Many, many times over the past few weeks, in many instances in my life—even at work—I have experienced a strong feeling that the only appropriate thing to say or do is to open my mouth and have Brahms’ How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place issue forth. Not just the alto line, but all the voice parts together, as if I were some super Tuvan throat singer and could sing all four vocal parts at once—with the orchestral score issuing from my throat as well. It has been almost a physical sensation, as if I am a channel, or a pipe which, if placed in the wind just so, would come alive with sound. Or maybe it’s as if I am a television that, if my antennae were placed just so to catch the wave, would spring into sound, color and narrative.
Saying the appropriate thing these situations has been a real challenge. If I am possessed in those moments, it is a wonderful possession. It feels as if it must feel to be standing on the edge of a cliff with arms outstretched and the wind blowing in the right direction, and wanting ever so badly to take off and fly—but maintaining just enough rationality to know that it wouldn’t happen, so best not to jump off, best not to open my mouth wide and wait for that fully formed music to come flowing out.
Do you think I’ve packed enough metaphors and similes into these scant paragraphs? Here’s one more: Though it’s not issuing forth from my mouth, the music lives inside of me, and I ride it like an eagle riding a thermal.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Enthroned in Majesty
The week of my father’s funeral, my cousin Sandy had cooked us a Thanksgiving dinner and brought it to my mother’s house, where we were all staying. Thanksgiving was about two weeks away, and Sandy, in an act of caring and generosity that is typical of her, thought since we probably weren’t going to be together on the actual feast day, we should be able to share a meal of thanks while we were all together.
We prepared the table as for a normal Thanksgiving meal, and sat arrayed around the table. Although I grew up Catholic, ours was not a terribly observant family, and we never normally said grace before a meal—except on Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving. As we sat there about to begin the meal, the question arose, who was going to say grace? My brother Mark suggested I say it, as I was the only child who regularly attended church. I said, “No, I think Ma should say it.” And so it was.
My parents had been divorced some 39 years before, and it was an ugly divorce, in which the fighting and strife had dragged on for years. While my father had gone on to create a second family with a second wife, my mother, although pretty, sociable, and popular, had never remarried, despite several opportunities to do so. There were many reasons for that (most stingingly, “no one wants to marry someone with four kids”), but at heart it was because she was a one-man woman, and married the man she had wanted to be married to for life in 1948. Over the years they would see each other from time to time, mostly when it had to do with one of us, but as they aged they saw each other less and less. At the time of my father’s death, my mother had not seen him for many years, and knew of his growing infirmity only through the reporting of her kids.
She began the prayer stiffly—although she had been Catholic by choice from the age of 21, she had not been raised in any religion, and was not a natural at acts of worship—and duly thanked God for the presence of her kids at the table. Then she paused, and unrelated to any sentence that I had heard her begin, said, “Walter’s death,” and began crying. My mother was not an easy crier. Her crying always sounded strangulated somehow, and to break down and cry at the head of the table at which she was formally speaking to God, surrounded by her silent children and their significant others, was not something she felt comfortable doing. My brother Mark quickly began speaking over her tears, partially to comfort her but also I think to get past the awkward, sad and painful moment. He was sitting next to me, and I kicked him. I thought she should experience the grief that I knew she must have been feeling, but had not yet expressed or maybe even felt, caught up as we all had been in the drama of either standing by and witnessing as the funeral preparations had been made, or participating in them from off stage left (that week my mother had even forwarded a suggestion through an intermediary—me—to her formal rival to help enable her to get a payment of some sort from the VA). Quietly, she cried. Quietly, we let her. Eventually someone stood up and walked to where she sat to comfort her, the moment passed, my mother mastered her grief, and we went on with dinner.
I’ve heard those words in my head, “Walter’s death,” often in the years since then. My mother never called my father Walter. She mostly called him Walt (or in the early years, Wally or even, when they were feeling especially playful, Waldo). To us, she always called him Your Father (she even called him Your Father once or twice when talking to one of our spouses, so used as she was to calling him that). But at that table, she wasn’t talking to her kids—she was talking to God. And to her that meant that she had to be formal and well-behaved, like putting on your best clothes to go to church. To her that meant that she had to be at her best, as if she were visiting a rich uncle whom she saw seldom, but knew she was obligated to impress. She might even have been slightly embarrassed at breaking down and crying in front of God.
She had told me toward the end of her life that she wasn’t very big on the external formalities of churchgoing, but, she said with conviction, “I believe.” I’ve thought a lot about that “Walter,” and it tells me that to my mother, God was transcendent, and not immanent. God was not there with her, familiar with the intimate details of her life, but was away from her, up there somewhere, enthroned in majesty.
We prepared the table as for a normal Thanksgiving meal, and sat arrayed around the table. Although I grew up Catholic, ours was not a terribly observant family, and we never normally said grace before a meal—except on Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving. As we sat there about to begin the meal, the question arose, who was going to say grace? My brother Mark suggested I say it, as I was the only child who regularly attended church. I said, “No, I think Ma should say it.” And so it was.
My parents had been divorced some 39 years before, and it was an ugly divorce, in which the fighting and strife had dragged on for years. While my father had gone on to create a second family with a second wife, my mother, although pretty, sociable, and popular, had never remarried, despite several opportunities to do so. There were many reasons for that (most stingingly, “no one wants to marry someone with four kids”), but at heart it was because she was a one-man woman, and married the man she had wanted to be married to for life in 1948. Over the years they would see each other from time to time, mostly when it had to do with one of us, but as they aged they saw each other less and less. At the time of my father’s death, my mother had not seen him for many years, and knew of his growing infirmity only through the reporting of her kids.
She began the prayer stiffly—although she had been Catholic by choice from the age of 21, she had not been raised in any religion, and was not a natural at acts of worship—and duly thanked God for the presence of her kids at the table. Then she paused, and unrelated to any sentence that I had heard her begin, said, “Walter’s death,” and began crying. My mother was not an easy crier. Her crying always sounded strangulated somehow, and to break down and cry at the head of the table at which she was formally speaking to God, surrounded by her silent children and their significant others, was not something she felt comfortable doing. My brother Mark quickly began speaking over her tears, partially to comfort her but also I think to get past the awkward, sad and painful moment. He was sitting next to me, and I kicked him. I thought she should experience the grief that I knew she must have been feeling, but had not yet expressed or maybe even felt, caught up as we all had been in the drama of either standing by and witnessing as the funeral preparations had been made, or participating in them from off stage left (that week my mother had even forwarded a suggestion through an intermediary—me—to her formal rival to help enable her to get a payment of some sort from the VA). Quietly, she cried. Quietly, we let her. Eventually someone stood up and walked to where she sat to comfort her, the moment passed, my mother mastered her grief, and we went on with dinner.
I’ve heard those words in my head, “Walter’s death,” often in the years since then. My mother never called my father Walter. She mostly called him Walt (or in the early years, Wally or even, when they were feeling especially playful, Waldo). To us, she always called him Your Father (she even called him Your Father once or twice when talking to one of our spouses, so used as she was to calling him that). But at that table, she wasn’t talking to her kids—she was talking to God. And to her that meant that she had to be formal and well-behaved, like putting on your best clothes to go to church. To her that meant that she had to be at her best, as if she were visiting a rich uncle whom she saw seldom, but knew she was obligated to impress. She might even have been slightly embarrassed at breaking down and crying in front of God.
She had told me toward the end of her life that she wasn’t very big on the external formalities of churchgoing, but, she said with conviction, “I believe.” I’ve thought a lot about that “Walter,” and it tells me that to my mother, God was transcendent, and not immanent. God was not there with her, familiar with the intimate details of her life, but was away from her, up there somewhere, enthroned in majesty.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
A Stirring Memory
My mother took cream and sugar in her coffee, and she had a way of stirring her coffee that was unique to her. As she would rotate the spoon circularly through the cup, she would clink the spoon against the side of the cup three times, in a triangular fashion, for each rotation of the spoon around the inside of the cup. It was as if she didn't feel the coffee was being truly and properly stirred unless that spoon clinked against the inside of the cup in just the right way. I can hear the music of her coffee-stirring right now, as I write this.
It's funny how a person lives on in such inconsequential memories, ones that can be prompted by the simple act of making myself a cup of tea in the middle of my work day.
It's funny how a person lives on in such inconsequential memories, ones that can be prompted by the simple act of making myself a cup of tea in the middle of my work day.
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