Stories

Aside from my husband, Ellis Paul is one of my favorite songwriters. He’s from Boston, well, Maine originally, and I have always thought Boston was a good place (the one time I visited), and always dreamed of going to Maine. I collected lighthouses for awhile, trying to create beacons of hope on my living room mantle. My favorite story growing up was the Robert McCloskey book, One Morning In Maine. The book was about a little girl and her older sister going out to dig for clams on the seashore one breezy morning, one morning in Maine. They, along with their gentle doe-eyed father, took a small-engined boat from their house to the beach, yelling up to the seagulls along the way. Then the little girl lost a tooth in the sand and was so worried that she would miss the tooth fairy with nothing to place beneath her pillow until her father reassured her. She had these most amazing parents who didn’t seem to get angry when she spilled her glass of milk at the breakfast table and let the dog lap it up. They didn’t grow impatient when she dropped her ice cream cone and threw a little fit. They just bought her another one. I was always dropping my ice cream and throwing fits.

One afternoon in a store, my sister was buying a silver ring with a dangling charm for her best friend’s birthday. I wanted a silver charm ring too; my mother said no. Sometimes, like many mothers I suppose, she’d say no without providing a good reason, and that was something my small-minded concept of injustice couldn’t quite reconcile. Perhaps she did give me a reason, but I chose not to hear it. Instead, I threw myself down on the floor of the jewelry store and refused to move. I kicked my feet and beat my fists, my face red as a beet. I flattened myself out into a stiff piece of cardboard until finally my mother, at her wit’s end, picked me up like a large baguette and carried me out to our Pinto. In the back seat, I continued my temper tantrum, pulling my mother’s hair and covering her eyes as she drove. I pushed my feet hard against the back of her driver’s seat. As she swerved and screamed and my sister swatted, I pressed my small fingers over my mother’s eyes, pulling back with all my might. I never got the silver charm ring. This was the first time my heart felt torn from my chest. Oh, the drama of youth...(and my poor mother!)

Ellis has had his heart torn too. He sang an album full of songs all about it, songs about hindsight and melting colors and flying hot air balloons. But my favorite song is the one he wrote called “Weightless.” It’s about a woman who owns a house where he sometimes stays while traveling around the country with his guitar. This old woman has a rare kind of faith that Ellis doesn’t understand but is somehow drawn to, and the song is about his contemplation of the beauty of her faith. He can pour so much meaning into simple words, weaving his heart into these musical poems, letting us see all his searching.