For Christmas my son got me a record player. Seriously. A turntable. Several years ago he discovered a turntable and decided that this was the new thing for music. I had a record player growing up. I usually played singles but my parents had a “stereo” and I used to play their albums on there until I was old enough to buy my own records. My parents had country. They had Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette and Marty Robbins and Merle Haggard. Okay, they had Ray Price and Charlie Pride too. My dad even had a Bill Cosby album. He would lay back in his Lazy Boy and listen to Bill Cosby and almost fall out of the chair laughing so hard. To this day, I can still quote some of his best lines, “… and I’ve seen kids dumb enough to go out in the back yard and rip up a tree to come back with a switch …”. My sister started her collection early. She had Sweet Baby James and Tapestry and Tea for the Tillerman. When I had saved up enough money from babysitting I bought John Denver albums. Pretty much only John Denver.
Through the years I continued to add to my music collection. And what’s really cool is that I still have a lot of that music. I have all of my 45’s. Those are the singles. Those are the Jackson 5 and the Osmond’s or just Donny Osmond. I’m sure there are other singles in there. Then I have cassette tapes. I must have about 50 different cassette tapes. I missed the 8-track craze, thank goodness. But I still have that music. I do not have my albums though and through the years I have missed them. So, when my son got me the turntable for Christmas I was so excited. In this day of technology I wasn’t sure how to make it work but it isn’t much different than it was when I was a preteen. I let it sit around awhile. But when it was time for my birthday I called my son and told him he could get me an album for my birthday. I told him I would like to have anything John Denver but if he wanted to get me The Eagles, or Carole King or James Taylor or anybody like that it would be okay. I knew he would get it for me because he likes that kind of thing anyway.
I have about a gazillion songs in my iTunes library. I really like being able to download just one song or a whole album. Plus, I can take my music everywhere I go. Some of my kid’s friends fuss at me for not streaming but I want to ownnnnnnn the music. I want to be able to pull up a song and play it at any time. And I can. So in my library I have Abba and Adele and Alabama and a whole lot of Alan Jackson and Alecia Keys and Alison Krause and Amy Winehouse and Anita Baker and Aretha Franklin (I think everything she’s ever recorded), and that’s just the A’s. People marvel at how diverse my music is. But one thing I did not have was much John Denver. Oh, I had the Greatest Hits. I think I even had Back Home Again. But that was it. But then they digitized some of his old work and I was able to get Aerie, which is one of my most favorite albums of all time. But that was the extent of my attempt to revive my collection.
So when I was telling Jay what I wanted for my birthday I went through all of John Denver’s albums and decided that I would really like to have Rocky Mountain High. That is such a good album. The songs are songs of my youth and if I want to relive that time those are songs I want to hear. But I also got to listen to some of the songs on Poems and Prayers and Promises and thought, wow, I’d like to have that one too. I’ll put that on my list for Christmas but in the meantime, I’ll download it. And I did. But I didn’t listen to it. It was just in my library. When Jay came home for my birthday though he had bought me Poems and Prayers and Promises. I didn’t question him, I was just excited to have it.
Yesterday morning I got up to an empty house. Jimmy and John were off doing the things they needed to do and I had the entire morning to do what I wanted. I got up, straightened up a little and then decided that I would make some banana bread before I got into the cleaning mode. I love to bake. It takes me back to Saturday mornings growing up when Grandma was at our house. She didn’t bake like your grandmother did but she came closer to doing it than anyone else in my life. She and my dad were diabetic so she wouldn’t make big cakes or pies or anything like that so as not to tempt him. But one thing she would make was banana bread. Sometimes she would make pound cake or angel food cake with strawberrries. I will say this, every bite of banana bread I’ve ever had reminds me of her. So, as I was baking I got to thinking about her. I had put on some music and one of John Denver’s songs came on and I decided to listen to Poems and Prayers and Promises and I was really thrown back into that era of my life.
I can remember when I was a teenager how Grandma and I would talk about moving to the country and building a home. We would talk about doing things the old ways, like she did when she was younger. Sometimes my brother would chime in and say that he was going to move to the country with us. What could be better?
I didn’t move to the country with Grandma or with Kerry, but I did move to the country, and I built myself a home. I didn’t build a house, that was already there, but I built a home. If you doubt that, just come by to visit. I don’t live in a house, I live in a home. It might be a little messy and really dusty and a little bit worn, but there are at least six people in this world who consider it their home, even if they have one of their own. And if you come on a spring Saturday morning I will have the windows up with a crisp breeze airing out winter. The sun will be shining in my kitchen windows just as they did for Jimmy’s mom. I could stand in that sunshine all day. I’ll never forget the Saturday morning that I’m describing where I was frying bacon in the iron skillet, peeling home-grown tomatoes, getting ready to fry country eggs and I wanted so bad to call Grandma and tell her about my life. I couldn’t. She had been gone for awhile. My brother wouldn’t have understood. Then I thought I would call Mom and tell her. She wouldn’t have gotten as much out of it but she would have appreciated the bacon frying in the iron skillet. But she had been gone for awhile too. I sat down at my kitchen table and cried. Here I had the life I had always wanted, my whole life I had wanted, and there was no one to call and tell. But I know that they knew, and they were happy for me.
So yesterday as I was listening to John Denver and singing along with every single song (yes, I still know all of the words to every one of the songs on Poems and Prayers and Promises), and baking banana bread, I knew that the day could not get any better at all. I had my dog at my feet, I had the promise of my men coming home, and I had my youth visiting and reminding me that this was all I ever wanted, ever in my life. Life is good.