April 11, 2016 (Monday)
In 1946 I was an usher in the now-demolished Majestic Theater in Houston, on Rusk at Travis streets in downtown Houston. I remember when we featured “Night and Day,” starring Cary Grant, which was about the life and music of Cole Porter. People liked it so much it was held over for a second week. Two to three times a day I heard the song, “Just One of Those Things,” featuring the line, “a trip to the moon on gossamer wings.” I suppose I did not have an inquiring mind, because I never wondered what “gossamer” meant. And I have not questioned the line during these 70 years that have passed since those days. Until last week. I was writing a blog about Neil Armstrong’s trip to the moon and as I repeated the line (“trip to the moon”) in my head, up popped the Cole Porter line about a trip to the moon on gossamer wings, and I began to wonder what “gossamer” is.
So I looked it up. Finally curious after 70 years.
Here is what Webster says about “gossamer: ”
1: a film of cobwebs floating in air in calm clear weather
2: something light, delicate, or insubstantial
In Porter’s song it represents love so strong and ecstatic it’s like floating through space. At least that’s how I interpret the phrase.
It may sound like “true love,” but the song confesses, “it was just one of those things.” A fleeting romance of sorts. It came. It went. So much for that. Just one of those things.
In the song, at the end of the “trip to the moon,” the singer says to his lover of one night, “So goodbye, dear, and Amen. Here’s hoping we meet now and then. It was great fun. But it was just one of those things.”
Years ago I met a couple in a Taft nursing home who had been married 74 years. Theirs was not a “trip to the moon on gossamer wings,” but a journey through life, hand in hand, heart in heart, with a shared destiny. A life together. A worthy goal for any young person contemplating marriage.
I recall the words of an expressive young person years ago: “I believe in true love. I’ve had the experience many times!” Not so. Not the real thing. True love is not wispy silk floating through the air; it is the Rock of Gibraltar upon which strong families are built. And those families build a nation. It’s God’s way.