A Little Johnny Mathis

It was a long vacation, and just as vacations should be, which is why I've been absent and silent for several weeks. It's good to be back. There was a particularly golden moment on our trip, which the youngsters among you may not appreciate. If you're too young to know who Johnny Mathis is, this post may not interest you much.

I grew up listening to Johnny Mathis. My mom loved him. She loved Wayne Newton and Ed Ames, too, but I'm pretty sure they will never inspire me to write anything. Yeah. My brothers loved the Beatles, though, and even though my mom didn't, she allowed them to play their 45s while they waxed and polished our hardwood floors. Every other month on a Saturday morning, Paul, George, John, and Ringo rocked our house with their latest hits, and by the time I started first grade, I knew all their early songs by heart. Don't do the math. I'm old. Johnny Mathis, remember?

My mom loved music. It was her muse, her balm, her soul's sustenance. She liked the crooners, but violin music was her favorite. Her father played fiddle in a dance band in Idaho at the turn of the century, and he was still playing in dance halls from time to time when she was old enough to remember, in the 20's and 30's. He would come home and on that same fiddle he would play classical violin in their parlor. Mom adored her father. He was a hard, austere man, except for when he played the fiddle and when his children were ill. When mom was sick, he would sit at her bedside and care for her tenderly. Those were the only tender moments she had with him. It's no wonder she found music so healing, or that she seemed to be constantly cursed with 'sick headaches' and other vague ailments.

My father, in contrast to my grandfather, is a tender man who said "I love you" daily to mom and all of his children. His philosophy on pain is, if it hurts, well, that's too bad. It will get better eventually. End of story. When mom would complain of feeling ill, he would encourage her to rest and get better on her own while he went back to work. I think that sometimes she felt a little confused by that. Music was her solution. She would stack six or eight albums on the stereo and let them drop, one by one, as she lay in her bed. I grew up listening to symphonies and concertos and violin sonatas. And Johnny Mathis.

Mom succumbed to cancer in 2001 at the age of 77. It was hard on Dad. In mom's last year, he took over most of the cleaning, cooking, and even some ironing (heaven forbid!), so he was equipped to survive when she was gone. He was not, however, equipped to be alone. After a few years of mourning and living on his own (with regular phone calls and visits from all seven of us kids), he decided it was time to remarry. That's another story, but the woman he chose is lovely, and I like her very much. She's a little younger than him -- three years younger than my oldest brother, actually. I don't mind.

At our reunions, karaoke is a family tradition, for good or ill, and my stepmother (how weird is that to say?) was one of the first to get up and sing. She sang a snappy song from a Broadway Musical, and I was impressed with her spunk and ability to stay on pitch (not a requirement, sadly). I was busy doing something else when a familiar piano introduction caught my ear. I looked up to see my father's bride sing the opening lines, "Chances are, when I wear a silly grin the moment you come into view . . ." Johnny Mathis. This woman knew how to pick 'em! Then I looked for my dad -- and my sister was pulling him up out of his chair to dance with her.

At 87, my dad doesn't dance much. He and mom used to dance when they were very young, but she stopped, so he stopped. As the music drifted through the speakers and across the yard, and with my stepmother singing and swaying along, I watched my sister and my father foxtrot on the patio behind my brother's home that warm August evening.

For just a moment, the world stopped turning, just for me. For me, the nearby horseshoe game fell into silence; the great grandkids munching on "Dog Chow" (our family's name for Chex Muddy Mix) made not a sound as they giggled and teased and tossed the crunchy bits at each other. There were no peepers peeping in the creek, nor any trucking noises from the highway just over the bank of trees. The pleasant chatter of the adults standing around the crab-boil table, downing spicy crayfish and grilled corn on the cob, drifted into silence. Just for me. All I could hear was "In the magic of the moonlight, when you sigh 'hold me close, dear' . . . "

The years fell away, and I was home. I watched my father's face as he danced cheek to cheek with his oldest daughter, and their happiness expanded to consume me, as well. My mom was there, singing with my stepmother words to a song she would never have presumed to sing, herself, in public. That would have been prideful, and not proper. It was Johnny's voice I heard, though, and I could smell our old sofa, and feel the hardwood floors beneath me, and everything in the world was right in that moment.

"Guess you feel you'll always be the one and only one for me, and if you think you could . . ."

So, I think our new stepmom is going to fit in just fine, as she gets dad to do things he's never done before in the years he has left. Do I think they'll be happy?

"Well, chances are (their) chances are awfully good."