This seems to have been a year of many changes for me and for the people around me, the latest one being my youngest daughter, Gracie, who is moving away from home. And she’s not just moving down the road…she is moving to another city, Vancouver. She is moving in with a friend and neither of them have a pot to pee in. Literally :-).

So I’ve been digging around through the cupboards to find old cutlery, cups, plates and other bits and pieces to get her started, and all the while I’ve been thinking about the first time I moved out.

I had a bed, a dresser, my clothes and my guitar and a couple of friends with a truck. I moved into a basement suite in Richmond with my best friend Linda who had her bed and some kitchen supplies and her sewing machine. 

Between us we may have come up with a table and a lamp or two. But it wasn’t much.

We were 18 years old, not very old really compared to the age kids are when they move out these days. We were excited about living on our own. But all of these years later I have to admit that Linda did most of the work, the cleaning the cooking and all the rest. I was a lazy ass and didn’t think to do things for myself.

So a few months later when we had to move out again because the basement suite was declared illegal, I told Linda that I thought I needed to live on my own. There was a part of me, as dumb as I was, that knew it was time for me to take care of myself. So we parted ways and I found an apartment in Vancouver, not very far from where Gracie is now about to move.

I’m sure my Dad lost a lot of sleep when I first left, and I didn’t think to call home very often. I was too caught up in myself and my life to think that he might have needed to hear my voice every now and then.

I’m sure he has long since forgiven me, but remembering that now, I have set Gracie up with a webcam for her laptop (she WILL have an internet connection), so that I can check up on her constantly :-). Ain’t technology wonderful? Thank heavens.

When I was first living completely on my own, I was a slob and didn’t know how to cook anything except rice. I was constantly running out of toilet paper or bar soap and forgetting one thing or another. But I always paid my bills on time because I was afraid NOT to. I got fat from eating too much Kraft Dinner and I got depressed because I had no one to talk to. So I got a cat.

I didn’t have a TV, so sometimes I snuck out on the balcony and listened to the news from someone else’s TV in another apartment. And over time, I did get used to being on my own and there certainly was a sense of satisfaction in being completely independent. I only ever asked my parents for money once…when I broke the back axle on my car and didn’t have enough to pay for it. I didn’t have a credit card back then, so I always paid by cash or cheque.

In retrospect, I am happy that I had that time on my own, and I hope that Gracie gets the same sense of satisfaction from taking care of herself. But it’s hard to think about her being over there in that big city without me to smother her with hugs and kisses. Okay, maybe she won’t miss that part 🙂

And that brings me to what this blog entry is really about…the gut wrenching ache of having to let go. There have been many, many parents before me who have gone through this, and there will be many more again. But this is my first time. I am happy to have her experience her independence, but I am sad to know that my life is going to be permanently changed without her here. She is funny, she is the only person in the world I can be a total goof with, she is smart, she sings with me, plays guitar with me, talks about Buddhism with me. She puts up with my smothering and rolls her eyes at my lectures. She sews the small tears in my clothes (I don’t sew), brings home a meal from the DQ when I don’t feel like cooking, and now she has a dream that she wants to follow. I can’t deny her that.

As I said before, letting go has been a recurring theme all year. The truth is that letting go is something we have to do all the time, but it seems that sometimes we have to deal with it in a much more profound way. My father had to let go of his home, and to some extent, his freedom, when he had to move into a care facility back in March. More recently, a very good friend of mine had to let go of her husband who passed away in August at the very young age of 54. And now I’m having to let go of my little girl as she ventures out on her own for the first time.

I wrote a song about letting go many years ago…at the time I was leaving my job and moving onto other things and I actually wrote it for my boss, Mary Jo, who was very soppy when it came to saying goodbye:

Is this goodbye?
Well, we haven’t said a thing all day
And it almost time
So I’m wondering when the dam will break
But I know that the road is right
I’m just following all the signs

We spend a lifetime letting go
Resisting it to the end
You can’t stop the wind, you can’t change the flow
So just love it and let it go

When you touch my hand
Part of you will always be with me
And you’re in my life
No matter where your world might be
I’ll remember and you’ll be here
Out of nowhere you’ll feel me near

We spend a lifetime letting go
Resisting it to the end
You can’t stop the wind
You can’t change the flow
So just love it and let it go

And now the moment arrives
For the tears and the ties to come down
But if you give it awhile
What remains is a smile
From someone who loves you

We spend a life time letting go
Resisting it to the end
You can’t stop the wind
You can change the flow
So just love it and let it go
You just love it and let it go

…I am going to miss you terribly, Gracie girl.
Love always,
Mom
xoxoxo

I guess I crossed something off my bucket list last night.

A couple of months back I heard that James Taylor was coming to Victoria. One of my big dreams in the last few years has been to see all of my songwriting heroes live. Aside from Joni Mitchell, he has to have been one of the greatest influences on my writing. He’s also been, in my opinion, one of the best interpreters of other’s songs over the years. “Up On A Roof”, “Handyman”, and of course “You’ve Got A Friend”, Carol King’s beautiful song, were all given that distinctive JT sound back in the 70’s when his star was flying high.

I’ve seen snippets of his concerts on TV and DVD, but of course seeing him live gave me a much better sense of his personality, his energy and his showmanship. He looks like he’s thoroughly enjoying himself up there. I’ve seen concerts where the band or the artist looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. One of my heroes who strikes me this way is Gordon Lightfoot. When I saw him for the first time only a few years ago, he was quiet, reserved and just let the songs do all of the work. There was a bit of a disconnect with Lightfoot but with James Taylor it was the complete opposite.

From a performing songwriter perspective, you realize the importance of that audience connection. Granted, last night we were all already sold on JT before we got there…but when you’re not known, creating that connection is absolutely critical. It endears you to your audience, gives them a sense of your human side, your sense of humour and your personality. You can’t just bow your head down and play the songs, you have to play them TO someone and let them feel for themselves where the songs came from.

JT is a fabulous guitar player, and on his old hits the sound guys let his fingerstylings stand out just as they did on the original recordings. He used two Olson acoustic guitars; a dreadnaught and a cutaway…I incorrectly quoted the price of them to someone last night, but they start somewhere around $12,500. Yikes. The sound of them is wonderful though, rich and bright.

It was a great turnout and he gave two encores, which were such a treat. I have to admit, I enjoyed his acoustic hits a little more, but that band of his was absolutely fabulous. I think it was his last night on his Canadian tour, so maybe we were just lucky to get a little extra out of them. Actually, the last encore appeared to be spontaneous…he ran to each member and whispered in their ear as if he had just decided to do one more.

And then there were the songs themselves. I wondered how many older hits he’d actually play, knowing how difficult it is to play the same songs over and over and still give them the energy they deserve, but he managed to do that so well. “Caroline On My Mind” and “Sweet Baby James” were real highlights for me, and of course he had to do “Fire and Rain”; that song is a staple in his bag of hits. The one that teared me up, though, was “You’ve Got a Friend”. He has a wonderful, rich baritone voice…not one note was out of place…it draws you in with it’s purity and resonance. I’ve often tried to emulate a female version of that voice and it was always James Taylor’s vocal that I was hearing while I was writing so many of my songs over the years.

So, JT, you helped an old 70’s girl to fulfill a dream last night. Thanks for coming to Victoria, thanks for all of your wonderful songwriting and performances over the years. You really are the best.

IJ

One of the highlights of my trip to New York, was a visit to Ellis Island.

I am here in North America, as many of us are, as a result of my recent ancestors’ immigration to this continent. In fact, if we all look back far enough, we are all immigrants.

Ellis Island was a place my father always told me about. My Grandfather John Jokumsen (who got frustrated with people being unable to spell his name, and changed it to Jackson), came across the Atlantic from Denmark all by himself on an old rust bucket of a ship nicknamed the Holy Oly. He was only 16 years old.

The reason he came was because he had a wealthy Aunt and Uncle who lived in Kalispel, Montana. They had offered my grandfather’s parents the opportunity for one of their 12 children (the “smartest” one) to come to the US, so that they could take him in and educate him.

And that’s how my grandfather, who was apparently the smartest one of the lot, got on the Holy Oly for that infamous trip to Ellis Island. It was 1912. And guess which other very famous ship was crossing the Atlantic at the same time? That’s right. The Titanic.

When my Grandfather’s ship pulled into the harbour at Ellis Island, they could see the lifeboats of the Titanic moored up to the docks. Can you imagine? The mightiest, “unsinkable” Titanic, didn’t make it, but the Holy Oly did. The photo above is the main hall on Ellis Island where every immigrant was processed before they were allowed into the U.S.

To make a long story short, my Grandfather did not take to his aunt and uncle very well, and ended up jumping on the rails and travelling all over the US and Canada by himself, working wherever he could and then moving on to the next stop. Eventually, he went back to Denmark and married my Grandmother, and brought her to settle in Canada. My father was born not long after they reached Calgary.

My mother was also an immigrant. She came to Canada via Montreal after a year’s tour on a Danish hospital ship, the Jutlandia, during the Korean War. She was a registered nurse, and had been banished from her family (long story), so she decided to move to Canada in 1954, because a lot of other Danes were doing the same during that time. And that’s where she met and married my Dad.

Here in Canada, we depend a lot on immigrants…if it weren’t for the growing immigrant population, our economy would pop like a balloon stuck with a pin because our birthrate isn’t great enough to sustain us. But, as has always been, there is a segment of the population who resent the “foreigners” “invading” our country, “taking over” all of the jobs that should be “ours”, etc., etc. When I listen to Lou Dobbs on CNN talking about the “alien” Mexicans invading the US, it makes me cringe. We forget that most of us are here because our ancestors were also immigrants, trying to find a better life in another country, full of hope for a better future. Maybe they don’t all do so in a legal, above board kind of way, but their intentions are almost always good. They are simply trying to help their families. Over hundreds of years, this is one ideal that hasn’t changed.

When I walked through that building on Ellis Island and saw the way the immigrants of those times were shuffled around like cows, marked with symbols on their clothes if they were blind or sick or poor, put behind bars if they were thought to be of dubious character, unable to defend themselves simply because they couldn’t speak the language, I felt a great deal of compassion. In the present day, there is no difference…people just want to find a way to do better, and we have no right to deny them that. Not really.

Ellis Island is now a museum. It is part of a tour that includes the Statue of Liberty…the ferry takes you from Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, over to the Statue of Liberty first and then to Ellis Island, and then back to New York. A part of me wondered how many people would actually get off at Ellis Island. Everybody did. Maybe they were just curious, maybe they didn’t know any better, or just maybe they were from immigrant families too, and knew the significance of the place. That’s what I’m kind of hoping.

IJ