For a visual artist, my ability to describe a scene from memory is appallingly bad. But the music and the emotion…those I can recall. One of my earliest memories is of me and my sister sitting on papa’s lap, one on each leg. We must have been so tiny still!  He sang to us every night, it seemed.  “Lazy Moon”, “Always” and even the ribald “Makin’ Whoopee” crooned by my father in accompaniment to Harry Nilsson’s A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, complete with the pops and scratches of a vinyl LP on a dime store turntable.  If there wasn’t much money in those days, we were too young to notice: our needs were for a safe place to sleep, a little food to fill our tiny bellies and, above all else, the love of our parents.  These things we had in abundance.

At other times, Sis and I would sit at papa’s feet, displaced by his old yellow acoustic guitar. Papa had taught himself simple chords for a lot of Tom Rush songs back when he was in college, and now he sang to us of “The Circle Game”, “Urge for Going” and “Tin Angel”. But my favorite by far was “More Pretty Girls Than Two”. I know the original title is “More Pretty Girls Than One”, and I don’t even know which recording artist brought this piece to his repertoire – probably Ricky Skaggs and Tom Rice, since he does love bluegrass.  At any rate, my papa had two girls, and so he adapted the song to include us both. We had our very our own song, and that makes a girl feel very special.

Now, we’re all grown up, and he hasn’t sung to us in many years. He believes it’s wrong even to speak to us, because we don’t share his faith. Papa, this one’s for you.

What’ll I Do?
from A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night

Gone is the romance that was so divine.
‘Tis broken and cannot be mended.
You must go your way,
And I must go mine.
But now that our love dreams have ended…

What’ll I do
When you are far away
And I am blue
What’ll I do?

What’ll I do?
When I am wond’ring who
Is kissing you
What’ll I do?

What’ll I do with just a photograph
To tell my troubles to?

When I’m alone
With only dreams of you
That won’t come true
What’ll I do?