A Holiday Poem with Apologies to William Carlos Willams

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the Christmas cookies
that I baked
for you

and that
I intended to put
in your
mailbox

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so crunchy

Seasonal Joys

Mia's starry eyes fixed on the Goodman stage. Her whispering to me, "He said that!" when the Ghost of Christmas Present uses Scrooge's own words, "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" And Larry Yando whom Randy and I have enjoyed as Jafar in the CST's Aladdin and as Dr. Pangloss on this same stage in a Mary Zimmerman Candide, Larry Yando who was a delight in the lead, especially after Scrooge's conversion when he tries to fool Bob Cratchit by acting a cartoony version of his old grumpy self. He pounds the table and growls like an exaggerated bear, the glee bubbling up behind his pretense. I laughed, and cried, of course, at my favorite lines: "Father is so much kinder than he used to be!" and "God bless us, everyone!

Christmas cookies for the neighbors (sugar cookies with the girls wielding the cookie cutters; chocolate mudslide and Martha's fruit and nut cookies with pecans, macadamias, chopped apricots, dried cherries and coconut, yum!)

Teaching myself to play "Christmas Time is Here" on Mia's piano. And then later, sitting next to Mia at the computer, both of us staring at origami photos on the net and figuring out together how to fold a tiny paper piano to give to her piano teacher. I used the same site to find a pattern for a five-pointed star and taught Mia's classmates at the Christmas party on Friday. And they all did it! I love third graders.

The fresh perfume of paperwhites, a surreal touch of springtime in the gloom of short days. (Sometimes, around four in the afternoon, I'll look outside and wonder for a second, "Is this an eclipse?!" then remember, no, it's just winter.)

Nora showing us her new game, "Fwoggy DJ," by squatting like the world's cutest blond amphibian, then hopping in a spirited way that makes my middle-aged thighs and knees wince while she holds an invisible earphone to her ear with one hand and scratches an invisible turntable with the other.

Wearing mile-high hair to Randy's Christmas party, playing three games of pool and winning twice, even if they were sloppy wins (Ian the new assistant called a different pocket for the eight ball and Ian is an honorable man; Matt from marketing scratched on the eight), dancing like mad to Rhianna's new mournful-joyous song and many, many others.

I hope your happy season is also full of fun, friends and family!

Robyn's "Call Your Girlfriend"

Call me a teensy bit obsessed. Can't tell you what I love more, the forward moonwalk, the gawky pirouettes, the minor key, the giant shoes, the somersaults, the single take. There's even a little bit that reminds me of the Super Bowl Shuffle.

But I'm not alone. Here's a beautiful cover and here's a hilarious homage.

Such heartbreak in a synthy club song. Why not consider it a companion piece to Adele's "Someone Like You" (since I like to work Adele into almost everything) and imagine Robyn as the Other Woman?

Happy Anniversary to My Blog!

Our 2006 Christmas card. Out the window you can see, thanks to some Photoshop derring-do by dear Hubby, the fallen tree of my second post.


And our big girls this fall. Mia still smiling, yet with different teeth, Nora still reaching.

It's been five years today* that I started We All Fall Down and what a great ride it has been. Thank you for visiting, my dear readers. Here are few of my favorite posts and oddities from the last five years of writing.

The Point

The girls have transformed from a four year old sprite and her babbling, near-animal toddler sister into a pair of young almost-women. Writing and sharing our family adventures and my own mothering/wifing/being foibles has been both more and less than I originally conceived - less, as I explain here, and more fun, more funny, more healing, more surprising, more connecting, more communal that I had ever hoped.

I'm #4! I'm #4! I'm #4!

Google "sodden prose." Go ahead. This totally cracks me up. I'm also on the charts for "half of life is showing up" (let me take this moment to give Woody Allen some belated thanks) and "Happy Anniversary, Dear Husband," for which I am inordinately and absurdly proud. I will take what the search engines give me.

Only The Good Die Young

Last year was a particularly brutal one and my blog both showed it and helped me through it. During May, as my uncle Phil was leaving us, I only had the energy to post a dark song and an innocent one. That year the world lost Phil, the inspiring Mary Scruggs, and my friends Katy Maguire, John McGinnis, Rachel Levin Troxell, aaaaaaaaaand Paul Mooney.

(Sorry, I have to put in that last bit. Mooney was such a funny dark cynic; he had an ongoing joke about his family never getting the fun they wanted AND having to wait to hear they weren't going to get it.

Paul: (monotone loud-speaker voice) These are the parties that won't fit on the super fun boat ride. Anderson, Smith, Harris, Bailey, AAAAAAAAAAND Mooney!)

Writing the grief was my way to remember and keep the love burning. I miss my friends. I don't seek meaning in their deaths - I refuse to sacrifice them or anyone else I have loved on the altar of my enlightenment, but I do believe I owe them living my life as well and as happily as I can.

Even with the deep losses, writing the five years have been a joy and a celebration for me and I hope a bit of pleasure or interest for you. Hopefully my words have not conveyed so much about the falling down as the getting back up again. Now, let's DANCE!!!







*That is, if you believe the chronology of the posting dates, which I kind of remember fudging because I thought, with newbie, there-must-be-rules-to-this-blogging-business tentativeness, that if a post uses the word "November," it must BE in November.

The Original Version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight"

Solomon Linda (sharp suit on the left) was a South African singer and songwriter who worked cleaning and packing for a Johannesburg record company in the 1930's. In 1939, with his band The Evening Birds, Linda recorded his composition, "Mbube," named for the Zulu word for "lion." The mesmerizing chug of the low-voiced chorus below Linda's high improvised wail made an infectious groove and the 78 rpm record was a South African hit. Although the song sold over 100,000 copies, Linda sold his song rights to the record company for less than two dollars.

Fast forward to the 1950's and folk historian Alan Lomax gives a copy of "Mbube" to Pete Seeger. Thinking the song was a traditional song, handed down and of fair use, Seeger took the chorus of "Uyembube" ("You are a lion" in Zulu), translated it phonetically to "Wimoweh" and recorded it with his folk group The Weavers. The song went on to be recorded internationally by dozens of musical groups, including the doo-wop boy-band the Tokens for whom the song went to #1 on the pop charts, the Kingston Trio, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Jimmy Cliff. In what may have given the song its largest audience, Disney used "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" in the film and stage musical The Lion King.

Solomon Linda died destitute in 1962. It was eighteen years later before his family could afford a tombstone for his grave.

Another tragic story of an artist denied the credit and rewards for his work? Yes, but there's a happy coda. In 2000, Solomon Linda's daughters sued for the rights and royalties to "Mbube." Six years later, they won. The settlement gave Linda's heirs "payment for past uses of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and an entitlement to future royalties" and acknowledgment of Solomon Linda as its co-composer.

Justice prevailing adds another zing of joy to one of the music world's happiest compositions.

Tom Waits Sings A Song For The Day

Well the moon is broken
And the sky is cracked
Come on up to the house

The only things that you can see
Is all that you lack
Come on up to the house

All your cryin don't do no good
Come on up to the house

Come down off the cross
We can use the wood
Come on up to the house
Come on up to the house
Come on up to the house

The world is not my home
I'm just a passin thru
Come on up to the house

There's no light in the tunnel
No irons in the fire
Come on up to the house

And you're singing lead soprano
In a junkman's choir
You gotta come on up to the house

Does life seem nasty, brutish and short?
Come on up to the house

The seas are stormy
And you can't find no port
Come on up to the house

There's nothin in the world
That you can do
You gotta come on up to the house

And you been whipped by the forces
That are inside you
Come on up to the house

Well you're high on top
Of your mountain of woe
Come on up to the house

Well you know you should surrender
But you can't let go
You gotta come on up to the house