This week’s song is so far out of my typical wheelhouse. That said, in another lifetime I was married to a man who had a family lake house in the Sierra Nevada mountains in Northern California. While I know for my children this place will likely always be a place of peace, love and respite, for me it went from a place of wonder to the scene of some of the saddest and most heart breaking times of my adult life. I hope I never go anywhere near that lake again. One of the things that always did bring me a great deal of pleasure there, especially in later years as my marriage went from a thing of pure joy to circling the drain, was the collection of LP’s and the turntable that we played them on. One of these records was The Carpenters Greatest Hits and my favorite song was always Superstar.
As I type this, it’s Monday, March 2nd. Karen Carpenter would have celebrated her 76th birthday today. Instead, she died at 32 from heart failure after a battle with anorexia. I can remember so clearly the cover of People magazine detailing her passing. She was the first person I knew of who battled the disease and once I read her story I realized that I knew people, friends, who were facing the same monster. Some fought it off. Some did not. One of my classmates, Tina, was the most beautiful girl (in my opinion) of our entire graduating class- inside and out. Dark hair, sparkling eyes, tall, just beautiful- truly- and she recently passed. It took a few decades longer but the monster finally devoured her.
Karen Carpenter possessed a voice, a tenor, that was batting well outside of its weight class (yes, I mixed metaphors). The Carpenters sang light, feel good, bubble gum pop. Karen’s voice and Richard’s arrangements helped elevate the songs. The richness, the ache, the tone of her voice…God, what would she have sounded like on other songs? It’s always the might-have-been’s that hurt the most. Both with Karen and with my marriage. The refrain, “Loneliness is such a sad affair and I can hardly wait to be with you again. What to say to make you come again? (Baby) Come back to me again (baby),” God, I lived those lines daily. There I was lonely, desperate to bring my husband home again and nothing I did worked. The inherent pain in Karen’s rich voice spoke to my own pain. I love this song and I mourn the singer, but I am devotedly grateful to be on to another chapter, one that embraces joy, where I walk alongside- a partner, not left behind.
Happy heavenly birthday, Karen- you’re beautiful, but you always were. I wish you and I had realized sooner- we are enough. We always were.
