The Lyrics of My Grandmothers Life :: Music Personal Narrative Papers

The Lyrics of My Grandmothers Life At age seven she was a star on stage, singing the role of Becky in the turkey cock Sawyer operetta. When she was ten she dunked Mouses head in the teapot as the Mad Hatter in Alice and Wonderland. She was hoping to be Alice, but even back then the eighth graders got any the good parts. But the experience was satisfying anyway because Mouse was played by her grade school rival, the same girl who competed with her for the best position on the basketball team and who once made a better pot holder in Home Ec. Doris Horton Thurston, my seventy-five year old grandmother, has always had a song in her heart and on the edge of her tongue, waiting to flow over in a cascade of expression. She sees music as a conjunctive to the world, a form that lets her reach outside of everyday life to different people, different cultures and different times. From generations before her and for generations to follow, from the memory of her mothers piano playing and her fa thers voice as a child to the orchestra concerts of her youngest grandchildren, she holds the connection to music close to her heart.Her childhood was one of family hikes and plum trees and dipping fish out of the Lewis River when the smelt run came through. It was filled with holiday candles on the Christmas tree, carved cribbage boards and two younger brothers. In high school she ran track and played clarinet in Mr. Griffiths band. She danced to We Three are All Alone and Carolina stargaze on the gym floor of Woodland High School. Throughout it all she pursued her love of music chorus, octet and solo performances, piano lessons and family singing near the piano.She worked alongside her Mother, Dad and brothers, Troy and Dane, in the neatly tended and carefully guarded rows of the family garden. She hummed the lilting notes of an Ave Maria aria or the harmony line to My Wild Irish Rose, which she someways heard in her head when her fathers rich baritone caressed the melody and he r mothers fingers danced on the piano keys. She hoped the vegetables they were tending could be sold to earn a little tautologic for the next month of piano lessons. Despite the never-ending presence of the depression throughout the thirties, she was never hungry or cold.