Christmas Memories from Mississippi by Charline R. McCord & Judy H. Tucker

Author:Charline R. McCord & Judy H. Tucker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2010-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Soloist

Judy H. Tucker

Doesn’t everyone remember the Christmas pageants of their childhoods—the angel tree at school where you sat on pyramid bleachers wearing white crepe paper robes with green collars and sang carols, the church pageant with the manger scene, the angels and the wise men standing near?

Once upon a time, in a little one-roomed clapboard church at the edge of a deep, quiet wood, I was a star of the Christmas pageant. Only once. I sang the solo. It was so long ago there were as many mule-drawn wagons pulled into the churchyard as there were log trucks, pickups, and automobiles.

It was nepotism pure and simple. My aunt, my favorite aunt, was the director of the pageant. I was young, maybe six, seven, or eight, too young to know stage fright, so I did not tremble in fear as I took the stage wearing an old plaid housecoat of hers, carrying a shepherd’s hook, a rag of some sort around my head, and sang “Away in a Manger.” It has a simple tune; my voice was small and high pitched. I doubt they heard me beyond the front row.

I was the middle child of a large family and was much teased by the older and the younger siblings. My aunt made me feel special. In fact she said one time, “You are my favorite.” I do not doubt that from time to time she said the same thing to all my brothers and sisters, but I believed with all my heart that I was someone special in her eyes. A child needs that, and none was more needy than I, who would do anything to be around her. I waxed the floors on my hands and knees, I watered the precious azaleas she had planted around my grandmother’s house, I fetched and toted.

She had joined the navy in the waning days of World War II and she had seen the world. She’d attended the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Just to please her, I decided I would be an opera singer. Before Julie Andrews ever ran to the top of a hill and set the skies ringing with the sound of music, I did it, and scared the poor cows till surely it dried up their milk. Once, sitting by my aunt’s side in the city auditorium in Jackson, I sat through a full production of Handel’s Messiah. How many ways are there to sing “hallelujah”? Hot, squirming, hungry, and exhausted, I sat through them all.

Not to be discouraged by the likes of Handel, I joined the glee club in high school. The first day, I was in the front row; the teacher hovered with a baton in her hand. She kept leaning in, frowning, as we sang. “Somebody’s off key,” she said. She ordered us to do it again. She came up to the front row and turned her ear to us. Still she frowned. I knew I was the one singing off key. I blushed, shut up and mouthed the words, and got through the humiliating session.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.