Friend

  

My friend, so beautiful and wise,

I had only to search your eyes

To find comfort or fill a need.

You were, mind and heart and soul,

Broken dreams of my life made whole.

Had nature's times and tides agreed,

Had I not too soon had to go,

And could I but have told you so,

Oh my friend, I could have loved you.

* * *

Honestly, I can't even remember who this poem was written for. It was written while I was a student at Harding College. Of the few boys I had dates with (I could count them on one hand), I don't remember having these thoughts about any of them. I don't think I ever had more than one date with any of them. So... it's a bit of a mystery. However, it does remind me of something that happened after I graduated...

I got married a year after my graduation from Harding, right after Keith graduated. The girl (Maggie) who was my maid of honor had been a roommate of mine for a couple years, then she transferred to a different school after our sophomore year. We kept in touch, and I still considered her to be a close friend even though we didn't see each other very often. When she came to town for the wedding she came to my grandparents' house (where I was living). My parents were there, too. Maggie seemed to be not very happy that day. But she was always very quiet and shy, so I didn't think much of it. And it was my wedding day, so I was very self-absorbed, anyway. 

Some time later, though, I had a conversation with my mother and grandmother about that day, and they told me something that shocked me. They had noticed Maggie's mood at the wedding. And they both thought it was very obvious that the reason Maggie was so sad was because she was in love with me!! Well, bless her heart! If that was true (and I don't know for sure that it was), then it must have been torture for her to be my maid of honor. I feel bad about that now. 

Peace On Earth

  

"Peace on Earth!"

The angels sang it

Christ taught it

The preachers preached it

The common people cried for it

The lawmakers tried for it

The choir sang it

The Christmas cards said it

The national leaders promised it

"Peace on Earth!"

But the echoes faded and flew

Into the vastness of space

Leaving not a single trace

And there was a Voice

Like the sound of great rushing waters

And the voice said

"Let there be peace!"

And there was peace

And God saw it

That it was good

And the evening and the morning

Were the last day

* * *

In kind of an ironic way, this old poem seems very timely right now, what with all the wars and all the evangelicals anticipating the Rapture any day now...

Well, anyway... These are pictures from one of the best Christmases I ever had. 

Location - my grandparents' house in Watervliet, Michigan, 1967.

Cast of characters - Lester and Cleffie Burford (my grandparents), Annie Hicks (Cleffie's mother), Morris, Bob, and Ron Burford (my uncles), Wathada (my mother) and Red (my dad), Maxine (Ron's wife), Jackie (Bob's wife), Mark and Lori (Bob and Jackie's children), Rick and John (my brothers) and me. 

YETTA

  

You are a prism

Taking the white ray of life

And bending it through your mind

Until it comes bursting out

In all the rainbow colors

Of your soul

* * *

This poem I also wrote in high school. It's about my best friend in my senior year -- Janice Howard. She was thinking of changing her name to Yetta, which was her grandmother's name.

Janice and myself, singing at a talent show in high school. We were singing The Great Mandella (by Peter, Paul, and Mary). This grainy picture was scanned from our high school yearbook. 

Goal

 

You know I broke a heart tonight

Aren't you proud of me?

My mind told me he wasn't right

My heart just didn't agree

But I control my mind

And my mind controls my soul

I'm doing what I ought to do

I'm headed for some distant goal

Where's that distant goal?

Oh so distant goal . . .

* * *

My senior year in high school was very different from all my other school years. Most notably, I was in the throes of my first major depressive episode -- though I didn't recognize that until years later. (I had one friend who did, though. Bless you, Jean.) I had quit cheerleading, broken up with my boyfriend, and generally dropped out of social life altogether. The other major factor was the war I had with my mother the previous year about college. She did not want me to go to college, and did everything she could to prevent it from happening. That's a long long saga which I won't recount here. The end result was that I was accepted at Harding College -- a Church of Christ school in Arkansas. I was living in Michigan, where I was born and raised, and had never lived in the South. But all the relatives on my mother's side of the family had migrated from Arkansas to Michigan. So I was not entirely a Yankee -- people often asked me "Where are you from originally?" 

Another pertinent aspect of my senior year was that our overcrowded school had resorted to "split sessions" in which the high school had classes from 7am to noon, and the junior high from 12:30 to 5:30 in the afternoon. That winter the sun didn't rise until my second class period, and when my younger brother got out of school at 5:30 it was already beginning to get dark. (Meanwhile, my youngest brother and my parents were on regular daytime schedules.) One of the symptoms of depression, for me, is feeling cold all the time. A chill that seemed to come from inside my body ("as if my bones were made of ice" is how I described it). I just could not get warm enough. I have never been a morning person, to begin with. But that year it was especially difficult for me to get up and around in time for school. The routine I developed was a rather drastic coping mechanism. I would get out of bed extra early, before anyone else was awake. And I would go into the bathroom to get ready. We had a big old-fashioned clawfoot cast iron bathtub, which I would fill with hot water, as hot as I could get it. It took several minutes for me to gradually ease  my way from standing to a sitting position. And then I would just soak, trying to get warm enough to face the day. Another part of my routine was to tune the radio to a Memphis station, which I could only do in the wee hours, before the local stations' signals cluttered up the airwaves. Since I knew my future was taking me to the South, I was trying to mentally prepare for the transition to a different culture. I spent that last year of high school re-imagining my whole future, and re-inventing my self-image to coincide with it. 

 

PHOTO: High school graduation. I was class president so I had to make a speech.

PHOTO: Me with my grandparents in Bald Knob, Arkansas, 1972. 

(They lived just a few miles from Harding College and were a large part of why I ended up being able to go to school there.)

* * *

In hindsight, I'd have to say that my life has pretty much followed the path I envisioned while steeping in that bathtub all those cold dark mornings. I graduated from Harding, and I've lived in the South ever since then -- 54 years now. I guess I did reach "that distant goal", after all.

Sailor

Oh, how I yearn

For the lonely sea

Where the troubles of the world

Will not bother me

Just give me a ship

And a heart so bold

For the yearn of a sailor

Is a yearn untold 

* * *

This is not a poem I actually wrote. It's a quote that I remember from one of my teachers in high school. And I'm not at all sure if I'm remembering it correctly. In fact, it might have even been a real poem that he quoted, which was written by somebody else -- although I googled it to try to find out if it was a famous poem or not, but couldn't find any reference to it. So I just wrote it down as I remember it.

The teacher was John DeGolia. He taught biology. I took his class in 8th grade, even though it was a 9th grade class. The reason I took it was not because I particularly liked science, but because I had a big ol' crush on Mr. DeGolia. My best friend at the time was Irene Rhinehart, and she had a crush on him, too. We spent a lot of hours fantasizing about him, (as one does in junior high school).

Mr. DeGolia was a fun teacher. One of the things he did was to tell "gory stories" every Friday. As I recall, he had actually been in medical school at one time. For whatever reason, he did not finish and did not become a doctor. But he had enough experiences there, apparently, to last through a lifetime of teaching high school biology. Some of the stories had to do with things that happened in the morgue, or with cadavers that were being dissected by the medical students.

Mr DeGolia drove a red Corvette and gave me and Irene a ride in it one time. (Just around the block or something -- nothing creepy. We asked him to give us a ride in his fancy car.) 

He once took our class on a field trip to "Third Hill" -- the nearest mental hospital, in Kalamazoo. I can hardly believe he was allowed to do that, but I swear I remember it. 

Anyway, for some reason he got to talking about his sailboat one time in class, and he recited this poem. Why that particular thing stuck in my head all these years is a mystery.

Our Cup of Love

 

Our cup of love

Once so full

Is drained now to the dregs

But, touching my tongue

To its rim

I savor the lingering sweetness

Of its wine

I am fulfilled

* * *

This is not the boy this poem was written for. It was written for the guy in the prom picture that I posted a few days ago. (Interestingly, that's the only picture I have of him and me together -- although we dated for 3 years.) The guy in this picture was my boyfriend in junior high school. This picture was taken at homecoming my senior year. I didn't win homecoming queen. Here's the girl who did --

Hard to believe this was 55 years ago. 

Inspiration

  

All paths lead to God

The path you choose will be

The path He has chosen for you

You exist because He knows you

If He forgot you for one instant

You would simply disappear

The spirit within you is His spirit

The breath within you is His breath

Inspiration . . .expiration . . .

Inspiration

* * *

Fifty years ago today I graduated from Harding College. 

It was a Christian college, specifically Church of Christ, in which I was born and raised. I was in the main college choir, and traveled with them all over the country, performing at churches and staying in the homes of the church members while on tour. Those experiences alone, in my estimation, were worth the price of tuition. We even made a European tour the summer I graduated -- Germany, France, and Spain. 

Those were the best four years of my life, which I suppose a lot of people could say about their college years. And in the half-century since then my life has certainly not gone according to plan -- which I'm pretty sure most people would also say. But now, in my old age, I have come to believe that everything happens the way it's supposed to, whether we understand it or not. As the old song says, "We will understand it better by and by."

Prom

  

Remember Mai Kai

Our "Tahitian Holiday”

Dear friends, when we part

This night forever

In all its island splendor

We'll keep in our hearts

1971

* * * 

As the title indicates, this poem is about prom. I wrote it in my junior year of high school. Mai Kai Lounge was the venue, and the theme was Tahitian Holiday. My date was my steady boyfriend of 3 years. I would call us high school sweethearts, but then I broke up with him the summer before our senior year. I still loved him, but I knew I was going out of state to college, and I didn't plan to ever move back to Michigan. I didn't want to have to try to maintain a long distance romance, which I assumed would inevitably fail, anyway. And I wanted him to be able to date other girls while he was still in school with them. As a matter of fact, he ended up marrying the first girl he started dating after we broke up, and they have been happily married for more than 50 years. They still live in our hometown where he is on the school board and she was a secretary in the high school office for many years. So I guess maybe I did the right thing. I still wonder what our life might have been like if I had stayed with him. Honestly, I believe he has had a much better life with her than he would have had with me. So yeah, I think I did the right thing.

What Am I Doing Here?

I've been trying to decide for a long time what to do with this blog space. I keep thinking I'll actually write something that could be considered "memoirs" ... but procrastination has so far won out. There is a bunch of stuff I wrote in two volumes of the Storyworth app, specifically for my son. I've considered putting them into book form to sell on Amazon, but I'm still vacillating about whether to do that or not. I've published 3 books of poetry, and I don't think anybody has bought a single copy of them. So maybe that's what I'll do here -- at least to start off with. Maybe after a while I'll also mix in some anecdotes or short-form memoirs... We'll see.

Anyway, here we go...

[Oh, just a note about the name. Some of you may already know this, but for those who don't -- 

The name on my birth certificate is Crystal Dianne Thomas. My mother wanted to name me Dianne, but she couldn't think of a middle name to go with it. Her mother insisted that I had to have a middle name, and time was running out to think of one. I wish I had been there to hear that conversation, because it seems to me there are plenty of good mellifluous names to follow Dianne. Nevertheless, my mother rejected whatever names Grandma suggested. Somehow or another, they ended up using the name Crystal, and putting it in front of Dianne. Now, the official story is that Grandma had a friend named Crystal and that's where the suggestion came from. I don't really believe that story, though. (The stories in our family change over time, so you're never sure which version is true. For instance, my mother later claimed she really wanted to name me Anne, whereas always before she had said Dianne was her very favorite name for me. But I digress...) Well, in all my years growing up, I never heard Grandma ever mention any friend by the name of Crystal. So I have never quite trusted that part of the story. In fact, lately I've been thinking about when my mom and dad were dating they used to love to go dancing at a place called the Crystal Palace. And I just wonder if maybe that's where the name Crystal dropped from. I can just hear my grandmother's voice saying, "You can't name a baby after a DANCE HALL!!" And my mother replying, "Oh yes I can! You just hide and watch."

Nonetheless, I was never called Crystal, but only ever was called Dianne in the family, and in the small town where we lived. Most of the people I knew probably didn't even know my first name was Crystal. But then I went off to college, and in the large freshman classes (they still were taking daily roll in the 1970s) my full name was on the roster, of course, and so the professors called out "Crystal Thomas" and I just didn't bother to correct them. And so, by the end of my first semester my name had effectively been changed. Everyone called me Crystal from then on. (I later dropped the "L" and legally changed it to Crysta. But that's another story for another day.)

Now, 54 years later, It seems like a real annoyance to have to go by two different names -- one for the family and childhood friends, and a different one for everyone else in my life -- since the internet and social media now throw us all together into one place in real time. So I came up with the clever (so say I) idea of smashing the two names together into one -- Crysta Dianne becomes Crystianne. And that's why this blog is called Crystianne's Blog.]