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My Musical Dad

My Musical Dad

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Today would have been Dad’s 95th birthday, and he would have gotten a kick out of it. Imagine me such an old man, he’d say, with his trademark grin.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Dad and music as I practice for the concert next weekend. How he made sure Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff was blaring from the stereo, about his excitement finding the “Suite from Spartacus” in a bargain bin.

Dad grew up on church and popular music; classical music he found on his own. He never grew tired of telling me how: It was watching “Fantasia” that turned him on (and not in the way that my generation got turned on during “Fantasia”). He heard Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Symphony play Beethoven’s “Pastorale” and Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” — and music was never the same.

In fact, Dad was on a committee tasked to find the money to fly the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra to a music educator’s conference in Russia. Since the invitation was unexpected, he and the other committee members had only a few months to finance the trip. Dad used all his sales personality and charm on business and civic leaders — “our budgets were committed months ago,” they demurred — and even on the U.S. State Department, the closest he came to a bull’s eye. They were going to charter a military plane for us — quite a feat during those Cold War days.

In the end Dad didn’t quite pull it off, but it gave him lots of stories to tell. Now Dad is gone, so I tell the stories for him.

(Photo: Walt Disney Pictures. Don’t get me for copyright infringement; this is for my dad!)

Sappy But True

Sappy But True

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Nothing makes a mother happier than to know her grown children are hanging out together, chatting in the evenings after work, caring. That’s the way I feel, and I remember Mom feeling that way, too. What’s amazing is how the practice carries on through time, even when the parents are gone.

My brothers and sister and I spend holidays together when we can, check up on each other, chat in the evenings after work. And we care. The caring is not without a price, but it’s always worth it.

My parents gave us many gifts — optimism, resilience, a love of ideas — but best of all was the gift of each other, a fact we would have found shocking as squabbling kids in the back of a hot station wagon.

I write this today because it’s Ellen’s birthday, as good a day as any to say how lucky I am to have a sister, how I can’t imagine going through life without one.

(Ellen and I have given each of our daughters two sisters!) 

Toys Aren’t Us

Toys Aren’t Us

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I was sad to learn that Toys R Us will be closing its stores. Not that I liked them much in their heyday. Then I was sad about the smaller closings, the independents and the Zany Brainys. But still, this marks the end of an era. Not just of toy stores but of the sort of children who frequented them.

My kids grew up with real, tangible playthings — blocks and puzzles and Legos — and of course the boxes they came in. Electronic toys were beginning to enter the market, but barely. Now they dominate the market, and, I’m afraid, childhood itself.

What becomes of children who touch screens instead of play dough, who swipe instead of stack? I guess they become the people suited for a digital universe. All I know is, I’m glad I raised my kids when there were Barbies and Bratz and My Pretty Ponies — and the big warehouse store that sold them.

Birthday Surprises

Birthday Surprises

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An email this morning told me a package had been delivered.  I got a kick out of this — the fact that I had come in through the garage last night and overlooked this large item on the front stoop, being informed of it through a bunch of 1s and 0s on my computer. It was a funny way to begin this last day of November, the birthday of two people I love — my daughter and my brother.

But that was just the first surprise.  The second happened when I was lugging in the first — and Copper trotted around the front of the house (where he is never, ever allowed to be because he will run away) and right through the front door. The backyard gate must have been left open.
Whatever the case, it was all meant to be — the package left out overnight so that I could be there when Copper escaped, could usher him back where he belongs. The rescue of a dog that means so much to the birthday girl.
Yes, it’s often a random world — but sometimes it’s not. Today is one of those times.
In Praise of Service

In Praise of Service

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When Dad posed for this shot he was younger than my youngest child, a 21-year-old man with a skip in his step and (though you can’t tell it from this picture) his heart in his throat. It was terrifying to be a tail-gunner in a B-17 bomber, to fly across Germany with the enemy shooting at you, to return to the base in Horham, England to see the empty bunks of those who didn’t make it back from their own bombing missions.

So of course I’m thinking about Dad on this Veterans’ Day. But I’m also thinking about Drew, my brother, a civilian in harm’s way, using his skill and knowledge to protect our country.

How important it is on Veteran’s Day to thank those who are not yet veterans, who are still in active service, or even those not in the military at all, but who nevertheless risk their lives to keep us safe and free.

Self and Silliness

Self and Silliness

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Halloween has snuck up on me this year. Being out of town for a few days, being busy … But here we are on the day, little ghosts and goblins getting geared up for their big nights on the town.

I’m thinking about some of the girls’ best childhood costumes, which were made by their grandmother: a colorful clown, cuddly lion, tusked elephant and a seal made out of some sort of naugahyde fabric that I can’t even imagine cutting, let alone sewing.

Then came the in-between years, when make-up replaced masks. One year Suzanne went as some sort of a sprite or spirit with greenish skin and lots of eye shadow.

On Halloween we can pretend to be something we are not. But that was often the case when raising young children. I might be called on to cackle like a witch or moo like a cow at any time. The line between self and silliness was thin to nonexistent.

Now I’m myself all the time. As the girls would say … borrrrring.

Blue Sky Day

Blue Sky Day

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It was a blue sky day at the bay, a day spent with my brother and sister. This meant we could talk about Dad, and his habit of standing at the threshold of a doorway, stretching out his arms and saying, “Look at that, not a cloud in the sky.”

We joked that had Dad turned around, he might have noticed looming thunderheads. But he didn’t turn around; he ignored the clouds. He kept his gaze resolutely blue-skyward. An excellent trait — until you’re caught unprepared in a sudden downpour.

No matter, we loved him — and we carried umbrellas, learned to look for and deal with the rain and clouds and gloom.

Still, that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a blue-sky day when one is given to us.  And one was, yesterday — a glorious day.

The Basement

The Basement

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I’ve spent the last three days in a basement going through my parents things. By the end of the day yesterday, Ellen, Phillip and I had loaded one car with boxes to save and another car with boxes to discard. One car is bound for Virginia and Maryland, the other car for the county dump.

There’s a lot of Cassidy history in those two cars, and I’m bleary-eyed from going through it all. So many thoughts about the messiness of life and the tidiness of death. Thoughts amplified when Ellen and I drove to the cemetery late yesterday and I saw the clean sweep of grass and stone.

I dash off this post on a beautiful summer morning, window open to crescendo of cicadas and the low hum of a neighbor’s air-conditioning. My parents are gone, but we are still living. I could have called this post “The Cemetery.” But I called it “The Basement” instead.

Power of Love

Power of Love

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A few weeks ago Celia finally convinced me to give the Harry Potter series a try. Last night I started Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the third book. This morning I learned that the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, was published 20 years ago today.

By now we know the story, how Rowling, a single mother down on her luck, was sitting on a delayed train from Manchester to London when she imagined a young wizard with a scar on his forehead. The scar, he was told, was from a car accident, the same one that killed his parents.

By the end of Book One Harry has learned that the scar isn’t from a car accident. It’s from a encounter with Lord Voldemort, “he who must not be named,” the darkest of dark wizards whose evil ways were no match for the one magic power all of us have at our disposal:

If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign … to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin.

Three books in, here’s what I take from the series so far: the power of imagination, the power of love.

Young Inside

Young Inside

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I remember a conversation I had with Dad in the hospital when he was recovering from one of his surgeries. He was getting better every day, so it was not a bad hospitalization that time, and we were having a good visit.

We talked, as we often did, about his time in England during World War II. He was 21 years old then, seeing the world for the first time. “You know something?” he said. “I still feel that age inside.” Dad was lying in a hospital room with wires that measured his respiration and heart rate. He had an IV and catheter.  It was difficult to imagine how he felt young inside.

More than a decade later, I understand what he meant. In part it’s the mind’s way of dealing with dizzying change. In part, it’s because we often keep the image we form of ourselves in young adulthood.

Last night, as the older girls left our Father’s Day celebration in a car stuffed with a bike and a puppy and a boyfriend, I was reminded of Dad’s comment. My kids are not only young inside; they’re young outside, too. Their lives are ahead of them. But someday they will be telling their children how the young selves they wear so lightly now are still there inside of them.