Wisdom & Regrets
Sep 13, 2006
Dinner in Anacortes, WA, included locally-grown field greens, regional wine, and The Dunton Sisters. At first, and to ameliorate the loneliness of a solitary meal, I wished for my iPod. Soon I was grateful for its absense.
They began singing "God's not dead; He's still alive," an old southern spiritual that I remember from my childhood, a song my family sang in my grandparents' living room a quarter-century ago. I cannot count the hours spent in that room, my grandmother on the piano, someone on a harmonica, and occasionally, my dad on banjo or guitar. There is a soft, hazy glow to those memories, but the girl I was did not appreciate the joy of those moments.
I'm from a Southern family, whose roots go far deeper into the soil of the South than even my own. And musical ability was inherent, necessary. My father is a bass; my mother, a soprano; my sister has the range many vocalists covet. Part of growing up in our family included the ability to sing, including harmony and counter-melody, and play an instrument if you had the aptitude. (And sometimes even if you didn't.)
Hearing bluegrass hymns in the Pacfic Northwest (while enjoying a meal any salad snob would approve) reminds me sharply of what I had as a child and of what I've lost.
It's an unhappy truth that one must mature thirty years to appreciate that parents and grandparents are people with lives, thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams. Sadder still is the truth that one's forebears have passed through the veil and taken their music with them.
No fair to make your sister cry so early in the morning. Oh how I miss those days.