Is Anyone Home?

Blogging from Bruce
June 2, 2008
Vonda Tedford-Keon

‘Hey, is anyone home?’
Here I sit staring at the screen of my computer and the little cursor is just flashing at me. I am listening to a wonderful thoughtful song written and sung by a long lost friend that I stumbled across while surfing the internet over the weekend. Jamie was at that awkward age when I knew her best. Her dad, Charles Ambrose, was my advisor and mentor at MUW. There were many times that I was asked to ‘watch’ Jamie Elizabeth’ as her mom fondly called her. You know how Southern moms are. They have to double up on those names. If I ever heard my whole name I knew that I was in some kind of trouble. Come to think of it as I am rapidly approaching the ole double nickel birthday, my mom still doubles up on my name, sometimes with great emphasis on each syllable.
Ahh, I have gone off on the rabbit trail again, let me get back to my little friend Jamie. She isn’t so little any longer and closer in age now than we were back in the earlier 70’s. She was a uber talented child that could play the piano in a way that put most people to shame and she did it by ear all the while fooling people into thinking she could read those little notes. Play it once and her mind must have been a steel trap that snapped and held in every note. Yet I often suspected that she silently beat herself up over it. I was in awe of her intelligence. She went to do her graduate work in Germany in Celtic Studies for heavens sake; on a Fulbright Scholarship no less. Genius comes in small packages.
Jamie was mortified that she had to have a ‘sitter’ at her age. I don’t know that she ever figured out that I was probably more house sitting than babysitting. Well, yeah, she knows it now, but being the only daughter and the youngest of the family, she was the one that her parents wanted protected whether she liked it or not.
When her name popped up on my search screen the other night while I was searching for a book, I noticed it was highlighted so I moved my little flashing cursor and clicked on it. Then a page appeared with a photograph. Yep, it was the same Jamie I had ‘babysat’ over 30 years ago. When I clicked on her music I was blown away. One of them is called ‘Is Anybody Home?’ It brings to mind the welcoming sight and sound of that creaking screen door on the front porch and coming back home after being gone for a while. It envisions wrapping yourself up in hugs and kisses from family you haven’t seen in a while and wonderful dinners at family reunions during the holidays. As we all get older things change and we can’t go home any more. But the memories live forever in our hearts and minds. Thanks to talented songwriters and authors, people and simpler times live on.
Are you wondering if we have reconnected? Well, yes we have and since she now lives in England, the internet is the only way to communicate these days. We have traded in the creaking screen door for the computer screen and the blinking cursor. But as I listen to her music, I know that she is still the same gifted genius she was when she was just an awkward preteen that didn’t need a keeper.

It’s the sound of a heart that is falling, hey
It’s the sound of a memory calling, hey
It’s the sound of a lost voice aching, hey
It’s the sound of silence breaking. Hey!
Is anyone home?
Jamie Ambrose, composer
www.myspace.com/jamieambrose