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A song for my mother….
Written and recorded by Rusty Cline
I have recorded this song a hundred times at least. I never quite seem to capture what I hear in my head.
I wrote the song for my mother in 1997. She was a Jehovah’s Witness. I was removed from their church (cult) in 1979 – for smoking cigarettes – shortly after my mother informed me that she would have to quit associating with me, son or not.
Fortunately for me my father – who was not in the cult – intervened and said I could come to “his house” any time I wished. I did continue to see her when I would go to see my father. But she always made it clear that she wasn’t going to make me feel at home. My father died in 1987 and that ended the reprieve.
I tried to visit her on a number of occasions but she truly believed that her god would punish her if she befriended me, so “she never took the chance” (a line from the song). I ultimately moved to Tucson to keep from seeing her or my brother Charles (of the same cult) on the street and go through the rejection every time we crossed paths in a small town like Sierra Vista.
The reason I write this explanation is because song is so indirect that you would never guess it is for my mother, or that it is her “eyes so blue and gray” of which I sing and write.
Melba Ethyl Cline died in 2004 – but I died for her 25 years before that.
