Love Is All Around & Mary Tyler Moore

My family and maybe some of my friends know I have a bit of the shine. I don't see dead people exactly but I have premonitions about things, weird hunches, strange dreams, one too many coincidences. 

I hear music a lot -- like in my basement I sometimes hear music. We have a stone foundation. I don't know if music is being carried through the ground and into the rock, but it's older music like Big Band era music so I wonder. Here's another thing, I like cemeteries.

Today I decided to go to Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield.  It's a beautiful old cemetery in what is nearly Southport. I've been there once before to visit the grave of a young man whose family established a music scholarship in his name. I wanted to say thank you to David John Nogan for his help with our music kid's tuition at Loyola NOLA.

This time I was going to see Mary Tyler Moore's grave. I loved Mary Tyler Moore. Her shows yes, but I also loved her great style, the way she tossed her hat, and swished her beautiful 1970's long hair. She was just cool. I remember reading her obituary and feeling so sad for all of us who lost her. And then I read that she too was buried at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield. I knew someday I'd visit her grave. 

I brought with me the following offerings: one of our son Will's old baseballs, a guitar pick from his new music school in Minneapolis-St. Paul and some Mardi Gras beads with trumpets on them. My feeling was these were symbols of the old Will and the new Will. I wanted to leave the guitar pick and baseball for Mary Tyler Moore, the patron saint of Minneapolis-St. Paul, to watch over our Will as he transitions from young boy to young man in Minnesota. The beads were for David John Nogan, the musician who died far too young with connections to Louisana, where Will went to college last year. 

I need a Venn diagram to explain this clearly.  But in my mind, it mad perfect sense. Say goodbye to Louisiana, say hello to Minnesota and ask two souls to watch over Will.

Our dog Daisy ate the cover off the baseball on the way to the cemetery. She's obviously feeling better. My offerings now shrunk to two.

I drove in slowly, respectfully, minding the narrow paths that wind through Oak Lawn. I saw baby deer and big deer and none of them seemed to mind my passing. They would slowly shuffle out of the way, like here comes another one out to ruin my lunch. 

I found the section where Mary Tyler Moore was buried and circled slowly. I saw two people sitting near the center of section D, but I didn't really make a connection. I finally decided to get out of the car and walk around. I felt self-conscious because I'd just jumped in the car without thinking about what I was wearing. And that would be -- ripped jeans, my painting Birkenstocks with colorful splatter all over them and a kind of macrame detailed Lucky jeans shirt. But I thought, "Hey Mary Tyler Moore was a 1970's kind of gal, she'll get my hippie vibe." 

Here's where the shine part comes into play. 

The two people in the cemetery I would describe as a salt-and-pepper gentleman with glasses and a blond woman of a certain age, also with glasses and a vague European accent possibly of German or Austrian descent. With them, was an older dog who seemed friendly enough. But there are signs everywhere that say No Dogs Allowed. I felt sort of judgmental about them until I remembered my own dog was in the car with the AC blasting. 

I approached, said hello and met the dog. I asked the dog's name of the woman because he seemed to be her dog. 

The man answered, "Spanky." 

"Oh,' I said 'like that kid's show from back in the day?" 

He smiled. "Right," he said.

"Our Gang," I said. 

And I kept walking around in circles trying to find the place where Mary Tyler Moore was buried. The man, the woman and dog started packing up to leave.

There was something kind of strange about them. The woman sat upright, rather austerely, herding the dog as they left with commands of, "Heel!" The man sat on a stone bench in an enclosure surrounded by an orange mesh fence. I think he was reading a newspaper now that I think about it. For whatever reason, it never occurred to me that this area surrounded by fence might be where Mary Tyler Moore was buried. I did see a large white statue but I couldn't read the grave stone and I certainly didn't want to cross the orange fence to get a better look. 

Then I saw the man walking back toward me. Maybe he'd forgotten something I thought. 

He asked, "Can I help you with something?" 

"I"m looking for the grave of Mary Tyler Moore," I said. "Is this it? Do you know?" I asked, pointing to the fenced-in area. 

"Yes," he said. "We haven't finished with it yet. Pouring the cement and," his voice trailed off. 

And then I realized. "Are you her husband?" I asked. He nodded yes. 

I'm not a person who is light on her feet - I don't think quickly in situations like these. In an emergency, I'm a champ. Public speaking, not so much. I started babbling, explaining the story of taking Will to Minnesota, and that even though I know Mary Tyler Moore's not from Minnesota, I just wanted to leave something of Will's for her. 

"That's very sweet," he said. I showed him the guitar pick. 

"He's a musician," I said. 

"Leave it here," he said pointing to a row of stones on her grave. "Weight it down so it won't blow away." 

I thanked him as he watched me place the guitar pick on his wife's grave. Her husband was Jewish I remembered that too. I looked it up, the reason why Jews leaves stones on the graves of their loved ones. Putting stones on a grave keeps the person's soul down in this world. That's what I found out about the stones.

He had kind eyes. I must've sounded crazy with my ripped jeans and guitar pick rant about my kid in Minnesota. He's a cardiologist her husband, Dr. Robert Levine, so my guess is he's seen it all.

"I loved her," I said, starting to tear up. 

"Me too," he said.

NB: I did some more research. Of course, Mary Tyler Moore started a wonderful pet adoption charity called Broadway Barks and Spanky the dog was a rescue pit bull belonging to her housekeeper Anna, likely the woman I saw today. Moore said that Spanky could sense when her blood sugar dropped which helped with managing her diabetes.

Same As It Ever Was

Last week I dropped Will off at school. He's a sophomore now in college. My friend Lou Lou just dropped her daughter Olivia off at Tulane - a second generation who will live and breathe the walls of Josephine Louise dorm at Tulane University. Please god, let them be freshly painted.

I thought it would be easier this time, easier than before when Will was a freshman. His first summer back from college was a challenge. It's a strange time in a young man's life where he wants to do and be all things men do - or at least the fun things they do. But he's not quite old enough, he doesn't have enough money, he can't figure it out, women are difficult, cars are expensive. Strange times indeed. 

I'm reading a book called Lift by Kelly Corrigan at the random suggestion of a friend. It's a letter to her children to help them remember their young lives. In a way, this blog has been the same. Not all my posts are about our son Will, but I like to think the good ones are like:

Will, You Are Surrounded by Music 

The Makings of Mr. Right

In a World Without Earbuds

I have no real music skills, unlike most of the members of my family. Certainly, unlike Will. I don't play the piano. I'm just an okay singer. I do have one very unique musical talent however. I can remember the lyrics to many, many songs. Like the other day I burst into Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond. "I'd be inclined," he sings. That's a twisty phrase for song lyrics. It would have no place in today's songs, but Neil Diamond rocked those lyrics and his denim jumpsuits back in the day. 

I saw Neil Diamond in the airport one time. I'd just spent a weekend with my Tulane roommate Lou Lou bumming off all the other recently graduated kids who were living in Aspen. We'd been to see Lyle Lovett and his Large Band featuring the super talented singer Francine Reed. We'd biked up to see Hunter S. Thompson's cabin in the woods, slightly fearing for our lives because it was rumored he shot at lookyloos. 

When it was time to head home, I cabbed it to the tiny Aspen airport. And that's when I saw him -- bathed in a beautiful light, talking on a pay phone no less, was Neil Diamond in full-on denim -- denim bell bottoms, denim jacket with sheepskin collar, denim shirt. Sweet Caroline, I couldn't believe it was him. I was suddenly back in 1970's Texas listening to my dad's vinyl. 

In New Orleans, I was lucky to see live music all the time. One of the most amazing concerts I saw while at Tulane - and there were many like Bonnie Raitt and David Crosby jamming at the Maple Leaf with Ed Bradley from 60 Minutes on percussion. Anyway, one of the most amazing concerts I saw was David Byrne's Burning Down the House tour. Incredible show. Incredible performances. Thinking of that show takes me back to college days. I don't want to romanticize that time or  gloss over the tough parts, but that was some kind of fun that night. 

The song lyrics I thought of as I dropped Will off at college were these words from The Talking Heads' more subdued song Once in a Lifetime:

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Look where my hand was
Time isn't holding up
Time isn't after us

This year Will is in school in St. Paul, MN - quite a departure from New Orleans. It was his choice and I think a very mature decision based on how he felt after his first year. I've never been to Minnesota until just now. People couldn't be nicer, just as you would expect from Midwesterners. I did feel that I shouldn't burst into tears there, on the street for example. Minnesotans don't cry. So I waited until I got back home and had myself a nice outburst at JFK airport in parking terminal 2. Ah New York, the land of crazy and plenty of crying. 

It doesn't get any easier, dropping your kid off 20 hours away in a place you've never been until last week. It's tough when they're freshman and when they're sophomores. Maybe it gets easier when they're a junior. For now, it's just me and the old man and our dog moping around. Same as it ever was, indeed. 

Will, You Are Surrounded by Music

If I think about how fast I'm moving through life, not a second to think, not a second to reflect - it really should give me pause. One nice thing about sending my only kid to college is I suddenly have some time to reflect. Of course, I've filled that time with more stuff to do like house painting, weeding, cleaning and laundry. But every once in awhile, something strikes me as being sort of unbelievable, that I never saw a connection when there were so many connections to see. Like the role music has played in Will's life.

Our son Will was born with magnificent hair. Truly, it was a sight to see. Beautiful, thick black hair that his nurse immediately parted to one side. My brother nicknamed him "Tiny Elvis," a name that's stuck with him to this day.  It was a reference of course to Elvis Presley's famous pompadour, but Elvis was also a heckuva singer.

When Will started preschool at this crunchy Raleigh Montessori school, there was a young hippie dude named Chris who would sing and play guitar with the kids. Will loved Chris. One day, Chris pulled Rod and I aside and said, "I think Will has perfect pitch." He meant Will sings in perfect pitch. Only 3 or 4 at the time, I thought, "I think you might be hitting the reefer a little too hard there, Chris." I can tell you that I completely forgot about the conversation until much later in Will's life when when I saw him get up on his middle school stage and sing and play the guitar for the first time in public. 

Really, it was shocking. I tell this story all the time. When Will asked me what I thought about singing by himself in the 9th grade talent show, I honestly thought it would be the equivalent of middle school suicide. I was picturing the absolute worst, my usual MO for pretty much anything that involves change or risk or courage. 

But Will has great courage. He's not afraid of risk. He taught himself a song on his guitar, practiced his vocals, put on jeans and a pressed white shirt, and got on stage. It was silent. And then he played - Crashed by Chris Daughtry. And he was AMAZING! I couldn't believe the kid making that sound was my kid. The crowd went wild. The girls were screaming. It was one of the best moment's of many I've been lucky enough to share with Will and family. 

There were other signs all along of the music that surrounded Will. When he was a baby, we randomly spotted singer Marcia Ball in a Raleigh bagel store and got her to autograph a napkin of all things for him. We framed it and put it in his baby room. 

As a toddler, he was obsessed with singers Patty Griffin and Susan Tedeschi. I would play their music and he would sit in his car seat saying, "Again!" I heard Rock Me Right so many times, I thought I'd never want to hear that song again. Thank goodness it was Susan Tedeschi and Patty Griffin I had to hear over and over. Will sang and sang all the time. It was reassuring as got older and his door was always closed. I could hear him singing and know he was alright.

My dad and his wife took us to New York on several occasions and there we stayed in the swanky Peninsula Hotel. Alanis Morissette was standing in the lobby one time, spotted Will and started making baby talk and waving to him. We had a brush with Natalie Cole there and rode the elevator one time with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. "Aren't you Yo-Yo Ma?" I asked. About Will he said, "I am. But more importantly who is this young man?" And he shook Will's hand. 

Some time after Will left for college, I went through his baby book. In it, I found his horoscope from the day he was born, May 24, 1998. The first line reads, "You have unusual voice, sense of drama, ability to solve problems belonging to others." More signs of music, celestial signs now. 

My mom plays piano. My husband sings, my dad sings, even my brother and I can carry a tune.  My brother's wife, her dad is a big band leader - the Sammy Kaye orchestra. Her sister is a singer. Music is everywhere in Will's life.

I don't know how I missed all these connections to Will and music. Now that's he's studying music at Loyola, it all makes perfect sense. When Will started taking guitar here in Fairfield, his first teacher was this serious guitar player Al Ferrante who had previously played with people like Edgar Winter. He also taught John Mayer as a young man. 

John Mayer's official bios refer to Bridgeport as his hometown and I'm sure that's where he was born because Bridgeport Hospital is very near our home. But he actually grew up on the mean streets of Fairfield, CT where we live now. He studied guitar and went to what is now Warde High School, then music greatness. I'm hoping Will can really make it in music, like John Mayer make it -- with possibly less womanizing. 

Here's Will knocking it out of the park in middle school. 

NB: I remember what prompted this blog now. I was rummaging around in the basement and I found a woodcut my husband did in design school. It was the image of Wynton Marsalis. Kind of a weird coincidence don't you think? He grew up in North Carolina but decided to do a woodcut of a famous New Orleans musician over 30 years ago and now his son is becoming a musician in New Orleans. Weird. Cool weird. 

Everything Just Flows

Our son won a music scholarship through a town scholarship committee. It was sort of surreal because our long-time neighbor gave him the award. But she had to act all casual and didn't tell us before hand. So it was a complete surprise. 

As a researcher, I am naturally curious. I looked into the memorial scholarship. It’s a memorial for a young guy who sadly died at age 20 back in 1989. I can’t really figure out what happened — I think because newspapers were not online yet. His name was
David John Nogan.
 
I did find that he died here in Connecticut, but he was born in Louisiana where Will is going to college. And on his headstone are two carvings, one of a guitar and the other a peace sign -- two symbols I associate with Will. We’ve pledged to go and leave something at his grave site here in Fairfield -- maybe Mardi Gras beads and flowers for David John Nogan. We want to say thank you for the generous scholarship before Will leaves for Loyola. But how weird is that? From one young man at the end of his life, to another young man just beginning his. From Louisiana to Connecticut and back.

Maybe everything just flows.

This is amazing! In the days after, Will received an email re: the scholarship as follows:

Hi Will,

I am the Vice President of Scholarships for the High School Scholarship Foundation of Fairfield.  My husband and I were having dinner tonight at the Old Post Tavern and we struck up a conversation with a lady dining alone who, it turns out, is Assistant Professor of Music and Director of Bands at Loyola University New Orleans College of Music and Fine Arts.  She grew up in New England and was visiting her mother who lives in Fairfield.   I mentioned that we had given a scholarship to a Fairfield Warde graduating senior who was going to major in music at Loyola, gave her your name and suggested she look at your performance of Hey, Stranger on YouTube. 

She said you should contact her if you have any questions before you leave for New Orleans and offered to help you adjust when you get there by introducing you to other students in your situation so that you can begin to build your network.  It’s a great city to be a music major!

Just tell her that you are from Fairfield and that you were given her contact information by the lady who ate dinner next to her at Old Post Tavern.  That should jog her memory.  She was very sincere in wanting to help you.

Her contact information is:

Dr Serena Weren
Phone: 508-865-2027
Email:  sweren@loyno.edu
6363 St. Charles Avenue
Campus Box 8
New Orleans, LA 70118

Best of luck in the coming year.

MaryKay Frost 

In a World Without Earbuds

Eighteen years ago today, I was in labor with our son Will. It was a tough labor. It went on for over 30 hours, even after I was induced with pitocin. Pitocin is pure crap by the way. Don't believe the lies.

I saw one shift of nurses, and then another, and then the first ones came back again. I went through three OBs and regrettably ended up in delivery with the one I referred to as "Dr. Hair Plugs." That guy was the worst. He said at the bitter end, "Maybe we should've done a C-section after all." I would like to just go on record here and say you should never tell a woman that after hours and hours of labor.

It was not a shining moment for me. It was not a moment bathed in pure light as I saw my little boy for the first time. The doctors were worried about Will and the trauma of such a long delivery so they whisked him away from me. They sent a lung team in to check him. The nurses scrubbed him down and put him under warm lights. I could see him from a distance. He had a beautiful head of black hair. He was okay.  He was healthy.

I saw my husband Rod put his hand on Will's chest and it covered his entire torso. I remember thinking when we brought him home -- a nearly 10 pound baby is actually pretty tiny. Please God don't let me break him.

They did finally hand Will to me, just the way you see in movies. Swaddled in a little baby bun. Our beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy. We immediately nicknamed him "Tiny Elvis" for his amazing head of hair.

Tomorrow, Will turns 18. I'm trying so hard to keep it together and to remember the little boy who is now a junior man. I want to be happy for him and accepting of him and start to let him go. 

This morning he was complaining about his lost earbuds again. I believe this is two pairs of earbuds in one week, a world record here at the Risher-Morton house. I've come up with an idea for a new reality show where young adults are dropped on a desert island without earbuds. "In a World Without Earbuds" teens will be forced to talk to one another or make earbuds out of coconut shells like on Gilligan's Island. This is what I think about so that I can pretend this isn't happening. But it's all happening. And off he will go. I'm gonna predict he'll lose 17 sets of earbuds as a freshman at Loyola New Orleans. 

Yesterday I spoke to my good friend Leslie and we caught up on all the college news. I told her Will is going to New Orleans and that I was worried, because I know the dangers of New Orleans as a former Tulane grad. She said something so sensible to me, something like, "If he's a good student now and a good kid, wouldn't he continue to be that in New Orleans?" 

I said, "Leslie that's crazy talk!" And then I laughed. Because she's right. Or as my mom often says, "Honey, he's cooked." Or baked. Basically, he's done. He's made. He's Will. 

NB: This is Will with Lars Ulrich from Metallica at Berklee last summer. I'm not Facebook friends with Lars or else I would totally tag him in this post. Rock on!

Act As If This Is Your Last Chance

My friend Julie and I had a pretty funny conversation this afternoon, or it seemed funny to us. Through crackling cell phones we had a series of "old people" exchanges as follows,

"I'm hot," I yelled.
"What?" she yelled back.
"I'm hot," I yelled.
"What?" she yelled back.

This went on for at least a minute. A glimpse of things to come. 

At the same time, Will, my son was trying to tell me something about his scholarship money from Loyola in New Orleans. Some extra financial aid had appeared out of nowhere. A gift from the heavens. Great. Fantastic. At last, we can relax.

Then I opened the mail. You, Will,  have 8 absences, of which you are only allowed 12 in English for the entire year.  Or you lose credit and I don't know, maybe lose your biggest scholarship opportunity at Loyola. That's $15,000. 

I panicked. I got mad. It's like all the stages in Death and Dying by Kubler-Ross. Really panicking because it is frightening trying to get a kid into college these days and then figure out how to pay for it. 

I'm trying to be Irish Zen like my friend Lou Lou Mulderrig or my other friend Mike Casey. Just breathe, take it easy and know everything will be okay.  But that's not really how I tend to think. I tend to think the worst, predict the worst, fret about the worst case scenario that I know lies just around the bend. 

Until the worst case scenario happens, and then my thinking switches into another level of panic something like, "What if this is it?" I've experienced these moments under positive circumstances, for example when you see a landscape like parts of Texas and Louisiana, or pretty much anywhere on the Pacific Coast Highway. It's overwhelming, the feeling of smallness and finite and wow. This is really it.

And sometimes it happens in an emergency room, when I see my son attached to tubes and oxygen meters. Or when the vet finds Daisy, our beloved Doodle, has swollen lymph nodes. Or when, or when. It happens all the time. 

Bargaining kicks in. Dear god, I will do this thing, if you'll do this one for me. And the one thing becomes another, and another, until I would sell my soul to have one more chance. As I sit here thinking about how to tell Will that the absences in English could sink his ship, I try to also think of what I would say if I had one last chance. 

"Dear Will," I hope I would say. "It has been my great honor and pleasure to be your mom. You have a kind heart, a wonderful curiosity, a strong body and voice, a magnetism that could work in your favor if used wisely, an oblivious in the clouds nature that I think has to do with the music in your head, crazy confidence, less than exceptional work ethic and organizational habits. You would give a friend your last dollar and way too much of your time, so choose them wisely."

You asked me today how Dad and I raised an awesome kid like you -- not your words but I won't repeat them because you're a teenager and sometimes you say stupid stuff.

I think your dad and I made conscious decisions about choosing each other and not making the not-so-great relationship decisions we'd made in the past. We avoided certain patterns that were not healthy for either of us. We also discussed up front very important issues like how to discipline, how to talk to you, what to do about media (or too much of it), getting outside to build strength, what was important for your development. Most importantly, and THIS IS SO IMPORTANT, we wanted to keep an honest, open relationship with you. So we made a decision early on that if you told us the truth, we wouldn't punish you.

From what I've seen with your friends, this has sometimes been perceived as a positive and often times a negative. Some parents don't want to know what's happening. We do.

Full circle back to my typical worst case scenario thinking. You can't miss any more classes Will or you'll risk your scholarship, or worse, graduation. I'm seeing Poseidon Adventure scenes now in my head - the old one with Shelly Winters. 

But what's really important is to put this in context. I need to spend more time thinking like it's my last chance. When I think that something is finite, when we're in the ER with you because you've been bitten by a dog, fallen down a water slide, are overcome by asthma, then I start to think clearly about what is important. 

Dear Will. It has been my great honor and pleasure to be your mom. 

(NB This is one of my favorite videos of you singing at Greenfield Hills Congregational)

Will Morton Singing Hey Stranger

The Angel I Envision

 












My son Will wrote and performed this song at some point in our living room. I only found out about it yesterday.