♪ No Time At All

Where does thirty years go? This past weekend, that period of time got bookmarked three times.

   After a month of living here, I finally got to go through the jumble of boxes and bags I'd thrown into the sitting room of the master bedroom I'd moved into, early February. I told Jonathan that I had touched anything in there all this time and so most of it would probably get thrown out -- but actually all I needed to do was sort it out. Amongst Jonathan's foot lockers, assorted sleeping bags, and several boxes of books, I found a single cassette tape marked  "Pippin".  "Pippin" ran on Broadway for years in the late 60's, starring John Rubenstein and Jill Clayburgh and the phenomenal Ben Vereen, in a finding-yourself saga set in Charlemagne's realm. Gary Krinke directed it at Poly High School in '79. I went to see it as a freshman-to-be, memorized the whole score, and it stayed in my memory all these years. HA  I popped the tape in a combo turntable/CD/cassette unit that looks like the radio from Walton's mountain, and as I sang along I wondered where in the heck that middle-aged woman in the mirror came from. HA My psyche was in a thirteen year old state as I revisited the lyrics about a young spoiled one searching for the meaning of life. Perfect fit for a freshman in high school.  I trilled my way through the story and thought of my friends from high school who starred in that production who are now getting their first applications for AARP. HA
   Saturday night brought a tidbit of family news that made me so grateful for all of us who got old enough to get AARP applications. 
  A distant cousin had been traveling for the last year, on her bucket list of trips, and, at 34, she took her final trip after choosing not to treat Stage 4 cancer. I never knew Anna, who was a year old that summer of '79. (I would have chosen the same thing had I not had the boys, and just 'gone gracefully into that good night' but I need to be here to embarrass them at their weddings with the way I dance. Or not so much dance, but rather resemble Miss Piggy.)
   Tonight I read about another friend, from 30 years ago, who set out on a Saturday night motorcycle ride, on vacation in Florida with his buddies, who didn't survive the spring night. At 64, Ed had been in AARP for as long as I've lived here in Texas. I used to babysit for them when I was a teenager, soon after I started singing Pippin lyrics in my bedroom mirror back in the day. Their little chubby-cheeked boy was a love bug, and I remember Ed at about the same age that young man is now. Leaning against his motorcycle, heaping Southern gentility and grace in every word he said. 
   Took me thirty-four years to find Jonathan and fall in love with him all over again. We each got married and divorced twice over and raised a passel of kids between us while my fourth cousin Anna lived and left. Ed raised two beautiful kids, then left this earth doing what I remember most about him, riding his motorcycle. 
   I believe the actress who played Granny on 'The Beverly Hillbillies' played the role of grande dame Bethe in Pippin,on Broadway. Irene Ryan's distinctive voice played forth from my 33-year-old TDK tape, again, this morning:

Oh, it's time to start livin'   •   Time to take a little from this world we're given
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall   •   In just no time at all....

Here is a secret I never have told • Maybe you'll understand why
I believe if I refuse to grow old I can stay young till I die
Now, I've known the fears of sixty-six years • I've had troubles and tears by the score
But the only thing I'd trade them for • Is sixty-seven more....

Oh, it's time to keep livin'  •  Time to keep takin' from this world we're given
You are my time, so I'll throw off my shawl • And watching your flings be flung all over
Makes me feel young all over, In just no time, at all!

Live, and laugh and love..life goes by in just no time at all.