I’ve got a story I’d like to tell

Anyone who knows me (or has seen my car) knows I love Hanson.  But only a few people know the story of how it all started…

It was early 1997 and we’d finally gotten cable.  “MMMBop” and “Where’s the Love” had already caught my ear on the radio, but what really captured my attention was seeing the music videos on MTV and VH1.  They were just regular kids having fun!  To be completely honest, at first I wasn’t entirely sure whether they were girls or boys.  After a few viewings I decided they were really cute boys and the drummer was the cutest (I actually remember making conscious decisions on both counts).  From that point on, I was hooked.

Then October rolled around.  My 11th birthday (four days after Zac’s 12th birthday).  I couldn’t remember ever wanting anything more than I wanted the Hanson CD.  I immediately noticed that the present from my sister was the right shape, but I didn’t fully believe it until I ripped off the wrapping paper and saw Middle of Nowhere staring back at me.  THANK YOU, MONICA!

Is this what I think it is…?

YES! HANSON CD!!!

Fast-forward to Christmas.  Or, more specifically, our church Christmas party.  By that point I’d outgrown sitting on Santa’s lap, but for something this important…  True story: I asked Santa for tickets to a Hanson concert.  Without knowing if/when they were actually going on tour.

So this is kinda awkward…

…but I want tickets to a HANSON CONCERT!

But wait!  There’s more…

When Hanson announced dates for the Albertane Tour the very next summer, I was absolutely devastated that there was nothing in Texas (at least when the first dates were announced).  How would I ever get to see them if they didn’t play anywhere nearby?

Of course, we did take a family vacation every summer…  You’d think with something this important, I’d remember every single little detail, but I’m not even sure anymore whose idea it was.  I think Dad’s?  Anyway, someone looked at the tour dates and noticed one at the Nissan Pavillion in Washington, D.C. on July 2.  We did plenty of other things (visited Boston and Philadelphia, climbed the Statue of Liberty and counted the steps, spent the holiday with family who lived in the area, etc.), but we basically built our vacation around the concert.

And to an obsessed eleven-year-old girl and her thirteen-year-old sister (who was quickly pulled into the obsession too), that’s pretty much the definition of perfect.

Hanson symbol we made in the sand at Cape Cod

The rest is history.  Eighteen years, fifteen concerts, multiple meetings (including one fan club interview), and six studio albums later… Hanson is still my favorite band.  And always will be.

They’re singing happy birthday

Since this is a birthday blog project, I guess I should include some birthdays!  The majority were held at our house and involved Canadian bacon & pineapple pizza.  Highlights:

• For my fifth birthday, I had a princess party in the backyard.
• At my sixth birthday party, we drew Little Mermaid pictures in chalk on the unfinished gameroom floor (we were in the middle of adding on to the house).
• I had a sleepover for my seventh birthday!  The first of many…
• My parents went temporarily insane and let me invite all the girls in the class to my eighth birthday party.  Plus Mom took us out to the pasture to ride her horse, Chase.

5th birthday

6th birthday

7th birthday

8th birthday

8th birthday

• I didn’t have a party for my ninth birthday…
• I had my first ice cream cake for my tenth birthday!  I actually turned ten at my party.  And we made Mariah Carey music videos wearing costumes from past dance recitals.
• At my eleventh birthday party, we made our own t-shirts using a computer program and iron-on transfers.  Then we went out to the pasture to ride Mom’s horse again.  Most of us rode in the arena, but Amy was a bit more experienced and rode out in an open field.  Chase spooked, she fell off, and he stepped on her and cracked her pelvis.
• My twelfth birthday party was small.  Just me, Anita, and Ashley.  We watched Titanic and tried to count the bad words like we did at all our sleepovers that year.

10th birthday

11th birthday

12th birthday

• I have no pictures from my thirteenth or fourteenth birthdays.  Sad face.  I don’t remember much about them either, just that they were small non-sleepover parties and we played laser tag one year.
• For my fifteenth birthday I had a sleepover again.  We went bowling and rented Miss Congeniality and Josie and the Pussycats.
• My sixteenth birthday party started with two performances of the choir/theatre production of Love, Love, Love (Kate and me onstage, everyone else in the audience).  Then we went to my house for a sleepover, where I turned sixteen at midnight.  We watched The Princess Diaries and A Walk to Remember.

15th birthday

16th birthday

• For my seventeenth birthday, I had a double birthday party with Kate (because our birthdays are only a week and a half apart and we’re the same person anyway).  It was super fun, despite the fact that guy-I-was-totally-in-love-with-even-though-he-already-had-a-girlfriend actually brought his girlfriend along without asking if he could.
• Kate and I had another double party for our eighteenth birthday.  After random fun stuff at her house, we went swing dancing and got to dance with a bajillion people during the special birthday dance!

17th birthday

18th birthday

And that was my last birthday party, if such things are defined as a gathering of friends with activities including singing, blowing out candles on a cake, and opening presents.

I’ve still found ways to celebrate since then though.  Some big (Hanson concerts, Vandy Homecoming, trip to NYC that got postponed by Frankenstorm) and some small (dinner with parents, various theatre performances or rehearsals).  Not sure yet what I want to do this year, but I think I may actually put in a little effort and plan something.

Hundreds of stories

A typical sight on our annual summer family vacations.  Cooking on the camp stove with our tent in the background.

I was super happy to discover this picture in the boxes of slides I’ve been scanning, because some of my favorite memories from family vacations are actually from the campsites.  Specifically, in the tent at bedtime.  When Dad would tell stories.  That he made up as he went along.  And they were freaking hysterical.

I can’t tell you when any of the specific stories were told, or where we were.  I only recall a few titles, and I don’t remember any plot details.  But to this day, they still appear in conversations occasionally.  And we always recognize them when they do.

“The Finkles and the Farkles”

“The Amoeba and the Protozoa”

And the goat that said, “Pppppbbbbbbttttt” (how do you spell a sound???)

---

Then there was one night when I wanted to contribute.  Amy Grant was my favorite singer at the time, so I sang “El Shaddai” for my family.  Including all the Hebrew lyrics.  And a moment of silence before the second verse, while I played the instrumental bridge in my head (I made sure to tell them that’s what I was doing so they wouldn’t think I was finished).  I was around 7 or 8, and still terrified of singing by myself in front of people.  But I guess I just decided that being a part of the family nighttime experience was more important.  Like one of my favorite movies says:

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear

Of course, lying in a dark tent in our sleeping bags when I couldn’t actually see anyone helped too!

Even if you’re little you can do a lot

I give you these images as proof that I was once the shortest person in my family.  Also as a brief introduction to the epic family vacations we took every summer (plenty more on those later)…

A strong enough foundation

Today we go way back… to December 1986.

This was a surprisingly emotional box of slides for me to scan.  It included pictures from my birth day and baptism, none of which I remember seeing before.  Some of the pictures at the hospital are among the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, including a few of my sister meeting me for the first time (saving those for a sister post later, which I’m sure will make her cry for at least a month).  And I loved seeing pictures from my baptism.  Yay God!

I was baptized at a children’s mass.  I knew that, but I still wasn’t expecting to see all the kids crowded around.  Only a few months old and already captivating an audience!

Other things about this picture that make me happy:

• the expressions on my parents’ and godparents’ faces
• my dad holding up my sister so she can see
• my hand on my forehead in reaction to the water just poured over me

Not really sure what else to say that the picture doesn’t already cover.

So, yeah.  That’s how it all started.  And I could not be more thankful.

All you really have to do is shine

It’s dance recital season, so…

Flashback to our first dance recital!  (May 1992.  Monica is seven.  I’m five.)

All I remember from the dress rehearsal is that I was super nervous and my bow tie was crooked.  When I recently found the tapes with old rehearsal videos Dad recorded (I look terrified), Mom said I was fine but then Monica kept talking about how nervous she was so I decided I was too…

At the recital, on the other hand, I wasn’t nervous at all.  It was so much FUN!  And the first thing I said when I got offstage was that I wanted to take more classes the next year just so I could be in more recital dances.

The rest is history!

It’s time for high adventure

My counselors and me

I joined Camp Fire just before I turned five.  My sister Monica and I had gone to their summer Day Camp for a few years, and I was SO EXCITED when I was finally old enough (seven) for Resident Camp!  Monica could have gone earlier, but she waited until I could go too (claiming she didn’t want me to get jealous that she could go when I couldn’t, but really she just didn’t want to go without me).

Summer 1994.  My first overnight camp!  A whole week away from my parents!  And oh boy did I have some adventures…

I actually wrote about it at school, using one of those canned journaling prompts.  And then I copied it into my diary:

I’ll never forget the week I was at resident camp.  It was really important to me.  I learned how to swim on my back.  It’s really easy now.  I saw some rabbits.  On Thursday morning we went to a country fair!  That evening I got to be one of the hay bale queens!  It was fun!  I was cute.  I got to have freckles!*  That night we went to a dance.  Cheryl and her boyfriend Bustin** danced together.  Katherine went, “Kissie kissie,” and rubbed her fingers together.  It was funny!  On Friday morning Bustin busted into our cabin and stole Cheryl!  He woke me up!  Then he took Cheryl and guess what?  He tied her to a bed!  We were doing flag that morning and guess what?  She had to stay there during flag!  For a minute they had another counselor too.  But she got away!  Katherine and I were hoppers.  We were scared!  When Katherine, Alexis, and I went to riflery Bustin threatened to shoot us!  But we threatened to tell Mary Kay to make the horse Rusty mad.  You know why?  So he would buck Bustin!  He also kicked us out.  One day that week Cheryl got locked out.  Katherine says she kicked Bustin.  But if she did it doesn’t matter.  The first time we went to riflery we collected about a million be-bes.

*I let my counselors give me a makeover.  They braided my hair and drew freckles on my face with eyeliner.  And I really wish there was a picture…

**Cheryl was one of our counselors.  Her boyfriend was also a counselor.  His name was really Justin, but we called him “Bustin” for obvious reasons.

EDIT: I found this in my parents’ filing cabinets enclosed in a letter from Taleen, the other counselor whose name I’d forgotten!

And that was only the beginning.  I had no idea what discoveries still lay on the horizon…

I went back to Resident Camp every summer until 2001 (except 1999 when I tried a 2-week camp with a friend).  All the years blur together now and for the most part I have no clue which adventures happened when, but there were plenty:

• Visiting the “haunted” cabin Zuni at night, listening to the legend of Zuni inside the actual cabin, and getting terrified when someone started throwing rocks on the roof
• Escaping from an epic mud fight by running into the arts & crafts cabin
• Dancing with a boy for the first time (to “Are You That Somebody” by Aaliyah)
• Asking a boy to dance for the first time (to “This I Promise You” by N’Sync)
• Losing my glasses multiple times to always have them turn up miraculously by the end of the week

Then there were things that happened every year:

• Participating in awesome camp activities like swimming, canoeing, archery, riflery, horseback riding, various arts & crafts, etc.
• Singing fun camp songs with motions (maybe that’s why I started making up my own motions in music class at school…)
• Writing letters home on specially purchased Lisa Frank stationary (oh boy those would be hilarious to read now…)
• CROSSING THE SWINGING BRIDGE

THE BRIDGE (1995)

THE BRIDGE (2000)

Seriously, the bridge was one of my favorite parts of camp.  It was strategically placed at the camp’s entrance.  Like a gateway to adventure.

There will be light

I drove to Dallas on Valentine’s Day to see the touring production of The Bridges of Madison County.  I’ve been obsessed with the cast recording since it was released, and if it had run just two weeks longer I could have seen it on Broadway.  When I heard the tour was coming to Texas, I was thrilled and didn’t even care if it meant driving 350+ miles between cities!  Then this weekend I flew to Nashville to visit my sister and check out her new apartment… and see the touring production again.  Because I decided I just couldn’t pass up the chance while I had it.

“But Martha, you’re Catholic.  How can The Bridges of Madison County be one of your favorite musicals?”

Let me explain.  Or at least try to.

(Disclaimer: I noticed the book at a book fair at work recently, picked it up, skimmed the back cover, and flipped through a few pages.  It seemed like a completely different story and I have no desire to read the whole thing.  I have not seen the movie either.)

It starts with the light

I don’t normally pay much attention to technical aspects, but I repeatedly found myself drawn to the lighting of this production.  It was breathtaking and fit every scene perfectly.  It also heightened my awareness of how important a theme light is.  One of the main characters is a photographer, and the word “light” appears frequently in the lyrics (which I’ve pretty much memorized by now, thanks to my obsession with the cast recording), but it goes deeper than that.

Light is how we see.  Not enough light?  It’s dark and we can’t see anything.  Too much light?  We’re blinded and the effect is the same.  It’s a balance.

I am looking for the light

This musical sheds light on so many things:

• Tiny details and various contributing factors make it impossible to know someone else’s whole story.
• The decisions and actions of one person affect everyone around them, whether or not they fully realize it at the time.
• Love is always better.

But just like you can’t see light unless you open your eyes, you won’t truly see anything unless you’re willing to open yourself up to it.

The tornado of his eyes shining bright, finding light

It also goes back to one of the reasons I love theatre.  You may be exposed to situations you’re not familiar with or characters making choices you definitely do not agree with.  But you’re still able to understand why the characters made the choices they did.  You can understand even if you don’t agree.  And it can change the way you see.

The shadow in her light

Plus, Jason Robert Brown’s music is magical.  Pure and simple.

A shift in the light or the sun just got brighter

 

The trees you get to climb

Scanning old slides, I’ve been amazed at how many pictures there are of me climbing trees.  (No wonder I gave Brandy a treehouse when writing my American Girl books!)  I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves this time, so without further ado, I’d like to present…

“Baby Marthas In Trees”

People come into our lives for a reason

I love this picture.  Not because it’s a particularly great picture, but because of the people in it.  Backstage at the River City Twirl & Dance annual recital (or dress rehearsal maybe), June 1997.  Me, my sister, and my heroes Brandi and Jessi.

Brandi, Monica (my sister), Martha (me), Jessi

(Yes, the one I named my American Girl after.  I debated for the longest time, but I think I went with Brandy (and spelled her name wrong, oops…) because of the darker hair.  In later years I actually identified more with Jessi, but that may have been a “yay we’re both tall with long hair” thing.)

One particular detail from this recital that I will always remember: it was only my second year in clogging.  The “big girls” (as I always referred to the River City Stars) had two clogging dances a few numbers apart, and their second one was the number right after mine so they waited backstage.  Part of our spacing had us facing different directions for one section of the dance – the two girls in the middle faced back then front, the two girls on the ends faced front then back, and the other two girls faced in then out.  Facing in, I was looking at my best friend in the class.  Facing out, I was looking offstage… directly at my heroes.

I was never in class with them (I was five years younger) and I can’t even remember now when I first met them.  But for whatever reason, they caught my attention and I wanted to be just like them.  And whenever they noticed me, I felt super special!

There were other girls in that age group, but I think part of the reason Brandi and Jessi meant so much to me is that they stayed the longest.  They both joined the River City Stars performing group (which I desperately wanted to be part of) in the 1995-1996 year.  Brandi left after the 1997 recital, and Jessi left after the 1998 recital.  Jessi was also the 1996 Miss River City (basically what I wanted most in the whole world).

A lot can be said with a few journal excerpts…

Right after the recital in sixth grade, which I consider my “break-out” year (June 1999):

I’m so happy!!!  Jessi came to the recital!!!  I’m almost as tall as her!!!  She came in the dressing room before the recital.  Jill ran over to her and hugged her, and I was close behind.  Monica came over and Jill left.  I said, “I grew, Jessi,” and she replied, “Yes, you did!!”  …  When it was time to go back for America, we were talking about how Jessi always used to “keep order” while we waited and how there wasn’t “order” at the rehearsal.  Jessi said, “Oh, I’m coming.  There’ll be order.”  We talked a lot while we waited.  Brenna and Daniela were being rowdy, so Jessi was yelling, “Order!!” at them.  Right before we went out, Jessi said, “5, 6, 7, 8,” like she always used to.  …  When we got home, mom told me that she told Jessi about what Mrs. Willman had told me and Viana, and that hopefully I’d be a River City Star next year, and Jessi said, “Oh, she will.  She’s doing great.”  I almost cried when mom told me that!!!  It makes me feel so good that Jessi, who I admire so much, would say that about me!!!

Following the recital junior year of high school, which included performing my solo after being named Miss River City the previous year (June 2004):

I need someone to look up to. I need my Brandi and Jessi back. But wait – that’s ME now. Which is insane in itself.

And my last month at home before leaving for freshman year of college (August 2005):

I think, now more than ever, I need my Brandi and Jessi.  But that’s me to a lot of people.  Which is awesome, but I need someone too!  Someone to really admire and look up to and be able to go to for help and advice.

So Brandi and Jessi, if you ever read this, thank you for leaving such an impression on a young dancer that the phrase “my Brandi and Jessi” will always mean “role model” to her.  Even 20 years later.