The music that came in under my bedroom door as a child was Dinah Washington.
Drinking again
And think-ing of when you loved me ...
My mother would have been sitting out there alone, in coffee-colored knit slacks and a crisp sweater, her loafers under her chair.
If you listen to Dinah long enough, deeply—intentionally—you hear certain things that are perfect; perfect in a way that we hardly encounter in our lives at all.
One memorizes the phrases and transitions, and repeats them on the lips, like little religious texts, until they can be sung out—with depressing results but, still, in competent mimicry.
But here I come back for more,
Open the door,
Please—please—please
Mis-ter Blues.
Dinah—and my mother—belong to that world of 33-and-a-third revolutions per minute, of hypnotic, slow circles ... a rippled indigo-black lake that reflected the low lights of the living room at night.
Which found their way under the crack of my door. My bedroom was dark, and I was awake, too, but not in the way my mother was awake, at that moment.
