Easter Hats, Dirges & Dad

I have recently decided to explore the meaning of my life through the filter of music. In this piece, I will relate the memory of my first profound encounter with this incredible art form.

It happened in church — I was raised Catholic, and my parents took us to mass every Sunday without fail (until I told them at age 15 that I was having serious doubts regarding the existence of God and felt that going to mass was a nonsensical activity, and they, God bless them, honored my feelings and didn’t force me to attend against my wishes).

But I digress (nothing new there!). I was in church. I had arrived a few minutes earlier with my family, which at that time consisted of my mom, my dad, my 2-year-old sister and 4-year-old me. After entering through the big, wooden front doors and blessing ourselves with icy cold holy water from the font at the entrance, my mom, with my sleeping baby sister slung over her shoulder, led us down the aisle to a pew only three or four rows from the back. We each dropped a quick genuflex — like carousel horses on a merry-go-round bobbing up and down in turn — before entering the pew one after the other: mom, dad, and me, pulling up the rear.

We seated ourselves on the hard wooden pew: mom and dad side-by-side, me snugged up close to dad. I loved the strong, masculine smell of him: a mix of Dial soap, Old Spice, and the smoke from his almost ever-present filterless Camel cigarettes.

The pew was uncomfortable, not only because it was hard and splintery, but because it was not made for 4-year-olds. Leaning against the back of the pew forced my legs to stick out awkwardly in front of me as they were much too short to allow me to bend my knees and rest my feet on the floor like an adult. This made me fidgety.

The hat on my head also made me fidgety (its the same one I am wearing in the photo above). This was back in the day when all females, regardless of age, were required to wear a head covering in church. Why? Lord knows. Perhaps the sight of our unbound hair would drive the male congregants to commit unbridled debauchery or, at the very least, have lewd thoughts. But anyway…not only was I unused to hat wearing, the blasted thing had two ribbons that hung down the back, so that when one sat down with one’s back against the pew, said hat would be pulled down the back of one’s head, and one would be strangled by the elastic chin strap that allegedly was designed to keep the infernal contraption fastened firmly to one’s head.

Mainly, I was fidgety because I didn’t particularly enjoy going to mass (OK, let’s be honest: I hated going to mass). I was a very active child, I didn’t like sitting still or being quite for prolonged periods of time, and mass was FAR from entertaining in those days. The mass was conducted in Latin — a language I most definitely did not speak — and the priest kept his back turned to the congregation for the duration. BORING!!

So where does the music bit come in? Keep your hat on (see what I did there?) for just another second… I’m getting to that bit. Our church had a choir loft (much more about this in a later post) with a grand old pipe organ. There was no choir singing that day, but the organist was up there playing a tune (might I say a funeral dirge?), to set the mood for the frivolity to come, as we waited for the top of the hour and the appearance of the priest and the altar boys. Well, let me tell you, as I sat there with the sonorous tones of the organ washing over me, I was struck to the core. That music went right to the heart of me and touched my very soul. I was overcome by an intense and total feeling of deep melancholy, and I began weeping. Not loudly or ostentatiously, but huge, fat tears rolled down my cheeks and I felt unutterably, indescribably sad. I can remember the sensation to this very day.

When my father noticed my distress, he swept me up in his arms and carried me back outside through the now-closed front doors. Setting me on my feet, he dropped to one knee in front of me and asked what was wrong. Unable to articulate my feelings, I just shook my head and shrugged, though I dearly wanted to explain. Now, I was normally a very happy-go-lucky child, so this crying jag was out the norm for me, thus my dad’s concern. He asked me if something was hurting me, but I shook my head again — how could I tell him my soul was aching? I didn’t have the words.

Thankfully, being out of earshot of that depressing death march, I quickly returned to normal and regained my equanamity. My dad removed the starched and precisely ironed hankie he always kept in his breast pocket and mopped my face with it, and I guess we went back inside and got on with mass. I don’t recall , but it doesn’t matter anyway, because that isn’t the important part of the story.

So…why does this memory stand out among the thousands upon thousands of others stored in my noggin? First of all, I believe it has to do with the music. Strong emotions help encode lasting memories into our brains, and music is inherently emotional, thus IMHO, the reason songs and music are linked to so many of our most vivid memories, and the reason I hope this exercise will yield a few gold nuggets of personal insight.

But beyond that..what does this particular memory mean for ME? How does it explain the person I am? As mentioned earlier, I was always a cheerful, happy-go-lucky child. A blithe spirit. But little did I know that beneath my carefree facade lurked a deeply sensitive and emotional soul. This was perhaps one of the first manifestations of this side of my personality — it’s definitely the first I can consciously recall. However, as I will discuss in upcoming posts, it was a side of myself that I chose to conceal (for some obvious, and other not-so-obvious, reasons — which will also be discussed in future posts).

I am a person of deep feeling, but I am not super demonstrative. I am friendly and open up to a point, but I am careful and guarded when it comes to revealing my soul to others. I will do, but it takes time (sometimes a long time) for me to reach that level of comfort with another person. I have been criticized and belittled for this perceived “lack” in the past. I have been made to feel bad about being “closed off” and “unemotional.” I used to take this criticism to heart, and I would allow it to make me feel awful. I felt like a horrible, bad, unworthy, undeserving human being. I tried to change, but it was so powerfully difficult that I couldn’t do it. And at some point I finally realized the futility and ridiculousness of trying to change myself to please others anyway (especially others who didn’t know or understand me — and probably never would). Finally, in very recent years, I have come to grips with this facet of my personality. I feel deeply, but do not need to emote all over the place all the time. This is OK. This is me, and I am fine as I am.