Lori's Lyric of the Day

Todays lyric refers to the migration of many Appalachian families  north during the 50's through the 70's. Many of my family members were among them. Some stayed, and some went home when they couldn't handle being away from home any longer.

23

c. 2003 Lori Clevenger



I put my foot on the highway like a toe in cold water
Wishing I was somewhere else, but so afraid to go
There was crying behind me, and crying inside me
But when life says it's time to leave, you just don't tell it no

So I joined the desperate caravan leaving Appalachia
I wiped the coal dust off my clothes, and the scales from my eyes
But there was no Emerald City, just a gray town with no pity
And those city nights were darker than those Logan County mines

Everybody else was heading my direction
They were looking for the promised land like me
But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions
and the asphalt's awful hot on 23

There was no work at the factory, they wouldn't hire me in a store
But I was never broke enough to stand in Welfare lines
Folks looked at me funny, I didn't talk like everybody
Soon my reasons for staying became empty alibis

Everybody else was heading my direction
They were looking for the Promised Land like me
But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions
And the asphalt's awful hot on 23

Now it's July hot in Cleveland in a room 10 bucks will buy me
The walls are smoky yellow, the window's painted closed
But I cant stop remembering when, so I'll just pack my things again
An walk back down that blacktop till I find my country road

Everybody else is heading my direction
They've been looking for the promised land like me
But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions
And the asphalt's awful hot on 23

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions
And the asphalt's awful hot on 23....

I put my foot on the highway....

Lori's Lyric of the Day

Waterloo
c.2009 Lori Clevenger

Tin cup hanging on the side of the well
Ice cream melting in a china bowl
These are the stories my memories tell
When the sun rains down from a blue heaven
Like little drops of gold.

Hidden in the attic there were dusty dreams
A secret world for little girls to find
Dolls and dresses and magazines
And Grandma's face smiling back at me
From another place and time

(chorus)
It was a big gray house with a big gray barn
And a light on a pole where the bats flew 'round
I keep a treasured picture of it in my heart
And every road in my memory leads me to
A place called Waterloo

Firefly lighting on the back of my hand
Leaves in the trees whistling old folk songs
Running 'cross the road to where the old barn stands
Theres a ghost that lives in there Mama
Hes been alone so long

(chorus 2)
It was a big round world with a big blue sky
But Summer takes wing when its time to fly
I keep a well worn picture of it in my mind
And every road in my memory leads me to..


That big gray house with the big gray barn
And the light on the pole where the bats flew 'round
I keep a treasured picture of it in my heart
And every road in my memory leads me to
A place called Waterloo..

A Long Time Gone

I took a little time away from this blog over the Summer. It isn't that I was busy, although in some ways, I was. I left a job, had some down time, started a new one, and dealt with life's little fastballs. I'm getting better at ducking. I'm working on bobbing and weaving next...stop, drop and roll is the advanced class...maybe by Christmas.

But I digress..I thought it was time to come back, add a few thoughts, and revisit my old ones. I've been taking some personal inventory lately. Summer days poke at my memories with a very sharp stick, and this Summer more than usual. I turned 47 last month. 47 is dangerously close to 50...a number which freaks me out just typing it...my 30 year High School reunion is coming up next year. I'd like to know when this happened to me...when did I become middle aged? There has been some mistake, clearly. Not only is the number of years wrong, but someone has dyed my roots gray. I do not find this the least bit amusing. And the theft in the night of the elasticity in my skin has me downright pissed off. Don't even get me started on my boobs. Well,since you brought it up..you know the week-old, forgotten, deflated balloons thumbtacked to telephone poles showing you where the birthday party was? Yea...my party's over, too...
Time has kept moving all Summer, having caught me up in its current, and carried me off, kicking and screaming, towards Winter. Life has done the same thing...Spring is over. Summer is fading. Autumn is dropping its colorful curtain all around me. I will look around soon, and it will be Winter. I will look back over the fleeting year that was my life in God's datebook, and wonder, like I am doing today, where it all went.

It's Mothers Day...

...I'm thinking of you today.
I'm remembering the moment I first knew about you, the quickening in my soul that told me you were there.
I'm remembering the joy in my heart and the excitement in my mind as I made all my plans. I imagined how I would tell your daddy and how his eyes would twinkle. How I would tell your grandparents and how they would cry. I imagined telling my friends and how they would share my joy. I pictured myself holding you, before I ever knew if you were a boy or a girl, feeling your warm little body snuggled against my breast while I breathed in the scent of your skin. These pictures are the ones I drew with my psychic hand on the blank pages of my mind, while the hand of God drew a very different one in the book of my life. He drew his picture with a pen dipped in the tears I shed the moment I lost you. The moment you escaped from my life like sand through my fingers. The moment I lost my dreams, my plans, my joy, my baby.
It's Mothers Day.
I'm thinking of you today.

Let's Skip the Fight and Just Make Up

Noone believes me when I say this, but Juergen and I have never had a fight. I honestly don't know why. We are both incredibly hardheaded people. But as a general rule, we agree on just about everything. On the rare occasions we do disagree, we end up teasing each other rather than fighting. Now this is not to say that we haven't made each other mad, or hurt one another's feelings. Its just that we wholeheartedly adhere to the sunset rule: don't let the sun set on your anger. Neither one of us can sleep if the other one is upset. It doesn't matter who's right or wrong. If we want to sleep, we have to hug each other and say "I love you". That way noone admits guilt, but by the time the hug is over we forget we were mad in the first place. Works every time.

For Juergen

The room is dark but there is just enough light from the moon coming through the window that I can see him sleeping next to me. He's on his side with his back to me, which is the way he likes to sleep. "So I don't snore in your ear," he always says with a smile. I want to touch his back but I'm afraid I'll wake him and he worked so hard today. I knew he was tired when he made love to me, but he wanted to anyway. Now I want to touch him, and ask him why he loves me so much. But I lie still and watch him sleep instead. And just as my eyes get heavy, he stirs, and shifts, and rolls over to face me with his arm draped across my stomach. And he snores in my ear.

The Good Daughter

I don't believe I'm cut out for this.

I've been caring for my mother for 12 years. She came to live with me when she and my father separated, and I was moving to Tennessee. She had suffered a heart attack, and had been diagnosed a few years earlier with colon cancer, had gone through treatment, and was recovering. She was beginning to feel well again, and we looked at Tennessee as the beginning of a new life, for her, and for me. I had alot of plans and dreams, and I was happy to have her with me to experience everything.

But Tennessee was hard. We found a nice little house to rent, and I got a job in a Tanning/Nail salon. Business was slow, however, and Mom wasn't getting any of my Dad's military retirement benefits. I took a second job, managing a mall beauty supply store for minimum wage. I worked there all day, and went to the salon at night and on weekends. We still couldn't survive on my income, and to make a long story short, we moved back to Ohio after two rough years. Dad was very frail by then, and he passed away not long after we got home. He and Mom never reconciled, and she continued to live with me. Over the next several years, she developed more health problems...heart trouble, severe hearing loss, macular degeneration which is robbing her of her sight...and just general age related maladies that have her feeling bad alot of the time.

Mom is a stubborn woman. So am I. We've been close my whole life. Being the baby, i had her sole attention a good deal of the time, and we went everywhere together. We loved to go shopping and have lunch, and just run around doing nothing. As she grew older, and I grew more independent, our mutual stubborness began to cause problems. Now, she's 84, and I'm turning 47, and the occasional differences of opinion have turned into full fledged, more-often-than-not arguments.

I try to remember that she is old, ill most of the time, and set in her ways. I try to give her the respect that I know she deserves, and that I want to give her. Most days, I succeed. But other days, when the TV is so loud that the walls are vibrating, and I've folded all the sheets incorrectly, or I've come home from work an hour earlier than I said I would (?), it just doesn't work. When we're making a 20 minute trip to the Wal-Mart across town because she doesn't like the one 5 minutes from our house, and spending 10 minutes deciding which package of paper plates to buy, I forget that I'm supposed to be patient. And when she throws my mail away because I left it on the desk instead of putting it in the drawer, I blow my top. I yell, and slam all the doors I threaten to put locks on, and come very close to getting in the car and just driving away.

I have never given birth to a baby. I've never raised a child. I joke and say, "I don't have kids, I have old people". I've had Mom with me for so long, I should be used to her quirks, and the compromises to my lifestyle that are necessary to keep her with me, but I'm not. I am only human, ONE human at that, and I get tired and frustrated, and I lose my temper. I feel like a heel when that happens. I always apologize, and she always forgives me, and then a few days later, I get something out of the kitchen cabinet without washing my hands first, and all Hell breaks loose.

I'm NOT cut out for this.