Dolly’s passing blindsided me in a way I never anticipated, not only because I hadn’t realized how much she meant to me but also because I never imagined a world without her. She’s always been there.
She was there in my childhood in the late seventies and early eighties. I’d slip the record out of the jacket of her 1977 album, Here You Come Again, put on the giant brown, plastic headphones and record myself on my sister’s boom box, belting out “Here you come again, just when I’ve begun to get myself together…” as a seven-year-old. I felt Dolly and I were one as we sang about heartache and hopeless devotion. I marveled at the size of her bosom on the cover as my parents quietly chuckled.
9 to 5 was released in theaters toward the end of 1980, and I don’t remember if I actually saw it in the theater or later as a rental from Erol’s video store. What I do clearly recall as I watched these intrepid women is the first twinge of girl power pride in my eight-year-old heart. Why shouldn’t women be able to advance in their careers just as men do? Why should’ve women have flexible schedules to support them in juggling a career and motherhood (this was the era of “I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan”). Men who exploit women deserve to be chained up and swing from the ceiling. It was all so satisfying and empowering.
I remember when she and Kenny Rogers released “Islands in the Stream” in 1983 to my dad’s and my delight. He taught me to slow dance to Kenny Rogers, and we shared a love of Dolly, so this was a big moment for us.
Dolly has come to mean so much more than a singer with a voice like an angel with a twang. She embodied kindness, generosity, humility, a refusal to judge others, and a message of love thy neighbor that she felt to her very core and lived by in a very practical sense. Losing her cut a tie to my childhood that stings like hell, and the world is less bright and sparkly without her.
I went to see my nephew play in his high school’s marching band on Friday, and after their performance at halftime, Dolly’s voice came floating over the stands as I made my way back to my seat. So many of the teens were mouthing or quietly singing along to “Jolene” and then to “9 to 5.” This gives me hope that she will live on and that we will strive to live by her example. I don’t know what I believe happens when we die, but I feel that wherever her spirit is right now, above all this, she wishes us love.
the Dolly era of my childhood (me between my dad and my little sister, with my older sister across the table)
the album I spent many hours with as a child
My Corner of the Village 