Major Lance - Um Um Um Um Um Um

I have several families. My nuclear; my mom, dad, brother, niece and I. (we are the only ones of us around for hours in any direction.) My extended; the ones sprinkled through Mount Airy and Galax - my aunts, uncles, cousins and remaining grandparents. The hyper-extended; the few floaters in Detroit, Virginia, SC and even Germany. Then the surrogate families… since my brother and I grew up so “far away” from our other kin, we were adopted into a few other groups, we were raised by villages… 1) Our church and 2) my dad’s coworker world. This song makes me think of #2 (although my church family is a huge part of who I am, even though I no longer associate myself with this church – a post for another time, I’m already mentally preparing for it).

The 80s in Raleigh was a much different place than it is now. I grew up off Lake Wheeler road, (an area eaten alive with subdivisions and strip malls now,) but the house my father built, at the end of the cul-de-sac still remains. I find myself sometimes driving by, it’s not too far from my home now… about halfway between where I live inside the beltline and my parents’ home in Apex. Driving down that little unlined back road beneath the loblolly pines and puttering past the split level ranch homes of that neighborhood really does something to me. I time travel every time. I am kissing a boy for the first time, (Chris) after he pops a wheelie off a plank of plywood propped on a cinderblock in his back yard. I am learning to ride my bike, albeit pathetically, while the whole neighborhood watches me crash. I hear pine needles crunching beneath my Zips. I smell dogwoods and lumber while my dad builds the freestanding garage... But one of the strongest memories I have of that house are the block parties.

Does anyone even have block parties anymore? Does penny candy still exist? I can understand that my niece may never know what a VHS tape or a rotary phone is; I got that. But trick or treating without fear? Banana seat bicycles and realistic toy guns without the orange cap in them? (My God, did you ever think they would stop selling Jell-o Pudding Pops? They did! They are gone! You will never eat another REAL Jell-o Pudding Pop!) Wandering off deep into the woods to explore for hours with the promise to be home by dark and never explaining where you’ve been… can kids even do that now? That was the majority of me and my brother’s “play time” as kids… just… walking off into the woods... Exploring. We would walk for miles up into strangers’ back yards and then just… wander back. Stick fighting; jumping creeks… are there even any creeks left in the 27606? Lake Wheeler is 1/3 the size it was when I was a kid. We didn’t have shows the glorified teen pregnancy much less even understand the concept of reality TV… we watched The Dukes of Hazzard and the Muppet Show and we went to bed.

My dad began working for this company almost 40 years ago. Rather than go into his entire history of employment, I will tell you he worked his way up through college, starting as a surveyor and ending up in upper management when he finally retired a few months ago. My dad got me my current job, where I worked 2 stories below him for the past 6 years, with him and the extended family I grew up with. I loved working with my dad and these guys. I wish he was still here. Dad basically created the department he later became responsible for. The men who created this section with him worked with him (some are still here) from day one. These men (and women) became my dad’s best friends and one of my surrogate families. They would always throw Christmas parties together, we kids all graduated kind-of around the same time (I was younger than most,) and we all played together. One of the best parties the group would throw, and the ones that stick out the most are the annual pig-pickins.

Please remember, this is going back a lot of years for me, so while my details may not be 100% accurate, the feelings of these memories are flawless. The smell of the pig cooking, the crispness of the fall air as they day would come to a close… Chocolate Chess Pie, my mother’s laughter, vinegar, my dad in flannel with a big full red beard, my second dads; Jim and Scotty teasing me and encouraging my shenanigans, showoffs and general attention seeking behaviour; and the music. Always the music. Dad would pull out his full Kenwood stereo and set up the vinyl. Mostly Carolina Beach music, Motown and a little classic rock thrown in. I sometimes wonder who has listened to my dad’s vinyl more now… me or him. How many times can a child listen to Steppenwolf’s ‘68 self titled first album and be normal? Is it ‘normal’ for an 8 year old girl to know all the words to The Pusher? (ps - in case it is not blazingly apparent... i was perhaps the coolest kid ever.) Dad would test me, play “name that tune” to entertain his friends. I’ve mentioned it before, when my parents would punish me, they wouldn’t send me to my room or ground me, they would take away my music… Hell. On. Earth.

There is very little Shag music I can hear now-a-days and not think of these pig pickins. Where I don’t think of that little ranch house and the smell of the pig cooking and the taste of the sweet iced tea. I hope I can give my own non-existent children experiences like this one day. Or, at least my niece. These songs, Major Lance, the Temptations, Wilson Pickett, the Drifters, the Coasters, the Platters, and the Four Tops – these songs are the ones that bring me back with the strongest intensity to the innocence and childhood euphoria of Swiftbrook Circle. Much like Hank Williams, Sr and roy are the strongest connection to my mom for me; This music, the deep swinging soul of the Southern black man, this will always bring me back to my daddy.



FYI – my dad is the whitest man on earth. My family feeds on irony, whether they recognize it or not.

Roy Orbison - Indian Wedding

(note: minimal linkage in this post as it is a little too intense and i don't want distractions)




Most of my childhood memories until the age of, well, until I wasn’t technically a child anymore, are centered on my father. I am a daddy’s girl, this is well known. My dad is without a doubt my best friend. When shit goes down, when I have a funny story or something amazing happens, I call Pop first. This, however, isn’t intended to say I have no memories of my mother during my childhood or that her love or presence in my life is diminished in any way. It’s complicated. It took a lot of therapy for me to work it all out. Sometimes I think I have it all figured out, Sometimes I don’t, most times I assume it doesn’t really matter too much at this point. We are all who we’re going to be now.

When I think back on the things that stick out the most to me as child, the largest memories; vacations, Saturday errand runs, playing in the woods, etc… there is a large unexplainable gap where I always thought my mother should be. (NOTE: There is a part of me that hesitates to explain my mother in this light, because words cannot fully express how much I love and truly admire her now, but I am comforted in the fact that there is literally no actual connection between this blog, my true identity, and therefore her identity. Best thing about mom, really, and best trait I got from her is that she literally wouldn’t give a shit if you knew anyway. She knows who she is and doesn’t care what you think of her. My mom is life’s biggest mystery to me. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand her.)

My mother slept through the majority of my childhood, as I can recall. I may be wrong. My memory may be skewed. I am entirely open to the possibility that I have over-exaggerated this fact. But to my best recollection my mom was not present. She only worked at the shop Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Somehow, even having the majority of the week with her and then having a year or two of just me and her together while my brother had started school still eludes me. I know now that she was suffering from a deep depression. Mom was severely overweight until the early 2000s. Now she is thin and gorgeous, after much work, a hysterectomy, and a lot of self actualization. I am extremely proud of her, but back then I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t play with us and got so angry when we were loud or destructive.

I spent a lot of time in my early teens and 20s acting out against my mom. She was “against” me. Everything I seemed to say and do was somehow the exact opposite of what she wanted from me and what she expected. I still am not sure if I was simply rebelling against her or if that’s just the way things turned out. I know that it doesn’t matter now, the past is the past, but I think about some of the things we would argue about back then (and sometimes even now) and try to piece together who she is. There are aspects of her personality that I know I have so clearly adopted. One of the biggest jokes in my family is that I spent the first 30 years of my life looking just like my dad and suddenly now my mother and I could be sisters.

My father and my mother are so complete opposites from each other I wonder sometimes how they even spoke to one another after their first date. Quickest explanation: dad is very extroverted and needs a lot of attention and reassurance (he was an only child); mom couldn’t care less if she didn’t speak to another human being that she wasn’t related to for the rest of her life (she is the youngest of 8.) I spent the majority of my life trying to be the opposite of everything that my mom was; misanthropic, quiet, a loner, and quick to anger (I now know I misread anger for her passion and intensity.) Now in the past few years I feel her coming out in me. That fierce dedication and love for family, the passion for creativity and beauty, the revelry in quietness, the irritation at interruption, and the need for solitude; I am honored to have this part of her.

In my teens we would fight incessantly. My hair, my room, the choices I made for my future, the way I dressed, my grades; I thought she was just being impossible back then, now I know that need for the ones you love to do better than they are doing. I know that on a very deep familial and personal level. I can remember when I was first learning to drive and we were riding in her white Volvo back from church and we were being vicious with each other. I said something spiteful and teenager-y like “you don’t care about me, you just want me to be as miserable as you.” or something. God knows. She stuck her finger in my face and screamed at me to never say something like that again. That there was no one on this earth she loved more and that she would fight the devil himself for me. I’ve never forgotten it. I literally think about that moment all the time as being one of the first moments I truly felt what love was, beyond the normal every day shit you take for granted from your family…

Digression (because I’m a very rambly/long winded mood today): I often think that this moment defined a lot of who I am and what I believe now. Perhaps so much of my belief in love as a living breathing thing is tied to my faith and devotion to my family. I know I have this deeply compulsory need inside me for reassurance and feedback. I need to know I am not fucking up at every turn. Sometimes I need to know that mom still feels that way. Or dad, even though he’s never said it and I know he feels it. Also, even, from my brother. Mom taught me about the ferocity of true love; willing to fight through hell for someone because you can and you will. Mom and Jesus both taught me that for the sake of the truest love, there is no greater gift than to die fighting for someone you love. I (luckily?) somehow learned to translate this ferocity outside of my family. This moment with my mother in the car is what taught me that for true love to exist, you need someone who will face hell for you without the promise of ever turning back. So far I’ve only found this through a very select set of people. And I know in my heart, when I say I am looking for “the one” or the man I will marry, I am looking for the man who will lay down everything and defend me; always have my back, loyalty beyond all my stupid mistakes and poor decisions; just like family. This is why I want to be married. I want someone who has CHOSEN to be my family, someone who has chosen to face the devil for me. That is a love *almost* more powerful than blood to me. Sometimes I think about how close I was once to being married and I wonder if I let that chance for that kind of love slip through my fingers. Then I think about friends that have been through divorce; to tie yourself to someone to that level of intensity to be betrayed by circumstance or your own heart. How do you survive it? How do you divorce your own mom? (It’s almost the same level to me.) Sometimes I think I am so ready for it, for that kind of love and loyalty to someone. Sometimes I can’t imagine why anyone would ever be that crazy or vulnerable as to tie themselves to my level of love. Sometimes I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t.

…end of digression, back to memory:

…Not to say there are no memories of my mom at all in my early childhood. They are there, but for some reason I mostly remember being ignored until I was irritating enough to be punished. I do not want to paint my mother in any sort of negative light, but I am only speaking the truth. She knows all this. She was there. I can remember strange beautiful moments with her in the old house… lying in bed in the dark while she drew circles and infinity symbols in the air with the lit end of her cigarette (she quit smoking when I was still young.) I remember her driving me to piano lessons, taking care of me when I was sick, climbing out of the pool and running to her for change for the snack stand. This song brings up one of my very favorite memories of my mother.

In the living room of the old house, the ceilings were white with large oak beams leading to an A-line point in the center. Along the wall behind the laundry room was the entertainment center, which I spent many an hour lying in front of the Kenwood with my father’s records and headphones. Across from the TV were two corduroy, cornflower blue lay-z-boy recliners. I can’t remember a time when these twin recliners weren’t worn on the arms and I’ll never forget the springy pop and click-click-click they would make when you opened the footrest and tilted them back. They sat in front a large bay window that looked out of the front yard. The bay window had a small window seat, large enough for tchotkes, one of which was a conch shell as large as my, then, head.

Mom always sang. Both of my parents taught me a deep and reverent respect and love for music. They both sang all the time. Dad sang along with the radio, mom dad not. Mom would specifically turn off the radio at home or in the car to sing to us. Mostly old honky-tonk like Hank Williams or Ernest Tubb, but sometimes and more often than not, she would sing Roy. There is rarely a time I hear a Roy Orbison song and don’t think of my mother singing me to sleep with it. This song specifically was one of her favorites.

I can remember very vividly being around 4 years old, having been sick (I had thrown up I think,) and mom was holding me in her lap in the recliner to the right of the window, rocking us back and forth. I was wearing a cotton nightgown and clutching my favorite blankie. No TV or radio was on; it was a bright sunny day. Mom sang this song. Mom doesn’t have the best voice but she is always in tune. There is a weight and throaty-ness to it that makes it one of my very favorite voices to hear. I wonder one day if she would let me record her singing this song.

Unfortunately I know there will come a day I will need it very badly.


PS - here is another quick story about Roy.