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The Telephone Book Lullaby
Sam had a hard time falling asleep when he was a toddler. Some nights we had to lay in the bed with him. It got so tiresome that when he finally nodded off, we’d just go to bed, too.
We had a few tapes of lullabies we’d play for the boys when they were little, and it helped on nights that Sam was less fitful and didn’t need a human teddy bear to fall asleep.
One of the tapes was of Jan DeGaetani singing Alec Wilder’s Night Songs and Lullabies. If I remember correctly, Ray Wright arranged them. We wore out a copy I made of a recording borrowed from the Rochester Public Library. If there is such a thing as local produce, there is of music, too. She was a great singer that taught at the Eastman School of Music, and Wright headed up the jazz department. Wilder had his own connections to the school. I knew that bootleg copy was a keeper and I was bummed the day it wouldn’t play anymore.
From time to time, I would call the people at Recycled Books and ask them if they had a recording of Jan DeGaetani singing Alec Wilder’s Night Songs and Lullabies. Never worked out. Earlier this year, I got on a tear again. Another artist recorded it, and I bought the CD. Reading the liner notes, I’m not sure they were even aware of the other recording. It’s lovely, but it’s not Rochester-local. I don’t know how to explain that.
Editions of that music book that I’ve seen for sale are collector’s items. Published in 1965, it was a music manuscript collection meant for children — it’s illustrated by Maurice Sendak (yes, the author of Where the Wild Things Are). I’ll bet in some families it’s an heirloom. This month, I borrowed it through interlibrary loan and started playing the lullabies and night songs on the piano.
Oh, the flood of memories. I swear music hits way more memory spots in your brain than smells and scents.
I asked Sam if he remembered any of them, and he didn’t. In a way, for him, that’s a good sign. When he was little, his memory was lists and lists, like a telephone book. He mapped out everything and it was always available — addresses, people’s birthdays, etc. But as he got older, his memory got less savant, you might say, and that’s ok.
Wilder’s book has about 50 little tunes in it, many of them completely original. As I played through them, I realized not all of them were on the original recording. One of the lullabies, if it had been, would have been Sam’s favorite as a kid — then he may have remembered it as an adult.
When I played it for him a few days ago, he followed along with the lyrics and laughed. This was a good lullaby for kids, he said.
I think all parents of kids (and not just parents of kids with autism), desperate enough for them to fall asleep that they might just start singing the phone book, would agree.
The Telephone Book Lullaby, by Alec Wilder
Ada Jones, Agnes Jones, Albert Jones, Alec Jones,
Alfred Jones, Alice Jones
Alma Jones, Alvin Jones, Andrew Jones, Anna Jones and
All the other Joneses.
For additional verses, Mr. Wilder suggests you see “Jones” in any telephone directory.
What color is your agitator?
When Sam was in elementary school, he often asked people what color their washing machine’s agitator was. You would be shocked — shocked, I tell you — how many people did not know the answer to this question.
Many times people were so loving and accommodating. If we were visiting, they would say, “Let’s go look,” and the whole crowd headed to the laundry room. Sam enjoyed that. If they didn’t know, and didn’t suggest to go look, he didn’t obsess over getting the answer. He had picked up enough social graces that he would simply move on. Often, at that point in the conversation, he would share the color of our washing machine’s agitator. For some reason, I was slightly embarrassed the first few times he shared that — even though I told myself that was not the same as sharing other details about the family laundry.
I was never quite sure of his motivations for gathering that information. I don’t remember when he stopped asking for it. I asked him about it a few nights ago and he remembered that it was something he was curious about. “I don’t remember when I lost interest,” he said. He doesn’t remember why, either.
Sam has been researching home automation systems lately. He thinks about accessibility. A person in a wheelchair can’t reach the controls, he says, and an automated system would let them operate appliances by remote control.
He’s so determined, even if it means teaching himself code, which he finds exacting — even for him.
He had been quiet about it for awhile, but I asked him about it again after this video showed up on the browser history when I came home from work.
(Other parents might have to worry about stumbling upon porn. I just get to see a washer with three speeds of spinning.)
I don’t mind him experimenting on our house. And I wonder about how to show off that quality to an employer. He’s a problem-solver.
The current color of my agitator, you ask?
White.
OMG
I wanted to pass on a particular invitation this weekend. It wasn’t the company. I’m smitten with the great people at nonPareil Institute, where Sam interned in spring 2011. They are having their second fundraiser this weekend, a Sunday night banquet and a golf tournament on Monday. No golf for this working girl, of course, but even the banquet price was a little rich for me.
I reminded Sam we were already heading to another fundraiser earlier in the day — a fajita fiesta for Denton County’s newest therapeutic riding center, Born2Be.
But he wouldn’t hear of it.
“Why didn’t you ask me to buy the tickets, Mom? It’s nonPareil. I should be the host.”
After he finished the order, it hit me.
I’m a trophy mom.
What little girls are made of (reprise)
The adorable photo of the girl in the jumper comes from the Women and Girls Lead Facebook page and has been pinned around cyberspace. I saw it on the page of a comrade in single motherhood. It made me think back when Paige was in kindergarten and first grade and she went after school to the community dance program at Texas Woman’s University. For a while, she learned ballet, then she tried another dance class that mixed up the styles a little more.
You could see, even then, that she was a talented dancer, but she tired of it. I didn’t make a fuss.
If she thought of dance during the rest of elementary or middle school, I didn’t know it. For all I knew then, dance had only been an early childhood interest. But when the high school marching band added a color guard, she was all in, not just with the flags, but the dancing, too. Such a personality she had during performances!
Sam’s younger years were a gift to his siblings in some ways. We were trying so hard to get Sam to “average,” we didn’t fall into those traps that so many anxious parents fall into with their kids and their extra-curriculars. Michael and Paige tried out lots of different things: music, sports, leadership, theatre, and 4-H.
And that was a beautiful thing. Paige worked hard with her dancing in high school. Yet, because it was never a chore, never something she did to please anyone but herself, dance will be a lifelong love.
It’s a good thing to remember when you’re sinking $200 into gear or lessons. I never let myself think it was an investment in a future, four-year scholarship. It wasn’t something to distinguish my child from their peers. It was something to allow them to stretch and explore and learn and feel and discover who they really are.
Four weddings and a long ago funeral
Tonight was the fourth wedding I’ve attended since Mark died. The first wedding came about eight months after, and I was a wreck.
On your own wedding day, part of your heart opens up and it just gets bigger and bigger until your beloved isn’t there anymore.
Oh, mercy, that expansive, empty space hurts on another couple’s wedding day, no matter how happy you are for them.
When I first saw the date on the invitation, the night before Mark’s birthday, I wondered. But it’s also been nearly five years. Tonight, as we were waiting for the bridal procession, I heard the violinist begin the first few phrases of Ashokan Farewell — one of Mark’s favorites. My eyes couldn’t focus, and I could feel my knees and my heart giving way, but then the string ensemble transitioned to another tune.
Then, I told myself that little bit of music was just Mark’s way of winking and letting us know that they were all there …
Congratulations, Megan and Brandon!
Patron Saint of College Kids
In my faith, if you have a need, we’ve got a saint for that. I’ve got one of those little “guardian angels” hanging from the rear view of the pick-up, but I don’t take much stock in it. Some would say I need a St. Christopher medal, but I got Sam and myself a membership in AAA instead.
If you’ve lost someone close to you, like we have in the Wolfe house, then you probably carry that person with you like a patron saint from time to time.
The year after Mark died, in my own year of magical thinking, I often talked to birds that came close, in case it was him.
Friends would tell me that they would get visits from their loved one. These were the greatest stories, by the way, friends who could see the loved one in a bedroom mirror after dark, or who would see the loved one next to the bed, and carry on a conversation. I was a little jealous. The birds never talked back to me. Once I thought Mark was trying to visit — coming down the hall after all the kids had fallen asleep — but I got so terribly frightened that he never tried again.
Hence the birds.
I digress.
Michael called when I got home from Iowa. He was filled with emotion. He had felt Mark’s presence all through the end of high school and through the first years of college. But now, as he is about to start his senior year, Mark has left his side, Michael says.
“He was trying to get me to be the man he wanted me to be,” Michael said.
Michael realized the message: he was there, the rest was up to him, it was his life to lead now.
Mark’s been gone for nearly five years and he still makes me weak in the knees.
It’s 10 o’clock
Michael has moved into his apartment at TCU and Paige is packing. Tomorrow Paige and I hop in the pick-up and drive her back to Iowa for her sophomore year.
Summer ends again, tonight.
I tried not to cry when she started kindergarten. She’s my youngest. For years she had watched her older brothers go off to school. Even though she went to nursery school three mornings a week, she was so ready that day she went to kindergarten. She just bounded out of the car like her brothers and headed confidently to her classroom. She was big. How could I cry?
Sunday morning, we’ll move her into a new room, although in the same dormitory as last year. She’s out of her living-learning community, but the bonds between her and fellow writers from last year are strong. They are already trying to figure out how they can find a house to share by next year.
She may not even come home next summer. I’m mindful of that. I didn’t come home after my freshman year. We’re starting to collect things she will need to live in her first home away from home.
She’s big.
How can I cry?
Horse bling
Sam isn’t a belt-buckle-wearing kind of guy. When he’d come home from Chisholm Challenge with another trophy buckle, usually from being the best in English equitation, we’d look at it lovingly for a minute. The organizers of Chisholm Challenge order the trophy buckles each year from the silversmith in Placerville, Calif. That was always fun to see, too. I knew the shop since I worked for the El Dorado Arts Council for three years, back when Sam was an infant and toddler.
But then, we’d just put the buckle back in the velveteen box and shove it in the dining room cabinet. (Lots of room in there. We don’t have many fancy dishes.) After a few years, I felt bad. He worked hard for those buckles and he didn’t get one every year for every event. (Unlike Special Olympics medals and ribbons, but I digress.)
I figured it was time for a display. I asked Dad, and the next time we were talking on Skype, he showed me what he’d built. I brought it home two weeks ago and showed it to Sam.
He’s not really a belt-buckle-arranging kind of guy, either. I pulled them out of the box, marveled at the craftsmanship and then arranged them.
I hope he’s a belt-buckle-noticing kind of guy.
Love Letter to Caleb
Our family has been touched again by tragedy.
Happy Valentine’s Day from Mark and Peggy
Sometimes we did things just to see if we could.
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