Ravel

I stole this picture of my mom. And many more like it...I confess. Of course, "stole" is in the past tense, because once Maryann had passed away, I inherited all of her memorabilia. But this one I extracted from her New York apartment before she died, spiriting it back to my home base in the Maine woods so that I could scan it very large, and absorb it. Mom wasn't fond of my obsession with the leavings of her life--I memorized her high-school yearbook as a little girl, I pored over letters and Christmas cards she'd saved, and I burned the chronology of how she looked year-to-year into my mind. I know she thought I was odd for wanting to know so much, and for craving nostalgia from her that did not exist. One of the greatest arguments we ever had, actually, was sparked by my interest in family pictures. She raged at me that I must be crazy wanting to have all those faces up on my walls at home. (Don't worry, her counterpoint never swayed me for a second. It wasn't the first time that our opinions had been so diametrically opposed--no, I had invested decades in doing the opposite of whatever she would.)

 

This photo lived in her professional scrapbook: an imposing, black-covered, slippery-paged tome that was filled with press clips, telegrams from Broadway openings, 8x10 glossies, and other showbiz detritus. Undeniably, my mother was the least glitzy performer ever. Just look at her up there: she dressed beautifully, I'm not saying that, but look at her posture and her expression...and her nimble, blurred-in-motion hands. It's all about the music. Maryann did not get into playing piano for fame, fortune, or even attention. I'm not sure she even got into it because she wanted to. I believe she began to play piano because she was compelled by a powerful, overwhelming blend of innate talent and deep-seated alienation from the people around her. That doesn't differentiate her from other musicians, I'll grant you--but it sure as hell sets her apart from most people's mothers.

What did she hear in the music that she created? And what of the music that others performed, which she owned in recorded form and treasured? I wish I could ask her, but even if I did, she'd shrug off the question or give me a filmy half-answer. Mom was not a music librarian or completist (that was my rubric), but when she loved a performance, you can bet you'd be hearing it over and over in her household. Fats Waller. Count Basie. Oscar Peterson. Jimmy Smith. Ella Fitzgerald. Peggy Lee. Her chronology, her nostalgia was aural, rarely visual or verbal.

Another thing that set my mom apart from other mothers was her propensity for keeping me awake late. Jazz musicians are nighthawks; thus, much of the musical education she imparted to me was shared long after my peers were tucked in with a teddy. We went to Broadway shows, my dressy patent-leather shoes sliding on red carpets and giving me blisters as we searched for our seats. Sometimes we went to clubs or smoky restaurants to hear one of Mom's old friends play.

Even at home, she would wake me from a sound sleep and implore me to come into the living room to hear something. "You have to hear this, Nessa," she would say. "Listen. Do you hear it?" While her career had largely been forged in jazz, the music she woke me up for was invariably classical. I can still revive my feelings of grumpiness as I shuffled into the dimmed living room, wincing at whatever lamplight there was. "Do I have to?" I would whine, but she ignored me. Respighi, Stravinsky, Ravel...swirls of intoxicating, cascading, now-dissonant, now-resolved orchestral pieces. Romantic--I should say so, to the extreme. Completely contrary to my mother's everyday demeanor of distant practicality. As I snuggled alongside her on the sofa, leaning in a desperately sleeplike posture, she would regale me with stories of the composer's visions whilst writing the piece. She would also describe the revilement of contemporary audiences when some of these pieces debuted. How these composers were misunderstood, untouchable, way ahead of their time.

I remember Daphnis et Chloe most vividly. I never could catch the gist of the romance Ravel was depicting in this piece, no matter how many times Mom explained it. Instead, while I sat there, I was tugged by two distinct emotions: admiration for my mother's full-hearted bliss as she experienced this lush recorded music, and embarrassment that she was so ridiculously fond of it. The music seemed somehow maudlin and unseemly to my kiddie mind. I wanted to feel the swoops in the pit of my stomach as the crescendoes rose and burst, but this extravagant expression of prewar beauty was beyond my ken.

I wonder now if my parents had listened to these classical pieces early in their own romance, before things turned sour and negative. Tucked onto her single-mother sofa, was she revisiting snowy Montreal, the cosmopolitan isolation booth of a city that hosted their few happy years as young marrieds? Was that why her classical listening sessions were dampened by tears, always?

I can't play an instrument. In fact, I resisted Mom's attempts to teach me piano rudiments because I felt above those single-note lessons. She, in turn, steadfastly refused to flip past the first pages in the book, to see if I was somehow more gifted than the average student. I needed a solid foundation before I could start really playing, she insisted. I needed to know which keys were matched to which fingers.

Wasn't gonna happen. I'm too much of a free-associating creative type to follow the marching ants of sheet music. But I did inherit one shining thing: all of my memories are swathed in music. I find artists who speak to my sensibilities, and I return to them again and again. The past is brought vividly back as I listen, and every chance I get, I will see those performers in a live venue.

Yeah, sometimes I cry, too. I apologize to my embarrassed 6-year-old self whenever that happens, but I tell myself: I'm powerless. I can't help it. Give in.

"Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning." --Igor Stravinsky

Internetus Interruptus

It's astonishing how mind-bending it can feel to be suddenly devoid of an Internet connection. Chez Reifsnyder, we are beholden to a humble sports-bar-like satellite dish in order to be web-connected. We've entered the stormy winter season (a little earlier than the recent usual, so take that, global warming!) and this means that our dish is exposed to all kinds of unruly elements. Sleet, ice, driving snow.... Under these conditions, it sputters, the little modem lights jitter and flicker and then...blackness. Well, modem blackness, anyway. That's been the norm since Tuesday (and yet still I am paying an exhorbitant fee for this non-reliable service HELLOOOOOO?!?).

That's not my beef, though. I mean, I expect to pay a premium, given that I live in a region where stores are not open past 6 pm, you know? We're lucky we actually have phones (and no, that doesn't include cells; they are confounded by our island terrain, apparently). But I'm just bemused by the disembodied feeling when I sit at my home computer and confront the reality--no casual web-surfing for you. No random checking a song lyric to see who performed it...no idle family-tree work...no e-mail, gaaaaah! no e-mail. And no facebook (which sets both me and my teenage son on edge a tad).

 

End result of this disembodiment: I sleep a little more (not much) and watch TV a little more (SoapNet rocks my world) and try to get all the pre-Christmas tasks done (intermittently successful). And as now, while I sit at my work station, I cram in a smidge of extra net-time to assuage my withdrawal symptoms. 

 

I earnestly hope there is some other 'net solution lurking out there for the denizens of ultrarural America. And a Target within 10 minutes' driving distance would be nice.

Hockey

Peter and I had an instantaneous attraction when we met 22 years ago, but our relationship really began to take shape in the first few days after we'd realized that attraction. In those brisk fall afternoons and evenings, with classes done for the day, we engaged in an extended conversation about who we were. Families, religions, school experiences, favorite music...I remember those conversations as feverish, a rush to share and compare. And incredulous, as well: everything that one of us offered, the other came up with some parallel. We both loved vacationing at northern lakes. We both, unbelievably, had grandparents with New Brunswick roots--the same town, even! We both had spent childhood winters in cities, and summers in rural places that were not typically touristy. And then we talked about sports.

My affection for sports is from an audience-member distance, and really only goes as far as wondering how the team from New York in any given sport is doing. In this, we differed--Pete had been an enthusiastic athlete for years. He named off the sports he'd played: tennis, golf (my brother played those, I responded), squash (got me there), and hockey--

Hockey. Looking back, this was one of the sharp-focus moments when our coupledom became actual. Turned out that everyone in Pete's family was a rabid hockey fan. Whaddya know, everyone in my family was, too. Many, many nights spent gathered around a (usually black-and-white) television, with the ebbs and swells of crowd noises accompanying the players' ceaseless motions around that little black speck of a puck. Even though I was coolly unconcerned about every other sport...hockey, I took very seriously.

I'll take an indulgent moment to sigh and remember Peter in those days:

from his h.s. yearbook. The sight of him on skates always made, and still makes, my heart swoop.

Anyway. The mutual hockey adoration has been a durable part of our togetherness. Granted, Pete watches 80 times more of it than I do, and he follows teams with that odd statistical insistence that men (and some women, I'm sure) bring to the endeavor. You know, he's cognizant of where each team stands in relation to the others, who's maybe gonna trade someone, who the top scorers are.... Whereas I drift past, sit and watch with him a few minutes, banter about silly player names and bad uniform choices and WHOA that was a good pass, comeoncomeon SHOOT! awwwww. Then off to whatever else I was doing that evening. (Except when the Rangers start getting good. Then I sit down and stay there, and yell just like my mom used to while I root for them.)

Lately we have had the good fortune to befriend season-ticket holders for Alfond Arena, where the University of Maine Black Bears ply their trade. I've always been proud, in the back of my mind, that my home state of choice has such a fantastic collegiate hockey reputation. But in the past few years, we've actually been able to attend some games and see live hockey together for the first time since Bowdoin.

Last night was one of those nights. And we were able to bring our younger kids, Lydia and Desmond. It's rare for us to have quality time with just the two of them, especially so in this year of Zoe's college choices and Willis' singing performances. I found myself in reveries while we sat in the stands, treasuring the echoey sounds of skates and shouts and thudding checks, the slightly misty whiteness of the ice, the mishmash of Mainers in the stands, and the excitement of realizing that I really can tell when a good play is in progress...so that a goal never blindsides me. But also, seeing my children become part of this family continuum pleased me so much. I kept sneaking furtive cell-phone pictures as we watched:

I managed to take pictures when they were aware, too:

I have a fierce sense of pride for the Black Bears now. It's different than what I feel for the pros. It has a regional tinge--I feel like I belong a little more here for knowing about them. There's enormous tradition vibes on the Orono campus, too, and that taps into my genealogical jones. Plus, watching this team is reminiscent of watching Pete play at Bowdoin. I always had this nervy mix of maternal feelings and aggression when he was on the ice. It's powerful.

Last night's game against Merrimack was triumphant: 3-1 Maine, with all three goals scored by a kid from Windham, Matt Duffy. A hat trick. Fifteen minutes before that third goal, we'd bought Lydia a banner in the UMaine swag store between periods, and Des had gotten a baseball cap. He'd been fussing with the cap ever since, wanting it to sit just so on his head. (I know he's emulating his older brother, who's rarely without a cap.) When Duffy's third goal--an empty-netter--sailed in, the usual attendant fan chaos was accompanied by a shower of hats flying out of the stands and skittering on the ice. Des watched, astonished. "When one guy scores three goals, they call it a hat trick," I explained into his ear. He nodded soberly, fussed with his cap, then turned to me. "Should I?" he asked seriously. I could tell he thought it was obligatory. "No!" I yelped. I saw the whew! look pass across his face.

After the game, we finished up some Christmas shopping at Target, and he and Lyd scored Pokemon cards. They opened them in the van, and Des was ecstatic--he'd finally gotten a Mothim. (I'm shrugging, but this was really important to his deck.) "This has been a great day," he said with satisfaction as Pete maneuvered us out of the parking lot and into the late-night blackness of Route 1A.

Didn't take him long to fall asleep. I loved the way his new cap and cards were part of the tableau. It was a great day.

Legacy

My family tree program is called Legacy. On it, I have logged 44 men named Joseph "Joe" Pinette. One of them is my direct ancestor: my nana's father, whom I never knew, but whose life was made vivid to me through the storytellings of those who knew him well.

 

One of those people who knew him well was also named Joe Pinette: my nana's nephew; my mother's first cousin. Indeed, named after the original Joe. I wish I had known him sooner, but my mom had 29 living first cousins on the Pinette side, and we didn't live near any of them. Only as an adult did I become a Mainer, and that placed me in proximity of many people I had not known before, even though I knew of them.

I met this Joe Pinette after I had attended a funeral for a different first cousin in 2003. I'd been conducting family tree research for three years, and was beginning to get to know Mom's generation over time. Joe Pinette was not at the funeral, but his wife and sister were. I will never forget the moment when they approached me after the service, both of them literally peering into my face, squinting--and then one of them exclaimed, "Now, she's a Pinette! Just look at the eyes!" We talked at the luncheon, and Joe's wife told me that he would be interested in my genealogy, and would be calling me.

His voice was gentle and manly all at once. There was an endearing catch to it, an occasional throat-clearing. The friendliness streamed right through the phone. He said that he had some information to share with me: Joe was the eldest of six siblings, and there had been eight others from his father's first marriage. Mom always had trouble relaying their names to me; now I was hearing it from the source. Did he ever have information for me! But quickly, my connection to Joe Pinette transcended mere data. In fact, it took my breath away.

We had something in common, Joe and I. Something strong as steel, invisibly massive, life-destroying and life-affirming all at once: We had both grown up in households where upheaval, alcohol, and shame reigned. We knew, deep in our souls, what it felt like to go to school and excel, forcing ourselves to behave in an upstanding and amiable way--while hiding a strange, distorted homelife that no one in our school worlds could possibly comprehend. We had both transcended. We had, in fact, soared. Our parents' marriages had blown apart, causing financial hardship and chaos; our fathers had been horrible drunks; and yet we completed higher education, we chose solid careers, and at the age of 25, we each married our soulmates.

Talking to Joe brought me to a place of level solace in my genealogy. It felt like a unified circle to meet someone of a completely different generation who knew, deep down, what it had taken to survive. And Joe, like me, retained immense fondness for all of his family members regardless of mistakes they had made or pain they'd caused--even for the small town that had stepped deftly, sometimes indifferently around his family's secrets.

Soon, we visited Millinocket together, that small town--my mom's hometown, too. We took a walk around a part of town called Tin Can Alley. This was where the poorest families lived, too many kids to feed properly, and in many cases with a dirt floor. This was where Joe grew up. He brought his street to life--told me about a family who'd lived across the street over there, others over here; showed me the low fence that had demarcated his world. Joe was not allowed to go past it as a little boy, so he stood at it and watched cars, other houses, other people, wondering. Behind him would have been a house with two toddlers and a baby...noise and conflict and worry. Here, he stood alone, a five-year-old already beyond his age in what he saw and knew.

We left that street and walked the half-block distance to the river that divides Millinocket. In Joe's youth, the Penobscot was not a clean river, as the paper mill discharged effluent into it routinely. There was undoubtedly a foul smell, and sometimes, unusual colors swirling in the ripples and current. Joe reminisced about goofing off, walking along the river with his pals as an older boy--and as he said that, we found ourselves standing underneath an old apple tree.

Joe looked up with a grin and saw ripened red apples hanging there. He joyfully reached up and plucked one and explained that for a hungry kid from Tin Can Alley, this tree was one of the best spots to visit. And then he ate the apple with a satisfied smile.

Joe was like a grandfather, father, uncle, and friend all in one. I knew instantly that I was loved by him, and he inspired that same devotion in me. This afternoon, his wife Gloria, who has been married to him for 52 years, since she was a girl of 18, called to let me know that Joe died a few hours ago.
My tears are sharp and insistently welling. You see, in the past 15 years, I have lost a grandfather, a father and mother, a treasured uncle, and a lifelong best friend, all of whom I am still grieving. And now, the man who helped me to sustain those feelings and connections has joined them...after giving me so much of himself. I can tell you that Joe knew how much he gave me emotionally, because that's the connection we had.

And my genealogy--that never-ending, joyful journey of discovery and familiarity--henceforth I dedicate to him.

God bless you, Joe, beyond the fence.

 

A blank page of looseleaf

That's what this new blog is...empty and awaiting words. It's taken me hours to align everything the way I want it, and now I find myself without much to say. Oh irony.

So I'll start with a little news report: it's 16 degrees F here. That was kind of abrupt, the shift from gee-a-scarf-might-feel-nice, to o-m-g-my-nostrils-are-stiff-with-frost-helpmehelpme. I'm not exactly ready. I'm also not ready for the Christmas tree-decorating tradition, as our household added two cats last New Year's, neither of whom has ever been in contact with a towering, chewable, ornaments-dangling behemoth. What's more, last year we bought a lovely artificial tree (pre-lit...lordy it's convenient). This will only increase the chewiness factor, as far as Wookiee and Momo are concerned. I suspect the heirloom ornaments will stay boxed this year....

Despite all the above Scroogy-ness, I actually enjoy this season. There's a dreamy quality to December...work stress is temporaily derailed; the nights are darker, velveteen, endless; the cold makes indoors something to treasure--nay, to rush towards; lamps glow with more intense power than usual, staving off the elements. Also, my creativity engine goes into overdrive. Partly that's because I have to deliver multiple handmade Christmas thingies, but mostly it's because winter inspires me to seek color, patterns, textures, and shapes...I guess to make up for the loss of summertime's bounty.

Hence, a new blog. Inspired by tea. Maybe that's a tough metaphor to understand, but for me it resonates mightily. Perhaps with time, it will make more sense to the readership, whomever that turns out to be.

Ah, the wind is roaring outside. The last, brown autumn leaves are getting swirled and swept into the air, glancing against the windows. It was dark at 4:15 pm. It's here.

Entangled

The non-specific longing that engulfed me at age 15 remains the most sustained spasm of feeling I have ever experienced. I had always been prone to crushes and flights of fantasy, but as my freshman year of high school commenced, I became a heat-seeking boyfriend missile--only, my guidance system was completely off. The resultant frustration and loneliness were 24-hours-and-7-days challenging.

 

I expended a lot of energy imagining the scenarios that would result in BOYFRIEND. Every school-dance poster brought a surge of hope--although my stepfather held the keys to my fate there, as he would capriciously decide whether I could go or not. Usually, he said that I couldn't. Since these dances involved a nighttime subway trip from Queens to NYC and back, I could understand, even when his decision devastated me. And even when I did go, I pressed my back against the wall and observed blocky movements out on the floor, mentally beating myself for being a non-entity.

 

By sophomore year, I'd crafted a master plan of sleepovers at my friend Alexandra's house that released me into the latenight Manhattan world. With emerging bravery, I displayed my best dance moves with various crush victims (never slow-dancing, sadly). Almost always, there were exhilarating post-dance conversations with those same quarries at bars or ice-cream parlors or pizza places--the oases of colored light in the blackness of New York night. Nonetheless, and maddeningly, I was still unable to maneuver a boy into asking me out. Or even spontaneously kissing me. Much less kissing me.

 

One problem was, I had absolutely no idea what I would do to said elusive boyfriend if I got my trembling hands on him. I had long since received the stone tablets of the facts of life, handed down by my mother when I was in fourth grade. (Bless her for understanding that I was intellectually ready and thirsty to know.)  I consumed young-adult romances like they were self-help books. I certainly understood that there was kissing, and then there was kissing. I knew a boy's trembling hands would start wandering around my shirt front at some point, once kissing commenced. And I had read plenty about the post-foreplay penetration...an activity so mind-blowingly absurd that I dismissed it from any considerations. At any rate, these physical movements existed in a black box of actual sensation. So, essentially, I desperately craved a black box.

 

I did think I knew what it would feel like to have a constant companion--a love sidekick--who would share my interests, praise my music choices, laugh with me, read my writing, and sling an arm around my back when I wasn't expecting it, to remind me that I finally existed in a circle. I belonged. Perhaps this was a lot to load on the average teenage boy.

 

Perhaps it wasn't.

 

Reader, I met him. In the most mundane place: French class. He sat alongside me--assigned seats--and for months I had taken notice of his longish light-brown hair that curled despite any efforts to comb it, the relative heft of his shoulders inside the navy-blue blazer we all had to wear, the stylish corduroys (1979, remember) and the smiling eyes behind big aviators (again, 1979). One day I took notice of something far more revelatory: he had doodled Yes on his notebook. The band name. In its logotype.

 

This, I could launch a conversation out of. For which I must be eternally grateful to my brother, the music fanatic, who had long since infected me with encyclopedic knowledge and my-band's-better-than-yours attitude.

 

"Rob," I said casually, "you like Yes?"

 

He turned left and met my gaze. "Yeah!" he said eagerly. "Seen them a few times live, in fact. They're incredible. [Insert an excited discourse about their elaborate stage set, which I listened to indulgently.] Why, do you like them?"

 

I tilted my head in somewhat-assent. "Yeah," I said. "But Genesis is better."

 

His eyes popped. Really, they did. Score. Rob's response was a diatribe that included words like "sucks." Thus raising my hackles. And for weeks after, we traded barbs about Genesis versus Yes, making escalating claims of superiority based on music that we had rushed home to listen to the night before. A spiraling keyboard solo here, a particularly inspiring vocal there. Guitar prowess. Drum dominance. All delivered to each other across the bow of our French desks, with the slightest twinkle in our eyes.

 

As the dialogue continued, we both started making concessions about the other's favorite, because I was popping in my brother's Yes tapes for comparative purposes, and Rob had taken to analyzing Genesis as closely as Yes. So I became familiar with many of Yes' charms, Rob developed serious fondness for Genesis, and our arguments morphed into encouragements.

 

Most importantly, all this prog rock gave final shape to my burgeoning sense of romance. Cool water on the hot rocks of my wanting. These bands did everything BIG, with ebbs and swells of sound, and lyrics at once obscure and emotionally charged. I felt championed and supported by this music; long nights alone in my room were less desolate.

 

It would be untrue to say that the Genesis-Yes Wars (as Rob and I came to refer to them) were an instant guarantor of romance. No, it took an agonizing year for that to happen. Turns out that Rob was as constrained by inexperience and urgency as I was. But we forged a friendship that ranged beyond music, got to know each other's quirks (plenty on both sides), made each other laugh all the time...became companions. Finally, in the spring of 1980, Rob's friend Larry--an everlasting sparkplug, one of the funniest people I've ever known--became impatient with all of this mooning in the guise of friendship. He prodded Rob to take action, even gave him careful instructions--just as my friends began insisting that I had to do something (because they were dog-tired of hearing me moan about it). And they were right: I had taken to making journal entries in grey marker, for God's sake, to reflect the hopeless that wrapped around me. Besotted poetry excerpt from said journal:

 

a journey into the center of your eyes takes me

farther into myself than I'd ever believed was possible...

joins your dreams with mine

and makes them all come true

and makes your thoughts my words...

 

A pounding in my head: Rob, Rob, Rob. And yet every day I hung out with him cheerfully, never giving voice to anything I was feeling.

 

I always figured that a boy would ask me out under cover of darkness. Hence my frequent engineering of sleepovers, so I could make myself available for the big mo. Yet Rob chose full-on afternoon, in Central Park...a place we had been together many, many times, just two blocks from our school. In fact, the Park was the refuge for those of us who despised the sweaty drill of gym class. Improbably, instead of gym, we dissenters were allowed to go to the Park without a teacher and jog. (I know, it strains the imagination, doesn't it? So 20th century.) A ragtag band of about eight kids would bang out of the gym doors, blinking in sudden sunshine, and head two blocks west. Once the Park's majestic treetops became visible, a subgroup of stoners would veer off to the right, and the rest of us would go to the Reservoir and make some attempt to plod faster than usual around a wide oval. Rob and I used this time for deep conversations, which would start to get breathless until we gave up on trotting and returned to sensible walking.
 

That fateful day, spring had overswept the city, dressing its greys in ballgowns of blossoms. As we half-jogged, Rob and I engaged in a strange, stilted conversation about the idea of going out as we walked the Park paths. I don't think I overwhelmed him with enthusiasm, because a) I was constricted with nerves, and b) I had finally learned something about not scaring off my prey. After the words had been released, rendering us boyfriend and girlfriend in name only, we returned to school--gym was the last class of the day. Once we had changed clothes and the final bell rang by the lockers, Rob and I reconvened and headed for 86th Street, to grab the subway downtown.

 

For an hour now, ever since the conversation, I'd felt like a newborn--overwhelmed by the everyday. Now everything was different in the context of everything being the same. I wondered if I would feel this way forever, until Rob snapped me out of it. At the mouth of the station on 86th and Lex--where streams of people crisscross on the sidewalk, either heading down into the subway, or coming up from it--he stopped me by touching my arm, and then he delivered one electric kiss right there where we stood. My lips tingled with the jolt. As we took the grimy steps downward, I didn't feel the impact under my feet. Perhaps I really was floating.

 

Why am I reliving this? Well, last Thursday, Genesis was issued some kind of Rock Honors thing from VH1. Now, 27 years after I championed them between filmstrips in French class, they are being acknowledged as innovators, masters, leaders. No matter. They were all of those things for me back then, and as the VH1 broadcast brought the full range of their music to the masses, I sat back on the sofa, overspread with the heady, painful confusion and the final sweet payoff of 1980.

 

Tune in next time for: How Alcohol Led to Kissing.  

The Diamond Anniversary

On May 8, 1932, a 35-year-old woman prepared for her wedding. A wedding she never expected to have, which resulted from a love story she never expected to be living. Her intended was 28 years old, a Canadian who had moved to her small Maine town eight years ago. You could say they were a study in contrasts: Fred was 5-foot-9, the very definition of strapping.

Whereas Theresa (always called Tut) was 5-foot-2 in her shoes. Even in her 30s, she was as adorable and diminutive as a doll.

Tut's temperament was doll-like, too…cheery, loving, and devoted. Fred--well, Fred was devoted to her, there was no question of that. But impatient! oh, never could anyone become exasperated like him. Not angry, not mean…just sputtery and annoyed. Tut smiled to herself whenever she thought of it. This man endeared himself to her with every fluster, every bluster. She calmed Fred, soothed him, and humored him. He had never smiled the way that she made him smile.

But married, she never expected. Fred started courting Tut when he was barely 21. How many times had she shaken her red-haired head and redirected him to a younger single woman in town? She thought Fred charming and insistent, but just a little misguided. Because Tut's devotion was to her parents. As their youngest, she had pledged that she would never leave home. Six siblings had left before her, married, and produced some two dozen children among them--all of whom cherished their Aunt Tutty for her uncomplicated generosity and young spirit. But really, Tut stayed behind for an unspoken reason that caused her pain, alarm, and concern in a mixed jumble: her parents' relationship was frayed, if not ruined completely.

Mama had always relied on her four daughters for house-tending and chores…even for cooking. With Mama now in her seventies, Tut was left to manage the household. What's worse, Mama held a seething grudge against her husband for the loss of their first home to foreclosure, two decades before. Tut adored her papa, who was temperamentally more like her than anyone else in the entire family. Papa was a peacemaker, an oasis of calm. Mama's fiery Irish ways may have drawn him irresistibly in their youth, but now she threatened to overwhelm him with spite. Tut served as their bridge, and for love of both of them, she would never leave.

Fred knew all of this. Years prior, he had heard it in conversation with Tut (as well as her friends, who privately mourned the spinster path she was on). Then, Fred gradually got to know her family. He saw the jagged dynamics in person. And he made a simple statement to the beautiful woman he wanted to marry: "I will never take you away. If you want to live with your parents, I'll do that."

Tut let herself fall in love with him at that moment. But she didn't let on, right away. Fred's desire, his adoration was almost too much for her to bear. Whenever she looked in the mirror, she saw a woman eight years his senior. What kind of existence would this be for a young man in his twenties, the prime of his life? Why, at her age, she probably wouldn't even be able to bear him one child, let alone the many that her sisters had borne.

On May 8, 1932, Theresa adjusted her hair nervously in that same mirror. She wore a modest dress, not fancy wedding attire. Fred was a Methodist, and Tut was devoutly Catholic. For this reason, the wedding was to be held in the rectory of the church: a non-event, meant to deflect attention. Her sister and brother-in-law would serve as witnesses. No guests, no rice, no toasts, no extravagance. Just two people--opposites, attracted--in a small town.

Make that three people. Inside her that day, Tut nurtured a new life--the hidden fact of a pregnancy. Her lifelong modesty makes it impossible to imagine the moment that she gave in to Fred's advances. In a boxy old car? Unthinkable. In her parents' house? Never. In the rooming house where Fred lived sparsely? Doubtful. The place is not important, anyway. Somehow, in the winter of 1932, Fred had convinced Tut. And at the age of 35, she must have asked herself, what was there to lose, really?

No one in Millinocket, Maine, would have been surprised at the subsequent wedding of Fred and Tut. There was nothing abrupt about it; they had been dating for four years solid. Surely their acquaintances rejoiced, having known for years what a perfect couple they made. And her nieces and nephews clung to Fred's lanky frame as though he were already their uncle. Therefore, the baby that Tut carried on May 8 remained a closely held secret. Instead, a few weeks after the priest pronounced them man and wife, Tut and Fred shared joyful news with family and friends that made sense in the timeline: now, they were expecting.

Tut's parents allotted the newlyweds the upstairs of their old, austere house. Tut, who had worked all of her adult life as a gregarious telephone operator, gave up her job and took an even more active role in her parents' daily lives. Fred worked long hours as a railroad telegrapher to support them.

Some months later, the trees were bare, the winds grew cold, and the birth of their baby was nearing--substantially sooner than anyone would have thought. In a masterstroke of plotting, Tut was sent south on the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad to visit her sister Nellie in Augusta. There, Tut awaited her confinement, which came "prematurely" (Fred told the folks back home). Her sister was undoubtedly in on the ruse. In Augusta, on November 27, 1932, Tut delivered a full-term baby girl.

Perhaps Tut would have been better off delivering a preemie. Her tiny pelvis struggled with the birthing, and in the days afterwards, she experienced intestinal difficulties that threatened her life. At one point, the doctor admonished Fred: "Don't ever get her pregnant again." He visibly blanched, nodding his assent.

These events of 75 years ago are part of my DNA. The baby girl was my mother, Maryann. Tut and Fred were my beloved grandparents, from whom I learned about marital love, attraction, respect, and cooperation. It is nearly impossible to explain how safe and cherished I felt in their company--it was beyond a parenting relationship, into something spiritual, a glow that suffused me.

It wasn't until my young adulthood that I learned the full story surrounding this wedding day, and the secret they harbored throughout the years. As the puzzle pieces fell into place, I understood why they never, ever celebrated their anniversary, why they had no wedding pictures, no wedding memories. And as I contemplated all of these events on this year's anniversary--which I choose to commemorate, despite the fact that both Fred and Tut are both deceased--I couldn't help but wonder at the contrast between their surreptitious wedding day, and their lifelong, deep-rooted, inspiring love for each other. In my life, I've met maybe a dozen married couples whose bond and friendship is immediately, tangibly obvious. I compare all of them to my grandparents, who showed me that first.



How sad that the day these loving people were married brought them guilt and shame. How triumphant that they stayed together for life, and never let that submerged secret spoil what they had. My mother's birth, after the complications were cleared, fulfilled both of them in a way I don't think they had anticipated. And while I know they ached for more children, Fred would never have risked losing his sweet wife. Instead, when their two grandchildren arrived, they shared all of that long-held parenting energy with my brother and me. For that, I owe them everything.

Through all of the tumult and nerves, 75 years ago, I can see a moment in the rectory--maybe when the priest was droning from a text in front of him, maybe when the plain gold bands were exchanged--when Fred looked at Tut, caught her eye, and smiled that mischievous and satisfied smile that only she could elicit. And at that moment, I know she smiled right back. Her misgivings had been foolish. He was the one.

An important footnote to this story: up until tonight, I had never seen a photograph of my grandparents' wedding day. I decided to flip through my digital archives to illustrate this story--I have many images of them, just not of their wedding.

Two years ago, my cousin Earle e-mailed me some images, and those were among the files I looked at tonight. I'm very fond of one of them, which appears below. Ever since Earle sent it, I've puzzled over it: why are Nana and Grampy standing there so awkwardly, on the right? Who are the two people with them? Where are they, anyway?

In a bolt of clarity that any genealogist will understand, I suddenly realized tonight that this is the only surviving wedding picture. They are standing on a hillside: that's right across the street from Millinocket's Catholic church. I know that hill like the back of my hand. The two people on the left? That's the witnesses, Eugene and Essie.

First I felt driven to write about their wedding day, and then, I saw it. The ancestors speak to us, that's all I can tell you. And tonight, their diamond anniversary, they led me to this.

Dear Hamish,

Thanks for your note! When your mom told me how much you love funk music, I was just bowled over, and I couldn't get to the iTunes to make that mix disc fast enough. It's not every fourth-grader who appreciates that genre...and I should know, because when I was a fourth-grader, I did.

When I listen to the Spinners now, or James Brown, the Isleys, or Eddie Kendricks, it takes my mind back to graffiti-drenched New York City when I was your age. A place where considerable despair dwelled alongside joyful mellowship. The funk vibe was everywhere, bringing social commentary and free escape in equal doses. Just like the graffiti: a desperate expression...but the colors! Whenever a RR train rocketed past on the el tracks, a few blocks from my apartment building, I would stop and look up at the spectacle. Blocky letters, airbrushy splashes, in vivid-to-lurid tones, flying by. Really, it was like a comic-book blast up there, a save-the-day! message.

The day needed saving...a lot of crime and poverty, back then. It seemed like even the sanitation department had given up on trying to tidy the place, so when I played in the outdoor courtyard of the apartment building with my friends, there was this perpetual grime, a grey dust all over the stoop, the sidewalk, wherever we sat. It never fazed me, not once. (Only the mom in me is taken aback, thinking of it now.) Because when you looked up, up, past the roofline of our building, past the surprisingly tall trees in front...the sky was incredible blue.

Playtime outside in that era demanded a transistor radio. Everyone had one--they were boxy little rectangles with a blippy dial. In our neighborhood, you toggled between WABC, WNBC, and--if you were lucky enough to have FM--WPLJ and WNEW. These stations cooked up a stew that included funk along with rock and pop.

Soon, we would all start acquiring boom boxes. That term sounds silly and dated now, but in 1977 it meant a holy grail of sound. That's because a boom box was BIG--like, eight times the size of a transistor--and it was (you'd catch your breath on this word) stereo. Most of us had never heard stereo before--most certainly, never in the streets. Boom boxes liberated sound quality from its tether in the living room. In NYC, when you weren't at school or eating a meal, you wanted to be in the streets; and out there, musical accompaniment was crucial. Stereo wove the sound around your group of friends, made you want to stay out and hang together longer.

The first song I ever heard in stereo was, alas, not funk. It was "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac. My older brother handed me his new headphones--the puffy bubble kind, from Radio Shack--and switched on his new boom box. "Listen to this," he said. The song was mixed to drift and pulse, left channel to right channel. I actually got shivers, hearing the wide-open terrain of that sound--Lindsay Buckingham's haunted guitar notes chiming, setting the stage for Stevie Nicks' plaintive vocal.

Hamish, your mom told me you like disco, too, and I'm proud of you for that. Like boom box, disco is a term that is unfairly maligned. It symbolizes faddish things, but the music must not be confused with the attire and dance moves it spawned. The best disco grows from a funk root, and when you hear it, if you're open-minded--as you obviously are!--you're compelled to move and groove.

So thank you, Hamish, for the memories you are making right now, which will equate funk and joy and expression with downeast Maine. You've underscored what I already knew: that genre of music is universal, and it stays with you like a companion for as long as you're true to yourself.