Six years later, after performing La Boheme at an opera workshop with Richard Barrett, I felt that irresistable pull toward being a professional singer. I had just received three curtain calls for the role of Musetta and knew I was moving more and more toward opera. I objected to the idea of having to live out of a suitcase, being exposed to corrupt managers, and the whole la-de-dah attitude that goes with performing: sweeping into a hall and pitching a fit as a diva often does. I had just started to become familiarized with that particular activity, when I began to rethink the whole idea of being a professional singer.
You see, singing is in my gene pool, so there is something from far away that comes alive in me when I sing. My nanna and both grandparents on my mother's side sang. My best memories of my grandfather are of him singing Italian street songs at the top of his voice over a pot of red sauce.
My three siblings and I used to sing in a quartet, and spent many happy hours singing through Handel's Messiah, Mendelsohn's Elijah, and whatever other four-part oratorio/classical music we could get our hands on. Then when I started singing seriously in my teens, I knew no sweeter experience and was almost intoxicated with the joy of it. But something wasn't quite right about the whole business of serious classical singing. I did it extremely well, and have many times been filled with regret that I gave it up (which I did for reasons that would only intrigue Freud...)
One day in church, we sang the gospel song, Because He Lives to open the service. For whatever reason, I remember that we remained seated during this song. I didn't feel like singing--probably because it was so gospelly--and occupied myself with listening to the voices around me. When we got to the chorus, I started to pick out some scratchy, slightly off-key notes behind me.
I instantly recognized the voice as belonging to Mrs. R. She had been abandoned by her husband while she had five or six small children. Somehow, they had all gotten through, but then she developed a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis and became frail and sickly. She was practically penniless--I had no idea of how she was surviving except that her children helped her out. She always had a smile, always kind words and an invitation to eat something whenever I visited her. She was one of the kindest and most gracious women I'd ever met. She came to church alone and went home alone almost every week. And there she was behind me singing with all her heart, in her loud, raspy voice, meaning every word:
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow;
Because He lives all fear is gone
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.
Each line was sung fervently, as though it were a lifeline for a drowning, sick woman, whom the world had treated very cruelly. She sang out the last line triumphantly and smiling--I could hear her smiling, and I knew she was sitting back against the pew, eyes closed, in a little world with just God and her, her crippled hands folded delicately one on the other. Tears quickly flooded my eyes as I recognized in her singing the very thing that mine lacked: spirit, fervor, conviction, hope, life, joy, peace, determination, faith. I wanted it all, and my sterile, correct, ho-ho-ha-ha singing would have to go.
I don't really have a moral to throw out here--if you close your eyes, you can probably imagine what Mrs. R sounded like. I think of her almost every time I sing in front of other people now. One day, I will stand with her on the Sea of Glass in heaven and we shall sing together the same, but very different song, Because He Lives. Thank you, Mrs. R., for teaching me more than I can put in words. Your voice still rings in my heart.
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