The Lyrics of My Grandmother's Life

The Lyrics of My Grandmother's Life

At age seven she was a star on stage, singing the role of "Becky" in the Tom Sawyer operetta. When she was ten she dunked "Mouse's" head in the teapot as the "Mad Hatter" in Alice and Wonderland. She was hoping to be "Alice", but even back then the eighth graders got all the good parts. But the experience was satisfying anyway because "Mouse" was played by her grade school rival, the same girl who competed with her for the best position on the basketball team and who once made a better pot holder in Home Ec.

Doris Horton Thurston, my seventy-five year old grandmother, has always had a song in her heart and on the edge of her tongue, waiting to flow over in a cascade of expression. She sees music as a connection to the world, a form that lets her reach outside of everyday life to different people, different cultures and different times. From generations before her and for generations to follow, from the memory of her mother's piano playing and her father's voice as a child to the orchestra concerts of her youngest grandchildren, she holds the connection to music close to her heart.

Her childhood was one of family hikes and plum trees and dipping fish out of the Lewis River when the smelt run came through. It was filled with holiday candles on the Christmas tree, carved cribbage boards and two younger brothers. In high school she ran track and played clarinet in Mr. Griffith's band. She danced to We Three are All Alone and Carolina Moon on the gym floor of Woodland High School. Throughout it all she pursued her love of music: chorus, octet and solo performances, piano lessons and family singing around the piano.

She worked alongside her Mother, Dad and brothers, Troy and Dane, in the neatly tended and carefully guarded rows of the family garden. She hummed the lilting notes of an Ave Maria aria or the harmony line to My Wild Irish Rose, which she somehow heard in her head when her father's rich baritone caressed the melody and her mothers fingers danced on the piano keys. She hoped the vegetables they were tending could be sold to earn a little extra for the next month of piano lessons. Despite the never-ending presence of the depression throughout the thirties, she was never hungry or cold.