Playing Life by Ear: Notes from Eighty-Nine Years of Living, Learning, Laughing, Loving, and Believing

Copyright © 2015 Doris Markland.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5992-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5991-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015901567

iUniverse rev. date: 03/16/2015

CONTENTS

Preface

LIVING

Playing by Ear

Rain on My Parade, Please

DeKarmalizing

My Little Dumplings and Diversity

Palmer Method

Palmer Method

The Family Hairlooms

Our American Idyll

The Mission

And That Leaves Blue

Touring in the Twenties

The Nest Is Never Empty

Part I—The Elephant in the Room

Part II—Moving On

Articles I Started

Living Moments

Listen to the House

Sun Bonnet Sue

The Horizon

Walls

Hang Loose

Living Memories

The Round Table

Snow Vacation

The Quilting Bee

LEARNING

Young and Old

The Testy Two-Year-Old

Great Grandma

Thoughts on Life

My Comings and Goings

Centering

Weaving

Seesaw

Twenty-Five Words or Less

I Heart My IBM Computer

The World Is My Cloister

Connecting

Captcha the Intruders

Highlights of My Brilliant Smoking Career

A Grandmother Speaks On Being a Talent Scout

Their Words Walk with Me

About Time

LAUGHING

Funny’s Good but Not to Die For

The Granny Nest

Poems for Fun

Pocket Pleas

Keeping Abreast

Ad Lib

Saturday Evening Postings

Wait!

The Workout

Counterpoint

Marilee We’d Roll Along

A Smutty Story

Lightening Moments

Housewife’s Confession

The Tired Help

Culinary Itch

The Editor

Up Close and Personal

Dermatheology

X-Spendable

It Figures

PTA

The Difference between a Jackass

Snippets

When Grandma Said the F-F-Forbidden Word

Tech Talk

Sign of the Times

He-Mail (or E-Male)

Textception

The Juggler

Literati

Ah Love

LOVING

Come to Mother

Evening Star

Grandchildren

Two-Part Harmony

That’s When I’ll Be There

The Communicator

Lovers of 1943

No Albatross in Heaven

Quiet Moments Heal

Some Things Last Forever

Turn About

Revolving Door

BELIEVING

Thunderburst

Meditation

Afterglow

Abundance

Forever

Goodnight from an Autumn Oak

The Gate

Heirlooms in the Attic

Growing Pains and Pleasures

A Brief History of Hugs

The Good Hug

Lifting the Old Rugged Cross

The New Rugged Cross

They Did It Their Way

Precipice

The Twenty-Third Psalm through My Eyes

The Last Christmas

Soul Survivor

Senior Citizens

Every Body’s Gotta Go

Darling, I Am Growing

The Very Proper Pronoun

From the Mountain

Promise Lands

Looking Back … Looking Forward

My Prayer

To my chil

dren,

Sara, John, and Tom Markland,

who saw me through my life,

with special thanks to Sara,

who saw me through

this book.

PREFACE

This book is not the story of my life but the stories of my life, the kind you share with friends, the kind that linger until you figure out their meaning. It is also a collection of my poetry, some that I wrote for Hallmark or for magazines but more that I wrote for fun.

The stories are true. They are memories not just of what I lived, day to day, but what I thought and what I felt. The mind can be a busy place, but what circulates there goes nowhere if it isn’t also in your heart. Actually, any desire I ever had to communicate or to accomplish or to inspire began in the feeling part of me, and my intellect then joined in to do the work and make it come true.

As you read, I hope that my insights will lead you to insights of your own. I shall be so happy if you find even one thing in my book that has meaning for you.

LIVING

Playing by Ear

They say practice makes perfect, but I say that’s conditional. You have to want to practice. You have to practice the thing that’s right for you.

I received my first piano as a gift under the Christmas tree. It was probably twelve inches long, pale green with white keys. I sat down right there by the tree and played all the Christmas songs we had been singing. I played them perfectly. I was four. The adults were amazed.

So my mother bought a used piano, and of course I was taking piano lessons as soon as I was old enough, playing the scales and exercises over and over and over—and then the assigned nondescript song. I listened for the kitchen door, and when I knew my mother had gone out to work in the garden, I closed my books and played for me. I played the songs we sang in school, the songs we sang in church, the songs I heard on the radio … and the songs I heard in my head. As for the lessons, I continued them for years, but beyond a certain point I stalled, and instruction was pointless.

On the playground, I was the last one chosen for any team—not because I wasn’t popular but because I was small and lacked the spirit of competition. Still, I did make the girls’ basketball team in high school. I was thrilled because it got me out of the ugly, green, belted uniforms we wore for gym class and into the cute, white satin suits of the team. We practiced every day and played games on the weekend. Coach put me in sometimes to spell one of the stars, but I was soon back on the bench.

It should have come as no surprise when, at the beginning of my senior year, he called me into his office and I learned I was on the team only to make the numbers and that I was being replaced by a sophomore who had just moved into town. I was crushed, but my parents were pleased. Years later they told me how they dreaded those moments when I was sent into the game. Years of practice had made no difference. I was not a competitor. I played too nice.

I went to a small but very good college, and because I was offered a minimum music scholarship, I pursued a music major and was selected to sing in their fine touring choir. But we didn’t tour in 1942, because of WWII. Still, I enjoyed the rehearsals and the local concerts, until one day the director took me aside. He was making some changes and told me I was one soprano he wouldn’t need. Curses. In school, studying music, and in all the hours of rehearsals, I had never improved.

I switched to a more general course and was required to have hours in sports. I chose tennis and passed it only because I memorized the rules. Swimming I passed because I could finally make it from one side of the pool to the other. I tried golf and found I couldn’t even beat myself.

As an adult, I played bridge. For years I played in a social foursome, in a contract duplicate club, and sometimes on Wednesdays I played duplicate at the country club after lunch. I liked it because it got me out of the house, the food was good, and I was with friends. It was a long time, however, before I noticed how often a partner was tapping her fingers on the table, waiting for my play because I was listening to the background music or I was watching a robin in the tree outside the window.

One day it came to me clearly. I was not good at bridge, and I wasn’t getting any better. I made calls to opt out and never played bridge again. It felt good, and now I had time for other things.

With friends socially, we often gathered around the piano, and I played the songs they wanted to sing. I played by ear, and it wasn’t perfect, but after all, their singing was not perfect either. They were singing by ear.

In the late fifties or early sixties, I found some success at contests sponsored by companies who asked us to tell why we liked their product in twenty-five words or less. I loved to write, and now for fun I researched how to write greeting cards. It was something I could do at home while the kids were in school. In the quiet of my house, I could hear. And I wrote what I heard. In time, my cards were on several counters, especially Hallmark’s, and eventually my cards bore my name. Not to say this had not taken practice but to say that the practice brought a certain amount of result. Particularly as I learned to listen.

It was a while before it came through to me that in all areas of my life I did best when I made use of my inner wisdom, my inner inspiration, my inner guidance for direction. I do believe my muse is an angel, or perhaps I have several angels who move into my aura to help me when needed, particularly to help me when I’m on track—my track.

No doubt about it. Life is a learning experience. There are things I must do, things I can do, and things I love to do. But I am happiest and most successful when I’m in my feelings, when I’m alert to inner promptings, when I’m playing life by ear.

I have done a lot of things in my eighty-nine years, but nothing tops my performance in 1929, on Christmas Eve, when I was four.

Rain on My Parade, Please

It comes quickly, gray clouds bubbling up on the horizon, a sudden wind, and then an eerie hush that stills the birds, those that haven’t headed south. I step outside to feel the first large splats of rain and then back into the shelter of the open garage to watch the force build.

Straight down at first, the drops become silvery streams, slanting now in sheets that strike and power-wash the driveway, then turn tame and curl in rivers down the street, taking flaky autumn leaves and any last hints of summer.

I stand in the doorway, thrilled, breathing in the delicious scent of nature’s shower, shivering a little but not from the cold.

I’m reliving one of the strongest memories from my childhood in the thirties, the dry years, when rain was so desperately needed in the Midwest. Farmers watched the sky day by day, shaking their heads when rogue clouds built and frayed away, one wisp at a time, leaving us still with the plague of red dust that wasn’t even ours.

But then came a day when the sky grew angry and rumbled with promise. We felt the tension, and so did our animals, when streaks of lightning came. The family gathered on the lawn, unbelieving, then rejoicing at the first raindrop, laughing and running in circles, soaked to the skin as it began to pour. I had never seen my parents so happy.

The feeling of those moments registered with me as deliverance, the opening of a window of hope. Rain meant relief from the heat. It meant prosperity for the crops. It meant a cleansing of the lawns, the roads, the atmosphere … and the soul.

From then on, mental images of certain rainy days were captured and stored in my mind as special.

Picture: On a rainy day, I could play outside in my oldest clothes, squeezing mud between bare toes, running into new ponds in the driveway, deep lakes in the hollows of the lawn, laughing, rain slicking my hair and streaming down the length of me. Click.

Picture: My fiancé, home from the war, arriving unexpectedly to take me to work. He comes to the door with an umbrella and a large bouquet of lilacs, covered with droplets and smelling like heaven. We dash through the rain, holding hands. Click.

Picture: My son, at five, in yellow slicker and hat, turns to wave good-bye as he trudges off to kindergarten, sloshing through September puddles, grinning with pride in his new independence. Click.

Every picture that I saved is there in my permanent mental hard drive, and on rainy days, I bring them up and look at them. It’s a nice feeling.

Other pictures that didn’t turn out so good, like the time I ran out of gas on the freeway in the middle of a storm, or