#18 - My Second Mother

In fifth grade in California, my English and home teacher was Mrs. Debbie Moore. This grade was when I became an unrepentant reader and a devoted music lover, and Mrs. Moore played an important role in my life. So in that regard, I am indebted to her. Thank you, Mrs. Moore.

My first books that I bought for me with my father’s money through a book catalog provided by Mrs. Moore were Harriet the Spy and Sara Crewe. That is all it took for me to be forever smitten by the written word.

Music. Mrs. Moore decided to play some songs on her record player giving us the lyrics to those songs and asking us to underline the components of sentences, like verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. Two songs stand high and clear in my memory from that class. The first one is The Sounds of Silence with Simon and Garfunkel. Oh, it was beautiful, poetic, poignant and I loved it. The other one was You’re so Vain with Carly Simon. I just fell in love with Carly, the song was witty, sassy and plain cool.

Pretty soon I was investing one hundred percent of my allowances in books and music. That is how I discovered jazz all on my own, specifically Louis Armstrong, as well as classical music via a two-record collection that had a bunch of pieces by different composers. That collection helped me know how beautiful this music is, no matter that I do not listen to it that often.

Curiously, I would buy some records recommended to me by my mother. Like very old Mexican folk songs by the Dueto Amanecer or the Hermanas Padilla that I still treasure and some were my daughter’s lullabies as a baby.

From "Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits” long play, I claimed one song as my personal anthem in English, I am a Rock. I felt that everything about that song defined who I became as a sullen and lonely teenager. “I have my books and my poetry to protect me. I am shielded in my armor…I am a rock, I am an island, and a rock feels no pain and an island never cries.” There, all said.

Carly was another thing. I would religiously buy as I could any of her albums. I told myself that I was practicing my English and perfecting my pronunciation, improving my immigrant accent (yes, by then I was a young adult).

My mother was never really inclined to identify with any phase I would be living through in my teenage years, but I felt Carly understood everything there was to understand about me and the depths of my feelings, my conflicts and my needs. I like to think and say that I was nursed by Carly, that she somehow became a second mom to me, my true confidante.

I still get excited when I hear anything about Carly, I know she is a grandmother. I know the names of her two kids, Sally and Ben. I hope they’re a lot like their mother. I imagine they had a great and privileged childhood.

Sometimes I imagine writing a letter to Carly where I tell her how much her music means to me; how much she and it helped me when I was my most neurotic. That sometimes I imagine the child I was, and that as “a bunch of flowers” “I set her moving to her sweetest song.” Ay, Carly, that odd little girl sure loves you!