The Scent of Sweetness and Hope
It’s 7:00 AM, and while I’m scrubbing a crusty saucepan left to soak after last night’s re-heated chili, I’m also catching up on some current-events chit-chat on the morning news. Moving around the kitchen-island sink to get a closer look, I realize this piece is on Ringo Starr, surrounded by a group of 100 singers on a field, and for a couple of minutes I seem to have been sprinkled with trails of fairy dust rising up from the graves of the love generation. I see daisies everywhere. Switching the channel over to YouTube, I find the video of his latest song, “Look Up,” and take it all in: the retro-guitar sound, the faces representing people from all over the world singing along and serving up the diversity this world needs, with a persuasively warm hearted Ringo, standing front and center. I love this.
The video opens with a blend of palm trees and yucca plants, but that shot segues quickly to fields of tall, late summer grasses just below backdrop of gentle sloping mountains. Encircled on that field, there's an array of swaying humans, making peace signs and hand-hearts. I think I see a flash of John Lennon. It's not.
Ringo is singing with his shades on, a white jeans jacket, and the word L.O.V.E. written vertically in white on his black T-shirt and love is indeed the message I am receiving. Is that a peace sign he's wearing on his neck?
I flinch a little when he sings,
"Live to fight another day,
good things are going to come your way.
Look up."
Is it just me, or is that a little bit invalidating? I mean, for right now? This short lived thought fades with the song, and I have surrendered to Starr’s sincerity as the drone-camera pans high enough to visualize, in the final shot, that all of those bodies singing together in a circle are actually forming a peace sign. I feel like I’ve been coerced into hope, and that’s OK. I like the guy, and this music gently eases me back in time where a specific memory comes into focus.
I’m still waking up on the morning of my 16th birthday, brushing my woolly-mammoth hair after sucking-in, holding my breath, and zipping up my uniform skirt. I want to hurry down the winding staircase, grab my lunch, and try to be on time to my first class at Marymount. I've already had scrambled eggs and cheese with the family; breakfast is an anchoring family tradition, but it leaves little time for gathering my senses about whether my homework assignments are completed, or whether I’m prepared to face this weird bridge to adulthood called high school. My lunch is packed in a brown bag, and I’ve counting every calorie, paranoid about how my body compares to those of the other young women with whom I gather to be fed geometry, world religion, and biology. I'm not popular, an understatement, but I have two or three very special girls I call my friends.
I'm wearing saddle-shoes, or something like them. Absurd. White ankle socks and gray, polyester-knit, pleated skirts with a white, scalloped-collared, itchy polyester shirt on. Why do they make us do this? Wearing the exact same outfit doesn't exactly highlight our best features; on the contrary, the uniform differentiates all of us more or less in terms of size and height. I think I’m ugly; truthfully, my appearance is average.
On the morning of my 16th birthday, the first face I see after breakfast is Jenny.
I don't know how our blond, Swedish 50-something Jenny ended up as a humble housekeeper, or exactly how she found her way into a service position in our home.
Or why a 16 year old, insecure, privileged young woman can't take care of picking up her own dirty clothes or scrubbing her own toilet.
Jenny is one of the divinely-placed faces of mercy in my life. She showed up when I was younger, when my also divinely-placed parents couldn't, especially in the middle of the night when I knocked on her door, having just barely drifted out of a dream state, shaking from having heard and felt King Kong stomping outside my window. When monsters and witches haunted my dreams, she comforted me.
Most every school day, Jenny greeted me with the same silly song.
"It's only me, from under the sea,
said Barnacle Bill the sailor."
I can't explain the song, but I smile when I hear it. It feels generous for this less-young woman to be so joyful right before getting slammed with her pile of household chores. She loves me, and I love her.
And, on my 16th birthday, amidst all the insecurity and confusion of being a chubby rich kid with a blossoming eating disorder and low self-esteem who hasn't figured out anything about how to do life, sweet Jenny in her light pink polyester short sleeve uniform with a white apron tied at her waist comes into my room to surprise me with a different song. It’s in a brown bag, offered without the formality of wrapping paper or ribbons; she hands it to me smiling, but quickly she reaches to pull my gift out of the bag herself. Ringo Starr's, "You're 16."
The years have worn away the edges around this memory a bit; I can't remember if it was one of those 45s they used to sell, or an entire album. But I do remember that she was more excited than I was when she asked me to play it on my small turntable that sat at the top of my tall white princess dresser. We fired up the player, and touched the needle to the vinyl.
“You come on like a dream, peaches and cream
Lips like strawberry wine
You’re 16, You’re beautiful,
And you’re mine.”
The song played through the turntable’s small, harsh built-in speakers - slightly distorted, but it was fine. Jenny and I danced like children. Or like a grandmother would dance with a child; with our hands held in the middle and our accentuated, silly movements, we were barely attending to the rhythm. We were celebrating.
I can't think of that day without crying. And I don't mean a little hint of a tear slipping down the side of my face. What Jenny meant to me immeasurable. What that morning meant to me is that I mattered. To her. She treated me like I was one of her own.
Infused with the scent of unity, earthy sweetness and hope, Ringo's new video touched on some of these old feelings of mine that remain. Treasured memories of dancing, feeling beautiful and feeling loved. I wonder if Jenny felt the same way.
And sometimes, I wonder how many nannies, au pairs, housekeepers and helpers, often immigrants from other countries, are similarly remembered by the children who ran to them for comfort when their parents weren't able. I wonder how many plates have been artfully laid out at a dinner table or on a buffet, prepared lovingly by those who have made the best of a bitter situation. Like Jenny.
I hope you’ll leave a comment and share your thoughts and feels after reading this post. THANK YOU!
I love these glimpses into your childhood. At our age, we can certainly look backward and reflect on all our growth. Lessons learned, things we might change or wish we could have are a part of growing old. As always, thanks for sharing.
Beautiful, Laury.