March 12, 2008
When I arrive, Mother is eating her lunch. She is detached, but looks very pretty with her hair done and a perky blue patterned top and white pants. She looks like she’s headed off on a cruise. We are mostly quiet. Aurea is on duty. A beautiful, kind, smart, woman, who is always working quietly on her English, studying every spare moment she can grab. She humbles you with her capacity to care for people.
Ma agrees (after a few requests) to take a stroll. “How ‘bout I play some piano for you?” I ask. Music is the great gateway.
Mother lives now at Elizabeth Seton assisted living and memory care, a beautiful facility, originally for aging nuns, set on a gentle hill, across the street from the school I walked to as a child. The Academy of the Assumption, grades 1-12. I have many memories seared in my brain about that kind, old rambling building that housed grades 1-4. Sister Marion Anthony, who taught us how to play basketball, Sister Francis of Rome, who taught us how to tapdance, the gleaming black and white tile floors, wide oak stairwells with intricately carved newel posts larger than any of us, the drifting smells of lunch being prepared in the refectory, where we ate at large tables, family style. My parents took me out after sixth grade and sent me to Wellesley Junior High, I realize now because they were up to their eyeballs in tuition bills for college and private schools for the older kids. I am very thankful that Fate handed me that change-up, although as time goes by, I might like to be one of those aging nuns in line for a lovely place to live.
A few ladies are gathered in the central room, sitting quietly in their wheelchairs. I set one on of the ultra gliding rocking chairs up close to the piano and begin to play out of Mother’s copy of Masterpieces of Piano Music, choosing the songs she used to play, which are still marked with the sticky notes she put there … Gounod, Chopin and others, that aren’t quite under my fingers. I thumb through, looking for the ones I play, starting with Handel's Sarabande. A few more ladies gather. One of the aides says, "My Sergei always liked that!” It’s going to be a quiet music appreciation session today. Next on the program was Beethoven's Für Elise.
Mother sits by me, sometimes watching, sometimes dozing. That amazing light rises as she hears the music she’s played for 70 years or more. I show her the book and tell her she used to play all these songs. She smiles gently.
"Oh, I like this one,” comes a voice from somewhere. Who doesn't resonate somehow with Für Elise? or maybe it’s just the sound of a piano being played. OK, maybe not a toy piano.
On to the Moonlight Sonata. The soundless energy of more wheelchairs rolling across the carpeted room. I falter with the same sharps I always miss, but nobody seems to care.
The sweet sister in the regulation wheelchair (not Eleanor in the PVC playpen) claps enthusiastically. I stand up and take a grand waist-deep Liberace bow. The faces all look so happy.
Now the audience is growing and I abandon the classical for the popular. Thank you, Larry, who taught me and Mother ‘popular’ music, including what he called ‘the business man’s bounce’. (see Music Lessons for the full story.)
I decide to start at the beginning of the Readers' Digest Songbook, which was our family bible. I skip Avalon... too slow, plus I don't really know it. On to the second tune. Tip-Toe Thru the Tulips with Me. My back may have been to the audience, but I could feel it -- limbs are stirring, mouths are mouthing, bodies are shifting. Knee deep in flowers we'll stray; we'll keep the showers away...
Next tune, Memory Lane. Skip it. I learned my lesson from the last time, when the nun in the wheelchair (see above) came up behind me and told me to ‘kick it up a notch’. Bye Bye Blackbird…Fuggedaboudit. Too slow. I always think that’s a peppy one, but it ain’t. Skip it. Next.
Ain’t She Sweet. Our Celito Lindo aide (named for the time she and I sang Celito Lindo in spanish, dancing around the room) was up and dancing around, looking for willing partners.
Then, a little 3/4 time with If You Were The Only Girl in the World and I Were the Only Boy…. Whatever happened to the use of the subjunctive in the English language? I think the Oscar Meyer Wiener ad campaign killed it.
The subjunctive slowed down the dancing.
Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the (beat rest) Mo-o-or-nin – the rest in the beginning of that measure isn’t in the Readers’ Digest version. That syncopation was birthed, along with the blues, when we four sisters sang it at the St. John’s talent show in 1958. It still remains, 66 years later.
Sister claps at the end of each song, except when she’s drinking her apple juice. In mid gulp she chimes out, “Somebody clap! I can’t because I’m drinking my juice!”
I roll on to Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, followed by a dramatic Irish tenor version of My Wild Irish Rose.
When I go up tempo (sister was right) with Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet, Kathleen, the white-haired leprechaun, starts to wind up. She loves to sing! Two songs. OHYOUTAKETHEHIGHROADANDI’LLTAKETHELOWROADANDDAISY,DAISY,GIVEMEYOURANSWERDOEASTSIDEWESTSIDEALLAROUNDTHE..
I’m still playing we’ll hitch old Dobbin to the shay (yes, it is shay), and through the fields of clover, we’ll drive up to Dover… IT’SALONGWAYTOTIPPERAREE,IT’SALONGWAYFROMHOME and I kept hearing something aboutI’LLGIVEYOUALOCKOFMYBONNIE BROWNHAIR but I couldn’t make out the rest.
Kathleen’s wrinkled face is always on the verge of breaking into a good laugh about some inner joke. Every day, she wears the same old-fashioned dress, which she probably made out of old curtains. Everybody should have a grandmother like Kathleen. She speaks with a thick Irish brogue and can’t hear a thing. She sings very loud and enthusiastic versions of her old favorites over whatever song is being attempted by the group. I’ve heard that the trouble is with her hearing aid. It’s turned down. So she watches the energy level, knows there’s a-singin’ goin’ on and jumps in. Singing must have been a great part of her life. And her smile! She’s an imp!
We run through all the favorites, a few hymns, a few college fight songs, childrens’ songs, whatever pops into anybody’s head.
It has become a tradition to end our sings on the patriotic side. America The Beautiful is a gorgeous, peaceful tribute to our country. A trip to Pike’s Peak, in 1893, inspired poet Katherine Lee Bates to write the tribute. Later she set them to Samuel Ward’s song O Mother Dear, Jerusalem. If only, if only, we could continually rise toward the grace and brotherhood Ms. Bates describes.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
We finish with The Star-Spangled Banner. There is something very stirring about singing with people who have lived rich, long lives in this country (or have made great sacrifices to move here). It is more poignant and thrilling than any baseball opening ceremony.
I gather my things and tell Ma I need to be on my way. She fidgets a bit and with a familiar old expression on her face, asks if maybe she could come along with me, hitch a ride home. How does a heart hold these things? We walk around the halls for a while and happen upon Aurea who is busy studying her English verbs. She gathers Mother up in her kind and loving way and they head down the hall together.
Keep singin’.
Every post is a gift, dear Kate. Thank you. 🌺💜🌺