“In memory, everything seems to happen to music.”
- Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie
It began with 11 simple words posted on Carol’s Facebook page.
“Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me…”
In less than a millisecond I disappeared into the mists of
memory finding two companions significant to my life: My older sister Anne and
my mother.
For the next 10 or 15 minutes, I entered the ‘cavern of
cognitive dissociation’ from the real world, and was transported to any number
of settings where the beginning lines to this family favorite hymn brought
images and sounds, with clarity, to my heart and mind.
In those moments lost to reality, these two wonderful women sang
this hymn for me under very different circumstances. Anne was gifted from a child with a notable
soprano voice. My father liked to show
her off when people visited, and I cannot count the number of times he, to my
mind, aggressively encourage her to sing for our guests.
She may have enjoyed this – I never really asked – but it
seemed to me, she often sang under duress.
I do know this, however, she loved music and loved to sing and cultivated
her gift through a graduate degree in voice, making a career of pleasing people
privileged to hear her and cultivating the gifts of voice students with whom
she has spent her adult life teaching.
My mother, on the other hand, had a lovely ‘choir’ voice. It was in the alto register and quietly
expressive. As a child and young adult,
she had memorized many hymns, the words of which brought her strength and
sustenance. She sang and taught them to
me…it was her way.
When I read the single line post, my mother’s voice took
over my mind with an almost startling immediacy and I heard her with quiet sincerity
sing those words to me once again. It
was as though I had slipped into a tub of warm water and felt the soothing
gentleness of her character envelop me as she so often had done in her life.
Anne then appeared with a power and inspiration of voice
that one could not hear without being touched.
This song and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ (also a favorite of Mum) came to
mind with the rush of a summer wind blowing through the leaves of the Canadian
hardwood trees of my youth. I suppose
because it seemed so natural to hear her sing, I seldom expressed to her the
depths with which her voice touched me.
It gets better…
I was so taken by Carol’s first line, that I posted the next
…”Let there be peace on earth – the peace that was meant to be.”
Over the next day, other friends of hers placed line after
line – one person at a time until the first verse was complete. I confess, I checked several times during the
day, hoping it would get done.
While the specific circumstance was unexpected and greatly
enjoyed, the experience of an unpredicted stimulus bringing to life things
passed, is not new to me, and I am certain, you either. It is part of the magic of life!
The bigger picture…
I never cease to be fascinated that everything entering through
the vacuum cleaners of sight, sound, touch, smell and taste, somehow sticks to fluid
bathed, micro electric neurons and remains surprisingly alive and well
somewhere in what appear to be inaccessible regions of our minds…until…until
some unforeseen stimulus brings them to the surface like bobbing balloons held
under water and quickly released.
The thing is, we don’t ask for these memories to emerge,
from behind the boulders and sand dunes of our minds. Yet there they reside, in what seems to be a
state of suspended animation eagerly waiting for an opportunity to slip across
the technicolor, silver screens of our minds.
I had not expected to spend a little time with the women of
my family yesterday. In fact, I can’t
think of anything that was further from my mind, or maybe better said, buried
more deeply in my mind.
More to the point, I had certainly not expected to see the
first line of that wonderful old hymn on Carol’s Facebook page either. Yet post it she did and with little doubt,
the quality of my day was immeasurably better…
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