December 25, 2011

• Mama Would Sing

  Mama would sing when she was happy. I know my younger siblings may not believe this. Mama was not always happy. In fact, there were periods in her/our lives where happiness was scarce. It wasn’t that Mama was particularly sad. It was more the absence of emotion. The simple act of living consumed joy.

  Late at night we could hear her. Little snippets of some hummed melody. Probably not a song at all, just the bubbling of contentment rising to the surface. After a while, a tune would become recognizable. Occasionally words would escape and little phrases of some remembered song. A private pleasure indulged in only when she felt safe and alone.

  And although her children were her life and love, it was the rare occasion when she would find herself overcome with the need to smile and then eventually break into song in our presence. Elvis and Sinatra were her guilty obsessions. But there were times when even they could not coax her happy hum forth. 

  Christmas was the exception. On one hand she would would bemoan the fact the the holidays existed. Verbally she would insist that she was not fond of and at times hated the holidays; an impossible concept for us young ones to comprehend. What did we know of the day to day struggle to survive. 

  Yet we could feel her conflict. 

  Until Christmas time approached. Right after Thanksgiving she would begin to hum Christmas Carols. Soon it would evolve into full-throated song. She had a lovely voice; strong, vibrant, holding the promise of a much better day. It was required that all the children in grades seven and eight in my tiny parochial school sing in the choir. Absolutely required… no if’s, ands or buts. The nuns would drag us out to “perform” at all parish events from the Festa to the Spagehetti Dinner (O Sole Mio) and two Sundays a month. Our crowning glory was the Christmas Pageant/Concert held in the school’s basement cafeteria.

  Sister Two and Sister Three and I would sing our hearts out in the kitchen each night as we three conscripts sang “We Three Kings” in three part harmony (sic) until our heads ached and our neighbors’ ears bled. It was then that Mama could no longer resist.

  And Mama would sing; a loud, strong, soprano to our alto. I think she was a diva in a previous life. She was four foot almost eleven, but her voice was seven foot eight. Pounding, piercing, powerful, proud. Our Mama. Who would have thought. Carol after Hymn…  Day after day….  She knew all the words by heart… She was amazing; if only for the season. The New Year brought silence. And we would have to settle for snippets of song and moments of melody, hummed in the last hours of the night.

  Time and age have added understanding to my youthful ignorance. We were poor, then. We didn’t know it. My Dad drank, we didn’t know it. Disappointment was a constant burden that my loving stoic mother was forced to shoulder. She never unloaded it on us. She was the keeper of secrets, dark and desperate. She never let the skeletons out of the closet.

  My mama would sing.

  I can still hear her voice in the last moments of night as I drop off to sleep.

  My mama would sing.

  I can still hear her voice in the semi-dreams of first wakefulness in the early morning.

  My mama would sing.

   

   

   

  • 6:26 PM
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