Tag Archives: music

May10

“Mother” – The Heavyweight Title

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This week’s noon yoga class contained some different characters than what has become the norm. A

beauty near the back door, which was propped open to the spring sun, with an ebony braid as thick as a

rope; the variety of woman who might be 35 but might be 60, I couldn’t tell. A younger woman, clearly an

experienced yogi, pregnant with her first baby. The mother of two, her first son AJ born still, and her

second (and last, due to a harrowing labor and emergency hysterectomy) a 4-plus year old “wild man,”

coming back to classes after a few years’ absence. A mother/daughter duo, newish to our studio. The

rest, the handful of regulars, most with grown children. Motherhood, its joys and scars and often quiet

presence, was palpable in the room. There were no men in class on this particular day. Ladies with

no “germs.”

It is Mother’s Day week. I am a grandmother, a step-monster, an aunt, a Godmother. But I was never a

mother. Every Mother’s Day, the local grocery store gives a carnation to each woman as she checks out,

and I’ve always had to squelch the urge to argue back that I don’t deserve the flower. So much so that I

wrote an essay a decade ago, We Mother Each Other https://marybrat.com/2014/05/09/we-mother-each-

other/ to comfort that same instinct in others who feel undeserving of the Mother’s Day greetings that

come our way, intentionally or inadvertently. I get it—we do mother each other in so many ways, and

those with children like to thank the village that it takes to raise them. I’ve often reported the myriad ways

I have been mothered by women who are not my own mom, so I accept the sentiment, the card, the

carnation at the grocery store.

This year, in this era of my life, I know more mothers who have lost a child than I want to. That used to

mean miscarriage, stillbirth, infant death. Now, it also includes ladies my age and beyond who have

buried a grown or growing child. David, 37. Myles, 17. Lisa, 56, just last week. I sent her mom a Mother’s

Day card, although I’ve never met her.

That’s the point at which I must concede any claim to the title of mother. Whether by birth, adoption,

fostering, or whatever other iteration there is of choosing to have or raise a child, one succinct definition

(from Oxford Languages) of the word “mother” is a woman in relation to her child or children. In

relation, like the earth is to the sun. When one is no longer alive, the other—the Mother—is forever a

different human, just like whatever the moment was that made her a mom for the first time. Her

fundamental structure is altered. Yes, the rest of us are also changed when the birth or loss occurs, God

knows that is true for me too, but the change isn’t as comprehensive or complete. I’m reminded of the

movie Steel Magnolias and Sally Field’s character’s declaration, “I realize as a woman how lucky I am. I was

there when that wonderful creature drifted into my life and I was there when she drifted out.”

Oh, to be me…to have never had the pains, or the burdens, even the responsibilities of motherhood, but

to have been inordinately close to the joys, thanks to the mothers in my life. To have never given birth nor

pursued parenthood in any other way, but to have had my sisters and best friend place their babies,

living and deceased, willingly into my open arms. To have been allowed the privilege of close

grandparenthood from our kids who didn’t even meet me until they were in college. To have been raised

so selflessly by a mother who fought hard to have her own children, but who was technically abandoned

in a way by her divorced parents for a while. The “others” who stepped in for her and her sister, her

Polish-speaking grandparents and aunt-by-marriage, showed her just how to be a mother, in an

unconventional sense. That aunt, in fact, the one who showed such life-altering affection, became my

Godmother when I was born.

Truth is, I couldn’t—wouldn’t—have been the best mother, and I knew I could never measure up to the

unselfishness and commitment with which I’d been raised. I know no mom is perfect, but one thing is

sure, mine is selfless to an extent that I could never match. Even my sisters, whose flaws and shortcomings

I’ve spent a lifetime keeping track of (what sibling doesn’t?) impressed me beyond measure when they

became moms. They allowed me to participate in raising their children, and now they let me share the

rewards as their children become parents…and I’m awed to tears by seeing the whole thing come around

again.  

Mothers hand over their bodies…some for YEARS!…maybe in pregnancy or breastfeeding, but then their

sleep, their mental

health, their privacy. Their schedule depends on everyone else’s plans and health. They give up social lives

and career opportunities and a clean car. (Well-described in the lyrics to The Mother by Brandi Carlile,

please check it out at the end of this post):

“The first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep
She broke a thousand heirlooms I was never meant to keep
She filled my life with color, cancelled plans and trashed my car
But none of that is ever who we are”

And I took on none of that. All that I did do was show up and give love, and I’m grateful that they all let

me do it. I got to sing “Rubber Ducky” in Bert’s voice for bathtime, and to read “just one more!” bedtime

story. I got to ride sidesaddle on an MRI machine to pacify a scared toddler.  I even “got” to be the

incumbent present adult when someone got her first period! I’ve chaperoned field trips (yes, I behaved)

and stood, hooded, in the sopping rain at soccer practice. And yes, I knelt at the feet of the gutted

mother holding her baby who had just slipped up to Heaven. That’s how close these moms let me be to

their motherhood.

Real motherhood is a thankless, thankless job. When I’ve been afforded the usually mundane tasks of

pouring the milk into a sippy cup, filling the bath with more bubbles than necessary, ordering the ice

cream, pitching the baseball yet again, even wiping up the vomit…I get thanked. When I’ve shown up at

recitals or sporting events, I’ve done so on a good night’s sleep and had time to put my makeup on.

Real motherhood deserves a Mother’s Day. The pause in time, not just for the dads and kids to make

their fair-to-middling attempts to acknowledge, thank, and appreciate you moms…but for YOU to pause.

For YOU to acknowledge that you have abdicated your very life in favor of your children. Willingly.

Lovingly. Imperfectly.

Mothers, YOU change the world. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Oh, and happy Mother’s Day. It may

not be spent exactly the way you’d like, but I have a feeling you’ll bear it just the way you do

everything else…full of grace.

Mar21

Love Lifted Me

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The weeks leading up to my parents’ 35th wedding anniversary in 1994 were tense.

After so many years of bowing to the desires and demands of his wife and three daughters…my dad had ceased shaving.

My tan, athletic little fireball dad who had gone salt & pepper before my birth in 1969, who by this anniversary was definitely heavy on the salt, had decided for the first time in his life he would let his facial hair grow.

To be fair, this was the closest thing to a mid-life crisis Hap ever had.  This and a very inexpensive, very yellow old Porsche convertible which would come a few years later. 

But Dolores, our mother, was NOT having it.

Why?

“Because you look like Kenny Rogers!” she’d say, with a grimace.

And while Kenny was a very nice looking man, that was not the look she wanted to see on the face of her husband. And she was not playin’…she was not pleased, she was not kind about it. She was punishing him in ways small and large, I’m sure. We were scared–if Hap didn’t shave, if the cold war continued, what would happen when they showed up to the fake event that would actually be their surprise anniversary party and were barely speaking?

Luckily, through whatever marital manipulations will remain unknown to we three sisters, as the date neared Boots somehow prevailed and Hap shaved. They showed up to the party and were greeted by the two grandchildren they had by that time, along with the best friends, coworkers, and extended family they had cultivated during that long marriage. They cried tears of joy, and as the saying goes, a great time was had by all.

They were treated to a slide show of memories, and part of the soundtrack to that slide show was “Through the Years” by Kenny Rogers. It was their song, their family song–not their song as a young dating couple, but their adult, grown-up life song:

“Through the years, through all the good and bad…I know how much we’ve had, I’ve always been so glad to be with you…through the years, I’ve never been afraid, I’ve loved the life we’ve made, and I”m so glad I stayed right here with you…through the years.”

It was just a song, but an emotional one. My dad was a huge fan of country music, the country music before it would have a surge in popularity with younger people after that time. Before artists from Kenny forward would sway it towards pop. His country music was Ronnie Milsap and Lynne Anderson. I remember watching the Barbara Mandrell show with him as a kid and arguing that I preferred her sister, Louise Mandrell. He shook his head, “no way.” He liked Barbara. He liked that she could play so many instruments, a petite scrappy blonde who took on that steel guitar like other women took on baking. As her own song says, Hap was “country when country wasn’t cool.” Oh, sorry, he listened to country when it wasn’t cool. He may have owned a plaid shirt and a straw cowboy hat to wear to a convention of other financial planners and insurance salesmen, but he was not “country” the way Mandrell meant it. Not in the real ways, but I’m fairly certain he lived vicariously through Little Joe Cartwright and the Big Valley Barkleys.

Back at the anniversary party in 1994, Kenny Rogers’ voice took us all on an emotional photographic journey of our longtime neighbors and friends “through the years,” which included a third generation of children playing in the same two backyards. And while no more Kenny Rogers songs were included in that day, as I awakened this day in 2020 to the news of Kenny’s death, my mind’s eye shows me quite a few other snapshots that Kenny Rogers’ songs frame:

A cassette tape of his greatest hits played over and over…and over…on a driving trip to Nashville, when my parents allowed me to bring my best friend and next-door neighbor Kristine. It is only as an adult that I realize they wanted me to bring her to keep me occupied so that I didn’t annoy all the joy out of the vacation for my older sisters. There were several of those trips, so I cannot recall if that was the same one that also included the family/neighbors on the other side, which would have included Sandy and Karen, my elders as well.

My days in Tennessee were eclipsed by thoughts of a boy named Mike who worked at the stables of Loretta Lynn’s Dude Ranch, who gave me a peacock feather. It was obvious he was in love with me. I was a pre-teen. I assume he was old enough to have a work permit.

I wrote a few postcards on that trip, one to yet another neighbor and friend, Lisa, to whom I had written something like “the trip is fun, MOST of the time,” which was a dig at Kristine getting on my nerves, and me on hers, and a lesson learned when my mother (who was about to mail said postcard) handed it back to me with a “shame on you, that’s unnecessary.”

I wasn’t yet at the age where I bought much music for myself. I had listened to (and ruined) many 45’s and albums of my sisters in the early 70’s, fought through a few of Hap’s 8-tracks, and then when cassettes came out, I just listened to whatever was in my parents car. So, some Kenny Rogers. I loved the song Ruben James, “you still walk the fertile fields of my mind…faded shirt, withered brow, calloused hands upon the plow…loved ya then, and I love you now, Ruben James.”

Over the years Kristine and I shared many choruses of “Coward of the County” and “The Gambler,” and I privately swooned over “She Believes in Me.”  “Lucille” took on a new shine when in my adulthood, my coworker/friend Maureen told me a story about an automotive breakdown using the lyrics, “ya picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel…”

But after childhood, I didn’t really follow Kenny Rogers, and his signature low growl in songs like “Lady” annoyed me. Years later I joined in the mocking when he had plastic surgery and those eyes were wound up a little too tightly. I never really sought his music again. I felt like he was making an aging attempt at being a sex-symbol.

But his song, my parents’ song, “Through the Years,” was the closest thing to an anthem our family had, and it was revisited on many anniversaries after that. My parents would go on to celebrate their 50th anniversary. By their 52nd, my dad was in a nursing home. By their 54th, he was gone. Sirius satellite radio continues to bring songs like that into my car, and when that happens I laugh, or cry, take a snap with my cell phone and text it to my sisters and my mom. Same thing happens with John Denver’s “Sunshine on my shoulders,” Sunshine being the name of our childhood dog. Thank God for music.

Now, it’s March 21, 2020. One of my sisters texted me this morning about Kenny Rogers’ death and how it made her cry, for all the reasons illustrated above. Kenny’s death might be getting more airplay today if we were not in the midst of a global pandemic of Covid-19, Corona virus. My husband keeps telling me to write about the worldwide crisis, to document the days we are all quarantined so we can read it and remember the details years from now. I haven’t done that yet, because what can I have to say about it–what we ate that day? What time we Face-timed the grandkids? Who of us still have jobs?

Instead, here’s my offering today. Kenny Rogers has died, and his music is part of the soundtrack of our lives. Hearing the clips of his songs again makes me smile. Nostalgia is strong, and I still know every word to those songs. Thank God for music, have I said that already? During this terrible health crisis when countless will be sick, many will be lost, and more will be devastated financially, I will go online and hopefully find one of those Kenny songs I sang after playing it over (and over, and over) on that trip to Tennessee, and I hope the sentiment rings true to us all:

“Love lifted me, love lifted me. When nothing else would do, you know love lifted me.”

Love Lifted Me

 

Mar26

The Privilege of Exercise…

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Let me move that for you…

These days, as I consider my designated intention for each morning’s yoga practice, my mind inevitably travels to those friends, family members, or acquaintances who are struggling with a challenge. Some of the first who come to mind are those experiencing physical illnesses like recurrent cancer, undiagnosed pain, systemic or autoimmune diseases, and other physical complications which, frankly, may exist completely without hope of resolution. While these are not necessarily more or less difficult to manage than other forms of dis-ease, unease, hardship or disability, the physical aspect reminds me: it is truly a privilege to be able to move our bodies in physical exercise.  

I happen to hate exercise. I am lazy by nature, and it is an effort just to get myself out of bed every morning, not because of depression, despair, or any valid reason at all—other than my preference for being as languid as my black cat for as much of my life as possible. I do not appreciate my own sweat, and in fact I am tremendously distracted by it, even during yoga. A competitive bone does not exist in my body—if you want to win, I assure you, I want you to win, because clearly it must be more important to you than it is to me. You may find me walking to music almost every single day that the temperature exceeds 60 degrees, but you will never find me running (as the joke goes, if you do see me running, you’d better run too!) I have weak knees, a family history of arthritic joint replacement, giant boobs, and a surly attitude when it comes to exertion. (Eyes up here, please.) I am not a strong swimmer, I cannot shoot a basketball, and I have gone to tennis “lessons” for the past four summers without ever actually playing a match (don’t judge, it’s a social thing). Golf may be on the future agenda, but there’s a certain petite friend of mine named Vicki who hopes I borrow someone else’s driver next time I try.

Even yoga and walking were activities I embarked upon for reasons outside of the physical. Yoga was for anxiety, when I had such a feeling of generalized unease about my life and family that I developed a constant eye tic. Dr. Google advised me to avoid caffeine and try yoga or meditation, and the rest is decaffeinated rock-n-roll history. Walking is, similarly, free therapy for me: almost everything I have committed to paper (including my dad’s eulogy) has been first written in my head on a long walk, past ducks and lakes and dog-walkers, often laughing or crying behind my sunglasses as a Billy Joel song in my ear buds takes me back to high school, or the Coal Miner’s Daughter soundtrack reminds me of the family vacation in Nashville when a boy gave me a peacock feather to put in my hat at Loretta Lynn’s ranch. The fact that my body is moving, breathing, and benefiting from yoga and walking is just a lucky, unintended consequence of something I would be doing anyway.

But now, I can’t deny that both activities, and every other new experience I have had the confidence to attempt because of them (stand-up paddleboard, riding a mechanical bull) have been so strengthening and liberating that I now appreciate the fact that I am in a position to participate. I am able. My parts work.

A friend of my husband could no longer walk the golf course comfortably because of congestive heart failure. A yoga pal enduring treatment for her fifth cancer doesn’t have the luxury of trying to practice standing on her head, because she is too weak from chemotherapy to even leave the couch to vomit. A relative can’t engage in her beloved gardening successfully anymore because some core abdominal muscles were re-appropriated in a post-cancer reconstruction surgery. Amusement parks and airports are no longer places a senior citizen can easily venture across without wheels. Countless people close to me want to do more than their bodies will allow them to do, but my long, boring history with HIPAA prevents me from providing further thumbnails.

Every day that I wake up and can physically do what I desire to do, independently, I am gifted. One day, an accident may happen, or a phone call will bring a diagnosis, or a flu bug may render me too nauseated to move, and whether the roadblock is temporary or permanent, it will be unwelcome. Too many of us don’t exercise, but we should—because we can. My eyes can see where I am going, my legs hold me up, my stamina is plentiful enough…I can move my body, so I must. Whether or not I want to, I will do so for those who cannot move theirs. Exercise, like aging, is a privilege denied to many.

Now, come on, sixty degrees….

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