campfire nights

Much of my childhood was filled with stories, noise and music. My parents were pretty big Bluegrass music fans, and that meant summers full of weekend adventures all around Ontario to attend festivals. We camped, played, and stayed up until the wee hours of the night with friends and friends-like-family. I remember falling alseep to the sounds of crackling campfire, upright bass and the harmony of instruments played by those who have spent many hours pickin' together. Stories meandered from song to tall tale, and punctuated the laughter of familiar voices.

I was driving down a lonely road one dark and stormy night
When a little girl by the roadside showed up in my headlights
I stopped and she got in back, and in a shaky tone
She said: My name is Mary, please won't you take me home?

It seems that no matter what story I tell - or what story I hear my parents tell - about those festival camping weekends, one common theme emerges: late nights were spent talking and laughing with good friends. And not just any good friends; these were good friends that my parents would see occasionally, sometimes in the summer at many festivals, but sometimes not for a year at a time. Each time my parents connected with their friends it was like they had seen one another just the night before, regardless of what time had passed.

She must have been so frightened all alone there in the night
There was something strange about her, for her face was deathly white
She sat so pale and quiet in the back seat all alone
I never will forget that night I took Mary home

It seems now that my parents friendships with these people - this wild, crazy, loving bunch of people - was initially based on the common love of a particular kind of music, and then it transformed into a larger and deeper connection. Maybe without the weight of being connected to the surface issues of daily life, these friendships managed to negotiate the deeper waters of the true bonds of friendship more nimbly.

Sure, they chatted about how work was going and whether the garden gave a good yield this year; I distinctly remember a summer when all the talk seemed to focus around tent caterpillars (it was an infestation - something about a cycle every seven years). But the main elements I can pull out of memories stored in a then sleepy nine-year-old's brain are memories of the larger conversations. Not 'save the world' conversations. More like 'shared values' conversations. 'What's wrong with the world' conversations. Nothing radical, just an open acknowldgement of the fact that this group of people wanted to live life in a particular way that might have been different from that of the larger group around them.

I pulled into the driveway where she told me to go
Got out to help her from the car and opened up the door
But I just could not believe my eyes 'cause the back seat was bare
I looked all around the car but Mary wasn't there

I believe we seek out, subconsiously and unintentially, the people who are like-minded. Many people I speak to have at least one good friend that they describe to me "...oh yeah, whenever I see him/her, it doesn't matter if it's been a week or a year; we always seem to fall back into it. It's comfortable." Those are the friendships that my parents had then, and those are the friendships I value the most.

We spend less and less time on the things we love, and more time on the things that distract us from the things (and people) we love. That's not front-page story material: anyone who is engaged on some level with technology knows this. Computers and the internet make it handy to keep in touch, but they also allow one extra level of distance that didn't exist on those campfire nights in Ontario provincial parks that I remember. Somehow, these 'lighter', less weighed down friendships are still here, despite the ease of not connecting in person.

A light shone from the porch, someone opened up the door
I asked about the little girl that I was looking for
Then a lady gently smiled and brushed a tear away
She said: It sure was nice of you to go out of your way

It was a storm of random events that brought my parents bluegrass group together: some were from Nova Scotia and remembered one another, some didn't yet they hung out anyway; others met through work in and around Toronto; a few wandered toward the campfire glow like moths. After the first few summers of bluegrass-ing, word spread among the like minded peoples and they all came together. Folks got married, cheated or were cheated on, got divorced and remarried. Others had kids, split up and got back together again. Still others stayed together through the whole crazy show of it all; through kids, drink, bankruptcy and times good or bad.

I can't recall exactly when the bluegrass weekends started, but in June of this year my parents attended the 26th annual Tottenham Bluegrass Festival. I remember being at the first one, so that says something. The Dixie Flyers have been around almost as long as me. There are two amazing things about the Tottenham festival: one is that my parents still go and meet those pickin' friends - and the other is that my sister has continued to go (after a bit of a break), now camping with her husband and their two children. My nephew is determined to learn how to play guitar, too. He strums right along with my dad - his Papa.

But thirteen years ago today in a wreck just down the road
Our darling Mary lost her life, and we miss her so
Thank you for your trouble and the kindness you have shown
You're the thirteenth one who's been here, bringing Mary home

The memory of this story was prompted by a weekend this summer of noise, stories and music. A good friend - who I haven't seen in over two years - came to Penticton with his band to play at a skateboard & graffiti art exhibition at the Penticton Art Gallery. The music that his band plays is certainly not bluegrass, but that's not the focus of this connection. He's a dear friend, and we stayed up until the wee hours of the night - talking. And talking. About, well, you name it - we likely talked about it.

I'm thinking about my own search for like-minded people, and the inspiration that those people bring to me to be the person I'm supposed to be. The seeds of that search were planted many years ago while I was snug in my sleeping bag, thin walls of the trailer barely muffling the sounds of my dad pickin' on his Gibson while my mom sang as out of tune as the rest of them. Those are the best sounds I know.


~ Jeannette

Lyrics in italics are from an old bluegrass tune called 'Bringing Mary Home', which was - and still is - one of my favourite bluegrass songs. I sang this song with my dad the summer after I got married. He played guitar, and we were sitting around a campfire one night at a wedding camp-in celebration that my parents held for my husband and I. With us were many of those pickin' friends - and their motorhomes were circled around the fire like wagons. Protecting, nurturing, and welcoming.

The holder of string

Each of us will often have a number of active families in our lives: the family we were born to, family we sought when first we stepped into the vast open space of life as an ‘adult’, maybe even collecting a family that holds shared values but whom we connect with rarely.

Regardless of how we define family or which family we refer to here, there is often one person in each of these families who loosely holds the strings of connection – and is the glue of each of our families.

That glue – or string-holder – is the person who remembers each story, or enough of each story, to get us started talking. Sometimes it’s the person who is the recurring character in many stories, holding the larger collective family story bound tightly. My shared DNA family – the one I grew up with – had one of those people to keep the strings together: my mother.

“Didn’t you tell him about the time your bathing suit got caught on the top of that waterslide? Well, we were at this marina…”

“But, of course, there was the summer we had to start the car with a screwdriver after your father lost the keys at…”

“I always knew you would write something – didn’t I say that when you got that award that time in sixth grade for your book report on…”

Encouraging, incredible, and at times perhaps a bit embarrassing – my mother knows a little bit (if not more) of every story in our family. To this day I ask her, during our regular bi-weekly telephone calls, to recount details of some trial or tribulation I/we/she/us encountered as part of our family.

I think that perhaps talking to my mother was my first experience with using some form of a heuristic, before I knew what it even was. School projects, those beloved book reports, and on to what and who Okanagan Writing Services really is – my mother has continually been asking questions, gently pushing me along whatever path is in front of me, and regularly helping me define my voice.

My stories wouldn’t ever become my writing without my mother’s memory illuminating the dim corners of my frayed recollections.

Occasionally I feel the combination of inspiration (whatever that is), motivation and courage enough to attempt a bit of poetry. Most of my scribblings are lumped into the general category of 'prose' until otherwise assigned, but this time it's something special. After all, it is my mom.

Thanks, mom. I look at my hands and see you, in so many ways – what a remarkable gift.



Sounds of sleep

Mesmerizing sounds of
musicians playing, voices soaring
the distinct clink of glass
collides in thick air

Someone’s house in this
suburban town, transformed as
the sun falls to sleep
changing places with the moon

Festive evening wear softly
murmurs appreciation of curved hips;
occasional caresses by loving
hands as couples dance

Upstairs, children dream among coats
of Sunday’s best; a tangle of
arms and legs and feet on beds
not their own, but familiar

Close my eyes and hear/feel
the sound/pulse of my
mother: talking, laughing, singing
my head argues with sleep

Small fingers clasp tightly onto
loving healing guiding hands
I lean against her chest and finally
fall
through
everything
fall into
sounds of sleep


~ Jeannette