After practicing for a while we finally lined up our first gig. We were going to play at a school dance and we were very excited. I told my Dad about what we had lined up and he said, “No, you’re not allowed to play at a dance.” I was very surprised and of course upset. I couldn’t understand at all how he could tell me that. He knew that we had been rehearsing and how much it meant to me I thought. But he was firm and said that I could not play at a dance.
Those were the days when some Christians frowned upon dancing and I thought he must not want me to play because he was a Pastor and it would reflect badly upon him. But it didn’t make any sense to me because my sister went to dances and had gone to the Prom several years before. He obviously thought it was OK for her to dance and go to dances. So why couldn’t I play at a dance? It all seemed very hypocritical to me.
But that was just the way that it was and since my dad had said no I told the band I couldn’t sing and the band disbanded without ever playing a performance for anyone. No Pink Lemonade. I was never in a group like that again that was basically a cover band singing hits from that time period.
I survived. I went on to form a group in a year or so that would sing cover songs plus Christian songs and sing them at church functions for youth groups. I even recorded some of those songs on an album called Blades of Grass which was my next group that was a duo. My Dad even loaned me the money to be able to pay for the recording of it and the purchase of the albums to sell. At some point, I remember talking with someone who knew me from High School who said that Blades of Grass was one of the names that my first band had considered but we ended up choosing Pink Lemonade as our name.
My Dad and I had a really good relationship most times in life but sometimes I would still think about how he had told me “No” in regards to playing at the dance. I carried that with me for years and finally years later, I don’t really remember how many years but definitely decades, I finally asked him about it.
In conversation with Dad, I described what had happened. I told him about the high school group that I was in and that we had gotten a gig to play at a local school dance. I was the lead singer and we were excited and then I went home and told him about it. I told him his response was to say “No, you’re not allowed to play at a dance.” I said I was so surprised because I never imagined that I wouldn’t be allowed to play at a dance because Rosalyn had gone to dances and that was obviously OK with him. I told him that didn’t seem consistent to me.
His response was, “You’re right.” He said it didn’t sound consistent with him either. Then he said that he didn’t remember the incident at all. No memory of it at all. He agreed with me that it wouldn’t be right to tell me that, but that he didn’t have any memory of that ever happening. He wasn’t doubting me. He just didn’t remember it.
All those years I had carried that with me. One of the few negative memories actually that I had of my Dad, something that had affected me so much I thought. I had carried it but he did not.
It didn’t stop me from singing in groups and it didn’t stop me from loving my Dad. It’s a favorite story about my Dad not that he told me “No” but that he would agree with me later that he shouldn’t have. It reminds me of how sometimes we carry hurts from someone and that person doesn’t carry them at all, doesn’t even remember.
I’m not glad that I carried that for so long but I am glad that finally I brought it up to him and put it behind me. Dad could have defended himself. He could have said I don’t remember it but then launched into a justification of why he might have said it. But he didn’t. He just admitted he was wrong. That’s a good story. That’s a good Dad.
