Gram and Babs

Or, in celebration of Barbra's birthday

Photo by BRUNO CERVERA on Unsplash

Back then, seatbelts didn't have those safety locks on them. 

I could move about freely while still feeling safe: this made performances easier. Every ride with my grandmother was an event when it was just she and I; though sometimes we would open up our intimate traveling show to friends and certain relatives. Those we trusted. The ones that could go with our highly dramatic flow. Our repertoire consisted of many Broadway original cast recordings (Phantom of the Opera was a particular favorite; my grandmother later took me to see it when I turned 10--my first Broadway show), a few Rosemary Clooney songs (where I left my grandmother solo), and a ton of Barbra Streisand. She was our favorite, our North Star.

"Barbra - The Concert" was recorded live at Madison Square Garden in New York City and released in 1994. It was a mighty thing to hold in your hands: two compact discs encased in substantial plastic. Back then, choosing the music for a drive required a lot of commitment, as you had to load the CDs into a 3 or 6 disc changer in the trunk of the car before you got on the road. Growing tired of something meant stopping, pulling over, and exiting the car to change it, and if you were on a long road trip with my grandfather, forget it: that was not happening. Although if he was driving, we were definitely only listening to 1930s Big Band on the AM dials anyway. 

Music was always a big deal to my grandmother and I. She was the daughter of a talented but troubled jazz performer, growing up in the sixth ward of New Haven, Connecticut in the 1930s and 40s, and I couldn't stop singing or writing music. In fact I still have the notebook that contains the first song I'd ever written (3rd grade, 1994. Title: "I'm Gonna," and yes I can still sing the chorus). I remember she told me, "if you want to learn from a real singer, you should listen to this,” a twinkle in her eye as she pressed the play button, the bubbling anticipation so clear in her voice. We'd just been to the record store on the hill to purchase it. I was eight. It had already been a confusing year for me. One of the worst.

“The Concert" starts out with the white noise of a palpably excited audience, before the overture of the orchestra rumbles in. Pretty soon it's a crashing, rollicking medley of instrumental renditions of Babs' most famous songs. When she enters the massive space, the energy—now frenzied—felt physical. It sent my tiny body into a state of euphoric delight. And then, she sang. Big, boom bravado; confidence that leapt from the stage to disc to car. As a 4-foot-something ball of big emotions encoded with a deep sense of loss, I was entranced, in awe, inspired. I felt every single note down to the atom. Every feeling and emotion seemed to pour in and out of me, my skin merely a filtering system to contain it. It was dizzying and delightful. I think I felt drunk. I gave my grandmother a hug.

It wasn't long before we both knew not just every single word to every song, but every bit of banter and errant riff on a single note, every tiny difference between the original and this live version of "Papa, Can You Hear Me?", every joke from the Therapist Dialogues. I curiously considered the fact that she called her disc two intro not an entrance, but an Entr'acte, a word I still don't know how to say. I transcended when she sang “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” or at the way she purred when she said, "hello, gorgeous." It was the first time I’d ever felt a desire to be sultry, not even knowing what that meant. I think everywhere I went I introduced myself with a "hello gorgeous" the whole of 1995 (I was nine, so it was probably cute).

By that time, car rides with my grandmother were frequent; I did plays and musicals and even joined a softball league for various reasons (I hated and was very bad at it), and needed frequent rides to and fro. Because my mother worked 90+ hours a week, regularly on night shift, gram and my grandfather were often our transportation providers. But rides with gram were always the best.

It will surely, no doubt, shock you to know that someone who had no problem pretending they were Gypsy Rose Lee, was bullied quite mercilessly, and not just by the kids at school. Add to this my rapidly increasing weight and height and perma-high honor roll status, and well...you probably get the deal. (To an extent, I don't totally blame them, I was undoubtedly very annoying.) But gram loved and actively encouraged the lot of it. She may have even told me at one point I had a gift, but I don't always remember her words, just how she made me feel.

And feel I did, emoting through every thrashing move or flip of the head and wrist while I'd jut out my tiny not-hip, emulating the raw sass I'd seen from Barbra when we watched the HBO version, an event replete with Chinese food and snacks. For once grampy allowed our singing in the living room. "She's damn talented, I'll give her that," he mused rather casually. I spun around and looked at him, smiling and out of breath.

I don't know if I could tell which song of Barbra's was her favorite—it likely changed all the time. But I never saw my grandmother feel, and look so open and lovely, as much as she did when she was singing along. At the time I could've probably written a very thorough Wikipedia page with all the biographical information I learned about the singer through my grandmother. Performances often included Barbra history lessons, and how we sang along evolved and changed with the information and feelings being felt by either one of us at the time. Given the length of the album (103 minutes and 27 seconds), we could go days or weeks without hearing the same songs if we wanted or needed to; sometimes “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” was too much to bear. "Barbra - The Concert" contains many a mood related to various times in Streisand's life, and the music stirred and consoled so many of the confusing and weird feelings I was feeling at the time. Through belting it out with Babs on the regular, I could express what I was feeling in a space that was safe, where no fellow student would mock me, no family member could yell, or sibling would hit me. Often, a song lyric would jump out at me, and I could finally see what it was I felt or wanted to say, even if I was too young to fully understand it. I could keep confidences with my grandmother and know she wouldn't tell. I nearly told her everything.

It was a mutual trust: she saved the best secrets (about her life and the lives of others) for me and those car rides, rides we'd stretch out for hours running errands or taking the long way home. It’s where I learned about how she got into Yale but couldn’t afford to go, about the year she spent away from my grandfather, her feelings about her mother and father, and other stories I’ll never tell. There are some secrets I regret I never told her during those rides, but I had long ago learned what the limits of that sort of trust in my family were in reality. None of us could totally connect. Not really: the matriarchs and patriarchs of generations past ensured that, teaching repression and ignorance over compassion and understanding. And worse still, the news had broken that year that my father had a secret girlfriend and was moving out; my parents were getting a divorce. Everyone was shattered, the betrayal made all the worse by his draining their shared bank account and moving to Florida with his new daughter who was also named Alicia Lutes. He wouldn't pay child support or answer our calls, and at one point even sent a letter through a lawyer trying to give up his parental rights. I'd read it to my siblings and mother through hot, gullying tears. There was many a time where we'd circle the neighborhood or sit in the garage until a song—or one of the discs, or both—was over.

But to Barbra, she and I could both connect. To ourselves, to each other, to our emotions, and desires. By this point I was determined to be a singer/actress/marine biologist who maybe ran to become the first female president on the side once she was old. But the singing and writing was really the thing. By mid-1995, my siblings, mom, and I had moved in with my grandparents and an uncle who also lived at their house. It was tight—to say the least—so the car rides and singing became more impassioned and frequent. Gram would often sing “Not While I’m Around” with tears in her eyes. Performances of "I'm Still Here/Everybody Says Don't/Don't Rain On My Parade," became more fervent and passionate, my feelings reveling in their one safe space to be.

I could feel my heart desperate to escape my body when I sang. Moments tinkering down small shoreline roads and winding wooded streets made my heart feel as if it could just escape its cavity in my chest, it would bust out that last "m-y-y... paraaaaaaaade!" more emotionally than any other living thing ever had or ever would. I would transcend, I would make sense. Tears became more common, but also felt more healing as our understanding of the world we were in evolved and grew. We were both, maybe, beat down by the unusual lot we had in life, but in her car we could just be, and not even the seatbelts could hold us back.