Paradise, with Thorns

 

Every now and then, a melancholy demon finds its way to my shoulder.  I look around my messy house, usually after I have spent a morning searching for something I know is in this place somewhere, or after the dogs have come back half covered with mud and burrs and I think about all the work that needs to be done on this farm.  The great thing about a big rambling farmhouse is that you have lots of room.  The terrible thing about my big rambling farmhouse is that I never know where anything is.  I still have a room filled with boxes of things I haven’t made a place for yet, in spite of being in this house for two years now.  I have two other rooms I haven’t “got to” yet, which is one of the reasons I have that other room still full of stuff I haven’t made a place for yet.  I also have a character flaw in that I do not put things back where they belong, or if I do put them back where they belong, I forget where that was.  Occasionally I am astonished when I search for some item all over the house and then find it right where it should be.  I spent two days looking for my fall wreath only to find it in a plastic bag, with the other fall decorations, right where it made sense for it to be.

Usually, I turn on the music and sit in the porch swing when the doom and gloom hits.  One mid-morning last week I was engaged in a pity party when my friend Clay arrived.  He barely got seated on the porch before I was reciting my list of reasons to be depressed.  As usual, he took out his invisible violin and pantomimed a sad song.  “You have a sad life,” he said before spreading his arms out to indicate the surroundings.  “Look where you are!” 

I was reminded of that conversation again this morning as I stepped out into the early morning to call the dogs and turn the horses out.  Last night I walked under an almost full moon with no sound of traffic or sirens to wait for the dogs to finish their last minutes duties.  I woke up to a golden sunrise and the smiling face of Sophie, waiting beside my bed for her morning hugs.  The last couple of weeks have been filled with those perfect days that usually occur in October – bright blue skies, fresh breezes, and trees of red and gold.  Gratitude fills my heart when I look around.  I have an embarrassment of riches, even with the thorns and burrs, the broken fences, and the chaos in my house.

Next month we will celebrate Thanksgiving.  My house will be filled with people and we will gather around a crowded table to laugh and remember.  The dogs will be uncontrollable, the food will be bountiful, and we will commune with those we love, not only in this world but in the unseen world.  It’s a good way to begin the final prelude to winter – a memory to keep us warm when the cold rains fall and the snow flies. 

The Piano, a Homecoming

 

We moved the piano back home this week.  I say, “we”, although my main contribution was to worry, watch and take pictures of the proceeding.  I’ve been back in my childhood home for about 2 years now, and we’ve been talking about moving the piano ever since.  If you have ever moved a century old upright piano, you will understand why it has taken so long to do more than talk about it.  It is not something to take lightly.  But my friend David, the most expert piano mover in the country, agreed with me that the time had come.  My friend Clay was put in charge of gathering a crew of strong men, and Thursday was chosen as the day.

This is not just any old piano.  It belonged to my great-grandmother and my first memory of it was in her house on West End Avenue.  I can barely remember her playing it, but I do remember where it sat in her living room.  The piano came to our house after she died and stayed there until Robert and I built our house just up the hill from where I grew up.  I have no recollection of how it got moved to our house, or who moved it.  Robert probably planned it that way. 

I was afraid that I would have a tragedy to write, of a piano crushing a hapless volunteer or rolling down the hill into a gully on the way over.  But with David in charge, things could not have gone smoother and, in no time, it rolled off the trailer, across the porch, into the living room to the spot that 

If this piano could talk, what tales it could tell! It might first tell of its journey to Centerville, a few years before 1900 when my great grandfather, Tom Colley, built a beautiful home for his young bride, Fannie Tate, on a hill overlooking the Duck River.  Tom was 17 years older than his wife – he had to wait several years for her to grow up before he could formally court her.  She attended Dr. Price’s College for Young Ladies in Nashville, where she majored in piano, organ and voice.  Soon after she arrived in Centerville, she became the pianist for the Methodist Church and continued as long as her health allowed.

A succession of little girls joined the family, and each of them took piano lessons, practicing on this piano.  As their competence grew, they were asked to play for “company,” and played for their friends and at family gatherings.  They practiced for recitals on these very keys, and when a little blonde-haired girl unexpectedly arrived, seven years after my grandmother, who the couple thought was their last child, she too learned to play on this piano.  Ophelia Colley  was first taught to play by her older sisters, standing on tiptoe in front of the keyboard, picking out songs and singing at the top of her lungs.  It was at this piano that the seed of Minnie Pearl was planted, the need to perform that became her life’s work.  It was at this piano that she played for her mother’s friends, even when she pretended to be shy and say that she couldn’t play that well.  Her mother would say, “Don’t say you can’t play; go over there and show them that you can’t play!”

The girls remembered their mother playing the piano in the evenings for her husband, romantic tunes that he loved.  As my grandmother, Dixie, grew into her teens, she became a piano player for a local combo, a group that went by the unlikely name of Hard Tater and the Syncopaters.  This piano was where she learned the tunes that were popular dance numbers of the early 1920’s.  Her love for those old songs continued and were some of the first songs I remember her playing as I was growing up.  A young farmer from just west of town heard her play that piano at high school parties and fell in love, marrying her and raising two boys who also loved her music.

The piano was an imposing presence in the small house where my great grandmother lived by the time I came along.  It was the focal point of the living room, the first thing you saw from the entry door.  I was allowed to pick out songs on the keys when I visited, and when I started taking lessons, I was encouraged to show my MawMaw what I was learning.  I remember taking the sheet music to White Christmas out of the piano bench one day and stumbling my way through the melody and occasional chords.  My grandmother thought it was wonderful; I’m sure MawMaw was reminded of her statement to her daughters long ago about showing people you couldn’t play!

When Fannie Tate Colley died, the piano came to live in our farmhouse.  Some of my happiest memories are of my grandmother and me playing and singing.  I remember learning Mr. Sandman and Last Date and Sentimental Journey and all the old classics, and I remember friends coming by to practice singing with my grandmother’s accompaniment for various community events.  One in particular, Steve Turner, was a regular until he learned to play the guitar and accompany himself.  He still talks about those times; his eyes light up when her name comes up in conversation.

When I married and we built a house just across the way, the piano came to live at my house.  My playing skills were never anywhere near those of my great grandmother or grandmother, but I enjoyed plunking away on it.  When we had parties, my more talented friends would play and we would gather around and sing.  I, who eventually took my grandmother’s place as pianist for our little country church, practiced the week’s hymns on that piano and I’m sure the story it would tell about that would have been a sad tale, when compared to that of the past.  The playing by ear gene passed me by altogether and I did well to stumble along with both eyes focused on the printed notes in front of me.

So now, I have moved back to my childhood home and the piano has settled in again, in the same spot it occupied for all those years.  I pulled out some old music today and played a little bit of White Christmas.  I would like to say that the stuck keys and long past-due tuning were responsible for how it sounded, but I’m afraid I don’t play any better than that long-ago little girl who played from that same worn sheet music.  But, it’s a fine thing to just look at that old piano and run my fingers over the keys again.  I didn’t realize how much the living room needed it to be complete. 

 

A Lot of Halloween

 

I saw a commentary the other day about Halloween.  “How in the world,” the narrator asked, “can we mess up Halloween?  It’s simple – put a sheet over your kid, give him a dollar store bag and he goes around saying trick or treat, gets candy and says thank you.”  But every year, people try to make it more complicated.  Inevitably, there will be a few people who ask, “What night is Halloween?”  Or, “When do we trick or treat this year?”  I don’t know about other places, but here where I live, Halloween is October 31 and we trick or treat on that night.  We preface that night with a spectacular Halloween parade, held the Saturday night before Halloween, giving two opportunities for dressing up in costume and gathering boxes, bags or pockets full of candy.  A few years back, someone talked the mayor into declaring that trick or treat would be on the Saturday night before Halloween because the day was on Sunday.  Mass confusion ensued and he vowed to never do that again.  I don’t remember people worrying so much in my childhood about staying out past bedtime – maybe we were tougher kids back in those days. 

This year, both events were tremendous.  The weather was Halloween perfect, the parade entries were amazing and children of all ages outdid themselves on their costumes, filling the streets of Centerville with joyful shouts of “Trick or Treat” for several hours.   A crescent moon hovered above, slipping in and out of the clouds and smiling down on the celebrants.  The volunteer fire department recycled their parade entry by setting up a display that featured a giant spider and towering ghost, and the sheriff’s department and other emergency services served up free hot dogs and handed out countless pounds of candy from the trunks of their cruisers and the back of an ambulance.  

We don’t have trick or treaters where I live, out in the country.  So, I joined friends in town on their front porch to watch the fun.  In theory, I was “helping” hand out candy, but I pretty much just visited and enjoyed the spectacle.  And it was a spectacle, no mistake.  As I walked down the street for a ways, shooting some pictures, I was reminded of those Hallmark movies.  Halloween season in Centerville is proof that those places do exist in the real world.  Dads and grandads pulling toddlers in wagons, moms pushing tiny, costumed humans in strollers, big brothers or sisters holding hands of younger siblings and coaching them in the timeless language of Halloween.  Shy children whispering “trick or treat” and “thank you,” enthusiastic youngsters running up to the door shouting the ageless entreaty and racing to the next stop on the tour, older kids mumbling their request, not quite sure if they are too old to be wearing a costume and begging for candy.  Too young to realize the memories they are making, or the importance of the tradition they carry on.  Too innocent to know their role in making a community. 

And maybe the key to improving the world does not lie in the halls of government, but in communities just like this, where families turn off their televisions for an evening and go out and share good times.  Maybe the local bank official is easier to approach if you met him on the street dressed like the scarecrow for Wizard of Oz.  Maybe the local policeman is less intimidating when he has contributed to an empty candy bucket and served you a hot dog.    Maybe, on a busy moonlit street, filled with joyful children, we can realize that we have a lot more in common than we know and that our differences may not be as wide as we think.  There is a song that says, “we need a little Christmas.”  Maybe we need a little Halloween too.  Or, in the case of my little town, “we need a lot of Halloween.”