The Hummingbird Returns

I fell in love with the guitar when I was ten years old.

A young couple from Tennessee, Jean and Walt, had moved into our neighborhood—a long, narrow street of brick row houses in North Philadelphia, with rockers on the porches and plenty of kids running around. They had a friend who lived around the corner named Bobby Janoski, but everyone called him Jay.

The thing that was different about our new neighbors was that they let the kids come up on their porch and hang out with the adults.

The thing that was different about Jay was that he had a big ol’ guitar hanging around his neck by a simple cord.

I’d heard live music before—my father’s friends often brought their fiddle, accordion, and tin whistle to our house for Irish tunes I adored. But Jay’s guitar was different.

He was a young man—handsome in blue jeans and a white T-shirt—sitting on the porch railing, one foot on the ground, the other tapping to the beat. The song he played was “Hummingbird”—though I didn’t know that’s what it was called back then.

I was mesmerized. Too shy to ask questions, too young to think a guitar could ever be mine. I just stood there and listened, transfixed, as Jay strummed and sang. To this day, I can sing every word of that song:

Hummingbird, hummingbird should be your name,
Too restless to settle, too wild to tame…

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I didn’t grow up to become a guitar player.
I became a single mother with two small sons to raise.

But I always sang—at home, in the car, on long trips with my boys bundled in their Star Wars sleeping bags in the back seat. Both of them picked up guitar in their teens—one inspired by Axl Rose, the other by Bob Marley.

As a teenager, I’d tried guitar myself. I bought a chord book—Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan—and struggled along. But life got busy, and I let it go. I always regretted that.

My sons, though—they stuck with it. They became professional musicians and built their lives around music.

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Three years ago, I decided it was time to finally give my own dream another chance.

I borrowed a guitar and promised myself that if I played every day for six months, I’d buy myself a new one. After five months, I kept that promise. I bought an Epiphone IBG Hummingbird—chosen partly for its beauty and sound, but mostly for what it symbolized.

That long-ago day on the porch had stayed with me.

With lessons and TAC, I began learning again. And with every strum, I felt closer to the child who once stood in awe of a simple porch performance.

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This past August, my sons and granddaughters came to the Jersey Shore to celebrate my birthday.

We gathered on the porch—just a block from the ocean—with friends and family. My sons, Teague and Ian, brought their guitars. Our hometown friend Mike joined in, and Jeff played harmonica. I sat right there with them, guitar in hand, singing songs I’d heard them play so many times: “The Weight,” “Evangeline,” “Angel from Montgomery.”

I wasn’t shy. I was alive.

When my granddaughter Annika joined in—a budding guitarist herself—it became a three-generation jam.

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That night, I felt like the real me.
The musical me.
The singing, guitar-playing me.

The ten-year-old girl who once stood on a North Philadelphia porch, captivated by Jay and his guitar, had finally come into her own.

And the dream of playing and singing alongside my sons had come true.

I’d rather be lonely, I’d rather be blue…
Than feather a nest to be shattered apart
By the hum, hum of your hummingbird heart.