To the Morning

The kids have left after Thanksgiving break, and the house returns to its quiet state. I'm in my little studio; Adam is outside gathering mown grass. Philip brought me a turn table. We've listened to Christmas music from old albums I've not heard in decades, L.P.s my parents had when I was very young.

But this morning the house is mine alone, and I pulled out the music I've been longing to hear.

I've studied the older generations, and now I study the younger ones, and I'm convinced we folk who grew up in the 1970's have a slightly different view of life. Neither my parents nor my children seem to understand my love of folk music, its gentle voices and strings and heart-wrenching lyrics. I miss Dan Fogelberg. My favorite of his albums is his first, Home Free. My favorite song on it is the first, "To the Morning." The thin violins fading in like the glow before sunrise. The simplest of melodies, the most innocent of lyrics.

And it's going to be a day,

There is really no way to say no to the morning.

Come on morning.

As I lowered the needle onto the vinyl and heard the scratchiness meld into the violins, and then his voice, it brought back my youth, and I missed it in spite of its unhappiness. In the midst of the unhappiness, and helping to overcome its emotions, was the music of my youth. With my friends I listened to Abba or Barry Manilow or Chicago. But in the privacy of my room I listened to Fogelberg and Joni Mitchell, sometimes Art Garfunkel. From them I learned all my complicated harmonizing abilities.

Dan Fogelberg is dead now, dead in this dead world at least, but I think very alive in the next. He was only 21 years old when his first album came out. He died of prostrate cancer at age 56. His words seep in and grow deeper as I age.

And maybe there are seasons,

And maybe they change,

And maybe to love is not so strange.

The sounds of the day, now they hurry away,

Now they are gone until tomorrow,

When day will break, and you will wake,

And you will rake your hands across your eyes,

And realize that it's going to be a day.

Perhaps that's as good as description of death as any -- a new sunrise, a new beginning, inescapable. Not the ending sunset but a new day with its brightness.

Christmas music will have to wait until I've reunited with these old friends. 

And a few others. I know my parents will remember these covers: