Friday, February 3, 2012

When I Grow Too Old To Dream

♪  “When I grow too old to dream, I’ll have you to remember, and when I grow too old to dream your love will live in my heart.” ♪ The words from this song haunted me even when I was a small child. I’d play the record on our wind-up phonograph player in the upstairs hallway. Over and over and over. And I’d cry. Every time. It seemed the song was about me. I’d sit cross-legged on the floor and see myself in a rocking chair, white hair, frail body, and blue eyes looking at a scene and some invisible one, remembering.

Music and memory go hand in hand. Mother used to sing a lullaby to us when we children were tucked in bed. “All Through the Night.” So sweet, her voice, as the words penetrated the dim light. ♪“Rest, my love, and peace attend thee, all through the night. Guardian angels God will lend thee, all through the night.”♪ Like one of those guardian angels she stood at the foot of our bed.

Then, in junior high school, there were other songs, like♪“Some day he’ll come along, the man I love...”♪  And movies. One I knew would never become less than my lifetime favorite: Maytime, with Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy. My first tragic love. I can hear that rich male voice even now,                 ♪“Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweetheart, will you love me ever? Will you remember the day when we
 were happy in May, my dearest one?”♪

In a high school production I heard for the first time “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” and my heart nearly died. Of course there were many other songs during World War II of lovers waiting for the war to end. And there was one song called Skylark sung by some lovely young spirit on the radio that played on a screened-in upper porch surrounded by trees. That was my first taste of summer camp. Somehow I always remember where I heard a song for the first time.

When I was at my first summer job I stood in the darkened movie theater where I was the balcony usher in a snappy uniform. Before the doors had opened I heard for the first time Billy Rose’s rendition of Holiday For Strings wafting out from the rich red curtains down below. It transported me into some world called the future, beyond imagination. Youth was never wasted on me. I had music in my heart. It gave me dreams. It helped me to believe in love and romance and tenderness and happiness ever after. It was always there to carry me on.

My life has been good, but that is not to say there weren’t times when the record’s needle got off track and its sweet music got lost in terrible screeches and discords. I watch my children and grandchildren and remember myself at their ages. Now I am that old woman I seemed to see as a child. I have white hair but I’m not in a rocking chair. I sit at my computer and click on that little icon called I-Tunes. Miraculously I see the old familiar titles. I sample them and buy a few of my favorites, but it’s hard to choose. Clear as the day I hear them again as if for for the first time. I’m in the hallways of the past. My dreams of yesteryear are blurred in reality’s wavy mirror. My life has not been wasted. I have loved and been loved, but now I feel a threshold beneath my feet. Will I be beyond this door another me? Will I hear some new song for the first time? Somehow I find that old song about being too old to dream is not true. I know I shall never be too old to dream. I feel like that little girl on the upper hallway floor, transfixed by a song and a vision.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting to hear your comments on music from your youth. I always enjoyed hearing Wagner's Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde when you told me it was one of your favorites. Then tonight on TV was playing a 1930's movie with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes called "A Farewell to Arms." They were playing that piece at the end! Is that where you heard it first? Here's a nifty rendition with a well known opera singer, Waltraud Meier, and there are English subtitles! Take a listen and be transfixed! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SA2KsY0ZRI&feature=related

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