Month: May 2018

It’s the music. Always has been. Probably always will be. It takes me places I have been. It invites me to places I would like to be. It is a surefire prompt for myriad memories.

With Heart and Voice on Hawaii Public Radio has been a Sunday ritual for many years. The first host, Richard Gladwell, a transplanted Brit who broadcast from the public radio station in Buffalo, New York, played tracks from what must have been a vast collection of sacred choral and instrumental music around themes. When Gladwell died, Peter DuBois became the host.

Not surprisingly, on the Sunday before Memorial Day, many of the selections DuBois played related to remembering or evoked a martial feeling. He began the show with the hymn “God of Our Fathers.” If you know the hymn, you recall that each stanza begins with a trumpet flourish. It is the only hymn I remember doing so. Those eight notes put me in the pew at University Christian Church, Seattle, around 1954.

Dad was the Minister of Christian Education, in that church, the number two person on the ministerial hierarchy, responsible for the Sunday School programs for people of all ages. In my little blue suit, white shirt and tie, and Homburg hat (just like Dad’s, though removed when indoors), I sat with Mom and my sister on the left side, (my brother was waiting to be born in September) in front of Dad’s lectern. Most Sundays, his role was to read the Bible verses informing the text of the sermon by the Senior Minister.

The church had a magnificent pipe organ, befitting a sanctuary that could seat over 1,000 people, all inside a classically Gothic-looking brick building with a square tower that projected power and authority. On the Sundays that we sang “God of Our Fathers,” the call to worship of the trumpet pipes of the organ stirred the blood. To me, at age 7, the voices of the congregation sounded louder and more confident when the trumpets finished their call.

I can go back to that pew just by closing my eyes whenever I hear the trumpets of “God of Our Fathers.”

People of a Certain Age, where does music take you?

PBS telecasts the national celebration of Memorial Day from the Capitol Mall in Washington the night before the holiday. Typically, a celebrity hosts the show and introduces various musical groups and soloists who sing songs that celebrate the nation and its founding values. The TV cameras scan the crowd, many of whom are waving small American flags, some even singing along.

The crowd is quintessentially American—faces of many colors, some heads covered as befits a particular religion, every age present, all sharing a moment that celebrates the idea of America and the lives of those who have served in one of the armed services to defend that idea.

At some point in the show every year, or so it seems, the anthems representing the branches of the military are played, representing the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. (Maybe the Coast Guard is in there, too, but I don’t remember their anthem like I remember Caissons Rolling, Anchors Aweigh, the Wild Blue Yonder, and the Halls of Montezuma). These are songs we learned in grade school in San Diego. Did you learn them, too, People of a Certain Age?

“Anchors Aweigh” puts me in Grossmont Hospital in May 1998, my sister, brother and I around my father’s bed following his simultaneous heart attack and stroke a few days before. The stroke left Dad without speech. We were watching that year’s Memorial Day show from Washington, and he seemed to be tracking the event, though he was unable to tap out any of the rhythms or say anything about the performances.

However, when the chorus began to sing “Anchors Aweigh,” Dad sang along with them and got all of the words right.

I have written before about that evening because it marks a moment when we siblings bonded as adults in a way we had not before, not because we were not close but because our lives had spread us around the country.

Dad’s singing did something else for me that I cannot name: I just know.

One of the last selections Peter DuBois played was the spiritual, “Going Home.” The song itself is beautiful and moving; this rendition was particularly noteworthy. Judy and I wondered whether the genesis of the song was religious—going home to Jesus after death—or political—going home to the land from which they or their ancestors had been cruelly kidnapped in one of the darker hours of human history.

It struck me that the music of that morning before Memorial Day had taken me home in some way.

Memorial Day has its origins in remembering the service and sacrifice of others to the benefit of the nation. It is also okay if the day reminds us of the service and sacrifice of those who have enabled our lives to be rich and full of meaning.

If I ever have any difficulty remembering, somehow there is always music around to help me.

Daniel E. White

May 28, 2018

I don’t think it was grief, the rhythm of grief notwithstanding. It was more the riches of memory that brought tears to my eyes Mother’s Day.

This was only the second Mother’s Day when I did not pick up the phone to greet her, if I could not be present in person. Sometimes she had flowers from me, too, and she always made me feel like I had picked each one for her specially.

If one is at all conscious, the culture in which we live makes sure that we know about Mother’s Day. Clothing store ads feature moms and daughters (looking remarkably close in age to me these days) laughing over the deals they scored for the latest fashions. Major league baseball parks have special events for moms. Even the local sports section featured our local world champion surfer who said he owes all his success to his mom. (Reading the story, you see he’s got that right!)

A favorite comic strip featured the tale of a young man whose mom tells him how proud she is of him as he publishes his first book. The book turns out to be a smash hit, and the book tour crowds are large.

The young man publishes a second book. The critics pan it as a disappointment. Book signings are now lonely events for him. In the next to last panel, we see the young man’s mom telling him how proud she is of him, and the last panel underscores how moms are like that.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro hosts “Sunday Weekend Edition” on NPR. As the second hour of the show on Mother’s Day drew to a close, she featured comments by various people of some renown about advice they had received from their moms. Lulu’s bit recalled that her mom, who had little formal education, impressed on her kids the value of going to college. She said that education was something that “couldn’t be taken away from you.”

The comment that hit closest to home for me was by Scott Simon, host of the “Saturday Weekend Edition” program on NPR. He said his mom told him that it is always better to be a little over-dressed than to be under-dressed. Imagine, she would say, that you accidentally ran into the Duchess of Cambridge. You would want to be in a blazer and tie rather than in a sweatshirt.

Mom gave me two bits of advice on clothing. First, always wear clean underwear in case you get into an accident. (People of a Certain Age, your mom said that, too, right?) Second, how you dress is an unspoken sign of the respect you have for whom you are meeting or where you are going. This last nugget came in response to my complaining about having to put on a suit as a 9 year old to go to church. Mom did not mention any duchess.

Then to wrap up that section of “Sunday Weekend Edition,” the producer slipped in a recording of Lulu’s husband wishing her a Happy Mother’s Day and her daughter, around 6 years old, doing the same, then wishing all mothers listening a happy day. Lulu confessed to tears after that. Me, too.

I texted my sister “Happy Mother’s Day” before I checked my e-mail. In my mailbox was a message from her with a photograph of what she described in our family lingo as “nearly the whole Fam Damily;” Judy, Sandee’s daughter, Hope, and me in the back row (and I am wearing a blazer!), Sandee, Jody, Mom and Chad seated in front. It was taken at Mom’s church some years ago and lacks Susan, Annie, and Sarah, the Georgia Whites, and Dad. Mom and Chad are beaming, in the picture of good health, before either began to decline too much physically.

I don’t remember the exact circumstance of the photograph. I do remember the joy whenever Mom’s kids could be with her at the same time, the unspoken safety and love. Hope and Chad in the picture only amplify the feeling that love can be contagious.

A recent issue of The Christian Science Monitor features a story about how groups of mothers in Puerto Rico have taken charge of feeding people and providing aid and comfort in places and times when the official sources of support have been unable to provide all that is needed. Why are we seldom surprised that it is mothers who so often step to the forefront to address critical needs?

I think about Mom and Dad often, perhaps more so in retirement than when I was working because I have more time to think. Mother’s Day is an obvious trigger for memories of times like the family being on a blanket in the campground, ready to take the required post-prandial nap (how did she know my eyes were open when her back was to me?) or seeing her as a minor local celebrity hosting her show, “The House of Happiness,” and interviewing my favorite San Diego Padres player!

Snatches of our shared history slip into my mind’s eye without warning. Grief? No, probably not. But surely riches, enough to make clear once again that the cacophony of the political world or our allegedly fractured society pale in importance when compared to the memory of Mom.

Daniel E. White

May 14, 2018