Author: Kay Foley

My childhood best friend visited recently. It was lovely to see her but much too short. She lived across the street from us when we lived in urban St. Louis. The big brick houses in our neighborhood were filled up with kids, many of them Catholic, like us. I figure in our square block there were at least a hundred kids. Whenever you wanted to play with a friend, you’d stand on the walk in front of their house and call out, “Ohh, Anne! Ohh, Lyn!” It was a somewhat rundown but wonderful urban neighborhood, around the corner from what is now the hip and groovy Delmar Loop. We moved there when I was ten and I loved every single thing about it.

Though Anne was two years younger than me, we shared a romantic sensibility, so we became friends right away. She loved ballet and we both loved classical music, books, and art. Every time I see her now, it’s as if no time has passed. And this time she reminded me of our teenage vow to meet up in Paris one day, saying, “It’s not too late to meet under the Eiffel Tower!”

I had pulled out the falling-apart piano music that she had given me when we had our little ballet school. We were just teenagers, maybe 16 and 14, when her ballet teacher moved away and handed over the “school” to her. It was really just a couple of classes of little girls that met on Saturday mornings in the basement of our parish elementary school. I played the piano and Anne taught the classes. We even put on a recital, for which we made costumes–mostly tutus out of netting–for those little girls. This morning, the melody of “Adagio at the Barre” has been running pleasantly through my head.

It’s pretty amazing to think about all of this now. Anne’s teacher and all those parents entrusted her with those kids and we were paid for the lessons! I suppose we did a pretty good job, though. As a teenager, I was not eager to get a job at the movie theater or make money by babysitting. Being in other people’s houses, especially at night, seemed creepy to me. But our little entrepreneurial venture suited me perfectly. It was not like working, at all, and yet we were paid. Many Saturday afternoons we’d take the bus downtown or out to Clayton and spend all of our earnings on little luxuries or things for the apartment we were going to have one day.

Along with our sisters, we had other ventures back then, too. A “boutique” in the basement, with a sign in the basement window–the Fried Banana. We made little crafty things to sell there and somehow thought we might get customers. We put on plays and a circus and one summer we had a daycare.

I suppose, with all of these projects, I was always going to be an entrepreneur of some kind. I always wanted to do my own thing, and here I am. Maybe it’s genetic, as four of the seven of us siblings have ended up self-employed.

“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”

― Alan Watts

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

As I may have mentioned, my dog Miles and I love our treks in the woods very much all fall, winter and spring. And as spring brightens day by day, the wildflowers pop out and the woods get more and more beautiful, I try to put out of my mind what this all means. Wildflowers bloom, everything greens up, turtles emerge from their muddy homes, and shortly after, so do snakes. Ugh.

I have come a long way with snakes. As a child, I had a recurring nightmare that a snake was chasing me in and out the windows of my metal dollhouse. As an adult, I had various other nightmares about snakes, in all kinds of scenarios. Then, when I lived on the edge of town, on three occasions snakes got into the house, one time a big black snake making its way up the staircase to the bedrooms. And of course I found it. Horrifying! And practically anywhere I went in nature, I would very quickly see a snake! In water and on land and then in the yard of my in-town house, loads of garter snakes. I finally got somewhat used to those, even when they nested near my front porch steps. I would never be one to pick up a snake, mind you. The terror subsided but not the revulsion.

Miles is completely unafraid of snakes and has no compunction about pulling them out of holes in the yard, picking them up, biting and shaking them. He doesn’t even seem to mind getting bitten. But here in Missouri we have copperheads and they’re quite poisonous, especially for a small dog. I imagine if he was ever bitten, he’d die. For the past two years, copperheads have boldly lain across the wide trails and even on the bridges in the woods where we go. I cannot risk it.

We have stopped going to the woods for the summer, as we do. This is always difficult. I love wandering in the woods and he loves being off-leash and able to run and explore. Now we walk in town, around the neighborhood and sometimes on the trail. But with a leash. Not nearly as much fun for either of us. This year has been a harder adjustment. He’s slowing down and likes to spend most of the walk foraging for dandelion puffs, cicadas, and dried-up worms. I hate to say it but I get impatient. I’d like to have a brisk walk! Nope.

Thus, when the temperatures drop in October we’re both keening towards the woods.

I would love to live in a land without snakes. I don’t care that they eat mice and bugs. I don’t care that they are part of nature, too. I don’t care that they are supposedly “not slimy” and some people even keep them as pets. Ugh! They’re still creepy and some are poisonous and Miles cannot be deterred from them.

“Regarding Girl Scout Camp survival skills: For instance, if I see a snake, I should stand still or walk backwards slowly, never run. I am one hundred percent sure I will not do that. But now, while running as fast as I can, I will be thinking, I shouldn’t be running.” ― Firoozeh Dumas, It Ain’t So Awful, Falafel

“Nevertheless, again and again, in season and out of season, the question comes up, ‘What are rattlesnakes good for?’ As if nothing that does not obviously make for the benefit of man had any right to exist; as if our ways were God’s ways . . . Anyhow, they are all, head and tail, good for themselves, and we need not begrudge them their share of life.”

― John Muir, The Yellowstone National Park

If you’re looking for my cards or art, you’ll find all of that on my website. And if you enjoy these letters, feel free to forward this one to anyone you think might like it. Finally, you’ll find past letters and poems here.

Thanks for listening,
Kay

P.S. MerryThoughts is the name of my first book, out of print at the moment. The word is a British one, referring both to a wishbone and to the ritual of breaking the wishbone with the intention of either having a wish granted or being the one who marries first, thus the “merry thoughts.”

I remember lying in bed as a child, listening to my mother play classical music on the piano. I still have the ancient book of classical pieces she played from. She had a dream, as a girl, to be a concert pianist. Life intervened and I don’t know that her dream was at all realistic. She went to Harris Teachers College after high school and then became a secretary.

I loved to hear her play. I took accordion lessons when I was young, and taught myself piano, having already learned the keyboard. And I, too, loved classical music. In high school, I started taking formal piano lessons at the St. Louis Institute of Music, founded in 1924. It was housed in a big old red brick building (now gone) in Clayton. It felt like someplace out of an old movie, romantic and storied. I loved going there for piano lessons. I also adored my teacher, a pretty young woman whose name I cannot remember. She became pregnant after not too long and left the Institute. So disappointing for me! I was assigned to a crabby, critical older German woman who gave me music I did not like; so I, too, left the Institute. I hated to leave, as I liked the quirky young guy who taught the theory classes. But if you don’t like your piano teacher, that’s a deal breaker.

Now I’m the teacher. I give piano lessons to kids and adults in my home. For a time I had many more students than I do now, and each year we gave a recital in the beautiful Unitarian church, with a grand piano. I used to save up funny things the kids had said, to read in my opening remarks. The kids loved it. Many aspired to be included there, though I didn’t use their names. One super cute little boy once said, “Sorry we’re late! My mom was yackin’ at us and we couldn’t leave.” You can see why I did not give names. A little girl once said, “Next time let’s skip the lesson and I’ll give you a hairdo instead.”

I’ve always loved having those 30 minutes one on one with a student; and I believe that that is one of the great things about music lessons for kids. Thirty minutes of individual time with an adult who isn’t their parent is hard to come by. For me, their stories and their unique ways of learning, of looking at life and school and family are rich, often funny, and interesting. One little boy excitedly told me he’d learned something new in school that day. “Don’t you always learn new things in school?” I asked. He shook his head, smiling. “Watch!” he said. He sat very still and wiggled his ears, saying, “I worked on that all day long at school.”

“Wel-l-l-l-l, if I don’t think it really NEEDS two beats, I just give it one.”

“I just take a deep breath and say I’m good at it!”

(alternatively) “I might not be good at it, so just watch out for that.”

“I forgot to practice because there’s playing and school and stuff.”

“His hot was head so they gave him a temperature.”