Maybe it’s just a summertime thing that’s always been, but I’m just now realizing how many reunions are jam packed into these sunlit months. Some are planned months and months in advance. Some just take you by surprise. I’ve been thinking lately about three reunions that I’ve experienced very recently. All of them have caused me to ponder how the act of remembering can be a curse and a blessing, all rolled up into one priceless gift.

#1. My husband Joe just had his 20 year class reunion. His high school was much smaller than mine. I think there were a little over a hundred in his graduating class. There were 800 in mine. I’m not sure yet if I will attend my 20 year reunion. But we looked forward to Joe’s for many months. I had heard so much about his dear friends, but had never met most of them. We traveled up to Blackfoot, Idaho and made it just in time for the daytime picnic. I wrestled our little girls for most of that event and spent most of the time at the little playground in the park. But that night Joe’s parents watched the kids and we went to the nice dinner at a local hotel. Joe was in charge of having plenty of 80’s tunes playing all night, so we went in and set up a sound system. Since we were there early, I saw the party crew finishing up on the decorations. They were cute and fun and simple. The room was small. We went out to run a quick errand. When we returned, people had already started showing up. The little unassuming hotel convention room was suddenly transformed as I looked in people’s eyes. There was a little anxiety, but mostly anticipation, and then delight as classmates recognized each other. Suddenly I felt like I was in a magical place full of emotional electricity. The most fun thing of all for me was to watch Joe. I saw a sparkle in his eye that I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen before. Most of the time when we go places together, we are working, and that usually means that I am in the spotlight, and he is in the back of the hall twisting knobs and making things amazing, without a lot of fanfare. Sometimes, unfortunately, he gets called “Mr. Call”. But tonight he was the star. Being Mrs. Anderson was an absolute blast. I loved watching him connect with people he really loved from days gone by. I loved witnessing his full bodied laugh. We stayed there very late. The formal part of the event had long since ended, and we were still talking and laughing with the best of his old friends. I was ready to pass out. But I knew he would have done the same for me.

A few days later we started hearing things about some of Joe’s classmates that hadn’t really been brought up that night. Pending divorces. Lost jobs. Heavy burdens. It was somewhat bittersweet to me that all of those things had just been set aside for a night, while everyone just had hula hoop contests and tried to win an old Tiger Beat magazine with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure on the cover. Everyone looked back at a simpler time, if only for a night. Maybe for some people there, remembering was a little gift that night in the midst of reality’s storms.

#2. Last month I played a show with my good friends Sam Payne and Ryan Tilby, at Brigham Park in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. I live about an hour away from Salt Lake, and I make it there quite often. I’ve even played that same concert series a few times. But on this particular occasion, the place I happened to find a parking spot was on First Avenue; a street I had lived on for a couple of years of my life, but hadn’t really looked at, driven, or remembered for quite a while. The moment I stepped out of my car and looked up at the actual house where I used to live, I was blown away by how much my life had changed. For a moment I remembered unpacking my bags and moving into that house. In so many ways I was dying to take flight. I was struggling to mend a broken heart, and making a million mistakes in the process. I was also trying with all my might to launch a big, heavy dream. The trial and error of both things ended up taking me nowhere and everywhere, all at the same time. I had just finished my first album and had about a thousand CD’s holding up my bed, and I was wondering if I could manage to sell any of them. I had a day job that made me feel like a brainless machine. I remember many nights, walking up to the giant castle at the end of the street and praying for help. I remember hearing voices and guitars coming from Brigham Park as I walked. And now, several years later, I was playing a guitar and singing in that park. I think that very day of my gig, I was feeling a bit discouraged about some of the career dreams I had left that hadn’t yet come true. But as I glanced at my phone to look at the time, I saw a picture of Joe and my beautiful girls. And then I saw people spreading out their blankets to come and watch me sing. And I realized that I needed to take a minute and remember that I am actually living the very most important of all of my dreams, and that if the younger Cherie who lived in the little red house could see how things would turn out, she’d be overjoyed.

#3. My dad is one of 14 kids. I am one of 97 grandchildren of my grandmother, Bessie Call,  who is approaching her 94th birthday. The Call family is gigantic, and we just had a great big family reunion. I could tell you a lot about the profound emotions that I get every time I visit the farm in Afton, Wyoming where my dad grew up. But when I think about this reunion, I think most of all about my grandmother.  I wonder what it would be like to look at hundreds of people and realize they all came from you. I wonder what it felt like to stand in a picture with all of those people, just outside of the little white house where that family began. I wonder what it would be like to know that your earthly life is almost over.

On one of the nights we were there, I had the honor of singing my song, “Photographs” for all of my Call relatives. I wrote that song about Grandma Call, and it was amazing to sing it with her in the audience. As I sang, we projected pictures of her life on a giant wall.

For the two days we were there, I think Grandma spent the whole time posing for pictures.

I don’t think Grandma has had an easy life. But I get the feeling it’s been good, and quite happy. Maybe that’s because it’s been crammed with people who she’s loved, and who have loved her back.

Maybe in all the remembering I do, particularly when I reach the end of my life, the thing that will matter most of all is just that. Love.

And maybe as I live each day and try to be useful and important and good, maybe the real trick and the real meaning of life is to remember just that.

I don’t really know very much about heaven. Go ahead and quote me all those scriptures. I know them. I like them. But they don’t tell me exactly what it looks like there. Or how it smells. Or tastes. Even in all the songs I write that talk about God, there’s a lot more of earth in them than there is of heaven, because I can only write what I know. But tonight I might have heard a sliver of what heaven sounds like. I got to sing with some really amazing musicians who are a part of a project called “The Lower Lights”. It is a collection of hymns recorded completely live, with dozens of musicians playing together all at the same time and in the same room. In five days time, something like 42 hymns were recorded.  I was only there for three hours of those five days. 

Last fall I spent three solid weeks in the recording studio working on my most recent record, “Grace”. My kids had a lot of daddy-daughter time that month, which is certainly a wonderful thing in and of itself. But after the project was done, I knew they needed more of me back again. So I was heartbroken when I learned that Scott Wiley and friends (we’re talking dozens and dozens of friends) were going to spend five days in the studio the very following week to record as many hymns as they possibly could. It sounded like a blast. If only it could have been a month later! I might have tried to make it work anyway, but it also ended up being a week when Joe was on the road. So I sat that one out. When I couldn’t stand it any longer I got a babysitter for three hours and I showed up at the studio in time to sing on one song: “This Little Light of Mine”. It was amazing.  I think there were at least 20 people playing and singing all in the same room. The musical and spiritual energy was off the charts. When it was over, I went back home and gave extra big kisses to my little girls for lending me out to the singing place for a few more hours.

As the months passed I started hearing more and more about this five day recording extravaganza. I started hearing rough mixes of what they did there. I saw clips of the documentary that was filmed. My mind was already being blown by the amazingness.

Here we are months later, and since the album and documentary will be out soon, everyone has been talking about doing the live shows.  With such a small contribution I made to the album, I’m amazed at this, but it seems I have the amazing honor of being allowed to sing at these live shows. Our first one was tonight, at a little family party. If you’re into the blogging scene, you might be interested to know that it was for the family of Stephanie Nielson. What an honor it was to play for such amazing people. I watched my friends play and sing with real smiles on their faces and some real tears in their eyes. It was a party, but also in it’s own way, quite a holy place. We didn’t sing with harps or an orchestra. More like banjos, guitars, and mandolins. Our organ wasn’t built into a giant tabernacle. It was a tiny little wooden thing. We weren’t in a cathedral with stained glass. We were in a backyard.

At church we hear about our “mansions above” all the time. But maybe what I really want is not so much a mansion. Maybe all I need is a backyard in heaven. I’m certain that heaven will ring and shake with the sounds of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir when the moments are right. I love the Choir and I’m excited for that. But there will also be music in my backyard. Music performed and listened to by all of the people I love. 

When I got home from the gig, I told Joe all about it. I also told him about our future heavenly neighborhood. I told him that on an ordinary heavenly day when people walk down our street, there would be speakers somehow installed that would play “The Lower Lights”.  He smiled about all of that stuff. Then he said, “Those will be some very good speakers.”

Visit www.thelowerlights.com or http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Lower-Lights/116842291671855 to hear a little of the Lower Lights for yourself.