Music Monday: Of High School Memories and Age Related Concerns

When I was in high school, a MILLION years ago, I was actively involved in my church's youth program. Kinda hard NOT to be, when one is the eldest daughter of the minister, right? Anyway, we were constantly raising money for one trip or another, and one of those fundraisers came in the form of a talent show (and maybe spaghetti dinner? I can't remember). My good friend and resident Duckie (IYKYK Pretty in Pink), Sean, and I did a rendition of "Just You Wait" from My Fair Lady, and then Sean, another friend, and our MYF (again, IYKYK) leader (who is now in the Virginia State Legislature) did a skit that involved the SC state dance, the Shag. Shag is in the Swing family, I think. 
So, I heard this song on telly recently and had to add it to my summer playlist. I've forgotten the steps in the TEN MINUTES AND I WILL NOT BE TAKING QUESTIONS since that talent show, but I still remember it fondly when this song comes on. Enjoy (lyrics are in captions).
PS - because my brain is about half British at this point, you can imagine how CAREFUL I had to be to write a blog post about this dance style. Giggles abundant. 

Not a Music Monday: A Memory Pivot

Early Poster of the Cast of Friends

So, I somehow forgot that today was Monday. I was behind on my #onepanelvss until late into the afternoon. I kept thinking it was Sunday and wondering why Hubs hadn't called his family yet. I kept forgetting it was Memorial Day because, for us, it is Get Ready for the Deck Guy to come measure and help us plan our deck reno.

So no music today. Instead, this is The One Where Nancy Remembers, also known as I watched the Friends Reunion and laughed and cried...and finally understood why that show was and is such an important part of my life.

Is it problematic? Sure - most shows from that time period are, especially sitcoms like Friends. Could the cast have been more diverse? Of course it could have. Is it a product of its time? Absolutely. And do I love it, even though there are episodes I won't watch for some of the reasons I've just listed? YES.

Friends premiered on NBC in September of 1994. I premiered in my First Adult Job/Internship in June of 1994. I was just a bit younger than the characters in the show, but what they were experiencing was, as one of the creators said in the Reunion show, that time when your friends are your family. I was firmly in that age group at the time.

I had a family. They lived in Georgia and I lived in West Virginia. For a year, I had friends that were far, far away, and I was the loneliest I think I've ever been any time before or since during that year. So I decided to try this show that I'd seen advertised (because TV was my outlet, don't judge me) and at first, I hated it. I hated it for reminding me that all my friends were in Georgia and Tennessee and Ohio and everywhere that I wasn't. But I stuck with it, and soon I could see bits of all my friends in these characters that the six actors brought to life, and as cheesy as it sounds, I didn't feel so alone.

In fact, one of the Friends fans that spoke about the impact the show had on her said that she didn't have family, but these six people became her family. That's what it was for me, and that's why I get teary still at the last episode. I am blogging about it now, because if I try to talk about it, well, could there be louder ugly crying?

So I get that maybe it hits differently if you are watching now, in your late 20s and early 30s, and are trying to make it fit into your life and your world. I know that it is dated and that some of it is more than cringe-worthy. Thankfully, we are more aware now. Our world is so much bigger than it was...wow, this is hard...25 years ago. I don't want to go back to any of that.

But I won't apologize for putting that show on and laughing until I cry at some of the bits or remembering being a scared 22-year-old sitting in an apartment in West Virginia, watching a group of friends and feeling not quite so disconnected from the life I'd known and the life I wanted for myself for a half-hour on Thursdays. I can look back at her, and see that she eventually got her own Central Perk, her own home, and friends that are her family.

Notes from Exile: Of Crooked Christmas Trees and other Leaning Towers

The Dunne Family Christmas Tree

Well, normally I would say it's almost that time, almost Christmas Day, etc. But not this year. This year, it feels like Thursday. I'm not planning how to get food two hours down the road to Atlanta for Christmas Lunch with my sister and her family. I'm not anticipating spending time with my American niece. We aren't waking up in Northumberland with Simon's parents. We just are.

I admire others that have been able to find ways around the general malaise that 2020 has spread. Especially those of you with children who have gone the extra mile to keep the magic in this holiday season when we have ditched the sugar plums in favor of vaccines and masks dancing through our visions.

Our Christmas tree has a permanent lean, as you can see in the photo. We don't have normal ceilings in this house, so we have to get a smaller tree than I'd like - but it is still too far from the outlet for me to feel comfortable plugging in the star at the top. It leans, as though it is trying to reach that outlet, and I'm reminded how we are all leaning this year. Leaning forward into the future with a vaccine and a return to in-person life. Leaning back into those moments we wish could have lasted, with family and friends that for whatever reason aren't here. Leaning into the "new normal," or leaning back into "the before time." 

We are all like leaning towers, and the key is not to lean so far that you fall. I remember a Christmas evening spent with one of my favorite people and his family, where the tree was crooked and we spent a great deal of time tying it into place with twine. There was a lot of clapping of hands and slapping of backs as the tree stood straight and tall...until something that I did to loosen the twine caused it to fall...on my friend's dad. He caught it, and while I don't remember what he said, I remember his booming laugh as he straightened it up and tied it again - and told me not to touch it.

That laugh is braided into the twine that holds me up this Christmas, along with my dad's decorations and my brother in law inexplicably under the Christmas tree at my parents' house in north Georgia. I'm remembering the ding that the MARTA train makes at every stop, and how my college friends and I raised our hands every time we heard it on the way to see the big tree in Atlanta - the start of the  Christmas season when I was younger. I think of my Daisy Mei Mei wearing the tree skirt like a 1950s salon cape and how every dog that is new to the Dunne family at Christmas has a picture in that same skirt.

I remember the Leeds German Market at Christmas and the sparkling lights in The Vue where we would grab a cheeky Nandos before seeing a movie. I remember Christmas Eve Mass at the church my inlaws attend in Seahouses. I can hear my mom saying, "Well, Merry Christmas!" on the phone when we lived 5,000 miles away. All of these memories and more hold me up this Pandemic Christmas as well as hold the promise of next year and our triumphant return to parades and late nights out, to massive meals with family and opening presents, to us. To normal. 

But for now, I will hang on to my crooked tree and my little family here in my house, safe and warm and healthy, and I will be thankful. Merry Christmas.

#tenyearsdunne

Like it was just yesterday. I still remember you on one knee at Manchester Airport (if you want me to say yes to something, asking when I'm jet-lagged and just getting off an 8 hr flight is a good time to ask), and I remember Louise looking concerned that I might have said no when we got to the car. I can still feel the loose buckle on my left shoe that made my leg wobble throughout the ceremony. I can still taste that first sip of Yorks Tea at the reception. 

How are we ten years older in the picture on the right than we were in the one on the left? How have we had ten Christmases and Easters and moved house twice and country twice? How has our house been home to seven dogs and a cat in that space of time? Didn't I just arrive at Heathrow and have my visa stamped? Wasn't it just a few minutes ago when we drove to Atlanta to get my biometrics done, or to Berea to sort out your social security? I'm certain it was only a week or so ago, maybe a month, that I picked you up at Hartsfield right after you collected me at Manchester when we were basically living at various airports and train stations. Wasn't it?

I'm so grateful for the macaroni and cheese, the shared nerdiness, the willingness to put up with my shenanigans, the flashlights bought for me to take to faire, the resolve to get up when the girls are howling so that I can lie in, the whispered, "love you, bye" when I think I've managed to get out the door without waking you, the love of travel and history, the debates over whatever has just been said on telly, the ability not to laugh in my face when I think I'm speaking Yorkshire, the shared love of Greenville, the support and encouragement to be a writer, the shared - and different - expat experience, and all the other things that I have been given over the past ten years that I most certainly did not and do not deserve. 

Ten years done and dusted, and as many more as I can get to come. Love you to absolute bits, Simon.

Spades, Cabbage, and Hazelnut Coffee

I had a memory resurface the other day, and it's a memory I'd like to share here.  Most of you that know me know that a great deal of my life was spent either as a camper or on staff at Camp Glisson, a United Methodist Camp and Retreat Center in Dahlonega, Georgia.

Camp Glisson Staff Photo, Summer 1992

I decided not to crop this picture down to just me, or even point out where I am, because that is not what this post is about.  It's about every single person in that photo, and the impact made on my life by that summer.

I was a camper at Glisson from 1978-1988, missing only two summers (I think...might have been only one). As a preacher's kid, I didn't really have a "home church," so Glisson was my surrogate home church.  Further, as one of THOSE PKs who saw the seedy underbelly that some churches have and how it had the power to devastate my father, I looked to Glisson as the place where I could feel close to God and feel the fellowship of believers that my home churches often claimed but fell short of creating.

Once I graduated from high school in June of 1989, instead of taking one last summer as a camper, I joined the staff and had a marvelous, frightening, overwhelming and amazing summer.  I had never lived away from home before and spent many nights dreadfully and privately homesick.  I painted a rock.  I decorated my own cabin with toilet paper.  I made friends, sang songs, and generally felt so accepted and loved that I thought my heart would explode.  Seriously.  I know that I tend to poke fun at the Kumbaya-like expressions of emotion that sometimes accompany "church," but it's only because I've seen the real deal and I  have yet to find anything equivalent.  

I was a village camp counselor for the summers of 1989-1991, and then in 1992 I applied to be a section leader.  Camp structure works this way:  Campers, Counselors (in various camps, at that time it was Village, Pioneer, and Sparrowwood), Section Leaders, Camp Directors, etc.  There were four section leaders in Village Camp and I got to be one of them that year, along with three other guys whom I adore to this day.  

What does all this have to do with Spades, Cabbage, and Hazelnut Coffee?  I'll tell you, hang in there.

Ben (Village Camp Director), Marty, Joe, Andy, and I would get together most nights on the porch of cabin B-1 (Boys row, first cabin) to hang out, play spades and, most importantly, drink hazelnut coffee.  My stomach lurches even now to think of how many cups of that I drank without sugar or milk!  It was hard for me that summer...I was still young then and of course, everything revolved around me and my thoughts and feelings...and I was the only female in a group of guys.  But those guys were marvels and made me feel at home...well, most of the time. 

Now back to my memory...Hubs and I got a mini-Keurig for a housewarming gift from my parents, and one of the K-Cups included was "Hazelnut Cream."  As soon as that liquid hit my mug and the smell drifted from the machine, tears sprang to my eyes.  I was 20 years old again, sitting on the screened porch, listening to the drone of the crickets and waiting for my spades partner (whomever had drawn the short straw that time as my lack of card playing ability was EPIC) to either tell me Cabbage (which meant to throw something good) or Garbage (which meant to throw something useless).  To be honest with you, I'm not even sure why I was throwing anything because the rules of that game are a bit fuzzy, but I can hear Ben saying "CABBAGE!" as clearly as I know my own name.

I was happy then, even if I didn't know it at the time.  I was supported and loved, even if my actions and attitudes made it so that I wasn't deserving of such.  I knew what I was doing and I loved my job.  It was a joy to get up every morning, even if it meant waking up with no campers to rouse and no living group plans to implement.  I loved Camp Glisson, and all I have to do to feel that love again is look at the mini replicas of the Dining Hall Porch, Cane Creek Falls, and the Chapel here on my desk...or stick a hazelnut K-cup in the machine at home.

It was all cabbage, all the time...and I have each and every person in that photo above to thank for it.