She'll be there

I come from a large extended family, both on my father’s and my mother’s sides. While many people dread spending time with relatives, especially large groups of them in smaller than ideal spaces, I relish it. 

My appreciation for my extended family could stem from the fact that I grew up with my grandparents and the majority of my aunts, uncles and cousins close by, as close as next door or a few streets away. Adding to the close proximity of my family is the fact they are awesome people. 

While every family has to negotiate the delicate which-side-of-the-family-will-we-celebrate-with-this-year issue, over the last few decades Thanksgiving has traditionally been celebrated with my maternal family. Even if not everyone in the extended family arrived for 1:00 lunch, they would trickle into my parents’ house after their lunch or early dinners celebrated with the other side of their families, for Haley Thanksgiving.

Card games were played, karaoke songs belted out, sometimes in tune, often not, and inevitably, my dad would invent some new word as he loudly expressed his opinions on politics, religion or pop culture. Some of my favorites: when he was talking about that “Harvey Bolito” song you hear at church—known to everyone else as “Ave Maria”—or when he proclaimed the automation in Lion King to be incredible. We even started Bob’s Thesaurus to keep track of his malapropisms.

As the years passed, adopted members of the family would join us. My brother’s friends and mine would come join in the festivities, and then some cousins’ friends began to follow suit. One of my favorite “adopted Haley” moments was when my cousin Tommy’s friend Dave brought his guitar. We stood around him joining in the chorus of Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” which then lead to more sing-alongs. A family favorite? Feliz Navidad. It was such a favorite, that if we got together at different times in the year, we would still sing it loud, even in the dead of the summer.

Ma's apple tree, with Tommy back on top.

But at the core of it all was my grandmother, Ma. She was the center to which we were all pulled. We all wanted to be the apple of Ma’s eye—and the top of her Grandmother apple tree. There is a running joke about the favorite grandchild in our family. Ma had a wooden plaque with the painting of an apple tree. Each apple had a grandchild’s name. As we were born, we were placed on the apple tree, with eldest grandchild's apple, my cousin Tommy,  proudly hanging at the top.

Tommy’s participation in a semester abroad in England coincided with my Ma re-wallpapering her dining room. To match the new wallpaper, my mother took the tree home, repainted it, and repainted the grandchildren by family rather than birth-order. Tommy returned to the States to find he had been demoted from top apple. We began competing, trying to give the best gifts or succumbing to brown-nosing in general for the chance to be top apple. Tommy went so far as to write her a song one Christmas which was performed that Christmas Eve, and many Christmases, Thanksgivings, Mother’s Days, and random family gatherings after the fact.

Ma, our matriarch

The last time we all sang the Ma Song was in February at her funeral collation.

This will be our first Thanksgiving without Ma. It’s just starting to hit me that she won’t be sitting in my parents’ kitchen when I walk over after I have my Thanksgiving lunch with my in-laws. Her peanut butter cups and apple pie will not be sitting on the counter, waiting for us to attack. The low hum that she used to unknowingly emit will not fill the gaps in conversation.

She won’t be sitting there, but she’ll be there. She’ll be in the stories we’ll tell and the memories we’ll share. She’ll be there in the recipes cooked—they won’t be Ma’s peanut butter cups or apple pie, but someone will have stepped up to fill the space on the counter with her confectionary goodness. She’ll be there in the pieces of herself she’s handed down to each of us.

For me, she’ll be there in my love of the written word and Emerald Isle, the slope of my nose and the blue of my eyes, the laughter, the love, and the joy of being with family.

***

Below: Tommy performing the Ma Song. I apologize in advance for my cousin Dan's tone deaf singing and the not-with-the-beat clapping half way through. ; )

Springsteen

One of Eric Church’s most known songs is the track, “Springsteen”. Off of his Chief album, “Springsteen” hit number one on the country charts in 2011. When I saw him in concert two weeks ago, he closed with this song, pausing to discuss the power of a melody to invoke memories of moments in time. I have many of these memories.

Whenever I hear TLC’s “Waterfalls,” I’m on the bow of my father’s boat, skin warm from the summer sun, dancing with my best friends—the girls who are still my best friends and the Godmothers to my children. It’s instantly sunny and clear, and I think I have “swag” as I belt out Left-Eye’s rap solo toward the end of the song.

I’m transported to the O’Donnell Auditorium, at old Woburn High, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving whenever The Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” comes on the radio. The first annual lip sync began that November in 1997, complete with acts by The Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, Puff Daddy—before he was P Diddy, or Diddy—as well as my friends and I telling everyone what we want, what we really, really, want. 

The opening riff—da da dA da da da, da da dA da da da— of “Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root places me firmly on the patio of Jessie Doe at UNH in May. We’ve traded our fleece jackets for light hoodies, windows are once again open to allow for some relief from the stuffy dorm atmosphere, and the year is drawing to a close. No matter where I go on campus, the yodeling of “Send Me On My Way” provides a soundtrack for my walk.

And naturally, when Tracy Byrd begins singing, “it was no accident, me finding you…” I’m on the dance floor of the Hillview Country Club, spinning into the arms of my husband as we celebrate our first dance as husband and wife.

The list of pivotal moments and of relationships celebrated and cherished through the memory of melody is extensive, but most recently, Eric Church has made his way into my life’s soundtrack with “Springsteen.” It isn’t because his song speaks of music memory that makes it important, though. Plenty of other songs have had similar messages, one of my favorites being Kenny Chesney’s “I Go Back.”

No. It isn’t the sentiment of the song that makes it stand out.

When I hear the low “whoa, whoa, whoooawhoa, whoa, whoa, whoooawhoa” chant half way through “Springsteen”, I’ll see my three-year-old blond-haired, blue-eyed boy, bobbing his head to the words, his little mouth shaping out the sounds while a smile twitches in the corner of his lips, shoulders alternating—up and down—dancing to the music.

To me, the “whoa whoa” song, as he calls it, will always be his song. Whenever I hear it, he will always be three. In that moment, music is melody and memory magic.