The Moldau

PBS took me on a musical trip today as I cleaned house, drew pictures, and generally wasted away a cold Saturday afternoon.

It started with some guy visiting Prague and listening to street musicians playing The Moldau, one of my favorite classical songs, right up there with Danse Macabre!

Then the Lawrence Welk Show came on.  It was from 1961 when I was still a little girl and I suddenly heard those songs that lasted throughout most of my life. Songs I played on the piano and sang with my sister as we grew up.  There was The Blue Bird of Happiness and an Irish folk song by the Lennon sisters and Pat Boone sang Moody River as memories just welled up.

It made me think how much time has passed and how many things I still love that I loved then.  I called my son and asked him to send my paper dolls to my granddaughter, who is the first child who might appreciate them.

I have little Shirley Temple cardboard dolls whose costumes lace on with brightly colored cords, Janet Lennon with her wardrobe in an elegant folder that opened up into a room.  There are the last paperdolls my dad bought for me on my eleventh birthday, tweens with fuzzy shirts so their paper cloth clothes stick right to them, and many many others, including some I made by cutting them out of catalogues and pasting them on shirt cardboards.

I remember those days playing with paper dolls and my dad's old 78 records playing Strauss waltz's, Irish folk songs and The Moldau, with such longing.