prematurely grey

Do I write about the song or the day? Does explaining how it is possible that ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me” could every merit SOTD remove its special powers over me forever? Am I free to mess with a universe both so intricate and delicate that not only would “Take a Chance on Me” come on, I would have a feeling, that crazy hunch that makes me wonder if I am indeed psychic with the radio, that it would play next.It was International Hello Day last Monday. Or so claimed John A., who was playing all sorts of hello songs that are now forgotten. I was in the pre-trip frenzy of laundry and organizing and errands, not paying too much attention to International Hello Day. I got in the car to return some stuff for Chris and exchange yet more jeans (more on the quests for jeans and boots later, but I need to know, does anyone else out there seem to think that life would be perfect if only for the right pairs of jeans and boots?), and was finally able to give International Hello Day its due. Emmylou Harris was dulceting away, “Hello Stranger,” which sounded both good and bad, which is the way things go with me and Emmylou. I kind of love her voice, but I also hear it through my mother’s “no nasal female whiners, where the hell is Janice Joplin?” ears. As I get older, I think my mom was really rejecting the sound of bluegrass singers stuck at church, a sound that she probably heard way too much. My mom’s love of female blues singers may be her version of salsa music: the music that was around her somewhere but clearly not the music of her people. The music she found to keep going in the face of all those dulcimer playing generations of, let’s not use the word hillbilly because it’s really a bad word, what do we call them now? Oh yeah, Appalaichans. Mountain people.

John came on over the end of “Hello Stranger:” “Do you hear what I hear?” I heard it. “I don’t know if anyone will forgive me for playing it or not, but I have to.” He pushes play and for the first time in years, here comes the intro, the two notes in that beat my mother clapped and clogged over and over in the apartment on 83rd Street.

My mother is a believer in songs. No question, she is the ultimate originator of Song of the Day, but she takes it a little farther. Like anything she does, my mother believes in simplicity in music. When she likes a song, she likes only that song. She likes it so much that it becomes the only thing she really likes. All other songs become distractions, irritations. When her song comes on, well, watch out. It’s going to be loud. “Brand New Key” played at 11 on the old old kitchen radio on top of the fridge. (Where I have one–a relic, yes, but I refuse to listen to KGSR in the morning on the stereo–early morning radio is a small machine affair to my ear. Yes, you guessed it, Chris hates this about me.)

Other songs on my mother’s list:
Hey Jude
Love Will Keep Us Together
Ma Preference (summer of 78 in France)
Let the River Run
You’ll Never Be Alone
Red, Blue and Grey (right now, apparently, courtesy of Chris)

But of all the songs in the history of my mother, I do not believe that any can top “Take a Chance on Me” in the intensity of of her physical response. She had to clap. She had to move her feet in this absurd clogging-was-mandatory-in-Bryson-City-Elementary-School-in-1948 way. She had to click her tongue. She had to.

She went and bought the single.

OK. This was where it became beyond acceptable to me. My mother bought a single. It was the era when I was buying singles to tell the world who I was, when I was just getting the economic and emotional power to make these statements via little circles of vinyl that meant everything to me. And there was my mother, who had never once bought a single in all my life that I knew about. (Where the hell were they, if she had? I never saw any singles.) My mother, who spent days refusing me the use of her belts or sweaters or coats for fear that I would “usurp her personality” (no shit that being a writer is a bit of a challenge for me–she hasn’t spent the better part of the last 25 years arranging her accessories.), went to a music store and bought a single.

There is the possibility that she asked me to buy it for her, but I don’t think she did. I think she bought it herself. Her lone single (until we had to go to the record store in France where she HUMMED the song she loved because she had no idea what it was called. By the way, my mom is more of a “da da da-er” than a hummer. At this point, I was 14 and everything about her was beyond belief.).

But here’s the deal: I love how much my mother loves “Take a Chance on Me” and I love the song because she loves it. Some musical version of the communicative and transitive properties. I love this song. The Emmylou song was some slow torture based on the exact same rhythm; John A. was dead on. I started to cry.

I went through the U-turn at Mopac and headed down to DSW to make another try at the Grail: high heel, sexy, calf-length black boots. At this point, I realized that I should wait until L.A., but if they could be a bargain, well, then I might start writing about shopping as the new Eleusian Mystery.

But I was crying and thinking about my mother and loving her for loving this song. And the thought crossed my mind, “We’ll play this at her funeral.” Oh my God–I’ve just thought about my mother dying. Not only have I thought about her dying, I’ve thought of what I’ll do after she’s gone. Not only have I thought about my mother’s funeral, in a flash, I realize that I’ve stumbled upon the possibility that I will do what I want at her funeral.

This is like being on acid. It all comes at once. I realize that this song would be the perfect end song to my mother’s funeral. (The French one is far more lento and sad–it will be at the beginning, before we’ve all laughed and cried and come to the mutual understanding that my mom is not only just fine, she’s known what would happen next all along.) I realize that my mother will have absolutely no control over what I do at her funeral. This is an awakening.

At this exact same moment, I think of my brother. I think of telling him that we will be disobeying mom’s directions for her funeral and playing ABBA at the end. This disobedience to our mother will in fact be our ultimate moment of obedience to her life teaching. My mom, who stopped playing by her mother’s rules and had hell to pay, paid it, and really has not looked back (reasons I don’t find myself in North Carolina for Thanksgiving–too complicated when your mother has specialized in rejecting both the patriarchy and her mother’s reenactments of it) has been a shining example of to thine own self be true. So, she’s getting ABBA.

That she will not want us to play ABBA is a given. She has talked to me about her funeral on numerous occasions. Yes, I am only 41 years old and my mother is only 66, but we have talked at length about her funeral. The first series of conversations I remember (although it is entirely possible that my mother has been talking about her funeral throughout my life) came after Jackie O died. My mother watched the funeral–it was at the big Catholic church a block from our house, three from Jackie’s penthouse overlooking the park. Sometimes, my mother would see her when she walked the dog.

The Jackie O funeral led to the pronouncemnt that there would be no flowers at my mother’s funeral. According to my mother, they’re too funereal. She wants only greens.

I did not decide during my parking lot epiphany whether or not I’ll also be violating the no-flowers rule. But I do seem to remember a weird conversation about music at funerals–how bad all the hymns that they play at funerals are and how she’ll have none of that. I think she thought about having a gospel choir, or my brother as the gospel choir, at one point. I think I’m onto something with my mother’s love of African-American traditional music. Anyway, I know that there’s this envelope with everything prepared in it in her office. I think it may be a large red envelope. Everything is spelled out. Care instructions. Will. Contacts. Arrangements.

I’m pretty sure that “Play ‘Take a Chance on Me’ as the congregation leaves” will not be on the list. But then again, I don’t know. My mother is very surprising. I just hope it isn’t. so I can do one last thing against her wishes, putting our relationship to rest, paying tribute to her both her musical obsessions and her philosophical position.