Saving Grace

Musical Retablo - La Guitarra

Music has the ability to pluck at our heart strings in a way beyond the sense of touch, and very often above any of the other senses, yes?  Music, like reading, like the other world I often speak of, was a saving grace.  When our house was crowded with my mother's angry yells, and I was facing the punishment of my bedroom isolation, I allowed music to rise above the din clearing my teary insides with the brightness of sweet pastures.

I would sing softly to myself, eyes closed, and the music filled me with a calm that belied the storm of my mother's rages.  Sometimes, without realizing it, my voice would begin to grow, and if I was lucky I would catch it in time before she heard and took offense (since she saw it as my way of dismissing her).  When I caught myself, I would slip into the closet, another of my favorite hiding spots when the outdoors and the trees were denied me, and my song would reverberate, cocoonning me until nothing else mattered.

Probably needless to note, my song choices were often a mark of ridicule amongst my brother and sister and their friends.  While they all listened to "Brick House" or anything by Earth, Wind & Fire, my song choices ranged from musicals, to Doris Day, Perry Como, Disco, Rock, and Folk music.  I had a record of children's songs, Sing Along With Breezy, and a 45 of scary poems with tellings of The Velvet Ribbon, The Cats of Kilkenny, and Dust; but I could listen to country, as well, then easily slide into traditional Mexican Mariachi or Ranchera music.  And I was fascinated by celtic music, making up dance steps and stories as I blared the albums on our old beat up record player with a penny taped to the arm to keep the needle from skipping.

Many of these old albums were my dad's, a collection of better times.  He continued to buy albums sporadically, whenever he could spare a few dollars, from thrift stores and yard sales when he saw the wide range of my interests.

One precious Christmas I could not believe a present awaited me--my brother, sister, and I squealed to find one for each of us--and I held in my hands a Christmas Album with a variety of singers and old-time favorites.  Nat King Cole sang Ms. Santa Claus, Dean Martin sang Buon Natalie, and Wayne Newton, in that hauntingly waif-ish voice sang The Little Drummer Boy.

Entonces vino el dia, Then came the day I was introduced to Mozart.  With those first notes of Serenade for Winds I knew how the angels sounded.  I knew that if I was a good girl, paid attention at Mass instead of tracing the stained glass window with an imaginary finger, if, if, IF, I could hold my tongue when my mother's got away from her, the angels would sing just like this and guide me to heaven.

The albums are long gone, but the music has never died.  Another of my father's many gifts that carried me from one day to the next, from despair to hope.  A gift I will cherish always, and that I have passed on to my daughter.