaching. And there’s writing, cooking, cleaning, hovering around those damned social networks and never, ever catching up on my email. I don’t have to tell you how it is… We’re all trying to poke holes in the sky.
TURNING 90
“Don’t get old.” I hear that. A lot. I sing at an assortment of retirement homes, assisted living dormitories, skilled nursing-almost-hospitals. A few of the residents tug at my sleeves and repeat these very words. More than you would think.
My own mother says it too. When she remembers. For the last few years she has been “87 years old.” Well that’s her story and she sticking to it. Here is a woman whose gray hair leaks around the sides of her teased-up auburn wig. She looks like a pixie-yoda and prefers conversations about sex. She insists she has no wrinkles and that mirrors lie. When I tell her she is actually 90 years old, shock registers on her face and she changes the subject. Read More
A LITTLE MORE TO SAY ABOUT “LOSING A FRIEND”
Last week I shared the story of my long-time friend, Cinda, who passed away on Easter morning and I received a bounty of heartfelt responses. Thank you! The people we love and who love us, the critters, the flowers on the window sill, the fresh strawberries in a bowl, the long-lived relationships, the bucks in the bank, the insights we file away on mental post-its—they come and they go. It seems like there is a little goodbye in every hello.
Thank goodness for denial, huh! But when we lose a friend, denial crashes into pieces. At least for a while… Read More
LOSING A FRIEND
We were friends for a long time. Thirty years, give or take. We saw each other through her divorce and my marriage. And the whole galaxy of “life events” that happen–the surprises that come out of nowhere, the “situations” that drag on.
Cinda had that “joy” thing happening and she delivered it into every corner of her life. By the time we met, she was teaching and working with children. But Cinda loved to sing too and she was a natural. Big, brassy and fun. You couldn’t help but grab your heart and smile as she shook her booty and belted out a Peggy Lee song.
LITTLE ONES VISIT THE CC STRUMMERS
Surprise! Surprise! That’s what happens last Thursday morning when a whole class of little ones from Farragut Elementary School in Culver City unexpectedly drop by my ukulele group, The CC Strummers, to sing a special song FOR US and leave a bundle of hand-made valentines on the table. It is Valentine’s Day after all! There are as many kids as ukulele players and they joyously squeeze into our already jam-packed room. With parents and teachers in tow.
When the kids finish, we applaud them heartily and they start to leave. Ah… Not so fast little ones! We have ukulele players here! The CC Strummers launch into a group kanikapila, singing “This Old Man.” In the key of C. By ear! The kids are thrilled. Their little eyes are big as pancakes and after we end the song at “This old man, he played seven, he played knick-knack up in heaven,” all of us — grandmas, grandpas, parents, tiny music makers — are cheering and frankly, glowing… From the inside-out.
In this life, you just don’t know what’s going to happen in the next five minutes! Giant meteors crashing from the sky… And unexpected visits from little valentines!
A SECOND LOOK
Hi Everybody,
We go to sleep early New Years Eve because we’re exhausted. It’s a desert-cold night and my husband and I are grateful for heat and our comfy hotel room bed. We are somewhere in Phoenix. There is a riotous party ratcheting up, downstairs. The pumping, thumping music lulls us into REM sleep. Well until the stroke of midnight, that is, when exuberant screams of revelers blast through the walls and fireworks, yes fireworks, go ka-boom.
We are in Arizona to hook up with the rest of my mystery family whom I discovered recently, thanks to Google and Facebook. We met many of them last summer in Indianapolis. (See my series of blogs, “Marvelous Midwest). But a few were still missing-links. Hence a “family reunion” was arranged in Phoenix. Cousins fly in from parts east, west, north and we gather for one joyously chaotic family graze-a-thon after another in the house of the matriarch herself, the stalwart and handsome woman who was married to my great uncle Sidney.
Cousins and spouses and kids perform, compose and record music, teach, write, draw, sew, cook, invent, travel, save lives in a neo-natal ICU, tile floors and do dry wall, run a business (Chopsaver), build and repair musical instruments. I know I’m leaving stuff out. Perhaps we are a bunch of high achievers, you think?
Well I like to work AND play. Play for me is shopping for clothes. Actually, shopping is my cheap therapy. “Therapy” because it gets me out of my head and out of the house. “Cheap” because I’m a Goodwill Thrift Store kind of gal. So when my cousin Noelle tells me there is a consignment store a block away and “let’s walk over,” well I can barely breathe.
So on the second to the last day of 2012, we are standing in front of “A Second Look.” Someone opens the door and I swear it’s like walking across a threshold into a phantasmic, colossal, colorful circus of joy. It’s big, like Ross Dress for Less, but the clothes (and jewelry and knick-knacks, shoes, bags, rugs, gifts, men’s wear) are unique and quality stuff. Apparently there are a lot of ladies in the desert who are happy to unload their spiffy frocks and do-dads.
And now I’m gasping for air. The stuff is SO fine that it turns over quickly. If a garment stays on the rack longer than a month the price goes down. Two months, the price goes WAY down. That is how I snag a pair of gray jeans for a whopping 75% off. They cost me $4.49. We stay all afternoon. Until the lady tells us on the loudspeaker to check out because the store is closing. The next day we go back for more.
I think shopping, for some people is, well, more than shopping. It’s a communal experience. It’s a feeling of belonging. And escaping. Even though we are in our own little worlds, searching for the right blouse or taking delight in running our hands over a row of coats, every customer in the store is doing the same thing. Looking, touching, trying on. Being utterly human.
In the dressing room we emerge from our curtained cubicles long enough to “ooh” and “aah” each others’ outfits. I learn the dance quickly. You can take up to 8 garments in at a time and afterwards when you return the booty to the attendant, you report how many are “yes” and how many are “no.” By now, she is carefully arranging my growing collection of “yes’s” on a nearby rack.
Exhausted but thoroughly exhilarated we finally drag ourselves and our stuff to the cash register lady, a lovely woman who knows this store, knows her clientele, knows the neighborhood and knows enough to ask me if I’d like to sign up for their rewards program.
“Awwwwww, I don’t live around here. Why don’t you open a store Los Angeles…? (I’m making pathetic groans at this point) Please! Please! Please!” She skillfully redirects my pleas for franchising. “So you’re visiting,” she responds. “Do you know anyone in Phoenix who’s on our program?” I mention my cousin (who is ripping out floor tiles in her house as I speak) and the woman’s face lights up like sunshine. “Oh yes we know her. We’ll add your reward points to her account.” That’s good for $25 off her next purchase.
Later that evening when I tell my cousin all about it, her smile is as big as the saleswoman’s and she tells me a little more about her connection with the store:
It was once upon a time… When she found her soul mate, a man who matched her intellect and curiosity and utter zest for grabbing the guts of life. He really loved her. And she loved him. The marriage gave my cousin, this monumentally talented and driven woman, a sense of balance and calm. But it ended tragically when he passed away suddenly. They had less than a decade together. My cousin tells me that she went to “A Second Look” everyday after that. It was her therapy. Being in the store with the clothes, with the people, helped bring her back to life. One day she told the saleswoman about her husband. “You’re not the only one,” the woman confided. The store is a haven. It reminds us that we can go on, even when we don’t think we can. Or don’t want to.
So what else can we do for each other, and ourselves, but bear witness to sorrow and suffering. Then get busy doing. Doing something. Get out of the house, out of our head and into the land of the living. It’s a new year…
MUSIC, MAYANS AND GOOD WISHES…
Well the end of the world has come and gone. Lookie! Lookie! We are still here and celebrating the holidays. Or un-holidays for some. And getting ready for a new year, new beginnings or more of the same. Ah the great mystery. We just don’t know what’s going to happen.
Speaking of unexpected twists and turns… My husband Craig, the guitar player, never dreamed he would give up the six-string for the little four-string marvel and become extraordinarily accomplished on the ukulele. Or that his 90-year old guitar teacher/mentor, Howard Heitmeyer, would take the uke trip with him and create masterful chord melody arrangements for the low G tenor ukulele. The Mayans didn’t predict it and neither did we. Read More
HAPPY THANKSGIVING
I can smell “winter” in the air, here in SoCal. The cool breezes push through the light sweaters I wear. Today it’s actually drizzling a little and since Mother Earth rotates on an axis, it’s getting positively night-like in the late afternoon. A whole lot darker than last month.
That means its time to haul out the extra blankets. My husband Craig “ooo’s” and “aah’s” every year as I lay his across his side of the bed. I crocheted it. Just for him. The basket weave pattern I used is dense and thick and I found myself making trip after trip to Michaels, the hobby-heaven box store, to buy more skeins of tan and brown and creme-colored 4-ply acrylic yarn. After a while I didn’t care if the “lot numbers” matched or not. Close enough, was good enough. Winter passed, then spring before it was all done.
TEACHERS “DO” AND “TEACH”
Have you heard this saying?
“Those Who Can, Do. And Those Who Can’t, Teach.” Who ever coined this one needs to repeat kindergarten. A couple times…
As I continue to improve my chops as a teacher, the words of my treasured guitar mentor resonate in my head. One afternoon during a lesson, this genius player told me, flat out, that he didn’t really learn about the guitar until he began teaching it. Until he had to explain what the hell he was doing. And why. Teaching helped him connect the dots, for himself and his students. And here’s a man who played thousands of gigs, who took a solo over “Satin Doll” thousands of times. In more than one key… Read More
THE LAST FLIGHT
Today a travel-warrior made her final flight, past Venice Beach, Disneyland, The Queen Mary, Universal City, Malibu and even home sweet home, Culver City. This is Space Shuttle Endeavour’s last hurrah before she grabs the big room at her new retirement home. The California Science Center near downtown Los Angeles. Like thousands of others, I seek higher ground to snag a view of this miraculous machine, riding piggy-back on a great big 747.
Hello and Goodbye – Marvelous Midwest
This post is THE FINAL INSTALLMENT of the 11-part series, “Marvelous Midwest,” about discovering my extended family in Indiana and “ukeing” it up in Missouri. All in one very eventful trip.
My husband I live a 10K race away from LAX. It’s like there’s an airplane freeway in the sky that passes over our condo. This is the soundscape of life around here. In Missouri, it’s cicadas. I never actually see one, no little green guy with a “C” on his butt. But I hear them and ask a local person “what the hell is that?” I am told that sometimes the cicadas get so loud it’s impossible to carry on a conversation.
Elvis, Llamas and Ukuleles that Float
This post is part 10 of 11 in the series, “Marvelous Midwest,” about discovering my extended family in Indiana and “ukeing” it up in Missouri.
It’s the first day at the Mighty Mo Ukulele Festival. We line up in the quaint Swiss Chalet dining hall for dinner and fill our plates at the trough…er…buffet. Lovely women, dressed Heidi-like, scurry here and there providing the sweetest service. “You mean I get dessert?” I ask. “This is the Midwest, honey. You get dessert with every meal.” She chirps. Read More