When I was fifteen, my sister taught me to play guitar.
I've always said my instrument is my voice, but I needed some accompaniment if
I was going to sit around in a circle with my hippie friends and sing
"Blowin' in the Wind," so guitar was the best (coolest) option. We
went to the swap meet, picked up a nice little folk guitar for 30 bucks (my
birthday money), and so it began.
It only takes three chords to play "Blowin' in the
Wind," although if you play it in C you have to play an F, and that chord
gave me fits until I finally conquered it. Of course, a hundred more songs
followed. But, one year later, it was that song, "Blowin' in the
Wind," that I was singing the day my eventual husband walked up onto my
lawn where I was sitting placidly, playing, singing. We'd never met. He lived
in the neighborhood. I'd seen him around. But that day he heard me singing and
simply walked up and sat down, listening quietly until I finished.
Six months later, for Christmas, he bought me a guitar. He
had told me repeatedly that I needed "a good guitar," a steel string
acoustic. Although I had told him I was perfectly content with the guitar I had,
as an axe-wielding teenager, I would've loved to have had a Martin (sort of the
equivalent, as guitars go, of buying a Landrover). Realistically, given my
socio-economic level, I could only dream about owning such a fine instrument. (By
the way, "axe" is a euphemism for guitar. The etymology of the term
is fascinating, so Google "Why is a guitar called an axe?" sometime
just for fun.)
However, on that Christmas Day in 1971, I opened a large
cardboard box the size of a small refrigerator to discover a guitar case, and
inside that case, a very beautiful guitar. Not a Martin. An Ibanez. Ever heard
of it? Neither had I. Now, don't get me wrong. Ibanez makes some really fine
guitars, and this one was no exception. But... this was definitely not my dream
guitar.
[Quick side note here: Inside that guitar case, in the
pick box, was a small jeweler's box. And inside that box was a ring. A thin gold band. "It's a wedding
ring!" the man said—in front of my entire family. "Put it on!"
That was his proposal. I should have seen monumentally huge red flags unfurling
so rapidly they blotted out the gorgeous December-in-Southern-California sun.
But I didn't.]
My response to the guitar, I think, was, "Um... ...
.... It's nice." I just didn't know what to say. It was huge, a
"D" size (no, ladies, guitars don't come in bra cup sizes, though
that might've helped), and far too big for me. And it was a
"dreadnought" shape (see photos above and below). And it was a light wood,
spruce. None of these are characteristics I would have chosen for myself.
And I couldn't play it. At least not yet. No
"set-up" had been done on the guitar (sorry for the jargon), so the
strings were too high, and they were steel (as opposed to the more forgiving
nylon strings I'd learned on), so pushing my fingers down to make chords felt
like jamming on razor blades.
"The neck is solid rosewood!" my now-fiancé beamed.
He loved that guitar. And what I came to realize is that he bought the guitar
that he wanted. No consideration had
been given to what I might have
wanted (which, no surprise, ended up being a theme in our doomed marriage).
But it was a nice guitar with a beautiful sound, and he
had it worked on so that it would be more forgiving on my fingers. So I played
it. And played it and played it.
(I'm the one in the middle.)
For forty-five years—at church, in countless weddings,
for several funerals, someone's baby shower, several luncheons—I have played
that big, loud, sweet-sounding guitar. What a trove of memories we've shared...
both good and bad. The good ones involve happy weddings and informal gatherings
like my brother's birthday a few years back when he, my sister and I all played
our guitars and sang the songs of our youth. Perfect day.
But the bad ones... well, they're pretty bad. Because I
mostly sang in church. And I suppose I should mention here that the man I
married, the one who bought me that guitar, became the pastor of a church
(despite being an atheist when we married). As the pastor's wife, certain
things were expected of me. I didn't mind singing; I loved it. But, after
eleven years, I just couldn't remain married to... him anymore. (For a list of all
the adjectives I just deleted in reference to him, you'll have to private
message me.) I separated from him, and when I did, I was asked to leave that
church. I went anyway (when he wasn't there), and when I showed up, I was
escorted out by deacons and told not to come back. In the years following,
while my children and I lived at the poverty level (because their father
refused to pay one dime of child support, and he never did), there wasn't much
time for singing or song writing or guitar playing while I hustled and
struggled to raise four kids on my own, make ends meet, attend college classes,
and try to make sense of what had happened. And frankly, I was so
grief-stricken over my failed marriage and the treatment I received by the
people I thought were my friends, I didn't much feel like singing anyway.
Eventually I began again, picking up the guitar every
once in awhile, singing for special events on occasion. But every time I pulled
that guitar out of the case, I drew out a swath of bad memories a mile wide
along with it.
What to do?
You know, I'm here to tell ya, life is tough. We often
wish we had a reset button to enable a do-over, but really, when you knock over
hurdles in the race, you don't get to go back, set them back up, and try again.
You just have to keep moving forward as best you can.
Having said that, though, I will say this: I accept that
I cannot fulfill all my life's longings. I'm resigned to the fact (now,
finally) that I'll probably never marry Robert Redford. Sigh.... I won't get
that interview with Oprah about my great-grandmother. But damn it, I'm not
ready to stop singing. In fact, now that I've retired from teaching, I find
myself singing quite a bit.
Which is why I bought a new guitar last week (at The Fret House in Covina). It's a
Martin 00-15 mahogany beauty with tones so deep and resonant it nearly makes me
cry when I play it. I spent weeks researching what I wanted, and with the help
of a few old friends and some really cool new ones (thank you, Doug, Tom, Rick
and Jorge!), I bought the guitar I've
wanted all these years. (See photos below.) And oh Lordy, am I ever ready to
make some new memories.
