When I was eight or nine or ten, I sang. In the back yard, I sang, swinging. And, Joan, my next-door neighbor and I used the doghouse roof as a stage for song and dance numbers. (A favorite was the Gillette Razor Theme Song from the Friday Night Fights.) The picnic table was off limits because, "somebody might want to eat on there some day." I remember wanting the car windows down so when I sang the Mickey Mouse Club Talent Scouts would be able to hear me. I liked Doris Day in the fifties.
I wasn't the only one around the house who sang. My Mama did, too. But only when she was depressed or angry. I don't know why. She must have liked music, she had played french horn in one of her high school marching bands and had a letter. (Mama tended to get kicked out of schools. She had a temper.) But when she was singing around the house, or whistling, she usually chose bad hymns and--not blues--depressing songs, like "... if I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I would fly." She rarely knew whole sets of words, and so would sing what she did know over and over again. To this day, hearing someone begin to whistle in the house for no reason makes me want to find a place to cower. I wonder what will follow.
There is only one time I remember Daddy singing. I'd been with him down to Dickson to see the relatives. Mama and Glenn had stayed in town for some reason. It was late summer and within a week or two I would be going away to college. Going away anywhere for the first time. At some point, about three quarters of the way home, he started up on "Red River Valley".
This from my never-affectionate, barely expressive father. Don't ask me what I said. I was seventeen and conversation with Daddy usually turned on books and bicycles and fishing, anything but emotion.From this valley they say you are going.
I will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile.
For they say you are taking the sunshine
That has brightened our pathway awhile.Come and sit by my side if you love me.
Do not hasten to bid me adieu
But remember the Red River Valley
And the cowboy that loves you so true.
So, I suppose somewhere along the line it impressed itself on me that singing (outside of the irrepressible beer drenched crowd tuning in a bar or the spirit soaked counterpart Sunday morning) has to be laden with important emotion. Something heavy.
1 comment:
that was pretty powerful. a pretty appropriate and incredibly emotional song and hard to imagine Daddy singing it. I can only remember him singing at church, and he usually looked uncomfortable and I would wonder if he was singing off key.
The whistling is a good observation- to this day I want to throw a brick at anyone I hear whistling- it's about the most cheerful noise in the world for most people, but not for me. For me it is the sound of torment, pain, anger and mental illness. I had forgotten that whistling meant that at our house.
Another cheerful song was:
Oh I wish I had died as a baby,
And then I'd have never been born.
Oh I wish I had died as a baby,
And then I'd have never been born.
Usually sung while doing the dishes.
But then on the flip side, either of them would do anything in the world for you, no matter what they had to do without for it. Mama would buy, what one dress a year? I spend more on clothes in six months than they probably did their whole lives.
on another note, I liked the line:
Between us was another girl, not a person, only three small words cut in hard rock. Not real to anyone but, I suppose, mother, who carried her the long lonely months
It's tough to write and make a point at the same time, but good luck with it.
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