LIFE IS ONE LONG MUSICAL

Today we were talking on Facebook about old songs and their lyrics. Jill joined in the conversation, and she and I began to converse using lines from different songs. This reminded me of the songs that she and I shared in some way over the years. Jill laughed and said "Life is one long musical", and I thought, how true!

When Jill and her brothers were very young our family went through a very tumultuous time. Things were very bad between me and my husband, the boys seemed to be getting into some kind of trouble at school a lot, and I had come to a point in my life when I felt trapped and alone. Alone except for my little girl. It was almost as if we had come to a place where it was just her and me against everyone else.

At that time a song came out sung by Helen Reddy, and it became very popular. It was called "You and Me Against the World". I'm not sure Jill understood why, but for me it became "our song". At the end of the song a little girl says, "I love you, Mommy." And Helen Reddy says, "I love you too, Baby." To this day, Jill and I end all of our phone conversations with these lines from that song. This has become one of the most precious moments in my life.

Jill and I are huge Barry Manilow fans, unashamedly. One of Barry's songs became a song that she and I would sing to one another for the rest of our lives because it says exactly how we feel about one another. The song is "I Can't Smile Without You". And I can't hear or sing the song without smiling and thinking of my Jill.

When Jill was a teen she and I listened to the radio a lot, listening to oldies and to the new music of the 80s. A group called Huey Lewis and the News began having hits, and she and I liked their music very much. One day I was in my bedroom reading, and Jill had her radio on in her room, so we both were listening. Huey Lewis and the News came on singing their new hit "Happy To Be Stuck With You". When they got to the chorus I looked up to see Jill's hand sticking out around the door to my room with her thumb and pointer finger pretending to be singing "Happy To Be Stuck With You". A new memory had been established, and today we sing those words to one another and enjoy the love that comes with those words. Oh, and we still do the thumb and finger singing.

Uncle John's Pun

    One morning I picked up my son John to go 

      to breakfast with him. As I backed out of the driveway 

     and started to pull away I noticed that his front 

       door was not closed completely, but standing half open. 

           I said to John, "Why is your door ajar?", 

       and he replied, "I don't know, Mom, but it's not a jar. 

It's a door."

The Cat-lady Who Lived On the Corner

I grew up in a nice enough neighborhood, but there was an old lady who lived on the corner who was a bit of a hermit. She seldom mowed her lawn or had anyone cut it for her. Over time, the woman had accumulated (this is no exaggeration) fifty to seventy-five cats, all of them underfed and wild. These feral cats would scrounge in everyone's trash barrel in the alley, and if you happened upon them they would pounce, doing some very unpleasant damage. People were on foot a lot, and walking past her house was not always safe.

When I got my driver's license and my car, a fast 1959 Ford, I  left a lot of tire tracks on her lawn if I saw a cat near the street. I never got caught, and no neighbor ever turned me in. I learned to hate cats through that, but thankfully I got over it.

The house has since been torn down, the poor old hermit lady resting in her eternal home. It's been replaced by a very nice modern house, complete with mowed lawn and no cats. That is, none that I can find anyway.