Laurel Massé

Introducing...

 

There is something special about the sibling bond, and when sisters, brothers, or sisters and brothers sing together, you not only sense it, you hear it. I am thinking of the McGarrigles, and the Roches, of the Boswell Sisters, of Ann and Nancy Wilson, of the Taylor clan (James, Livingston, Kate, Alex). And, of course, the Everly Brothers. The blend of their voices comes not only from practice, but from their blood and bones.

My career has included a hefty portion of group singing - in choral groups, The Manhattan Transfer, Moxie, and now JaLaLa, but it is only recently that I have become one-half of an authentic sibling duo. My sister Babette and I started singing together a month or so ago, and we did our first public performance during my concert at St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, Connecticut this past May 14th.

Ladies and gents: The Massé Sisters, with Tex Arnold at the piano.

 

 

Mothering

It's Mother's Day here in the States. In every corner of my city, folks are taking their mothers to brunch, or presenting them with flowers, chocolates, world's-best-mom cards, jewellery - all in an effort to say thanks.

Or in an effort to avoid the ill-effects of forgetting, or - heaven forbid! - willfully ignoring Mother's Day.

Or some combination of all the above.

Great moms grow great kids, we are told. These great moms, living and deceased (for this is also a day of memory, and of missing  the first loved one), are already the topic of so many editorials, blogs, coffee mugs, and facebook comments that I want to take a moment to consider the other mother. The not-all-that-good mother. The bad mother. Because surely, somewhere, somebody had her.

And if great moms grow great kids, as the coffee mug says, what do bad moms grow?

Children who grow up with moms who beat them, physically and/or emotionally, whose moms couldn't be trusted, who forced their children to choose between mother and father - might be having a hard time with this particular holiday, and who can blame them? "I can never repay you for the gift of life," sing the cards. "Thanks, Mom." There is no flowery, verse-y card, though, for the gifts of the fist to the face and the assault on the soul.

We have a tendency to want to make things pretty, to look back fondly at a past that may never have actually happened. The happy Thanksgiving family dinner. The forefathers of our country agreeing on everything. Our foremothers happily consenting to be less than citizens. Many of us are taught, in childhood, that the Bible is a cohesive single text, and that everyone coming to America came for and received religious freedom - that kind of thing. But the truth is that life has always been complex, people have always endured great difficulties and confusions, and tried to do their best. And often failed, with consequences.

One of the best mothers I know is the thoughtful daughter of a bad mother, and I know she is not the only one out there. I want to celebrate the kids who had the not-so-good moms, but have carried on, teaching themselves how to trust, how to make friends, how to give and receive love. For these, the good mother is the one they have become to themselves. To all of you: you've done well. You are magnificent. Happy mother's day.

 

 

 

Enough?

A friend posted a YouTube clip on Facebook, and because the friend is a thoughtful and interesting person in real life - as opposed to Facebook life - I watched the clip. It was about living in a tiny apartment. A very tiny apartment, about 100 square feet. Though the tenant had rid herself of a lot of possessions to live there, the space still seemed stuffed with... well, stuff, which made it seem even smaller. But it was intriguing nonetheless. After I saw that video, I did what we so often do: followed the video breadcrumbs farther and longer than I'd intended. Facebook and YouTube are forms of alien abduction. I watched several more films about small-space living, and continued to think about that after I had put the laptop to bed for the night.

I have moved many times, m-a-a-a-a-a-ny times, and have sampled a lot of different styles of dwellings. They've included a 32-room mansion in Connecticut and a 12x60 1970s mobile home in upstate NY, a duplex apartment in a 1920s Spanish-style building in the Hollywood hills, and an art-deco apartment near Paris's Bois de Boulogne. And a tent, oh boy, I never forget the tent. And there have been so many more that I almost feel a little immoral. Each space has taught me something, usually about light. Some were too bright, some too dark, only two or three just right. Apparently, I am a very Goldilocks of photosensitivity. And to each space, I have brought my most-loved stuff, whether it was a favorite plastic horsie (then) or a wicker chair (now).

I currently live in a studio apartment that, ever since I've watched those videos, seems enormous. It's a little on the dim side on the light scale, and I will have to remember to avoid lower-floor apartments in courtyard buildings in the future, because even on the brightest blue-sky days, the sunlight is all up there and out there but never in here. However, it is bright enough for full-shade plants, and the ones I have are doing well. I have some decent furniture, and artwork and books and objects that I like to look at, and it is a peaceful and spacious living space. But if I had less space, it would be too much stuff, just like in that first video I watched.

Which had me wondering: does one measure the too-muchness of the stuff by the available space, or by the life lived? Does a bigger life need more things, or more room? And if it is more room, does that imply more space, or less stuff?

I once lived with a man who continually insisted there was too much stuff in our home, but he always meant my stuff, and never his own. Eventually I discarded his particular sense of the scale (but not soon enough. I still miss my amber bracelet. Squawk! Flap! Wait..let me smooth my feathers back down.... There. That's better. Sorry.).

How much is too much?

This is - or should be - the great American question, because, as Americans, most of us have a quite a lot, and some very few of us have almost all of that. But perhaps we can't tell what's too much till we know how much is enough.

When I compare what I have with what my neighbors have, I can feel hungry for more. That assumes neighbor means the folks next door, or in the corner office, or perhaps other performers with busier schedules.

What happens when I define neighbor as everybody? As the person down the street whose pension disappeared, and can now buy food or heating fuel, but not both. And the woman who is working in a clandestine sweat shop. Or the kid with Irlen syndrome who, for lack of a diagnosis and a piece of colored plastic film might not learn to read. Those folks living in New Orleans who saw their moment of national attention pass by, and are living in a city still struggling to rebuild. The exhausted teacher whose job is on the line. The exhausted Iraq veteran who can't find a job at all. The banker who is mourning her lost integrity. The lottery winner who is contemplating suicide.

Now it's starting to look like I have a lot. How much do I have? becomes How much do I need?  

 

 

But there is a scarier question, yes? Oh yes.

 

 

 

How much can I give?

 

 

 

Grateful

O, what a lovely day it was yesterday! Daffodils have made their entrance onto the city stage, and were nodding their lovely heads in the breeze. It was warm enough for me to leave my winter coat at home, and it was the first day since last October that my boots stayed in the closet, and my green shoes came out to play. The sun was shining, yet its touch was gentle. People at the bus stop and subway station were lighthearted, and the 1 was running. I think it may have been a little early to turn the air conditioning on in the train, and I did have a little shiver and an inner whinge about that. But for heaven's sake! I was high in the air on an elevated train track, and then plunged deep into the earth, zipping along, on wheels, through a tunnel dug in the beginning of the last century, and did anything from any disaster movie I have ever watched happen to me? No. All was calm, all was bright, all hail to the Transit Authority.

I have become quite fond of the 1 train since I moved to the Bronx. It's a subway for most of its Manhattan run (except for the 125th Street stop), but, running north, it pokes its head out of the tunnel at Dyckman Street (roughly 200th St.), and continues on elevated tracks, racketing across the river at 222nd or thereabouts. From the Broadway Bridge, there's a big-sky view looking west to the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Hudson River, and the Palisades. That bridge is "the Grandma Bridge" to me. For many years, my grandparents had an apartment in Washington Heights, in northern Manhattan. When my family drove in from upstate to visit them, the crossing of that bridge was the exciting almost-there point in our journey. Now it is part of my prayer geography, a place where I always think of Elsie and Leonard, and of how blessed I was to have them so very long. I was 50 when they died within a few months of each other (as is so often the way). Age did not wither them till they were in their 90s (nor custom stale their infinite stubbornness), and they are still very present to me.

Once across the river, the train continues deep into the Bronx all the way up to 242nd Street and the gorgeous Van Cortlandt Park where there is still a stable. O wonderful, wonderful, most excellent park! I still have my well-worn paddock boots. Someday soon...

                                                                   A fellow redhead

 

Time for tears

In Shakespeare's Richard II, the title character speaks a meditation on time. Richard has the time to do it - his crown has been seized by Bolingbroke (who becomes Henry the IV), and he languishes in prison. As he muses on his situation, strains of music waft into his cell. He pauses to listen; the musician stumbles in the rhythm. Richard then says this:

Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is                                                                                     When time is broke and no proportion kept!

My students have heard me say this, though never so elegantly. "Time" as a musical term means rhythm. Mammals are beings of rhythm. Rhythms - heartbeat, breath, and so many more - keep us alive. Perhaps it is because of this that many humans are more sensitive to rhythm, to the breaking of rhythm, than to nuances of pitch.

Time as the passage of moments can also be broken. We think we'll have time that we don't - to be with a loved one, to make peace, to learn to dance, to go to Ireland, to take one more run with the old dog. Storms delay the trip. Illness breaks the rhythm. And death, the great rearranger of our arrangements, begins to show up more frequently. The losses come more quickly. Yesterday, an ordinary day, I started to see them piling up.

So last night I cried in a friend's arms. My friend hadn't done or said anything to deserve a drenching. I simply had started to count time, and became afraid, for a little while, that there would not be enough time to sing as well as I really could, or act, or write, or love as much as I really can, to even begin to use up all the love in my heart. How I felt in that moment is in Richard's speech too:

So it is in the music of men's lives.
And here have I the daintiness of ear
To check time broke in a disordered string,
But for the concord of my state and time
Had not an ear to hear my true time broke.
I wasted time, and now doth Time waste me...

Since I don't want that to be the melody of my story, I have a lot to do. Thank God for friends who help me navigate through storms, who help get my sails raised again.

You know who you are.

 

Tears for Joshua

I have lost a friend to Sister Death.

Here is the Lacrimosa from Mozart's towering Requiem. There are other clips on youtube with interesting visuals, but I just want the music. My young friend Joshua had a sweetness in his soul that only music can express now.

I'll be back tomorow.

 

An ever more perfect union

From President Obama's speech last night:

I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here - they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

I have been reading comments in the press and blogosphere this morning about the president's speech, and have come to a new resolve: I am not going to read comments on political stories anymore. In truth, I have thought this in the past, but always drift back for one more look, like touching wet paint to see just how wet it is. But no more. I know that there are women and men of bright goodness in this country, millions of them, and I don't want my ability to see that light obscured anymore by the smoke of burning hostilities.

It's pretty easy for me to feel, not unamerican exactly, but not-very-American. I lived overseas from the ages of ten to sixteen. These are very formative years, and I had a lot of trouble adjusting to being Stateside again for the start of my senior year in high school. Some of my sense of being a foreigner here never quite fell away. That is probably why I feel comfortable living in a big east-coast city even though I love the wilderness.

I look at newspapers from Britain, Canada, and France fairly regularly, to stay aware of the different perspective that was the only one I had in those years away. This country looks different from a distance, scarier to be sure, but also - often - more wondrous strange and beautiful.

I think what President Obama was able to do in his speech yesterday was to give us a different perspective, to show us to ourselves from a different distance, from a place where the divisions between us melt into insignificance. Where all one sees is that which binds us. Grief. Joy. Loss. Love. And a dream: a vision of how much better we can be than the often-pretty-fine-once-you-get-the-smoke-out-of-the-way that we are.

There were several scripture readings at the memorial yesterday, and the president referenced a few more. Had I a hand in the planning of the event, this is a reading I would have chosen:

One Body with Many Members

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it. (1 Corinthians 12:14-26, NRSV)

"Our hearts are broken," President Obama said last night. "And yet, our hearts also have reason for fullness."

I pray to remember to see from that fullness. To be in that fullness. And to carry that fullness out into the world every day.

God bless America.

 

On the ninth day of Christmas...

As I mentioned the other day, I grew up hearing that on the ninth day, my true love gave me "nine ladies waiting". This was the lyric that Fred Waring' Pennsylvanians sang, and as my grandfather was the lead baritone for that wonderful vocal ensemble, it never occurred to me to wonder if it was the right lyric. But that "waiting" bothered me. What were the ladies waiting for? Why did they have to wait? Having just experienced the yearly agonizing wait for Christmas, and then the four endless days between Christmas and my birthday, and still no pony in sight, which meant another year of waiting until maybe, just maybe, if I was good enough, if my grades were high, if I was polite, if if if, there might be a pony... after all that, I felt a kinship and solidarity with the Waiting Nine.

The men in the song, the lords of the very next verse, were allowed to be leaping: into the dance, into the future, to the top of the porch, to the top of the wall, and right on over the ding-dang walls. In my growing-up years, boys were allowed to be athletic, girls were not. But more important, boys were allowed to show that they were smart. That would have been OK, but most of the time... they weren't. No offense, gents, God knows I love you (and you know it, too), but back then, on any given day in primary, middle or high school, my girl friends and I could have made mince of you. Because teachers tended to call on you more often, we were usually denied that triumph. When you were rude, you were full of high spirits. When we were rude, we were uppity. Dire fates were predicted for smart, sassy girls, and indeed, one of those fates came early and fast: if you were smarter than a boy you liked, and showed it, especially in front of other people, he would never like you back. So you put a bridle on your mind, a bit in your mouth, and, holding a tight rein, learned to trot so slow and hide so well that for many women it is the work of a lifetime to come back out of that self-imposed hobbling.

I would like to think that times have changed, but as I see the early hyper-sexualization of little girls, I  think things are the same. And worse. Even without having children of my own, I find I am sometimes awake long into the night worrying about the girls. The various ways in which our culture is failing our children (boys, too) break my heart.

Back to the song. When I learned that there were alternate lyrics for the ninth verse, that the nine ladies were not waiting, but dancing - dancing! - I was thrilled. Perhaps Waring preferred the "waiting" because he was a little bit of a sexist, perhaps becasue it is a more singable lyric, and that can be enough for the singing of a song. But not for the living of a life. Dancing our lives is what we could have been doing all along, and what we must ensure our girls have the right and the power to do.

Room with... ahchoo!

There is whole lovely list of things I long to be writing about, but my brain is dulled by a sinus and bronchial infection and the broken sleep that comes from the sound of my own coughing. When I'm asleep, I cough. When I'm awake, I sneeze. So, instead of the lovely things, I want to talk about health care. But not in the way you are thinking. I want to talk about the health care I remember from my childhood.

Earlier this week, when first I was felled by this infection, I wrote to my friend B about what a drag it is to be sick when you are a grownup because no one takes care of you. I remember three great nurses in my childhood, and I wish that any one of them could be here this week, just for a day or two, until I can get up to make my own chicken soup.

Grandma Kranendonk was the first, and greatest, nurse. She was always fascinated by the miracle of the human body, and very down to earth about its functions. What color? What consistency? What frequency? She wanted to know, because from experience and reading she knew what the various possibilities signified. My grandmother was born in 1900. In a way, that was one of the great tragedies of her life. She was very intelligent, acutely observant, and had good hands; if she had been born fifty years later, she would have been a doctor. Born in 1960, she would now be chief neurosurgeon at a prestigious hospital. Instead, she had to pour all that curiosity and energy and potential into being a mom and helpmate, nursing my granddad's career rather than patients, and bossing her children rather than first-year residents. I love her dearly, and have missed her every day since her death in 2001, but I know she was thwarted by the narrow channel of life available to a woman of her time and place.

The second great nurse is my dad. He is the one to take you to a doctor when you need one, because he is going to ask the questions you are too out of it, or too embarassed, to ask. He is going to be pushy on your behalf, and he sticks around to make sure you're being cared for. Once the medications or the tests or the chicken soup are administered, he steps into his other role, that of storyteller. My dad tells preposterous stories, disguising them as plausible events. He is a master of the Invented Fact and Statistic. In one of her autobiographical books, Madeleine L'Engle wrote about her granddaughter Lena's hospitalization after being hit by a car. She said that when the pain medication couldn't hold the child, a story could and did; for the duration of that story, her mind and body were eased. I know this from my own hospital stay following my car accident. A friend came in to read to me, and it was pure gift. I am always happy to hear my dad's stories (ask me sometime about where cashmere comes from. I know because, when I was little, he told me).

The third great nurse was a small, elderly Belgian woman named Elsa. My family lived in Brussels in 1967 and 1968, and while we were there, Elsa and Jules were - I don't know what to call them. Servants? Helpers?  Auxiliary family is what they felt like. Elsa cried to see my sister and me fighting, which we did regularly then (our parents were going through a bad patch and we were unbalanced); her tears stopped us more effectively than any threats and punishments. Once, when our parents were out of town on some trip, my sis and I became very ill with flu, and Elsa took care of us. I don't know that any pharmaceutical medicines passed our lips, but I will never forget the flavorful clarified chicken broth she made, poured into a pretty bowl, and brought up to our bedrooms on a tray. There has never since been such a beautiful broth. Once we were on the mend, delicious toast appeared, and, I think, hot chocolate. All were the work of her hands: love made manifest. So maybe servant is the right word, not in the sense of employee, but in the sense of one who serves out of love. By the time our parents returned from wherever, we were fine.

There are many common denominators here among the great nurses; curiousity, courage, and determination, but the greatest of these is love. As it always is. I am going to make some tea now, and raise the cup in memory and gratitude... and then go back to bed. I need to be well by Thursday. Prayers gratefully accepted.