This led the soundtrack Saturday. My sister and I sang it, for reasons I did not know then and surely do not know now, as we stood holding our mother's hands in ICU recovery following aortic valve replacement and quintuple bypass more than 22 years ago. We thought we'd forgotten some of the words but we had not. It is a very short song.
THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE
(B.G. De Sylva / Lew Brown / Ray Henderson)
The moon belongs to ev'ryone
The best things in life are free
The stars belong to ev'ryone
They gleam there for you and me
The flowers in spring
The robins that sing
The sunbeams that shine
They're yours, they're mine
And love can come to ev'ryone
The best things in life are free
------------
Because it works for me, as well as anything can, given the human condition and all, I gaze deeply into what seem like hard times, determined to find the untarnished sequin representing the good therein.
Relationships, reversals of fortune, unwise choices, life just being life, though it will not change the circumstances, sometimes we come to hold a prize that could not have been won any other way.
Which connects, somehow, to Sherry O'Keefe's recent post, men not named Andy and the word suchness and my thought of moments - not fully realized adventures - but moments that were reached via the splintery bannister.
A man not named Andy who sang to me, in a bar at Kennedy Airport, What Are You Doing The Rest of Your Life?. Who flew still-fresh, self-caught salmon from Seattle to Pasadena. Who sharpened my spatula-dull knives and sliced the onions, telling me that biting on a piece of bread stopped tears. Too many suchnesses to count, a glimpse of what may have been within reach or else far beyond it. It seems a fair exchange; moments are not nothing, not everything is designed to last, some thing never even become. After such a long time, crying over this seems unlikely, but still...I know without looking that somewhere in the catacombs of the fridge lurks at least one elderly piece of bread. I'll let you know if it helps with anything that isn't onions.
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13 comments:
I chop my onions with abandon. Sometimes it's nice to enjoy a good cry without all the emotional baggage that usually goes along with it.
This made me smile, thanks.
What Laoch said. Thank you, Marylinn and a happy Spring to receiving hemispheres.
The gold buried in the lead. . . yes, Marylinn. We know it's there; we know we can trust it. And still we think it - the oft-unnameable, many-faceted 'it' of life - comes to play tricks on us, when it is comes again and again as loving teacher. I love how you express these aspects here. . . how moments of 'suchness' are very often arrived at via the 'splintery bannister' and how we come to understand that the prize we find we're holding in our hands could have come by no other way but the circuitous one. The hard-wrought one. Again I find myself standing here in quiet gratitude - the kind of quiet that can be heard across miles. Thank you. Love, Claire xo
I hope the sun finds you today
and smiles.
beautiful writing, marylinn.
i hope you need no crusts of bread today.
tattytiara - I agree completely. Would they be onions if we didn't cry?
Laoch - That makes me happy and you are welcome.
Antares Cryptos - It took me a moment to think of geographic hemispheres, of course, the seasons, for I first thought of receiving hemispheres in the brain, both sides working, a team. Well, now that we have that cleared up, thank you.
Claire - I am always grateful for your visits here. You know how the door remains open. It's good that we don't dizzy easily, all the circuitous routes, switchbacks, indirect paths. Love to you.
Denise - The sun, and a few ideas and words to express them, did find me today, thank you. A warm benevolence.
Angella - Thank you. So far, a fully crustless day.
Your comment about hemispheres, strange synchronicity as it was already in my pre-scheduled post.
So very perceptive.
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