Sally Huggins Toner

That can’t be right, that I’ve had one blog post in 2022. Well, here’s one more to introduce the new year and offer up my annual song.

It’s not a happy song. In fact, it’s been described as a contemplation of war, depression, isolation–not happy things. But it has whistling! There’s a story behind that too.

Otis Redding contemplated a fourth verse to “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” but hadn’t come up with the lyrics yet. So he whistled a filler, planning to get back into the studio to record the rest after his tour. Then he died in a plane on December 10, 1967, crashing  into the icy waters of Lake Monona. A grief stricken Steve Cropper decided to keep the whistle and add in the sounds of waves and seagulls before releasing the first ever posthumous single to top the charts in the U.S. 

Wikipedia music history lesson over. Why did I choose this song to play out 2022? It keeps coming up this week in my reading, anniversaries–an earworm I need to play, write about before I switch tracks in the never ending playlist that loops through my head. 

Let’s start with my reading. The song is described, its layers of sadness explained, in an incredible essay by Beth Ann Fennelly in her collection Heating & Cooling: 53 Micro Memoirs. She muses on the recording, “You can almost see them at Stax, shutting down the four-track, the console, killing the lights, We’ll finish ‘er up on Monday.” I read her book for a low residency program in narrative nonfiction I began this year at the University of Georgia. In 2022, I decided I wasn’t going to wait to “finish ‘er up.” The time to begin this program, and the project it entails, is now. 

There’s something else about Otis Redding. January 4 will be the 31st anniversary of Mark’s and my first date. We had actually gone to a football game, a movie, and a formal together before that night, but we chose the date because it was the night the two of us fell in love. No, no gauzy camera panning, not like that. Just talking. Until two in the morning. One of those talks. A couple of beers and, yes, Otis Redding on my parents’ turn table. To this day, I cannot listen to him without falling in love with Mark once again. That’s a good thing. 

But here’s the thing about anniversaries. They aren’t all good. January 4, 25 years later, would also be the night my doctor called with an official diagnosis of triple negative breast cancer. In the six years since, I have chosen to keep celebrating this day–as a birthday of sorts–a rebirth, if you will. Six years later, I am healthy, cancer free, peeling shrimp for New Year’s dinner listening to Beyonce’s, yup, Renaissance.

Not all anniversaries are good. And not all New Years are either. There is loneliness, regret, grief we carry with us as the ball drops. Still, I’d be a fool not to be grateful. To wait to “finish ‘er up.” I am fully aware that I don’t know how many more ball drops I, or anyone else, will see. I will spend time with those who lift me up, lifting them up in return. I’ll do the best I can for others while doing the best I can to take care of myself. I’ll make a joyful noise–read, write, and teach with my outside voice. But I’ll also remember the value of a song that mulls–the seagulls, the waves, the whistle. There’s a place for that too.

Happy New Year, friends. A wonderful 2023 to all of you.