Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

My Songs

Where Have all The Flowers Gone, a song dealing with way wars destroy an entire generation, was popularized by folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary in their 1962 debut album.

***

Someone said that as long as we live, there is never enough singing. 

Alas, for me, the soundtrack of my life has seemed to come to an end. No tune appeals to me anymore.

I can't even sing in my mind one line of the songs that I used to treasure.

So, where have all the flowers gone? 

Young girls have picked them, every one.

Where have all the young girls gone? 

Gone for husbands, every one.

Where have all my songs gone? 

Gone.

Fini

Thank Heaven For Little Girls

My Songs

Thank Heaven For Little Girls is a 1957 song written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. It was sung by Maurice Chevalier in the 1958 film Gigi.

***

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. - Anonymous

It was a Mother’s Day of epic proportions.

I got a blue-and-tan striped shift dress and a Victoria magazine with a picture of an idyllic French countryside on the front cover.

And dangling cat's eye earrings from Pier One that sparkled when I laughed.

Best of all?

I had conned almost-four and five-year old daughters to sing at the Mother's Day tea in church. I thought my song selection was perfect.

Thank Heaven For Little Girls.

I had coached my innocent ones, teaching them gestures that went with each significant phrase. 

Those little eyes so helpless and appealing

When they were flashing

Send you crashing through the ceiling.

I remember listening, wide-eyed and stupid, as I accompanied them on the guitar.

I thought they looked like this.

They're older now.

For little girls get bigger every day

They grow up in the most delightful way.

But no matter how old they get, my heart will always be with them. 

Some days, when there aren't any songs in my heart, I quietly sing anyway. 

Thank heaven for my little girls. 

(To be continued)

Close To You

My Songs

Close To You is a song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. The best-known version is that recorded by the Carpenters American duo in 1970.

***

Music replays the past memories, awaken our forgotten worlds and make our minds travel. - Michael Johnson

Why do birds suddenly appear

Every time you are near?

The singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from the heart. 

My insides were turning over.

Just like me, they long to be

Close to you

It was the year of a brief but intense infatuation for a good-looking, John Lennon look-alike, basketball superstar.

I remember how I would try to look cute in front of him, but would end up looking stupid.

How saying the nickname I created for him that only my best friend and I knew brought a smile to my face, a twinkle to my eye, and a skipped beat to my heart.

And every time he walked by and smiled... 

Oh, when he smiled... I'd melt and stars would fall down from the sky (even if it were broad daylight). 

Crushes were so awful. 

In my heart, I was singing.

Close to you.

Wa, close to you.

(To be continued)

Imagine

My Songs

Imagine is a song by Beatles musician John Lennon from his 1971 album of the same name.

***

The music of memory has its own pitch, which not everyone hears. - Anonymous

Freedom and unity.

In mid-college, naive about the world and plagued by concerned parents, I semi-divulged in activism that was in vogue at the time. I joined the band wagon of dreamers who imagined an idealistic scenario where everyone would live life in peace.

I tagged alongside the banner-carrying throng chanting, To the wrongs that need resistance, to the right that needs assistance, to the future in the distance, give yourselves.

We swayed to the tune of Lennon's Imagine, brandishing hope, love, and trust in a world where there is no heaven. 

No hell below us. Above us only sky.

I imagined all the people living for today.

Nothing to kill or die for. No religion, too.

Longing for a world that will be as one. 

(To be continued)

April Love

My Songs

April Love is a song by Pat Boone, also used in a 1957 movie with the same title, starring Pat Boone and Shirley Jones.

*** 

We love music for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch. - Letitia Landon

Music is the way our memories sing to us across time. 

Thus I'm reprising past years with some of My Songs, starting with this one, way back in high school.

Pat Boone's April Love.

April love is for the very young

Every star's a wishing star that shines for you.

Humming along while listening to this tune on the radio was really the first music I was ever connected to.

When pimples were living on my face but I didn't see some rent. 

When in my early teens, I started to grow up and noticed boys' looks, whereas before I had thought boys had as much personality as coat hangers.

It was that time before my heart knew to protect itself. When everything important was raw and exposed. 

That moment when I felt like flying or jumping because my crush just smiled at me.

When conversely, I got depressed because my sweetie didn't come to school.

It's funny how a melody can sound like a memory. 

Of sudden showers that could grow flowers for my bouquet.

Of a certain smile that made my heart skip. 

Of that time in my life when love was all of the seven wonders.

(To be continued)

For Ivy

My teacher asked my favorite color. I said 'rainbow.' - Anonymous

In an ordinary world, you appeared like a double rainbow.

Through the years, you've come in colors everywhere, adding brightness to my gray skies.

Top left: Hot Springs, Arkansas: May 2022 | Top right: With Pink Flamingoes. Pittsburg Zoo: July 2022  Bottom: Easter, 2022

That's the reason my heart leaps up

when I behold you.

Far left: "Who dis?" | Left: "Who dat?"Alice on 70's sitcom "The Brady Bunch." Halloween, 2021

A promise of sunshine after rain. 

Of calm after storms. 

Whee! Ziplining in Hawaii. July 2022

Of joy after sadness.

Of peace after pain. 

Right: Not Covid-safe at a wedding. "I blame the Chardonnay." Cincinnati: September 28, 2021

Rightmost: Showing off dance moves

Of love after loss.

Meeka celebrates a birthday. Columbus: September 26, 2020

Welcome Home! June 21, 2017

During those times when I'm afraid that I’d forgotten all the colors of the rainbow, I remind myself that I know just where I can find them again.

I quote these lines from Lord Byron in my wish for you, on this, your birthday: 

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. 

The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, 

and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray. 

***

Read on for a bonus tribute, recently found from a fading dot-matrix printout.

Tribute to Iris Velasco

on her induction to the National Merit Society

May 1, 1991

 Northwest Community Christian School

You are a special baby and will always be Guging, Reesie-Owie, Gugsie, and Sampaguita.

You have always been independent from the time you were just a little grape, deciding when you wanted to get out into the world and not giving us much of an advanced notice. Remember my story of how I wasn't really sure whether my delivery time had come?

Even when you were growing up, you pretty much knew what to wear or change into (which happened several times because you had wet your skirt or underwear). At 7-11 or was that at Circle K, once more, you demonstrated that your time was yours alone to decide - that was when you made that puddle in the store.

You have always been unique in your own way - with the word peach as your first word, rather than the traditional Mama or Papa of common babes. In your crib, you could only take a nap when you were set in the seater - what a sight you were -comparable only to the latest spectacle of you in our Campo Bello pool, as you had floated that one afternoon, with your multi-colored sunglasses, variegated patterned and colored swimsuit, and colored toenails sticking out.

The better parts of you include your concern for the environment, the poor, the hungry, and the needy. That is a good trait which most people are lacking in. From you, we are also learning in that aspect.

The best part that, at least I am in awe of, is your gift of music. As you religiously touch those piano keys, I could see your Pa's hunched position, as he produces the same wonderful music, which is perhaps his best legacy. When you perform, even if I dread to watch and would close my eyes, I would peek at times and literally gape in amazement at the agility of your little fingers. See, you did get something from practicing your cut, cut, cut activities with your scissors.

It goes without saying that comparable to your musical talent is your mind: which is not only intelligent but also logical and practical. It is your efficiency in thinking out all aspects of a task which is one of your best virtues.

And yet, even if you were not all of the above, I will still be writing this - perhaps saying something else, but it will still be written in love, for whatever you are.

Congratulations, little Iris! Keep up and count on us to be there to stand behind you.

If there is a reminder which we would like to leave with you, Iris, it is that what you have is but a gift. Qualities worth honoring, when coupled with humility and gratitude to the One source of all beauty, goodness, and truth, will work out always for the best.

Your sister, your Pa and I bless and honor you on this day. We are proud of you and love you, Iris!

###

Gion

Iconic Edifices: Kyoto, Japan

Finally, finally, FINALLY...

The place that I dreamed about and crossed my fingers for in the past 15 years or so (since reading and watching Memoirs of a Geisha) has become a reality.

With numerous other tourists, I'm in Gion, Kyoto's most famous geisha district, hoping to tick off at the same time a must-see subsidiary item. 

To catch a glimpse of a geiko or maiko.

What?! Who?! Were you expecting me to say, geisha?

Confused? 

I was, too, at first. 

Here's what I've learned.

Geisha, as it is known in Tokyo, is called a geiko in Kyoto. A maiko is a younger woman or even a child who is training in the arts of the geisha and geiko.

Now that terms have been cleared, let's look around this iconic place, shall we?

Umm... See that traditional wooden machiya townhouse? That is what I think my front entry could look right now.

Wooden lattices on the first floor facade. Unpainted maybe, just like those. Or painted in red ochre. 

With a second story window that is not made of wood, but of earthwork. An insect cage window, our tour guide explains. I wonder why?

What do you think about that entrance door? Too narrow, do you agree?

It looks so closed-in and mysterious. I bet I could easily do a reno on that and have it open into a big tatami room.

And shōji walls. Yes, please.

But enough daydreaming...

For shortly, an excited murmur runs through the crowd. Within seconds, it becomes the wild buzz like that of a high school auditorium before the teachers take charge.

Everyone is talking all at once. 

I have been patiently waiting for this moment.

A maiko... 

Ahh... Quaint. Exquisite.

She is shuffling in a pair of cumbersome zori flip-flop sandals. 

Her kimono, long, colorful, and intricately adorned with embroidery, has extra long sleeves that touch the ground when she drops her arms. Her collar is red, and her obi is long and wide.

Our tourist guides explains, She must be on her way from an engagement at an 'ochaya' tea house.

I'm fascinated, staring at her ultra-white face. Way too light, rendering her with a ghostly appearance. Her okiya 'mother' obviously has not heard of, or doesn't really care about, matching her makeup to her skin tone. 

I'll concede, though, that it goes well with the hair. No messy bun for this lady. Hers is a low, flattened chignon that is elaborately decorated with combs and hairpins. 

FYI: Have you heard that in order to keep this hairstyle in as perfect a condition as possible, a maiko is unable to use pillows and has to sleep with her neck in a small wooden support?

マジで 

(A Japanese interjection for, Seriously)

In order to become accustomed to this practice, the maiko’s mentor often places rice around the base of the support. If in the morning, rice grains are found in her hair, the maiko knows she has moved her head too much while asleep.

What more can I say? Such is an apprentice's life in Gion.

She flits away like a butterfly. I try to listen to her footsteps, but she has left without a whisper of a sound.

In Gion, there is only the exhalation of the wind and the seasonal sound of a wind-bell in the distance.