LETTERS FROM MY DAD: MUSICAL ECHOES

A week ago one of my former students posted on Facebook a video of the choir he now directs singing, “How Can I Keep From Singing?” (Robert Lowery, 1860) It was utterly lovely. I glimpsed my student as a studious fifth grader of at least twenty years ago, now with a choir of his own. But an even stronger memory transposed me to the Old North Church in Boston where my granddaughter sang that same song with the show choir she toured with a few summers ago. The words ricocheted off the antique walls of the historic church with such resonating clarity, I shiver with the memory today: “Through all the tumult and the strife/I hear the music ringing; It finds an echo in my soul/How can I keep from singing?”

I’ve always marveled how music can instantly conjure a memory we didn’t even know we still held onto. We often drove straight through to Florida over Spring Break. In the early Eighties, our then teenagers brought tapes which blared constantly as we traveled the darkened I-75. Whenever I hear Journey’s “Open Arms” I am instantly in the packed van once again.

During World War II, my lovesick dad used music to connect him to home, to his wife, to family.  In the March, 1943, letter shown above he listed all the songs they would listen to together, “on the davenport, with the lights down low.” I can only imagine how quickly my mother drew a little closer to her sweetheart so many miles from home.

Each Christmas it happens to me, too, when the Christmas carols from everywhere (malls, radios, television, parties…) begin and I hear Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” I am immediately with my Dad. Continuing the March letter after the list, my dad says, “Then to top it all to have Bing Crosby sing, ‘White Christmas.’ I think that will stand out as our own favorite song…” In another letter from March, 1943, he writes, “Do you remember Bing singing? Well, that record was just played and I could see our little tree in our wonderful apartment, you and I and the couple of kids we acted like.”  How can I not keep from singing with my dad each Christmas?

There is another song, however, where I don’t need to hear the song, I just need to be in that place. My husband David was an incredible singer. His music did not stop when he died. It reverberates still with the choir he loved, with the granddaughter who inherited his voice. It echoes also in the Meadow at our home on Old Mission. Shortly after he died I stumbled to the Meadow in despair and I heard David’s voice as clear and distinct as it had always been, singing the song as he had so often with his church choir:

“Now Lord, I feel you near me,
I feel Your guiding pow’r.
And know You’re standing by me
Through ev’ry passing hour.
And Thy will be done, Lord,
They will be done.”
       (Joyce Eilers)

Indeed.

Thank you to David Bassin for posting the video and

Sharon Thomas, for finding needed lyrics

FALL, FAMILY AND APPLES

    
  
When I drive to northern Michigan in the middle of October I just hold my breath. The wide sweep of blazing maize, outrageous orange and firecracker reds seem endless. Even the weeds and tall grasses are showing off their colors: burnt browns, mustard yellow. I am humbled with God's immense paintbrush. Exiting the interstate, dodging traffic in town, I turn unto Center Road which bisects Old Mission Peninsula. At the first wide sweep of rolling water, orchard and vineyard dotted hills, I murmur my traditional prayer given each returning trip, "Thank you God for giving me this."


My attention turns from the immenseness of autumn to the fall I can hold in my hands: apples. Fruit stands begin popping up mid July on Center Road: a new bright purple one with fancy awning and changeable sign to advertise selections, a circular yellow wooden stand with artistic fruit painted along the bottom, just a card table with a jar for your money, an old stonewall. The stands begin with cherries, move to peaches, blueberries, veggies of all varieties; but in mid October apples are supreme, each kind displaying its own uniqueness, its own taste, its own memory. Now stands advertise Honey Crisp, the new kid on the block (or apple in the orchard.) “We have Honey Crisp!!” “Honey Crisp here.” Right now she’s the Miss Personality, the new Homecoming Queen.

As a child we would jump into the family station wagon for a Sunday afternoon drive: my sister and I vying for the window seats, our little brother squirming between us. It seemed like an every Sunday ritual: visiting Grandma in Athens. At least in fall we delighted in the bonus of fresh apples from the orchards surrounding Athens. I loved Jonathans, the redness of their skin, the pure whiteness of its inside. My mother, the perfect pie maker, always said, "Spys are for Pies" but she preferred the "reliable Macintosh."

When our children were young we continued the Sunday ritual with trips to Big Red in Romeo: hay wagons driven by tractors delivered families to the orchards. Guides stood in paths pointing, “Red Delicious to the right…Empires to the left.” We always looked for the Ida Red rows. They were my husband’s favorite. He would show the three year old the low hanging branches and then heft the toddler unto his shoulders, pointing out “perfect” apples to pick.

Now I hold tightly to another apple memory: making applesauce with my grandchildren: coring the apples, letting them throw the quarters into the big pot, stirring the apples to “mush” as they cook. Then the most fun of all, pulling out that “funny winder” (or food mill) from the back of the cupboard where it stays all year until apple season and getting to turn and turn it until “miracle applesauce appears.”

Memories made in Michigan.