North of Hope by Shannon Polson

Author:Shannon Polson [Polson, Shannon Huffman]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780310328254
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2013-10-15T16:00:00+00:00

Requiem

Offertorium

Adding the grace of music to the truth of doctrine … we pluck the fruit of the words without realizing it.

—St. Basil, Hom in Ps. I (PG 29.211)

I’m squirming in my seat tonight. This rehearsal is painful. We’re getting closer to performance, so we’re into the details. Repeating passages again and again, trying to get the rhythm right, and the words. Nothing inspires me about being here right now. I’m not here because of Dad or Kathy, or because of beauty, or because of music or prayer. It is only the requirement of attendance that got me in my seat, on time, attentive.

More work with the men of the choir tonight, and I think of all the office work I still have to do when I get home before bed, things I need to have done before I go in to work in the morning. I don’t have time to be here. And why do things I choose always have an element of discomfort? Who designed these chairs to be so uncomfortable? I take some solace in memories, which seems to be my new modus operandi on the other side of an event showing me life is a blend of not only present and future but the past too.

I’d spent hours in these folding chairs accompanying my dad to his opera choir rehearsals when I was a child.

Dad sang with the Anchorage Opera Chorus when I was young, occasionally singing short solo parts like the gatekeeper in Rigoletto. I remember the conductor as a woman of extreme talent and beauty. Her name was Elvira Voth. Pitying my attendance at Dad’s rehearsals, perhaps, she gave me the task of writing down measures she wanted to revisit over the course of a rehearsal. I took my responsibility seriously, sitting on a hard metal seat just behind her, as single-mindedly intent as her choristers were. She spoke the measures to me over her shoulder as she continued conducting: measure 36, measure 141. I wrote them down dutifully.

We attended the free opera dress rehearsals as a family. I remember just before the storm scene in Rigoletto someone yelling up from the orchestra pit, “The bass drum! Can anyone find the bass drum?”

Dad’s resonant voice supported melodies of praise at church for most of my growing-up. More than these formal performances, though, I remember him singing songs from Fiddler on the Roof in the car on the way to and from a small cabin north of Anchorage, singing arias and spirituals walking through the house, waking us up singing the military call “You’ve got to get up …” or the old folk song “Lazy bones, sleeping in the sun …” He sang into his deep laughter, and even if we were annoyed as kids, we always ended up laughing too.

Dad’s laugh started deep and slow, suddenly erupting into prolonged musical interlude, his whole body convulsing, eyes crinkled shut, head back. It was the kind of laugh that came on like a tidal wave, a swell that swallowed the room in its exuberance.

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