Skip to main content

I Write the Songs

                                                               


         

                                                                I Write the Songs…

     A story I’ve told some. To this day it is story that I am fascinated by.  There are those times in your life when you feel you have nothing to offer to life. You wonder, ‘where’s your talent?’ I do that a lot.  I know I can work anywhere. I can last with my mental drive and endurance.  That I know.  But I know that is not a talent.
    Yet, I know somewhere in my essence I must have a little piece of talent in the arts.  No, not the martial arts.  The music, painting, drawing, and writing type arts, I’m talking about. Our youngest daughter has it. However, she’s adopted. My brother had it. My sister has it.  Her kids have it. You know where it comes from? I think I do. I’ll tell you a story and let you figure it out.
    One day in early 1975, my Dad came home with this big blue case, with brass buckles enclosing with what was inside of it. He rested it down on our living room chair that afternoon.  The sunshine reflected and peered through the pantry windows, through our tiny kitchen. And then into the back end of our living room.

    My Mom asked, “What’s this?”
    Dad replied, “It’s for you.  This guy…” He begins to unfasten the brass buckles of the blue case. He continues, “…was throwing this accordion out.  And at first, there was no case with it. It was sitting on the side of the road by the curb.”
    My Mom looked at the accordion. Dad added, “He said one key is broken off.  Another is a little too low and well. He saw me taking the accordion off the curb and called to me from his front door.  He offered me the case.” He shrugged.
    I asked, “Mom, can you still play it?” 
    She steadied her eyes on the accordion. Put her right hand to her chin. “Yeah. But I haven’t played an accordion since I was sixteen.”

    My heart sunk a little, for my mother was now age thirty-five. I thought that to be quite a number of years of passing with no practice.  Especially, when I knew my brother practiced his clarinet every day for the last five years and the guitar most days for the past six years. He was diligent with practicing. He wanted to be a star.
    My Mom then suddenly picked up the accordion out of its case. Put the straps of the instrument over her shoulders, and sat down. She sat there for about three minutes checking the air, the buttons, the keys, and the movement of the accordion. She made music.  It was an old type of tune. 
    Then she said, “Jody, put the radio on.” I did. It was tuned to an oldies and pop station CBS-FM.
Soon, after I turned it on and tuned the radio in with no static, a song by Barry Manilow played. It was “I Write the Songs”. It was a new song, that we’d just became familiar with. After it played on the radio, my mother said, “Okay shut it off.”  I turned off the radio.  Mom sat there and played the whole song on the accordion, as she sung the words to “I Write the Songs”. It was so fascinating. Mom commented after she was done, “Not so bad.”  She meant the shape of the old accordion.

    To this day, my mind remains blown by that day with the accordion. My mother had other talents.  She was a cosmetician. She could run circles around people with Algebraic equations.  Her ability to learn and use a foreign language such as Spanish was quite incredible.  Her English skills and penmanship were insane.  I know her IQ must’ve been high.  My mother could read forever. It was amazing to watch her. ---Jody-Lynn Reicher
https://www.amazon.com/Jody-Lynn-Reicher/e/B00R3VUZ18/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_10?qid=1418802234&sr=1-10

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Completion of Humanness

Completion of Humanness As we arrive to the completion of the first year without Norman, I had decided long before he'd passed that I would continue to do things certain things he liked yet could no longer do. I decided I would not take a day off of fitness.  I would run at least for 500 days in a row. I began that in early 2020.  I'd not be concerned with the distance I'd run. It was the very thing I convinced Norman and the thing that mattered to him, from the very first discussion we had August 11th, 1981, was fitness. I loved that he was a College Boy. He loved that I was a Marine. We tickled each other's soul with such admirations. Later fitness continued as an old discussion from 1994 ...getting outside and to run no matter what. I would say to him, "Run 200 meters, then 400 meters. If it doesn't feel good, stop. Turn around and walk back home and know you did your best. That is all you can ask of yourself." I said this,  knowing he would get dow
2 comments
Read more

In My World

As I finish putting away the week's groceries, I contemplate other's lives. Aside from my two daughters,  I consider what may be other's lives.  How they have conducted their lives over the past two years.  This is a thought not unusual for me to have. Yet, it occurs more often than not. Especially  now, as the population is probably feeling ever more irked. Regarding perhaps. their illusion of any lack of their freedom. But isn't that what life is about? The illusion of who we are. What we are about. Where we stand on the planet. Who we love. And who loves us. Our significance. Couldn't we imagine if this were all just an illusion? Sounds like a "Twighlight Zone" episode, perhaps. My aim here, are the thoughts of reckoning. I'll explain why I'm claiming such a thing. For about twenty-eight years of a career in dealing with injured athletes,  pain patients, chronically ill and the terminally ill. I found that there were many people who lied to
Post a Comment
Read more

It Follows Me...

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know.
Post a Comment
Read more