Still with us

Listening to Thelonious Monk right now, a cut of him playing his "'Round Midnight" at the piano. Now that's a George song (my dad). Completely.

Mom. She's there at the piano, so many of the pieces I play have her right in there. I sat down to play all the Debussy Children's Corner Suite pieces yesterday, and when I got to "Golliwog's Cakewalk," wow, she was IN THE ROOM! She was. She'd be playing piano and talking the whole time, telling us how she played it in a recital in high school, and complaining about the hard parts. She did the same with her favorite Mendelssohn and Grieg pieces. Just when you'd be enjoying listening to Mom play, she'd talk! I hope I don't do that, so much...

My grampa taught us girls how to dance, waltzing around the room with our feet resting on his. He was our Fred Astaire and his voice was like Bing Crosby. He had a gorgeous, easy voice and danced so smooth like silk. All the slow, dreamy songs, "Moonlight in Vermont," "Dream Dancing," the great Duke Ellington songs like "Mood Indigo", they are Grampa Marvin. And funny bits of pop music I still associate with him, too. The other day I heard Elton John and I remembered how Grampa could not understand the words to "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart", that rather irritating duet Elton did with Kiki Dee. It was always popping up on the radio when we'd be driving. He said, "Don't go stealin' my car? What did they say?" and Grampa just loved John Denver. "Sunshine on my shoulders"....Grampa would wake up in the morning singing that one.

My little boy Ethan loved music too; even though he was only a baby and never grew to be older than 4 months, he showed his preferences. We laughed about that, because some of the tapes he liked to listen to in the NICU were music we didn't much like. All the babies there had little mini-Walkmans in their isolettes, with teeny speakers. It was amazing how music helped the babies. I made homemade tapes of me playing and singing, mostly lullabies and quiet songs like "Edelweiss" and "Over the Rainbow." The same songs I sang to him when he was in the womb, I recorded for him to listen to at the hospital.

He liked that tape a lot, of course, and Kenny Loggins' "Pooh Corner", some French and English folk music tapes, and Linda Ronstadt's lullaby tape. Strangely, he adored the French album by Celine Dion, which was really the opposite of soothing for the rest of us. Bombastic is more like it. Egads! Ethan! Get some taste, kiddo!

They are not here in the room with me, but they are here. I just know there's music in heaven. God's too loving to deprive us. Can you imagine existence without music? I honestly can't, don't want to!

Tomorrow morning the grand piano arrives and I am like a little girl waiting for Christmas morning. I promise to have A.J. take my photo at the new piano and I'll put it up on the blog tomorrow so you all can see it. My happy gift to myself.