You can see it in
pictures when I was smallB
a wispy-haired blond with pale blue eyes always looking off to the side as if
listening for angels. Oh, I wouldn=t have said so thenB just that perhaps it was the
alone-ness that made me different. For
my first nine years we lived in the country, no other children close by, so I
played mostly by myself with my dolls, building imaginary houses, making up
tuneless songs with simple, rhyme-less words.
My childhood was otherwise as Anormal@ as anyone=s,
or at least I thought so then. My
asthma kept me from being as active as some, but it was all I knew, so I didn=t mind.
Daddy was my first
Prince Charming. Stunningly handsome even now in his nineties, back then with
his thick mane of black hair and dashing moustache he was aptly nicknamed AClark Gable.@ Tall and slender, too, he truly looked the
part, especially when he donned his gray felt Homburg hat. It was post-World
War II, and we were far from wealthy, but we had a home full of love, and my
father provided for his family admirably by being a traveling salesman. I
mostly respected (and probably a little bit feared) my father from afar, because
he was so often absent-- and when he came home, the administrator of
discipline!
I never doubted my father=s
love for me, yet I constantly found myself seeking his approval. I associate him with
three things in my youth: ham radio, a new Buick company car every two years,
and taking the family to church every Sunday.
I remember hearing about the church orchestra
Daddy played in and directed before World War II took him off to the Civil Air
Patrol, and some of my most vivid childhood memories take me back to adult
choir rehearsal on Thursday nights. On Sunday mornings I would sit with an
adult friend while Mama played the beautiful old pipe organ and Daddy waved his arms in the choir loft
above me, the two of them creating ethereal music for God’s ears. The Christmas
cantatas they led still play in the soundtrack of my memory , as fresh as the
pungence of the pine boughs we gathered on my grandfather’s farm to decorate
the church the Saturday before Christmas.
I loved helping arrange the lights and red bows that adorned the stained-glass
windows.
My mother was my constant
companion and caretaker, and as soon as I went to school so did she, as a
school secretary and later a teacher. Mama got me up every morning and took me to school where she worked. After the bell rang at the end of the day, I
would join her in the office until her day ended. Then we=d
proceed home, sometimes stopping at the A&P for groceries. I was her little helper-- whether it was
putting Ablueing@ in the old wringer washing machine,
running sheets and pillowcases through the Amangle@ or fixing us dinner on the big
electric stove--until she tucked me in at night.
Today she would
have been called a Asuper-mom,@ a liberated woman for the 1950s,
because she did it all, from running the household day in and day out to
driving her own column-shift Nash Rambler to work every day! I=m
sure I didn=t
appreciate all she accomplished, because to me it was an embarrassment that my
clothes, beautiful as they were, were homemade, as were our curtains and
slipcovers and my dolls=
clothes. On top of all this, she helped
look after her own parents and sisters, and kept my father and teen-aged
brother happy. And somehow she also managed to entertain several of my cousins
and an occasional neighbor=s
child, once in a while taking us all to
Youth Fellowship or Vacation Bible School.
The other male in
my life was my brother Charles, who was ten years old when I was born. As with my father, then, I always admired
him from afar, and he probably has no idea to this day how involved in his life
I was. Rather than being either my best
friend or my arch-enemy, as often happens with siblings closer in age, my
brother became my idol. There=s an old black-and-white photograph
(which Charles probably developed in his darkroom in our upstairs) that brings
back such fond memories with me in my child=s
rocking chair sitting beside my brother talking on his ham radio.
When I was small,
I had a vicarious adolescence through Charles.
I remember the excitement when he began to drive and polish his Acool@
cars in our driveway, and I had terrible crushes on his friends who came to our
house. The music in our home didn=t
fail to influence him. I can still
hear the haunting notes coming from his gleaming brass trumpet, the sound as
graceful as the curves of the instrument.
Whether he was playing at church or in the high school marching band I
must have beamed like the light flashing off the trumpet, I was so proud of my
big brother!
I suppose I will
never know which was the greater influence on my later yearsB the music that filled so much of my
young life or the six years of piano lessons I was forced to take as a
child. Whatever the cause, I don=t remember a time when my head was not
filled with music nearly every waking minute (and many sleeping minutes!). Yet I do not consider myself an accomplished
musician by any stretch of the imagination.
I can read notes on a page, yet if I ever knew much theory, most of it
is lost to me now. I have no gift for
creating musical combinations or even playing an instrument. My gift is an ear for harmony, and for the
harmony of words. Perhaps more than
anything it was all those early years of going to choir practice with my
parents. Certainly, singing in choirs
and musical groups has been my passion since my youth, and I have been
privileged to sing with many excellent choirs under several gifted
directors. For all of these blessings
of music God placed in my life, I shall never be able to express my gratitude,
but most of all to my parents I wish to extend my deepest thanks.
“Since my
youth, O God, you have taught me, and to this day I declare Your marvelous
deeds.” (Psalm 71:17)
MUSIC FOR YOUR MEDITATION:
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