Whitney Houston

The photo is from the video" How Will I Know". One of the cutest videos ever. When my daughter reminded me this week of dancing around the living to Whitney's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) I thought about why we're so sad when some singers leave us. After all, they were just singers and we didn't know them personally, right?

Singers often give us happy memories. We love their songs, we love the way they interpreted them with their singular talents, we love the memories attached to them. The songs remind us of a different time in our lives. That's why.

Yes, celebrities are just people like us, but to me, Whitney, just like Michael Jackson, came to us with God-given talents. They had no choice but to share them with the world. And they did, but they also paid the price of a greedy world. I think being so famous is life-altering. It's not normal. They must feel infallible and untouchable and maybe that's why they leave us too soon. We all know drugs take us away from reality, and the unreal lives they lived as worldwide celebrities is probably too much for human beings to handle. I believe Whitney, like Michael, came to do what they were supposed to do,and it's OK if we miss them.

If you've never seen the videos for "How Will I Know" or "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" find them on You Tube. You'll dance.

Coexist XXVI - With God

I spent most of my teenage years sharing my Christian faith with others. I grew up in a Methodist church at a time when contemporary music was rare and daring. The associate pastor and his wife were wonderful musicians and they had a heart for teens. I fell into a life of singing,performing and sharing my faith quite naturally.

My high school years were filled with rehearsing and traveling in Christian musicals. Some for teens and then for whole families. I co-directed a musical with the next group of teens, and that unique era in our lives lasted well into my twenties.

As a young wife and mother I continued to be involved in every aspect of the church. My then-husband and I became youth leaders in an attempt to keep that part of our lives with us a little longer. My little children went everywhere with us, including weekend retreats and camps.

Prayer chains and Bible studies were a constant, as well as the many songs I shared as solos in church. I had a one-woman Lenten concert that encapsulated all my beliefs in songs and commentary. Soon after that my entire life fell apart and nothing in my head or heart was familiar anymore. I learned that serving on committees, teaching Sunday school and abstaining from drinking and swearing were not what being a Christian was all about. I discovered that only one thing remained in times of overwhelming pain - and that was God.

The church failed me, friends failed me, my husband most certainly failed me and I fell complettely apart. I learned through counseling that I was a human being with all the same temptations and weaknesses everyone else had. I found out that putting forth an image of being good and spotless did not make you that way. I experienced rage and terror and despair. Many people in my church stopped speaking to me. I was tired of being perfect, tired of being a good example, tired of being a Christian.

I became a single mother and looked for love in all the wrong places. I wore my friends out with my anxiety and I discovered that none of them had any idea what I was going through. I screamed "why me!" over and over at night and I prayed and I prayed and I prayed. And God held me in His arms when no one else would.

Eventually I healed and became a new, more real person. I related to Pinocchio wanting to be a real boy. I stopped being a wooden replica of a woman and actually became one, and realized that maybe that was God's plan all along.

I fell deeply in love for the first time and began a new life, but our not-the-Brady-Bunch blended family was a disaster. How could God let this happen to me again? Wait. Stop. God didn't make it happen. I chose it. Now I needed Him again.

Then to top it off my beloved church left me. Literally. Picked up and moved to another community, dividing the church family and obliterating everything it had once been in my life. I was beyond heartbroken. So,even people who love you let you down, and the fallible human-led church let's you down, and what do you have? Just God.

My son and I sat in the parking lot of the church - the one we'd both grown up in, the one he'd been baptized in by that same pastor I grew up with (and he's named after), the church I'd hoped my children would be married in, just as I was, - and I said: "This has nothing to do with God. He didn't do this. People did this. " But, of course, teenagers love a good excuse to hate church and my church-raised children were no exception. Shit.

I continued my new life with a new husband and a new church, but somehow all the trappings of my very Christian life seemed irrelevant now. Don't get me wrong - my faith stayed strong. God is still in my heart and soul. But that's just my point. Although I see nothing wrong with churches and bible studies and prayer chains - they won't save you. Only God will save you. Only God will love you when no one else does.

In the '70's I was strumming my guitar and singing Christian camp songs and listening to John Denver and James Taylor on the side. I have to admit I deeply regret missing a lot of amazing music that was surfacing at the time. In the '80's I was listening to Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. There was one simple Amy Grant song, written in 1986, that has always stuck with me, and I've always thought it says it all.

In a little while we'll be with the Father, can't you see Him smile.
In a little while we'll be home forever, in a while.
We're just here to learn to love Him and we'll be home, in a little while.

(From the album "Age to Age". Song by Grant, Chapman, Bannister, Keister)

We're just here to learn to love Him.
To me that line puts all of life in perspective. If you've met God and let Him into your life, then you love Him and you can rest in the knowledge of a loving eternity. This world will shortly be left behind. Earthly life is the time He gives us to choose, to know Him, to use what He's given us. This is your chance. Right now.

I made a stupendous effort to not be a part of the worldly world in my youth, and I succeeded, but at a cost. I believe that my life crisis was used by God to wake me up to the world I really live in. A beautiful world, full of experiences and joy and heartache. It's brief. It's amazing. It's the human experience.

My High School Art Teacher and Frank Lloyd Wright

My high school art teacher was Louis Penfield. Mr. Penfield was 6 ft 8 in. tall and kind of a kooky eccentric type. He didn't do a lot of teaching, but he did a lot of art. In class we were mostly allowed to just do our own thing - and Mr. Penfield would do his own thing off in a corner painting in his watercolors. I guess he thought demonstration was the best form of teaching. Every once in a while he'd get up, walk across the room and draw right on what ever I was working on (GRrrrrrr - can't you just TELL me what's wrong with it?) He was cool in that he let us bring in albums to play. I remember a whole year of "Tapestry". Once on a beautiful autumn day he took us to his home to sketch. I remember that he told us that his house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but that did not impress me at the time.

Flash forward to this past summer. My book club read a book called "Loving Frank" by Nancy Horan. It's a novel based on one woman's affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. It sparked my interest and I discovered that Mr. Penfield's house can now be rented out for two days at a time. The house was indeed designed by Wright just for Mr. Penfield due to his height. It is one of about 100 Usonian houses and was built in 1955 on 30 wooded acres in Willoughby, Ohio. Only 1800 square feet, it has a floating staircase, a bottleneck entryway and several walls made almost entirely of windows. One might wonder how Mr. Penfield could afford to have a house designed by the renown Wright (specifically designed for his 6'8" height) on 30 acres on a high school teacher salary. I'm not sure, but I do know that Penfield was a prominent family and owned other property in the area.

So, I wish I would've paid more attention all those years ago, and I recommend the book "Loving Frank" too.

For more info go here or here.

Why I Love Sad Songs

It's the 50th anniversary of Motown! While reading an article about this momentous occassion :) I thought about how much I loved Motown songs starting from about fifth grade on. I had big posters of the Supremes on my bedroom walls for quite some time. I thought about some of my favorite songs and yes, they were mostly sad songs. I need to feel something to really enjoy a song. The lyrics are paramount (now anyway, when I was eleven I didn't have a clue.) Some of my favorites were "I Wish it Would Rain" and "Since I Lost My Baby" by the Temptations. "Love Child" and "Reflections" by the Supremes, "Tracks of my Tears" and "Ooh Baby, Baby" by Smoky Robinson. All tear-jerkers.

Back then (in ancient times) I never thought about any cultural differences. Even though I didn't really know any black people in my childhood, these singers were my idols. They brought the best songs to a Junior High heart - simple, catchy, easy to sing along to.

So this may explain why I love sad songs. I like to cry or commiserate right along with the singer. I like to know that I'm not the only one who's felt that way. It's cleansing.

I dug out a few of my albums and 45's (Yeah, I'm old) for your viewing pleasure. Or if you're old like me - a nice memory.

My Two Lives

The cedar chest sat in the dusty back corner of the crawl space for many years. Nothing in particular brought it to my mind, but after all this time it was unburied, pulled out and set in the light of an eastern window to breathe again. I lovingly wiped off the cobwebs and dust and opened the heavy tapestry-like lid.

One by one I unwrapped the 1996 newspaper from each item. That was the year I left my first life and started my second one. Commemorative glassware from long-ago proms, a family photograph of a now partially intact family, Grandma's figurines, remnants of my multiple craft attempts - needlepoint, cross-stitch, decoupage, my painted wooden plaques. I wound up a music box and it played "My Favorite Things " as I uncovered engraved baby plates for my daughter and my son, and other small mementos I'd made and that had hung in their bedrooms for so long.

I sat in the midst of crumpled newspaper and piles of my old life and wept, overwhelmed at trying to reconcile my two lives with each other. I wept at having no one with which to share these memories. These items, that are without monetary value, I had put away literally and figuratively for far too long.

Happy Halloween

One of my favorite Halloween memories is the year my girlfriend Patty and I went out as the Laugh-In characters Gladys Orphmsby and Tyrone. Whenever someone would answer the door I would start hitting Patty with my purse and calling her a dirty old man and we'd laugh hysterically every time. Upon leaving we'd say Merry Christmas and we thought that was really funny as well. I wish I had a photograph of Patty and I , but this photo of Ruth Buzzi will have to do......And I just love pumpkins.

The House on Oakmont Drive

Maybe each of us drives by the house on Oakmont Drive occasionally. The house where my children were raised. The house where I was raised from the dead. But this time as I slowed the car down to look, my daughter next to me, there was a public auction sign. It was empty. I backed the car up and pulled into the driveway like I had hundreds of times over those eleven years. We looked at each other like two kids in a candy shop and decided to go look.

The spacious welcoming front porch seemed tilted even farther than I remembered as we climbed the uneven stairs. We peeked in the windows and saw the living room, dining room and what we called the music room adjacent to each other. All the walls and woodwork were white. The floors uniformly covered in beige carpet.

But in that moment in time I saw something different. I saw country blue woodwork and matching drapes. I saw flowered couches and scratched wooden floors that were so crooked you could drop a marble and watch it roll through the rooms. I saw every hand-cut Christmas tree in the corner. I heard children's voices and someone playing the old upright black piano. I saw two long-gone dogs at my feet. There were dozens of friends and family crowded in at Thanksgiving and New Year's Day around my grandparents' round wooded table.

I saw every knick-knack, rug, painting, and the wallpaper my mom and I had carefully hung in the dining room. My dishes were still in the leaded glass cabinets with a blue cushion I made on the window seat between them. The canary cage hung in the back corner and Oliver was singing his heart out. The French doors separating that room from the dining room were the ones I spent days stripping multiple layers of paint off the glass. My daughter and I stared in surreal wonder. Even with all that missing it was still so very familiar. It was home.

We walked around to the side yard and remembered mean old Mrs. Skinner yelling at the kids, and the dog getting maced by the mailman the day we moved in. In the tiny backyard there was an empty spot where the wooden swingset had been, built for the kids by their dad. My glorious lilacs were gone. The dogwood tree we planted as a memorial for our dog was gone. There were people in the house next door, but not my dear friend Jeanne, whose funeral I had attended a mere two months ago.

The basement windows were now opaque, but in my mind I could see the dim, dank room that held my son's first drum set, and the jacks we'd installed to hold up the sagging floor above. We couldn't climb the stairs inside but I could still see her pink bedroom walls, his blue bedroom walls. I could see all my books on the hand-built shelves that lined the hallway. I could hear myself crying in the extra room behind my bedroom or in the clawfoot bathtub with the water running, trying to cover the sobs.

I could hear children running through the house laughing from the games we'd play on family night. Then I saw their faces the day we sat in that living room and told them their lives were about to change forever.

As we got back in the car I could see my son and daughter on every first day of school on that front porch - new clothes and shoes, new backpacks and smiles, and I wanted it back. Oh, how I wanted it back. There were some days in that house that I would do anything to re-do or to erase from my memory. There are hundreds of days I would love to relive.

Then there was the day when I opened that same front door and saw a certain man - and I was looking at my future.