“Write this down, take a little note
To remind you in case you didn’t know
Tell yourself I love you and I don’t want you to go
Write this down.”
-George Strait, 1999
To remind you in case you didn’t know
Tell yourself I love you and I don’t want you to go
Write this down.”
-George Strait, 1999
I heard this George Strait song on the radio, and it brought my Grandma Florence back to me. I could almost feel her with me, in the passenger seat, singing along. I was lost in a rare moment of unselfconsciousness, singing at the top of my lungs, not caring that I was at a stoplight where someone could have looked in to my car and seen me looking like a howling lunatic. Then I realized that my Grandma had never gotten a chance to hear this song; she died well before George Strait recorded it. He’s got tons of music, in fact, that she hasn’t heard (unless there’s a good country music station in Heaven, which I know I’m too old to believe in, but where else can you imagine your Grandma being?).
Grandma Florence loved George Strait. She preferred his fast-tempo songs to the ballads, in fact preferred dance tunes to ballads from anyone. Her philosophy: why listen to sad songs? There’s enough sadness already. She listened to the happy, danceable music, tapped her fingers on the newspaper on the table, and got lost in the joy of “Angel, Angelina” “Oh me, oh my sweet baby” and “Adelida.”
One year, for her birthday, I signed Florence up the George Strait Fan Club. She was ecstatic to receive their introductory packet – a signed photograph, information about his life. Her face lit up like the schoolgirl she still held deep inside her. She thought he was handsome, strong, and oh, could he sing. And she loved that he was a family man. That he married his high school sweetheart and they were still together. One love for a lifetime. Florence was that for my Grandpa Joe – she outlived Joe, as did most in her generation, but until his death he was a one-woman man who never stopped loving her.
George might be more handsome than my Grandpa Joe – just slightly - and he’s got a smoothness to his moves that Joe didn’t (unless he had them in his younger years and I was just not around to see it), but as far as I can tell, George and my Grandpa Joe were cut from the same cloth. After Joe died, Florence kept his name. She was Mrs. Joseph ________ until the end, no matter how many times my feminist strivings tried to argue that she was her own person so she could go by her own name. She lived and died in one community, the one wife of a man recognized widely throughout that community as a good, honest, generous man. Traits that George is known for, too.
If you’re reading this, Grandma, you’ll be happy to know George and Norma are still together – it’s been 39 years now. They’ve made it, somehow, through the tragic death of their daughter when she was 13, and no amount of George’s increasing stardom has threatened their relationship. Florence, at age 74, wept for George and Norma Strait’s loss. She’d wept for her own losses, too, but didn’t dwell on them. She wasn’t a dweller – no one who prefers up-tempo can linger long in melancholy or tragedy.
No one else in my family likes country music, so it was an absolutely private thing my Grandma and I shared. She favored George Strait, but back then, I was all over Alan Jackson. Black hat, dark hair for Florence; white hat and blond hair for me (I’d had a thing for shaggy-haired blonds, who I knew on some level were not for me, but that only strengthened their pull over me). Now, all these years later, it’s George who seeps into my musical pores; Alan Jackson’s music is great, don’t get me wrong. But it’s George’s voice that washes over me, and I sing along as loudly as I can and feel the bright, broad presence of a grandmother who seemed to see me in a way that others didn’t, knowing things I didn’t dare show others, and cherishing me just the same.
Florence has been gone over 15 years, which is hard to imagine but numbers make it so. I miss her, miss that she never got to meet her great-grandson who is named after her. I miss that she’s not around my table when I celebrate holidays. I miss her scolding me in the way she would, when my humor edged too close to sarcasm. I miss talking with her about my Mom, as we had such different perspectives on the same person. I miss that I can’t play Rummikub or cribbage with her or go swimming at the pool in her condo complex. I miss her gravelly, scratchy, hoarse deep voice which still seemed musical when she called for me, with a pet name that no one before or since has ever used.
When I hear George’s songs that Florence has never heard, I wonder: can she hear them? Does George know what a big fan he had in her – of course not, he has millions. But maybe George knows her anyway. Maybe he knows the essence of a strong, capable, loyal, loving woman who came up from hardship to live a life of honor and love and hard work, a woman who was quick to laugh and wanted to dance when she heard him play.
So thanks, George, for being a good man whose music gave such pleasure to a good woman. And thanks for sending me that little bit of Florence the other day.
Here’s a link to one of Florence’s favorite George Strait songs, Adelida: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf1aTVlc4SU
Grandma Florence loved George Strait. She preferred his fast-tempo songs to the ballads, in fact preferred dance tunes to ballads from anyone. Her philosophy: why listen to sad songs? There’s enough sadness already. She listened to the happy, danceable music, tapped her fingers on the newspaper on the table, and got lost in the joy of “Angel, Angelina” “Oh me, oh my sweet baby” and “Adelida.”
One year, for her birthday, I signed Florence up the George Strait Fan Club. She was ecstatic to receive their introductory packet – a signed photograph, information about his life. Her face lit up like the schoolgirl she still held deep inside her. She thought he was handsome, strong, and oh, could he sing. And she loved that he was a family man. That he married his high school sweetheart and they were still together. One love for a lifetime. Florence was that for my Grandpa Joe – she outlived Joe, as did most in her generation, but until his death he was a one-woman man who never stopped loving her.
George might be more handsome than my Grandpa Joe – just slightly - and he’s got a smoothness to his moves that Joe didn’t (unless he had them in his younger years and I was just not around to see it), but as far as I can tell, George and my Grandpa Joe were cut from the same cloth. After Joe died, Florence kept his name. She was Mrs. Joseph ________ until the end, no matter how many times my feminist strivings tried to argue that she was her own person so she could go by her own name. She lived and died in one community, the one wife of a man recognized widely throughout that community as a good, honest, generous man. Traits that George is known for, too.
If you’re reading this, Grandma, you’ll be happy to know George and Norma are still together – it’s been 39 years now. They’ve made it, somehow, through the tragic death of their daughter when she was 13, and no amount of George’s increasing stardom has threatened their relationship. Florence, at age 74, wept for George and Norma Strait’s loss. She’d wept for her own losses, too, but didn’t dwell on them. She wasn’t a dweller – no one who prefers up-tempo can linger long in melancholy or tragedy.
No one else in my family likes country music, so it was an absolutely private thing my Grandma and I shared. She favored George Strait, but back then, I was all over Alan Jackson. Black hat, dark hair for Florence; white hat and blond hair for me (I’d had a thing for shaggy-haired blonds, who I knew on some level were not for me, but that only strengthened their pull over me). Now, all these years later, it’s George who seeps into my musical pores; Alan Jackson’s music is great, don’t get me wrong. But it’s George’s voice that washes over me, and I sing along as loudly as I can and feel the bright, broad presence of a grandmother who seemed to see me in a way that others didn’t, knowing things I didn’t dare show others, and cherishing me just the same.
Florence has been gone over 15 years, which is hard to imagine but numbers make it so. I miss her, miss that she never got to meet her great-grandson who is named after her. I miss that she’s not around my table when I celebrate holidays. I miss her scolding me in the way she would, when my humor edged too close to sarcasm. I miss talking with her about my Mom, as we had such different perspectives on the same person. I miss that I can’t play Rummikub or cribbage with her or go swimming at the pool in her condo complex. I miss her gravelly, scratchy, hoarse deep voice which still seemed musical when she called for me, with a pet name that no one before or since has ever used.
When I hear George’s songs that Florence has never heard, I wonder: can she hear them? Does George know what a big fan he had in her – of course not, he has millions. But maybe George knows her anyway. Maybe he knows the essence of a strong, capable, loyal, loving woman who came up from hardship to live a life of honor and love and hard work, a woman who was quick to laugh and wanted to dance when she heard him play.
So thanks, George, for being a good man whose music gave such pleasure to a good woman. And thanks for sending me that little bit of Florence the other day.
Here’s a link to one of Florence’s favorite George Strait songs, Adelida: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf1aTVlc4SU
And here’s a link one of his recent songs that’s a favorite of mine, Troubadour, which she didn’t get a chance to hear. Or maybe she has: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo-tSAtM9ZQ
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