Thursday, August 28, 2014

A Move Accompanied by Music



In late May 1967, the four friends whom I’d met at the Loretto Guild suggested that we find a house to rent. One of them worked at the University of Dayton and knew that during the summer months the University rented the houses in which students had lived during the school months. At the end of May we moved into the house pictured in last Thursday’s posting. We stayed there for three months. During that time I dated a little. By the end of the summer that had ended.
         In August one friend began to study the classified ads in the Dayton Daily News. She found a three-bedroom apartment at a “swingin’ singles” complex that boasted a swimming pool with a concrete surround furnished with deck chairs, tables with umbrellas, and hootenanny music.
         For that swingin’ singles’ pool I bought a two-piece swimsuit. It consisted of a top that was like the modern-day sports bras and a pair of shorts that came four or five inches down my thighs. The suit was modest, its pattern a smattering of tiny pink, blue, and yellow flowers with green leaves on a white background. It suited someone like myself who was still uncomfortable with having much flesh on display. The memory of seven yards of black serge lingered and my body missed the anonymity of the habit it had worn.


         Many days in September and October, after taking the electric trolley bus home from work, I’d don that swimming suit. Opening the door to the pool area, which a tall wooden fence enclosed on three sides, I’d first dip my toes to test the water's coldness then sit on the edge of the pool, making circles in the sun drenched water. Next, I’d enter the shallow end and sit in the water. But I didn’t know how to swim, so after a few minutes, I’d emerge from the pool and settle into a lounge chair, positioned in the shadows beneath the overhanging railed balconies of the second floor.
         There I’d read while humming the songs the local DJs were playing on the radios. When not engrossed in a novel, I’d raise my head and watch the bronzed men and nubile young women flirting with one another in the pool and dancing on the concrete area surrounding it.
         The local radio stations played records by many folk artists, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Glenn Yarborough, and Simon and Garfunkel among them. It was a time rich in music.
         One of those songs—written by Seeger in the 1950s and sung by Joan Baez in the mid-'60s—helped get me involved in the Vietnam War protest.


         Another, sung by Glenn Yarborough, appealed to the men around the pool but spoke to me also. I embraced the independence advocated in the song—the searching for what’s next in life. It became sort of an anthem of freedom for me.
        

         A third song, written and sung by Simon and Garfunkel, forced me to truly look at the world in which I lived. It helped me recognize the alienation around me and the desperate need to find meaning. It helped me understand that I wasn’t the only person lost and confused.         



         The music of 1967 and the following ten years or so is embedded in my psyche. Those songs of protest, young love, human need—of taking to the road and being open to change—helped form the woman I was to become. Just as the goodness of my mother and the prayer and dedication of the convent nuns had formed me.
         Slowly I was finding a life, but I needed help because mostly my mind was muddled. I still disliked myself intensely. So next week I hope to share with you what the second Dayton psychiatrist said to me. It was peace I was seeking and with him I found mostly questions to ask myself for a lifetime.

48 comments:

  1. What interesting roads we take to get through our lives. I was singing the same songs then, but not out loud. My husband had become a reactionary.

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    1. Dear Joanne, did he stay a reactionary? And what was he reacting against? I'm glad to know that you sang these songs if only to yourself. Peace.

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  2. Ah, the sweet voice of Joan Baez. How I admire the way she would visit the Oakland induction center and tell the young men, You don't have to go. Some of them didn't. I've never been a swingin' single. I have a swim suit to wear at Willy Dunne Wooters' apartment complex pool. The top is a tankini, so it's a lot like a tank top. The bottom has a little ruffled skirt around. I prefer the modest look.

    Love,
    Janie

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    1. Dear Janie, I was never a swingin' single either. I just watched the goings on and realized that the world is made up of millions and millions of individuals, each with his or her own story to tell. And I guess I was always collecting stories to tell. Peace.

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  3. One word for you today--PEACE!!

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    1. Dear Fishducky, thank you!! And peace right back to you!

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  4. I love the songs which became your compass. And all of them are as real and as true now as they were then.

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    1. Dear Sue, thanks so much for the word "compass." It's true that many of those songs did become a compass for me. Remember "Bridge Over Troubled Waters," which came out I think in 1969? Peace.

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  5. Those were also songs that shaped me. E.C. says it all.

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    1. Dear Susan, it's wonderful to be learning how so many of us were shaped by those songs of our youth. I really don't listen to radio and so I know only the Broadway songs of today that I hear on PBS. I wonder what songs are shaping today's youth. Peace.

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  6. You have named some of my favorite singers of all time. They made me question and look for answers. I am still looking.

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    1. Dear Arleen, both Joan Baez, Yarborough, Simon, Garfunkel, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie were truly among my favorite singers and then many more followed them: Judy Collins and Peter, Paul, and Mary and Bob Dylan. So many who touched my life then and now. They did make me think and like you I'm still asking the questions and exploring the answers. Peace.

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  7. Great music back then indeed, today's can't hold a candle to it

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    1. Dear Pat, I really don't know the music of today except what I hear of Broadway on PBS. I know so many songs from the first 75 years of the last century, but really not many after that. Peace.

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  8. Each of those were favorites of mine also and held great meaning at that time. I think we thought deeper thoughts and felt more in those days than today's kids. I do hope this next psychiatrist was more helpful that that last monster.

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    1. Dear Arkansas Patti, I don't know whether I thought deeper thoughts and felt more. If I did I think it had a lot to do with Vietnam and somehow the last 11 years of Afghanistan and Iraq haven't touched the whole nation the way Vietnam did. I'm not sure why. And yes, the next psychiatrist was much more helpful! Peace.

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    2. I am pretty sure people were more engaged then because most of our soldiers were drafted. Today, the wars only touch those who enlist who many times do so because of economics.

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    3. Dear Arleen, I think you're right. Much of the protest back in the late '60s and early '70s came from college students who didn't want to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. And yes today it's a matter of enlisting so as to get an education and have a paycheck. I wonder what the statistics have been for the last 11 years with regard to race and economic background of the soldiers. Peace.

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  9. Great music that is all I have this afternoon my head hurts to much to think of a proper comment..............sorry

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    1. Dear Jo-Anne, I'm wondering if you, too, get migraines and if that's what's happening with you right now. I surely hope not. They totally debilitate me for a couple of days. They leave me wiped out. Please take care of yourself. Peace.

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  10. These songs and so many others still resonate today, Dee. They certainly helped shape my generation, through my high school and college years, especially.

    I think that a good part of why the past 11 years of war haven't touched the whole nation is because there is not a draft, as there was during the Vietnam War. Not all, but, a great deal of the protesting that went on then was done by college students - and musicians.

    Oh, dear Dee, you've opened up so many memories. Thank you.

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    1. Dear Penny, Arleen also thought that the draft made a big difference between then and now. I hope your memories are mostly good ones and that they are making you embrace your past. Peace.

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  11. The music is so familiar to me. I remember sitting around the kitchen of our convent in the late 60s singing things like Where Have All the Flowers Gone, and using Simon and Garfunkel songs in some of the religion classes I was teaching.

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    1. Dear Sr. Ann Marie, I so like to think of you sitting around the convent kitchen--while on mission?--and singing those songs with the other nuns. I left the convent on Christmas Eve 1966 and I can't remember knowing any of these songs. We weren't allowed to watch television or listen to the radio or read the newspaper so news of "hootenannies" didn't reach us! And so when I left I just embraced that music. In the religion classes I taught I brought in a lot of poetry I'd studied in college. But oh, how those songs must have fit what you were teaching! Peace.

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  12. The music of the 60s still speaks to me as well. I was in high school when those songs were popular and they were a big part of my friends' and my life. The values expressed by these song writers are so different from the ones kids listen to today.

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    1. Dear Cynthia, I really don't listen to the music that young people are hearing today. So I have no idea what's influencing them. I do wonder about the social media influence. That truly concerns me. I think I can't study the music also! I'd probably develop high blood pressure! Peace.

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  13. Questions for a lifetime...sigh!

    Linda
    http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com

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    1. Dear Linda, yes, for a lifetime. It's 2014, I'm 78, and I'm still questioning life and meaning and my place in the scheme of things. It's part of the great adventure and the marvelous journey we are all on. Peace.

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  14. Dee, Reading of anonymity through yards of black serge made me realize for the first time what that kind of anonymity brought and why losing it would prove difficult. I wear sunglasses in public a lot and think perhaps it might be a similar need ... that sense of being behind something, feeling less vulnerable, on a smaller scale.

    I love your choice of music to embody that time in music. It is a really wonderful musical heritage. So many wonderful songs came from that time period and helped shape my life. I still love to hear them on the radio.

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    1. Dear Teresa, how lovely to find a comment from you. Thanks for stopping by. You've truly understood the comfort of anonymity.

      Like you, that music continues to capture my imagination and to speak to meaning in my life. Peace.

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  15. Hi There, I am older than you --but I definitely remember all of those songs. The Sound of Silence was always a favorite. By the 60's, I was married with a baby (born in 1963)... Life was 'normal' for me I guess --and since I was working full-time, I didn't have time to think deeply about much of anything going on in our world. Actually, I didn't get interested in politics or history or knowing what is going on in our world until I retired... There are times now that I wish I could go back to that 'rose-colored-glasses' attitude about life that I used to have. It's hard to watch the world and our country fall apart all around me these days and not worry about things... It gets overwhelming at times --and that is when I just get out in nature and pray for a better world. What else can I do???????

    I'm enjoying your story since mine was SO different.
    Hugs,
    Betsy

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    1. Dear Betsy,I doubt if you are older than I am. I graduated from college before entering the convent back in 1958. While you were having a baby, I was doing convent obediences!

      It is hard to know what to do when things seem to fall apart around us. One writer wrote that we simply do or say one thing a day for or to someone. One helpful, compassionate, good thing. Peace.

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  16. I remember those swim suits. I bet you were a BABE. I was recently having a conversation with someone about how there were no overweight people and all the young gals were trim and slim. Of course that led to the GMO's we are forced to eat today. What I'm trying to say is that I know you looked great in a swim suit.

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    1. Dear Manzanita, I doubt if I was a Babe! That word made me laugh because until I was in my late fifties I thought I was quite ugly. I'd had a very bad case of acne on my face and back when I was young. I can't remember when that went away. I think the thing is that I felt so ugly that even after it was gone I still saw myself as difficult for others to look at. But I have to tell you that it's nice that someone thinks I may have been a BABE!!!!! Peace.

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  17. Dee, you capture so well the way music speaks to us and shapes us and becomes embedded in our hearts and minds. I don't know the Glenn Yarborough song, but Joan Baez and Simon and Garfunkel were and remain great favourites of mine along with the others you mention in your comment. Even in my very different situation as a university student in the UK in the mid-60s, who then married and had a family straight after, those songs shaped me. A lovely post.

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    1. Dear Perpetua, I'm so glad that you and other readers liked this post. I spent a lot of time considering which songs to post because there were so many at the time that just led me forward into life. I'm glad they are also embedded in your history. Peace.

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  18. Dee: Those songs you included are so evocative of the times as well as your evolving psyche. I loved the contrast of the seven yards of black cloth with the two piece bathing suit. Such a great picture of what was going on in your life at that time. I love this story, as well as the others. I can't wait to see these in print!

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    1. Dea r Shelly, I can't wait to see them written! And I'm hoping one day to see all these stories--so many memories--in print also. Peace.

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  19. Sounds like a good time in your life!

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  20. The power of music never ceases to amaze me. I wonder if those songwriters and performers truly realize the depth of their influence on the lives of so many people. As for you, the thing I love about your stories is the thread of confidence that runs through them. Even though you were confused, you never stopped moving forward, and that is such an inspiration!

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    1. Dear Kari, you know when I look back on that young woman who'd left the convent, I'm surprised at how she did keep moving forward. I'm working on the convent memoir and writing many stories for it that I'm not posting and she surprises me there also. I've tended to think of myself as a fairly milquetoast kind of person, but in reality I do seem to have an instinct for survival and I keep forging ahead. Thank you for recognizing that, Kari. Peace.

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  21. sure enjoying your stories. Thank you for continuing to write.

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    1. Dear Mimi, I'm glad you enjoy these stories. I'm surprised that people do, but it seems that some of the feelings expressed resonate with what others were feeling at the time. I"ll keep writing and you keep painting!!!! Peace.

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  22. I just have to tell you that you tell a story so well, Dee. I was right there with you at the pool's edge listening to the music that inspired and helped you to grow. I love the songs you chose to represent that time and can easily imagine how they spoke to you. I look forward to what you'll share next. Your development as you left the convent is such a fascinating story. I feel like you did have excellent input that brought you to this point, but you really had to work hard to bring about the changes that would help you build contentedness. The power of music! I really do understand that! ox Debra

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    1. Dear Debra, I'm sitting here at the computer composing the posting for Thursday and what pops up but a comment from you! I'm pleased but also somewhat surprised that readers like you find these stories interesting. They are for me like the shells that Anne Morrow Lindbergh picked up along the beach each summer. Shells that finally led to her classic book "Gift from the Sea." Slowly, as the Thursdays pass and I write these postings, I begin to see the arc of my life and to admire that young girl who was Sister Innocence and become Dee Ready. Slowly I begin to appreciate the beauty of my life and I live now--and this is one of the gifts for me of blogging--I live now in gratitude for all that has been and is being. And I trust the future. It, too, will bring life for which to be deeply grateful. Peace.

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  23. Beginning my morning with a few blogs, I see that Linda's mentions Pete Seeger, Teresa's mentions Simon and Garfunkel, and yours mentions both. I'm pleased to be reminded of great music today.

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    1. Dear Bill, yes, great music. I'm wondering whom you'd mention if you were to write about music and the farm. Peace.

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