Top 10
We live deep in the woods. Trees so thick the deer get claustrophobia. Today the clouds are grim and moving low over a light but pernicious drizzle. With the leaves gone and the tree trunks soaked, the view out our front windows is like looking at a black and white photograph. That's fine with me. I was an English major, so I see a poem or possibly a scene from a Thomas Hardy novel, but Norma has always craved sunshine. She asks me to turn off the TV and then sits there saying nothing. She just stares straight ahead, her hands tented and trembling.
Fearing she will start pleading to “go somewhere,” I take the blanket lying beside us, move closer to her and spread it over our laps. “We're going to pretend we're on a sleigh ride,” I tell her—hoping that the goofiness of the premise will get her smiling. And it does. It doesn't take much to encourage me, so I stretch out my hands in the manner of someone holding reins, make a clicking sound, and begin singing “Jingle Bells.”
By the time I get to “o'er the fields we go,” she's humming along. I'm not much of a singer, but I remember lyrics by the thousands. So I plow ahead through every damn verse, figuring I'll either inspire or annoy her out of her depression. Occasionally, I'll relax the reins to stare mock-adoringly into her eyes to coax out another grin. No act of idiocy is beneath me.
After “Jingle Bells,” I segue flawlessly into “ 'A' You're Adorable” ('B' you're so beautiful, 'C' you're a cutie full of charm . . . “ And I don't let up until I conclude with a flourish, “It's fun to wonder through/the alphabet with you/and tell you what you mean to me.” I’m making headway because she's still humming along and looking at me like I might eventually be tolerable.
I feel a blog coming on. So I grab a piece of paper and start jotting down the title of each song as I sing it—just in case I ever have to present evidence in court that I'm telling the truth.
Next comes “Up a Lazy River,” which Norma really likes, as I figured she would. When we were newlyweds, we used to spend hours sitting beside the Blanchard River in Findlay, Ohio, which was supposedly the inspiration for “Down By the Old Mill Stream.” I was just getting into my first college teaching job then and Norma was taking a French class. We'd sit there in the Depression era town park, with its concrete tables and benches, and I'd check the textbook as she repeated the phrases she was trying to learn. There was a boatman there who gave short rides up and down the narrow stream for 50 cents a person, a price that in 1960 strained our entertainment budget but was too romantic to turn down.
How this song should lead me into singing “Mona Lisa” (and imagining Nat “King” Cole wincing), I don't know. But Norma likes “Mona Lisa,” as her head resting on my shoulder now attests. I trot out “That Old Black Magic,” but it gets me nothing, and I decide never to sing it again.
With “Scotch and Soda,” I once more strike gold. The Kingston Trio was our Beatles when Norma and I first dallied. So “Scotch and Soda” and “The Seine” routinely fueled our madness. After Norma had one of her heart operations, the guitarist Pete Huttlinger (who later became our beloved son-in-law) learned “Scotch and Soda” as a gift to Norma and came to her house when she was recovering just to play it for her.
A couple of days ago, a friend brought us a DVD of the 2001 movie, “Moulin Rouge.” Fascinating though it was, it was too visually frenetic for Norma and me to finish watching. But it did bring to mind the 1952 “Moulin Rouge,” which is surely why I find myself now singing its theme'--”Where Is Your Heart”--to Norma. It must be working, because she does not recoil from my embrace.
Showoff that I am, I have to relate to Norma how the earlier “Moulin Rouge” is linked to the later one, just so she will have something else from me to ignore. I explain that Jose Ferrer, who starred in the 1952 flick, was married to Rosemary Clooney, who's the aunt of George Clooney, who co-starred in the 1997 movie “The Peacemaker” with Nicole Kidman, who stars in the later “Moulin Rouge.” I get a yawning ovation. Oh, the things this kid beside me could learn had she an open mind.
Oblivious to the weather but perhaps prompted by my singing, Norma says we should go for a walk. I tell I have something even better and sing to her every last word of “Let's Take An Old -Fashioned Walk.” (“I know a girl who declined/couldn't make up her mind/She was wrapped up and sold/coming home from an old-fashioned walk.”)
And still she hums. I think I'm onto something.
I surrender to the gentle nudging of free-association and next come up with “A Tree in the Meadow,” the first lines of which are, “There's a tree in the meadow/with a stream drifting by/and carved upon that tree I see/I'll love you 'til I die.” The song was popular about the same time I became biologically attuned to its sentiment. That's why it's so dear to my heart. Norma likes it, she says, but I know it was too long before her time to take hold.
I wrap things up with “You Belong to Me,” a favorite of Norma's and one she and chanteuse Julia Rich used to sing together when Julia was meeting with Norma every week to see how music affected her memory. She no longer sings words.
But it's at times like this, when her doldrums pull me out of my own, that I realize how much fun Norma still is to be with. She likes for me to joke with her, so I tell her if I ever see her lying still, I'm not going to hold a mirror up to her mouth to see if she's breathing—I'm just going to hum “Stardust” into her ear and see if she grins.