Knock Three Times On The Ceiling…And Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree…Because You Decorated My Life…

When I was about 7 years old we received in the mail a flier for the “Columbia Record & Tape Club”, where you buy roughly 3 million records or tapes [Cassette or 8-Track – Your choice…] for a penny [that you actually taped to the flier and sent back!] and then order every month [usually at a cost equal to the national debt].  And remember, if you didn’t send back your reply card, you received their “Selection Of The Month”, which depending on what category you chose, could be a new version of an old classical piece, conducted by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.  If you chose R&B at the time…it was probably Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. [now solo from the 5^th Dimension] singing “You Don’t Have To Be A Star [To Be In My Show]”. In rock it might have been Aerosmith’s “Toys In The Attic…”  Needless to say, to obtain a penny, and more importantly, the permission to enter this major financial agreement, I had to ask my Mom. 

My Mom was something of a conundrum to me.  If I had to say where my interest in music came from I would have to say it was from her.  Now it wasn’t like she had it on in the house, or listened to it constantly [Dad played WHN remember, and my grandmother preferred 600 AM WICC or 66 [660 AM] WNBC out of NY, with Imus In The Morning], but she had her favorites.  And whenever her favorites would play the area [I remember her talking about seeing Paul Anka or Tony Orlando at the Oakdale Theater when it was still in the round…], she would get excited, albeit quietly, about her idols.  She would drag my dad out to the show and any one of the four Kovacs girls [Robin, Jeannie, Katie or Maryellen] would babysit for us. I could never understand how someone with so much passion for her music could keep it all bottled up, but that was Mom.  She always had something else to worry about or something more pressing at the time. 

She once told me that she wanted to play piano as a child, and that one thing or another prevented her from doing it.  Because of this, whenever she saw my passion for music budding she nurtured it, and in doing so provided me with not only the permission, but the penny to join the club.   Now I won’t say there weren’t times when she may have regretted that decision, particularly when my room was right above the dining room and the volume of music that I would play would rattle the ceiling and shake the chandelier, but she would always somehow let me know it was ok.  Whether it was a smile, or a wink, she told me she got it.  She understood….

We had a turntable in our den.  And I remember playing a copy of the Grease soundtrack [not the movie…the original Broadway recording] and wondering why the songs from the movie were missing.  We had a copy of a Chicago record, and there was one point in 25 Or 6 To 4 where the song always skipped, so I got used to the skip.  Whenever I heard the complete version on the radio, my mind would skip the song… repetition strikes again.  We even had a copy of Cheech & Chong’s “Up In Smoke”, but we couldn’t always play that because of the profanity…  But what I remember the most was the albums my mom liked to hear.  It is these songs that I hear now and can’t help but to think about her. 

She loved “Diana” by Paul Anka, and Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” and “Roses Are Red”.  Long before Enrique took over as a Latin heartthrob, Julio Iglesias was a favorite in the house.  “Candida” and “Knock Three Times” by Tony Orlando and Dawn would certainly pick up the pace. And when it came to country music there was no one more idolized by Mom than Kenny Rogers.  I think if Kenny Rogers showed up at our house growing up and offered to whisk my Mom away, we’d never hear from her again…it was like that. 

She would play his album and we would sing with it [and usually we’d do it wrong..] Whenever we heard “Lucille”, the line would be “four hungry children and a crop in the field” and we would sing “four hundred children and a crop in the field” and think that was the words.  Math on feeding them all be damned… 

What I remember most is the smile.  She would smile from ear to ear whenever she heard those songs.  She didn’t play them often [or in my opinion, often enough], but when she did she was as happy inside as we could see she was outside.  She allowed me to play everything, and even though some of it drove her nuts, or was too loud, you could still see that it was ok. 

Mom will be gone exactly two years on Wednesday [3/9].  I can’t thank her enough for the influences and guidance that she has had in my life.  She knew I was a little different, and instead of trying to make me fit in with the rest, she let me be me, and knew somehow that the music would get me through.  She knew, because I was a lot like her, but she didn’t want anyone to know it but me…

On Wednesday I will say a prayer for her, and will play some of the music that made her smile as my little tribute to her.  And I will always treasure the moments that we had when she was here, especially the moments after she yelled at me to turn down the music, because I knew in my heart that she would have turned it up too… [Even the ones we got because we forgot to send back the reply card…]

“And you decorated my life, created a world where dreams are a part
And you decorated my life by paintin' your love all over my heart
You decorated my life…”

I Love You Mom.

Joan Marie Fico Finnegan [April 11, 1940-March 9, 2009]

Thanks for coming along for the ride…see you soon…

J.