Intervals

We are all thinking about our fathers this Father’s Day week. I found this remembrance our daughter Amy wrote a few years ago about Bill teaching her musical intervals, She has given permission to share it with you.

"This is one."

We’re in the car, he drives.  I sit in the back seat, repeating the tone back to him.

     "One."

     "Now, give me 'three'," he says.

My mind scrambles to make the musical steps.  My pitch is not perfect, but "relative," they call it.  I find the note with mental reasoning, unwilling to let him hear me do the figuring.

     "Three," I sing.

I know he knows how I find it.  It doesn't matter.  The game has started, and we both enjoy it.

     "Give me 'two'."

     Back to one, I think, then mentally, "One"-- aloud--"two."

We play like this: he tests; I challenge myself to do my mental gymnastics more quickly.

He falls silent, and I know he is thinking about-- what?  The days when he was a boy at the Stamps School, first learning intervals and harmonies? Or is he hearing the harmonies themselves? He fades further away, and I think I can hear the echo of a scratchy 78 playing in his brain...sounds drifting down from upstairs at my grandma and grandpa's farmhouse.

I often fell asleep to those sounds, harmonies fading and blaring on what sounded to my ear like very primitive technology, songs with titles like "The Bible Tells Me So," "Happy Rhythm,” singers with names like Denver Crumpler, Hovie Lister, and Jake Hess.

I know he is hearing them now, here, in the car.  I watch him in the rearview mirror.  His mind is always a mystery.  What harmonies, what memories, what beginnings fill him now?

Nights when we had dinner guests, and I would hear my father say, as the candles burned low, "Hey..hey, can I play you something?  Come in here."  And long after I was supposed to be in bed, I would sit at the top of the stairs in my nightgown, peering around the banister watching as my father's face danced with admiration, joy, astonishment, laughter, tears.  And our guests, smiling and nodding and catching his fever.  Then, black gospel choirs, Andree Crouch, and the singers with the Caravans. Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin brothers: "I've Done Enough Dyin' Today" and harmonies that made your heart ache.

     "Daddy."  I have to say it two, three times.  "Daddy.  Daddy."

     "What?"  He is still absent.

     "Earth to Bill," my mother says.

     He blinks, focuses.  "What?"

     "This is one," I say.  Back to one.

     He grins, returning.  "Okay, give me seven."  His favorite interval.

I wonder what memories my children will have of me, what late night reveries and what music will bring them back in their minds to our living room.  I wonder what memories they will imagine I am returning to when I disappear before them like my father does, has always done.  I wonder what will anchor them, like my father returning to harmony, his home base, his roots, his "one."  

I feel him grounding me there: "This is one.  Now give me--"

I wait breathlessly, wondering what I can give him, hoping it will please him, grateful for this reference point.  Back to the one.

--Amy Gaither Hayes 

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Covid-19 Rant

Strange. Now that the journey markers of each week are gone, it’s hard to remember what day it is without Monday—Bible Study, Tuesday—get groceries and write, Wednesday—answer mail, emails, text and do the wash, Thursday—shop, do self-care like hair appointments, nail repair, get lunch alone and read, go to drug store for personal needs, Friday—special dinner out or at home with friends or Pacer games with Bill, Saturday—water flowers, yard work, pick veggies, grocery fill-in, Sunday—church and lunch with close friends or a new college student or come home for soup and a nap and reading.

No wonder people in nursing homes are thought to be losing their memories when every day is exactly the same and no one comes to visit or eat or have great discussions or listen to music together or meet in the park or go for walks or grocery shop....  Who cares if it’s Friday or Tuesday? 

Why put on make-up or do your hair or take another shower or read a decorating or fashion magazine. Or news magazine, for that matter?  No wonder the residents all look old and puckered and drag around in old chenille bathrobes. No wonder last year’s magazines are as good as this year’s.  No wonder they don’t get tired of that lavender top and want a new striped yellow and lime one—or new shoes, or sharp new slacks.  No wonder they are late to the dining room when it doesn’t matter what time it is or what’s for dinner. Everything tastes the same and IS the same anyway.  Why play a game when winning or sharpening your wits won’t lead to a wittier banter?

I have to mark my days during this pandemic by doing something that makes me know today isn’t yesterday and certainly won’t be tomorrow!  I have to cook different foods.  I have to set the table and do it with different place mats and different colored napkins and intentionally different flowers. I have to light the candles and play the music.

I have to actually touch my sweet lover and kiss his lips and watch romantic movies—or disturbing ones or Westerns, or documentaries about Henry VIII.  I have to make a blueberry cobbler, even if and especially if I send half of it to Rodney Wilson across the street.  I have to take a hot bath in sweet-scented bath salts.  I have to like myself.

Today I will pickle some cucumbers and pull some weeds.  It matters.  I will snip off some zinnias and a stem or two of lavender and put them in a vase with purple phlox and the last of the lilies.

Today I will put on my lipstick and polish my flaking-off nails because even though I can’t go to the nail salon, I will not abide these ugly nails.  I will make tea and it will be Earl Gray!

Today I will hug someone who doesn’t have a temperature.  Today I will read my new travel planners I just ordered from Amazon even though I pretty much know I can’t go anywhere any time soon.

Today I will co-ordinate my clothes and wear earrings.  I will read something so deep and challenging that it will tie my brain in a knot and force me to read it again—and again, and maybe again.  I will not give up until I get it!  Today, listen to me! Today will not be just another day no different from yesterday or tomorrow.  Today I will shine, even if no one is watching.  And I will sing!

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It Ain't Done 'Til It's Done

Photo by Angela Kellogg

While I was growing up, my mother said more times than I wanted to hear, “It’s not done until it’s done!”  This would apply to everything from taking the bait “clean off the hook” before I put away a fishing rod, to hosing off the spade and rake (and, at the end of the gardening season, oiling the spade) before I put the tools away in the tool shed.  It was applied to putting my bike in the garage before I went to bed, neatly hanging up the dish towel after the dishes were dried, and making my bed and straightening the bathroom before I left for school.  Along with this valuable training, came the ethic I learned from my parents and grandparents before them: pay your bills in full, don’t buy what you can’t afford, and always “pay your tithe” first, if you want God to bless the rest.  Oh yes, and never live so close to the edge financially that you can’t help those who are in need and offer hospitality to whomever God brings into your life.

Photo by Angela Kellogg

I have been so grateful for this heritage of responsibility. My parents didn’t leave my sister and me much of an inheritance, but they left us a legacy of great value.  I hope Bill and I have passed that legacy on to our kids.

We have learned that we must be frugal so that we can be generous.  We’ve learned the value of “deferred gratification,” that the things we wait for are all the dearer when they come.  We’ve discovered that gratitude makes every day a treasure and the simplest pleasures sweet.  And we’ve learned that how we do a thing is as important as the doing of it, whether it is writing a song, making a recording, pruning a grape vine, or putting garden tools away for the winter.

Photo by Angela Kellogg

We have experienced in our own home and in our homes of origin the joy of deep rest after a day of honest labor, the contentment in knowing we have paid our debts, and the rich reward in sharing our blessings with others.  We have been as enriched by drives into the Indiana countryside as by trips around the world.  In our travels we’ve enjoyed a few really lovely hotels and some of the simplest accommodations, but we always think the best place of all is home.

Photo by Angela Kellogg

                  We have found true what Paul once wrote to the believers in Phillippi:

“I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances.  I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little.  I’ve found the recipe for being happy, whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty.  Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.”  (Phil. 4:12-13  The Message)

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Thanksgiving -- A Hymn Of Praise

You are probably in the middle of plans either to “go home” or to prepare for family and friends who are “coming home.”  The foods you are preparing have a history with your family and just thinking about them brings back waves of memories: grandma’s pumpkin pies, Aunt Lillie’s banana pudding, mother’s homemade yeast rolls.   Even the recipes cards are smudged with fingerprints made by mamma’s butter-covered hand or a drop or two of turkey broth someone smeared on the page as they stirred in the now familiar ingredients.

The tables will be set soon with linens someone gave you, and the arrangement of the house will likely be the way it was last year that seemed to work best for a crowd.  You may go out and cut the flowers for the tables from the rosebush Aunt Evelyn started for you or the hydrangea your daughters sent to celebrate your twenty-fifth anniversary.  And the autumn or Christmas candles will be set in the crystal candle holders that came from dad’s side of the family.

If you stop to consider, you will, like our family, find yourself being so grateful for the long line of memory-makers that have made life rich and beautiful, who taught by being thoughtful, caring, generous and selfless what is truly important in life.

Photo by Angela Kellogg

There may be other memories, too, those memories that made you vow to “never say that to a child” or “always notice when someone is lonely.”  Negative memories shape us, too.  We can choose to take a different course, to forgive instead of holding grudges, to embrace instead of pushing away.

Rituals are those habits we make in celebrating what is good and sacred and important.  They are sometimes the motions we go through – the framework of our lives that holds us together until the more worthy emotions return after love has been betrayed or promises broken.  Rituals and heirlooms help us remember our better selves, our purer natures, our more admirable moments.  They call us home to our ideals and reestablish our center of being.

In the end Jesus is the only ideal against which all else can safely be measured.  He is the center of our joy.  He is the ground of our gratitude.  He is the focus of our family celebrations.  He is the Source of all that does not disappoint.

May this be the year where like a magnet draws metal, your family and ours will be drawn to the centering force, the only inexhaustible Source for all we expect from holiday relationships: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, long suffering, forgiveness, tenderness…and great memories!

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