My legacy will be a mixed bag, for sure!

 

To battle a recent bout of insomnia, I’ve been asking “Alexa” to serve me up lullabies and soothing music to fall to sleep by.

 

The tactic is working, but it’s also dredging up some cherished memories that I haven’t revisited in years.

 

I’m pretty well convinced that this post is going to sound self-serving, at least at the beginning, so I apologize in advance for that.

 

Tonight while I was listening to “lullabies and other soothing music” that Amazon Music served up, the song “You Are My Sunshine” came on.  It was a version I hadn’t heard before. The words were the same but the cadence was different, so I really listened to the lyrics this time as I rested.  When I did, I flashed back to a memory I hadn’t thought of in years.

 

For a high school assignment, we were asked to pose a series of questions to our parents and/or siblings and jot down the answers to see if anything they said in particular surprised us.

 

One of the questions was, “What song do you think of when you think of me?”  I asked my mom this question and, without a single moment of hesitation, she responded, “You Are My Sunshine.”

 

Her response sent me backward in time even farther, to my earliest childhood days (ages one to four or so) when I was sick so much, because as she sat with me stroking my back to help me feel better, that’s the song she usually sang to me.

 

I smiled and then inquired, “Seriously?!”   She replied, “Seriously.”

 

That felt sooooo good!!!

 

Because, as a teenager, I was driven internally by a lot of angst and anxiety. (You know I’m transgender, but I didn’t have a word for it back then, and I hadn’t told anyone about it. I was keeping it hidden because I thought it made me a freak, and that’s the last thing I wanted my parents, siblings and friends to be thinking about me.) (My dad was also an alcoholic with a bad temper, so that didn’t help matters much, either.)

 

Despite that, You Are My Sunshine was the song my mom named when asked to define or describe me by a song title.

 

Later, when she was dying of brain cancer while I was living in Los Angeles and only able to fly up occasionally to visit her, she gave me a card as I left one time with a sad little cartoon dog waving a paw on it.  The front said, “Badbye.” Inside, the sentiment read, “I’d say goodbye, but what’s good about you leaving?”

 

I still have that card. It crushed me, but it was one of her final ways of repeating “You Are My Sunshine” in a way I would never, ever forget. (I’m crying as I write this now.)

 

Carolyn Kelley Called Me Her Cheerful Little Earful

 

Another amazing woman, Carolyn Kelley (DeForest’s beloved wife for 54 years, until his death in 1999), called me her Cheerful Little Earful. She called me very often just to chat because (I reckon) I raised her spirits, being the ebullient person I usually am.

 

Carolyn called me more than 1000 times. (I know, because I kept copious journals of my goings on–or I did, until blogging came along! Now I journal this way! This link will take you to Volume One of Kelley Phone Tag at Amazon. There are six volumes in the series.)

 

Several of those times, she mentioned me being her Cheerful Little Earful, so I finally said, “That sounds so nice! Thank you!” She asked, “You know that song, don’t you?”  I said, “No, I don’t. I never heard of it before.”  She couldn’t remember all the lyrics but she recalled a few lines, so she recited them (“I won’t sing them: I can’t carry a tune! De can carry a tune, but he can’t remember lyrics!”). I was pretty much blown away.

 

It’s lovely to know that two of the most influential women in my life thought of me in those terms. I wish I had really reflected on that more while they were alive. They were telling me they enjoyed my company–and I always worried I was inflicting myself on them, so I almost never called them. (I almost never call anyone, for the same reason!) I always waited for them to call me.  (That’s my insecurity on full display.)   Tonight I realized that my hesitancy to initiate calls could have been interpreted as aloofness or disinterest, instead of what it was. But they probably knew me well enough to know why I wasn’t the call initiator.  (Gosh, I hope so, anyway!)!

 

I hope I remain other people’s Sunshine and Cheerful Little Earful, too. I would hate to think that aspect of my essence ended years ago as I became more adamantly invested in social justice and equity!   I know I can get pretty heavy-handed at times, and down in the dumps at other times.  It’s all part of being alive. I’m not always cheerful, and not always sunny.

 

But my essence — the undamaged part of me — the victorious part of me — still feels robust and cheerful.  If I ever lose that, I will have lost pretty much everything that makes my own life and challenges feel worthwhile.  So, here’s hoping those parts of me are as long-lasting as my physical body!

 

It’s soooo  nice to be regarded in those terms…  sunshiny and cheerful!