I wanna rock!

I’ve had an unrequited passion to be a musician for pretty much my entire life.  Looking back on my favorite bands when I was coming of age in the 1980s, it’s no surprise that I wanted to become a leather clad virtuoso strutting around on a stage in front of thousands of fans. It didn’t matter that bands I loved were all men – Def Leppard, Poison, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi, Prince, Whitesnake, White Lion.

If I couldn’t date them, I wanted to be them.

Practice makes what?

When I was 15, I convinced my mom to pay for electric guitar lessons for me. I truly thought I was going to discover some latent talent that had been buried inside.  NEWSFLASH:  There was none.  As it turns out, the only way you get really good at anything is through practice. And that was something I didn’t really care for, not back then. I didn’t even care enough to practice to impress my instructor, who’s tight black jeans I still remember, though not his name.

I really did think that I could do it. I had taken piano lessons for many years.  I remember rushing home after elementary school to practice for fifteen minutes before I had to walk to Mrs. Pennett’s house down the block for my lesson.  I thought the freshness would work in my favor, kind of like a warm up. She was a great teacher, but there were no recitals to perform at. Unless I was just so bad she never included me.

In these letters Mickey asks about my mom’s playing, since she had been taking piano lessons.  He wrote that he hoped they would be able to afford a piano when they buy a house. That never happened. However, the piano I used growing up was a free gift from the bank where she had opened up an account with the money from my father’s life insurance policy. So, in a bittersweet and surreal manner, he did manage to get her that piano.

The letters continue with more “Arlene, you are my everything” and “Without you, I don’t exist.”  I still feel like I’m invading into a very personal space by reading these.  

Staying in Okinawa gave Mickey access to china at great prices.  Of course, he was buying a set of dishes for his and Arlene’s new life together.  Over the course of the letters, they discuss which patterns they like, where will it be shipped, etc.  Mickey said he preferred to buy outright, not dealing with monthly payments and terms. That is a practice that I was always raised to do – if I couldn’t afford something outright, then I shouldn’t buy it at all. (This was the complete opposite of my ex-husband, who never hesitated to come home with something big and shiny, no matter how it was paid for. This included a boat.)

As sensible as he was about purchasing things, he was equally romantic about  finances.  In his mind, they “will always be wealthy in love and happiness, even if we don’t have a penny to our names.”

They often discussed my mom’s nursing training, and the patients she had been assigned.  In this letter Mickey marveled at the human spirit, where a very ill boy has such a sweet personality while there other kids who are healthy and then get into heaps of trouble. He chalks it up to not being able to understand G-d’s ways for why things are the way they are. But, he adds, he has complete confidence in “him” and is certain he knows what he’s doing.  This is another moment in time where I am moved by the fact that he had no way of knowing how life was going to work out.