My father grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts, and blamed being cold all his childhood for his love of summer, even in Atlanta, even without air conditioning. He also loved classical music, which peopled my childhood with legends and stories. I didn’t even know the titles of much of the music I grew up with until I worked at an NPR station in graduate school, and a piece would throw me back into my parents’ living room, sitting on the floor in front of the record player.
It is going to be in the mid-90’s today in upstate New York, and I know my father would have loved to be in the backyard in the shade with a glass of iced tea. Today I will play his favorite pieces, from Symphonie Fantastique to Adagio from Spartacus, and strive to enjoy the heat, in his honor.
I am the youngest of four children, raised in the old-fashioned Irish-American way. I suspect my mother encouraged me to write from an early age to keep me out of her hair, although she may have regretted the decision when my teachers began to call about the controversial stories I was writing. Thus I began my career of butting heads with the good sisters at my Catholic elementary school, and ended it by leaving high school for college with no diploma. I wear my high-school dropout badge rebelliously and proudly.
In college, I became fascinated with the Middle Ages, which was described as a “starry night” by one of my professors. So began a trek through languages and legends that informs my narrative non-fiction and historical fiction, as well as my blogs.
I love feedback and enjoy discussing ideas. I have an accountability blog for the Round of Words in Eighty Days entitled Leavekeeping; I write a blog on literary history, intellectual history, and the history of words entitled Lapidary Prose. I'm on Twitter and Facebook; my email is lapidaryprose@gmail.com.
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2 thoughts on “Summer arrives”
Isn’t it amazing how a bit of music can conjure memories we otherwise might not pay attention to? For my father it was big band music and the Grand Ole Opry. I can’t hear Johnny Cash without thinking of my dad.
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell 
Isn’t it amazing how a bit of music can conjure memories we otherwise might not pay attention to? For my father it was big band music and the Grand Ole Opry. I can’t hear Johnny Cash without thinking of my dad.
*lifts glass* To Dad.
*lifts glass* to Dad!