On Reaching Fourscore Years

At some point during my high school years our class was required to memorize Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and I always liked the way the President opened his speech: “Fourscore and seven years ago …” Poetic and definitely memorable. Tomorrow I celebrate having spent fourscore years on this earth.

I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around this number for the better part of a year, but it really hit me just a few days ago, while researching for a book I’ve just started work on. I was looking into causes of death in the U.S. in 1927, and while looking at some tables I found was reminded of the influenza pandemic of 1918 … something we seem to have tucked into the back of our collective consciousness, probably because it’s too awful to contemplate it happening again … and it struck me. I was born on January 7, 1938, a mere score of years after that cataclysm.

My parents married in August of 1931. My dad had just finished four years as an engineering major at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, and while he was an engineer by choice, his passion for and knowledge of music was always an important part of his life and at times his means of livelihood. He played in the orchestra for Norman High School’s production of Rudolf Friml’s “Rose Marie” and a pretty, dark-haired, hazel-eyed chorus girl, a senior at the school, caught his eye.

They lived the American dream: my father retired as a vice-president of York Borg Warner, a highly successful professional man who had represented his company internationally. My extraordinary mother (who had suffered discrimination because of her Choctaw heritage … my dad told me his college roommate had remarked in dismay: “You aren’t going to marry that little Indian girl, are you?”) reinvented herself as often as necessary to be the perfect wife/mother/hostess/traveling companion as my dad climbed the corporate ladder. And she did this without losing who she was.

Looking back over my long life I am grateful for many things, my family among them. I’m grateful for my siblings: older sister Annalee, who sadly left this earth far too young, at the age of sixty-two. She was much like my mother: kind, generous, funny, loving, a lady with a heart of gold. My sweet brother Lawrence, a highly successful man in his own right who inherited our mother’s wit and our father’s brains. Larry has been a resident of California for decades and because of the continent between us I haven’t seen him in years, but think of him often with love. 

My brother is only two years younger but was three years behind me in school (because of where our birthdays fell), and when you’re a junior in high school and your little brother is in eighth grade … well, that’s a chasm. Hopefully he has forgiven me for being an insufferable older sister who was pretty wrapped up in herself. I’ve since learned everybody’s high school years are difficult. I didn’t realize how much I had struggled in high school until I went to college … to study music. 

Music, my life’s passion. What I have turned to in times of joy and sorrow, what I have come to believe is the most powerful force in the universe. I’ve been one lucky lady. I’ve been able to enjoy music as I think few people have who aren’t those souls whose lives were infused with music, who become the composers and performers we admire. I’ve been a student, a performer, a teacher, an independent contractor in the music publishing industry, a director of musical theater for both high schools and community groups (and wrote about those thirty-plus years in a book, “More Fog, Please”  ̶  available on Amazon, you might enjoy it. Sorry, we independent authors need all the plugs we can get.) And in recent years, an author who includes the power of music in the lives of her characters as it helps them meet some seriously daunting challenges. Bonus: yet more friends and colleagues in this new chapter in my life.

Music, which led me to a tenor with whom I spent nearly fifty years and with whom I had three wonderful children. Sam Jordan had one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard, and was a consummate musician. He was also a complicated man and it was not an easy marriage, but it was certainly rewarding in many ways. Our children  ̶  Susan Marguerite, Stephen Andrew, and Samuel Calvin  ̶  have become magnificent adults and good friends.

Music, which brought me into contact with so many people with whom I could share my love for the art … as student, colleague, teacher and stage director. Leonard Bernstein’s wonderful opera Candide closes with a piece of music I have come to love, “Make Our Garden Grow.” It includes this thought: “… and let us try before we die to make some sense of life.” We are all just who we are … and we do what we can with what life gives us. It’s all any of us can do, really.

How incredibly fortunate I have been over these fourscore years to have been given so much; to have this garden filled with thousands of blooms … I am grateful for each of them, for the opportunity I’ve had to cross paths with so many remarkable people.

To make some sense of life. It’s been a great run and I consider myself the wealthiest of women. Wealthy because of the people in my life  ̶  family, friends, colleagues, students, performers  ̶  and the music in the universe, which claimed me at a young age. It will always be there.

Please visit my website to learn more and find links to my books:

www.susanmoorejordan.com