Now it is the 6th grade -- and I have the lead female role in our school play "Thirty Minutes with Schubert" -- still singing and dancing as you can see. Hummm I wonder what happened after 6th grade because I think, other than choir while I was at Kenyon College, that was the end of my singing and dancing career. There is no way to reflect on this photo or this time in my life without talking about my Uncle Steve because he was the one who taught me how to sing. Not only how to hit the notes, but how to deliver a song.
My earliest memory of him teaching me to sing was in his car on our way to the summer fair in Highland Falls when I was 4 years old. I hadn't started school yet. And there he is teaching me to sing Tiptoe Through The Tulips -- this was before Tiny Tim made it a pop hit. So there we are together, on our way to the fair, and I am belting out Tiptoe Through The Tulips and he keeps stopping me to talk about phrasing of all things. I was ALWAYS happy to be with Uncle Steve. He wasn't a "blood" uncle -- he was an uncle "in the Indian way' as people here on the Flathead Reservation say. A dear friend of our family. A contractor by trade and a song writer by avocation. I have his sheet music (all written by hand, beautifully I might add) and his 78 lps and they are treasured momentos of a man who was instrumental (pun?) in who I am today.
So Uncle Steve taught me to sing.
And then there has always been this deep connection to spirit, to God, to a larger life, whatever we want to call it. I was a loved child, and as is also true in life I had the opposite experience as well. I loved being in church and at this time in my life I was seriously thinking about a religious life -- even though I was only in 6th grade. I would spend lots of time in our church, alone (churches were open all the time in those days), on my knees before the statue of Mary. I loved everything about it. The smell of the church -- all that incense in those days some of you may remember. The beauty. And during mass the incredible music. Always the music. It was always easier to know myself as a connected spirit - and always harder, even today, to know myself as a "separate" self. I think when I finally get the separate self part I will be more fully human and be able to use the many gifts I have been given more fully than I am able to now.
So church was my familiar, Mary was the locus of my faith, and Uncle Steve taught me to deliver a song. I remember the tryouts. Six of us and I was last to sing. When I opened my mouth to sing it was one of those moments, like with Alan when I sang and something larger sang through me. It was the voice of an adult and everyone just stared at me including the music teacher. So even though I wasn't a great acting talent, I snagged the part.
Forty-six years after this photo was taken I went to my 40th High School Reunion - the only one I have ever attended. And I was shocked to realize that for many of the boys in my elementary school, that performance of Ave Maria stuck with them more than any other memories of me. Willie Van Utrech came up to me and said, "I only have one thing to say to you . . . AVE MARIA" and everyone started talking about that play. That was a year and a half ago and I have been thinking alot about why that would stick with those boys -- and why for many of them it made me seem "untouchable". They perceived me all these years as totally self-confident, mature beyond them. And I think it is part of what made me a fairly lonely child even though I was always surrounded by people.
Back to reflecting on being fully human - I know now that the capacity to know myself as part of the larger life of God all my life has given me a kind of perception and depth that made people shy away from me - even my own mother who told me when I was in my early thirties that I frightened her when I was a child. I think part of what keeps people from engaging this kind of radical humanity is that it tends to separate us from the people around us. We all want to belong to the world in a deep way. The truth is that I have never been able to belong to the world that way and there have been days and years, especially when I was younger, that I felt like a kid outside in the cold with her nose pressed against a window, watching people all dressed up enjoying a party in a beautiful house.
Now in my life, I realize the emptiness that was in many of those rooms. Now I realize the the richness of my inner life gave me more than many of the people who seemed to be more confident, more successful, more in touch really have.
When Alan died, there was no reason left to keep those deep, rich parts of myself hidden. He was always afraid of those parts of me too, until those last three months when they helped to bring him peace. Once when he was very, very angry with me he hissed at me, "And don't think I don't know that the the part of you I can barely tolerate makes you the woman I love!". I laughed hard when he said it, but he meant it and he didn't think it was funny.
So I was lucky to be loved that way. And I am lucky to be "in love". Because LOVE is really what the creation is as well as the power that creates. So really we are all IN LOVE because there is no life without it. The thing we need to do is to figure out what that means, and how to share it with the people and the world around us.
Blessings,
Donna
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