Song for Sharon

My friend Sharon just got engaged the other day. She and her boyfriend had been apart for five months before he flew down with a ring in his pocket and proposed to her that evening. By the time I saw her the next morning she was glowing nonstop and bumping into things all day.

Joni Mitchell sings a beautiful song in the form of a letter to her friend Sharon about how she’s moved out to NYC but all she really wants is to find that one person she can share life with. Not only did I feel it necessary to use the title for my friend Sharon, but I love the way that Joni poetically tells the story of love (and the search for it).

I went to Staten Island, Sharon.
To buy myself a mandolin
And I saw the long white dress of love
On a storefront mannequin
Big boat chuggin' back with a belly full of cars...
All for something lacy
Some girl's going to see that dress
And crave that day like crazy.

I think that “some girl” is Joni. I used lyrics from a Joni Mitchell song in my last post from a song about Woodstock. Ironically, Joni never made it there due to a rainstorm. She ended up stranded in New York but created this beautiful song about the event.

I’m going on down to Yasgurs farm
I’m going to join in a rock n roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try and get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Joni was a bit a hippie and from CANADA. Guess where my Sharon is from?

CANADA.

We have now come to the real connection between my Sharon and Joni.

It took awhile for both Jen and I to fully adjust to a Canadian, attempting to understand the language and local idioms. To make matters worse, Sharon also grew up on a farm in Alberta. She was speaking about silage, birthing cows, cutting amneonic sacks, and was stressed out when their bulls weren’t going to make it across the border because border control couldn’t read the numbers that had been tattooed in their ears.

Nothing is worse than an unexpected group of 80 bulls.

She was saying “Ay” and talking about their currency up there as loonies and tunies (Looney Tunes?). We talked about playing board games when we were little while she gloated about having thousands of acres to create her hundreds of fort kingdoms. She told us about the time she took some kind of gun and shot a coyote. Due to the length of the gun, she had to open up her window along with the back window of the truck she was driving. We were told that when the cows are calving she has to check on them at 1 AM or 2 AM to make sure all is going well, while her dad checks them in the early hours of the morning. Sometimes they have to drop everything and run outside when a calf is born and hasn’t broken the amneonic sack that is now drowning it. She also expressed,

“I think every kid should see an animal butchered. I mean, I had to eat my favorite cow when I was 12.”

Sharon uses the word sh** and calls the handle above the passenger seat the “oh sh**” handle, saying that us Americans don’t swear. To her credit, she’s actually talking to the right crowd where that’s concerned.

That being said, Sharon is my dear friend. We watched many an episode of Gilmore Girls together and I ate all of the meals she cooked for Jen and I, especially her banana chocolate chip muffins. I also took full advantage of any offered massage. She showed me pictures of her Albertan childhood that resembled something out of a Land’s End catalog with her family often in the outdoors grouped together in snow gear and various outdoor attire. Now she has a shimmering special something on her ring finger, which means she’s got a whole lot of something wonderful coming her way.

Best wishes, my Canadian amiga.