Pat Sajak had just awarded a puzzle winner the prize money of $37,000. I left the TV on but turned the volume off. The date had been in the back of my mind all day, and I allowed myself to remember exactly where I was 50 years ago. I wasn’t watching the Wheel but was at our home on Eastover Drive. Husband Willard was at a board meeting of the Jackson Country Club.
The afternoon had been dark and dreary. It may have been partly the winter solstice blues, but I felt like I was coming down with something. As I walked through the den toward our bedroom so I could put my feet up and rest, awhile our daughter, Tootie (her big name, Linda Gayle), was on the sofa in front of the fireplace, playing her guitar. She patted the couch.”I’ve got a song to sing for you,” she said.
“I’ll sit for just a minute,” I said, sinking down. “I don’t feel so good. Feel like I’m coming down with the epizootic.”
With those thoughts, as Pat Sajak and Vanna White waved goodbye to their Wheel of Fortune audience I went back to another time.
That night,Tootie had picked the guitar strings a few seconds and then she hummed words from a popular John Denver song, “I’m leaving, on a jet plane.” She stopped a moment, then softly trailed the words, “Don’t know when I’ll be back again.” She laid her guitar on the sofa.
Tootie had a lovely voice. “I enjoyed that,” I said. “But I’m feeling under the weather, so I’ll say goodnight and goodbye for now. Think I’ll go lie down.”
“Wait just a minute. I want you to hear a little bit more. Even though you’re not feeling so good, I’ll play one that I’m sure will make you smile.” She reached for the guitar and strummed the chords to another tune, “There’s so many times I’ve let you down.” She gave me a mischievous look as she sang,”So many times I’ve played around. I tell you now, they don’t mean a thing.”
We both grinned as if we understood an unspoken joke.
Oh glory. I put on my best martyr face. What is she going to do next?
I had often thought and wondered those words.
Tootie pinged a few fast notes then tilted her chin, “Go on and lay down, Mama. You look like you don’t feel so good.”
I stood, bent over and gave her a quick hug, turning my face away so that just in case I had something, she wouldn’t catch it, then walked on down the hall to my bedroom.
I heard a few more soft chords, as I slid into bed. “Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”
A short while later Tootie came to the door and blew me a kiss. “Don’t wait up for me. Not sure when I’ll be back.”I barely heard her voice as she called over her shoulder.”I love you.”
A program I sometimes watch came across the TV screen. Not tonight. Not in the mood for any of The Goldbergs’ humor. Memories gathered around, melodies from the past were still with me. It hasn’t been a million tomorrows, but a long time passing.
On this night, January 22, 2020, teardrops were in my eyes as I thought back to our times together.
Willard’s daughters, Pat and Tootie, were not mine, and yet they were. Two little girls, age nine and eleven called me Mama, when their father and I were only dating.
There was a moment that changed with Willard and me. Another January afternoon, at four-thirty, it was, “Your girls, Pat and Tootie,” and “My son, Bob.”
At four thirty-seven, it was, “Our children.”
Almost from the first, Tootie, Pat, and Bob were brother and sisters. Then, about a year and a half later there was little brother, Bill. Even though the notes from the sweet by and by were sometimes sung in an off-key voice, from the beginning, that’s the way it was with our children. They were all just ours and in so many ways we grew up together.
I get up and turn the TV off. “’Ere I forget.”
And now, at exactly seven thirty-five, once again I hear the echo of Tootie’s feet going down the hall, walking toward the back door.
Willard was called from the country club board meeting; his daughter, Linda Gayle was being brought by ambulance to Doctor’s Hospital. He was there when the ambulance arrived, he did what no father should ever have to do.
Willard pronounced his daughter DOA.
I bowed my head, closed my eyes and said goodbye again, as I had done that night fifty years ago.
I hear her voice as I remember the haunting lines, “This is my moment, and now is my story.”
