There'll be Crocuses to Bring to School Tomorrow

This isn't going to be a melancholy post, really it isn't. Well maybe yeah, once I get to the personal stuff. However, I just wanted to talk about a Joni song that really socks me in the gut. The song is "Little Green" from Blue, and it's about her giving up her daughter for adoption. Now, for years and years, I had no idea that the song was about that. I had no idea she had a daughter, even though the lyrics of the song are clear enough. If you have never listened to Blue, as I am sure none of you have, the album is sort of considered the classic "singer/sonwriter" confessional album. It doesn't (or didn't at that time anyway) get much rawer or open than that album. She lays it all out and there is the famous comment from Kris Kristopherson listening to it in the studio saying "Joni, save something for yourself" because it was just so open and emotionally raw. But anyway, she lays herself out there, and all of the songs are in first person, except for Little Green. So, being the dolt that I am, I never really thought it was about her, but about someone she knew or something. Then, in the late 90's, when it came out that Joni was looking for her daughter, it completely freaked me out and the whole song made sense.
So what does any of this have to do with me? Well. Let me talk about Joni and the song first. Joni moved from Saskatoon to Calgary to go to art school, and after a year of that she went to Toronto. I can't remember the details, if she got pregnant in Calgary or Toronto, but it doesn't matter. Anyway, Joni is an only child and was quite looked after by her parents. Her mother and her always had issues with each other - still to this day, and her mom is 94. However, her mom was conservative and doting and proper and what have you and Joni, while always breaking out and doing her own thing, needed to in some ways pay lip service to her. Well, so Joni moves out east and is pregnant and 19 or 20 and doesn't tell her parents. This would be in '65 or something - I dunno, sometime around then? Anyway, she's pregnant and the daddy takes off to California and she has this baby by herself not telling her folks and she names the baby Kelly, as in the color kelly green (hence the song name little green). She has no food and can't support the baby and places her in foster care and marries a man who says he will raise her baby, and he lies and she gives her up for adoption, and then goes on to have her career and always have that void.
So that's her story in a nutshell. So, when we have our Kelly, and bring her home, the song takes on new meaning for me, since we have a Kelly too (although not named for Joni's Kelly or for the color kelly green, but still, it all works). So we get our Kelly home from the hospital and as I've said before, we listen to songs like "Your Song" by Elton and weep over our beautiful baby, and I used to rock her to sleep and sing to her a handful of songs, one of them "Little Green". Well, it really started to choke me up, not only because of our baby, but also because of Joni's story, and my sister's as well (which will come after).
The lyrics of the song are as follows, which Joni says she wrote to give clues, as it were, to her child:
Born with the moon in cancer
Choose her a name she will answer to
Call her green and the winters cannot fade her
Call her green for the children who've made her
Little green, be a gypsy dancer
He went to California
Hearing that everything's warmer there
So you write him a letter and say, her eyes are blue
He sends you a poem and she's lost to you
Little green, he's a non-conformer
CHORUS
Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
There'll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
Like the nights when the northern lights perform
There'll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there will be sorrow
Child with a child pretending
Weary of lies you are sending hime
So you sign all the papers in the family name
You're sad and you're sorry but you're not ashamed
Little green, have a happy ending
Just a little green
Like the Color when the spring is born
There will be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
just a little green
Like the nights when the northern lights perform
There'll be icicles and birthday clothes
And sometimes there'll be sorrow
And that is the song. Nice, isn't it? Why am I dwelling on it, you ask? Well, sometime this week, perhaps today (I think today) is my niece's 25th birthday, a niece I do not know. 25 years ago, perhaps 25 years ago today, my sister gave birth to her first daughter, who she put up for adoption. My sister was 17, and dating this, well, I can't say it any other way, absolute loser. She must have found some good in him to stay with him for a handful of years, but to me he was a loser through and through. They started dating, I think, when she was 16, and he quite frankly looked like he was a member of AC/DC. My dad, being the RCMP that he was, quickly checked his record and he had one a mile long, and they forbid her from seeing him. Well, that really didn't work, and me being the codependent mess of a child I was, I would sit with a nervous stomach all the time worrying she was going to get caught with him and then there would be trouble and on and on. I would pray and pray that she would dump him. Anyway, I remember one night I was at my other sister's house for supper and the phone rang, and she said "Leslie, what's wrong?" and I thought "OMG, Leslie is pregnant" - don't ask me how I knew, intuition or too many after school specials. But then my sister said when she got off the phone "oh that was my friend Debbie - I couldn't understand her because she was crying so much - she had a fight with her boyfriend", and I was so relieved. Well, fast forward to a couple days later. My parents had a bunch of people over for drinks before the RCMP Christmas Ball, and they left and I was in the basement watching tv when Leslie calls me upstairs and I was all mad thinking she was going to give me shit for something. So she calls me up and she's in the bathroom and then comes out crying, and I never remember her ever crying, and so I run to her and start bawling saying "what's wrong?" and she says "I'm pregnant" and I get completely hysterical and wail "Dad will kill you!" and to sum up, find out that her and my other sister are telling my mom and dad the next day, after I go out with my brother in law. So, long and short of it is that it is never talked about, at least in my presence, but my dad is bound and determined she will give the baby up, and my mother isn't on the same page but doesn't of course vocalize it to my sister, so it's this war between them that nobody knows. So in my family's dysfunctional way, things go on, and nothing is said, ever, except that I hear my folks fighting a couple times when drunk and I am in bed about it, and my mom going on and on about how she talked to our neighbor who had a baby at 15 and it was her parents that broke her and her boyfriend up and yada yada, and whatever. The only time it was mentioned was the day she was in labor, and I came home for lunch and my mom was all "Leslie is in the hospital!" all excited so I am thinking "will she get to keep it?" and we go see her that night and she's in pain, and then we all leave, and my mom doesn't stay. And they apparently call her and my mom doesn't go. This is because my mother can't handle anything... ANYTHING... that isn't pleasant. She can't deal. At all. So there will always be that instance that my sister holds against my mom. But I don't want to dwell on it. So anyway, she ends up with a C section and I somehow know it's a girl but my parents look ashen and beaten and I still don't know if she can keep it or if we say anything, but no, she doesn' t keep it, and we don't mention it.
So, it's not until years later, after a long night in the bar with my sister, that we broach the subject, and she tells me it was the best decision she could have made for that child, and I know in my heart it is true. She stayed with the dad for a couple years, and it was awful from what I know. Complete rock-bottom awful. But she just finally left, moved away, and came to Sask. where we were all living then. So yes, it probably was the best for the baby, but I know she hopes she'll make contact one day, and there will always be that emptiness and guilt and everything else. I know her husband always sort of celebrates her "special day" with her this time of year, and I just feel so sad for everyone. Especially since I've had children. After bringing Kelly home and holding her and being just overthrown with the love you feel for that child, the thought of giving that child to someone else just makes me ache. So, to my niece somewhere out there wherever you be, happy 25th birthday. And as the song says, have a happy ending.
xo
your uncle JT