By Rosalie Tirella
The stuff you remember, the memories you carry with you every day and then revisit whenever you like … . Who can say why (and how) we choose the dreamscapes we each carry within our hearts? Why is it that one man’s memories of his wife cooking homemade chicken soup one Sunday night will stay with him to his dying day? Or why one woman will forever remember the deer that came out of the pocket park to cross the busy street, right in front of her. The deer was breathtakingly beautiful – the moment seemed frozen in time.
The images that pop into my head during often busy and stressfull days are often happy ones, the kind that comfort me. Like the time my father, working as a night watchman at a local club, brought home the club’s New Year’s Eve party decorations for me and my two kid sisters. To hang on our bedroom walls! The night had ended. We were little but our mom had let us stay up late to ring in the New Year. Then, around 12:30 a.m. or so, in walks my father carrying white, silver New Year’s bells, the kind made of crepe paper – the ones that opened up and became 3-d bells – and big cardboard cutouts of the New Year’s Baby – colorful and fun. And lots of streamers, too! They had been hanging from the club’s ceiling. My sisters and I went nuts! We were seven or eight years old – and this was too much for us, already giddy from staying up too late. Well, my mom gave us some Scotch Tape and we ran around our Green Island third-floor apartment taping the decoratons up all over the place. I got the big silver crepe bell for my bedroom! My mom helped me hang it from my ceiling.
BUT: Somehow our dad – who could be counted on for little – certainly not for groceries or winter boots – had come through in the most spectacular way! For that night any way, we were a happy family!
Then this image, one that for some reason “surfaces” for me every year or two and that I want to share with you now: two twelve-year-old girls – both seventh graders, listening to (on one of the girl’s Walkman) and singing along with the Whitney Houston hit single “I Will Always Love You.” It’s the early 1990s and these tweens are in love … with being in love. Whitney Houston captures for them the kind of idealized romance that they are dreaming of, that they hope to experience, the kind they so badly want to believe in, the kind of love that makes your life PERFECT. “I will always love youuuu …. will always love yooouuuu,” Whitney sings, scaling those octaves, just one sensuous rollercoaster ride via her amazing vocal cords. The girls are sitting close together – like gal pals do – sharing the Walkman’s headphones. They are singing loudly but they are carrying the tune in the prettiest way.
They say to me: “Rose, come here and listen.” They are excited, their cheeks are pink! I walk over, sit next to them and one of them puts a headphone next to my ear. The black foam on the head phone tickles my ear and I listen. But I also watch the girls, all innocence, all dreams, all I-will-marry-my-first-boyfriend-and-we-will-have-a-beautiful-baby-or-two-and-live-happily-ever-after. My beloved will only have eyes for me. He will positively light up when he sees me and run to my open arms (in slow motion, just like in the movies!). We will ALWAYS LOVE EACH OTHER.
My two young friends are thrilled to have me “this grownup” acknowledge the miracle (maybe I say myth?) they have just stumbled upon: TRUE EVERLASTING LOVE. TRUE EVERLASTING LOVE as sung by the beautiful, Venus-like Whitney Houston. Whitney of the beautiful smile (better than Julia Roberts!), Whitney of the shimmering evening gowns, Whitney, the all knowing angel of love. If Whitney sings it so beautifully, it must be true!
I will never forget the rhapsodic looks on those young girls’ faces, their voices sounding more cottoncandy than chanteuse as they sang along to – floated on is more like it – the luscious pop melody that Houston sang to them that sunny afternoon.
For this beautiful memory, I will always love … Whitney Houston.
