Dreamboat
July 21, 2010
Alice has a new friend at The Place, a Viet Nam vet named Lyle. Like Alice, Lyle came to Oregon from the Midwest. When they see each other in the dining room, he talks about the war and about the music from the time of that war, music that still holds meaning for him. She can’t hear him very well, but she tries to listen. One of their lunchtime conversations prompted her to wonder about the music coming from our involvement in current wars. Is it beautiful? Does it have meaning for people?
She was wondering this when I stopped by with her groceries yesterday. She’d pulled the blinds because light hurts her eyes sometimes, especially after she’s had a treatment for macular degeneration, and she just had one a few days ago.We sat quietly after she’d unpacked everything. She’s always delighted with each item, even when she knows what’s coming because she asked me to get it for her. “Cinnamon bread!” “Grapes!” “Raisin Bran!”
When she brought up the question about music and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, neither of us had an answer. She can’t hear well enough to make out the lyrics of songs she’s never heard before, and I don’t listen much to music on the radio.
I thought about the few songs I have heard that were written for the people who have given their lives in those faraway places. They’re mostly country and western songs enamored of patriotism. The lyrics are in service to making a point: right versus wrong, not heart to heart. At the other end of the spectrum, protest music also focuses on the wrongs. If anyone’s listening to songs about this topic at all, they’re probably choosing to hear only those that express their own position on the wars. But, as we know, World War II was different because the country was more united.
I asked my mother what her favorite song was from that era. She mentioned “I’ll Be Seeing You,” but then she told me the song that saw her through the years my father served in the Army in France and Germany was “When My Dreamboat Comes Home.”
She sang the whole song for me. It begins like this (lyrics by Dave Franklin & Cliff Friend):
When my dreamboat comes home
and my dream no more will roam
I will meet you and I’ll greet you
when my dreamboat comes home
Almost all the songs she could remember from that time, she said, spoke to love and longing. My father was drafted shortly after Alice lost her only brother at Guadalcanal. She couldn’t face the idea of losing her love. Her dreamboat was going to come home.
As we sat close together in the near dark, she told me a story I’d never heard before. My father was due back from the war, which had ended at last. He was coming to Bismarck by train. She had no car and so she walked quickly across town toward the station to greet him, but the train came early and he had started walking home. When they saw each other, they ran to one another as fast as they could and embraced. “It was like the happy ending of a long, sad movie,” she said, and then she paused a moment before adding, “And I knew then that he really loved me. Whatever came after, it was me he always loved.”
How could he not? Try as he might, and he tried several different ways with several different people, Roger never really wanted to pull himself completely away from Alice.
The last night of his life, she stood next to his hospital bed the whole night through. She was eighty-five, and he was eighty-two. They’d been married sixty-three years.
Alice
Dreamboat
July 21, 2010 at 9:55 am
Hmm, amazing. I can see that each of your parents looks like I remember even though they were a lot older when I met them; the basic look is there. Your mother was and I’m sure still is, so beautiful. My parents made it nearly 61 and 1/2 years before my dad died at 85.
July 21, 2010 at 10:42 am
Carol, I remember your parents too. We were teenagers so our parents were…what? In their 40s? Doesn’t that seem young now?
July 21, 2010 at 10:19 am
Sigh…. These are just get better and better, Andrea. Thank you.
July 21, 2010 at 10:38 am
beautiful!
July 21, 2010 at 2:57 pm
So achingly poignant.
The grocery part is so sweet and lovely; the enjoyment of the simple things in life, like grapes and Raisin Bran.
Everything is new every moment and each moment is the best EVER.
Far from my jaded cynical view on life.
July 21, 2010 at 5:59 pm
I absolutely adore that you’ve included music links.
Classy! And evocative.
July 21, 2010 at 6:39 pm
so romantic … really. Thanks for that memory.
July 22, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Hi, Andrea,
Just read your latest posting. I have really enjoyed these last stories. I hear my mother’s voice in your mother’s voice, and her stories bring my mother’s stories to mind. I love that by signing up, you get a new story in your mailbox every few days. It’s a highlight of the day!
Thank you so much!
July 25, 2010 at 8:48 am
So beautiful. Your mother is stunning!
I listened to so much music from that era while writing my 2nd novel, but I never heard “When My Dreamboat Comes Home.” Love it. And your parents’ reunion…I can see it in my mind like a movie.
The only music pertaining to today’s wars that I know of that isn’t right-wrong focused is Bruce Springsteen’s album The Rising. It’s more about 9/11, but has some war-themed songs as well that are achingly poignant.
July 26, 2010 at 10:44 am
Your novel brought it all to life–not only music, clothes, hair styles, but also work, family conflicts, young love. I hope anybody who reads these comments (is it anyone but me???) will check out Ten Cents a Dance.
And yes, Bruce…I should have known. Thanks for pointing me in his direction, Chris.
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