My mother loved to sing.
She was never a particularly good singer, mind you. But that never stood in her way. She could be found cheerfully singing or humming at all hours of the day. Usually she'd softly, without thinking, sing old hymns to herself while she worked at her desk. Sometimes she'd croon old Elvis ballads to my sister and I when she wanted to tell us she loved us. Her voice would warble its way out of her throat, dipping and ducking like a bird struggling to maintain altitude. To say that she couldn't carry a tune in a bucket implies there was even something to be carried. She would stop in the middle of a line to cough or clear her throat. She'd blow her nose into a tissue. Then she'd pick up right where she left off. Nothing had changed.
She was always herself. I can recount an endless number of times when she would burp or fart in front of my friends followed by a quick apology. She’d welcome guests into our home with a “It‘s dirty enough to tell it’s lived in“ followed by a guided a tour of our house. She was eternally, perhaps even fatally lacking in punctuality. She would chat peoples ears off and win them over with her kindness and zeal. She could make conversation with anyone. She had a gift for finding common ground. She loved people, even when they broke her heart. She didn’t try to see the goodness in everyone- she simply assumed it was already there. She enjoyed finding ways to unlock it.
She was born in 1951, just a few short years before Elvis lit the mainstream, predominantly white culture on fire. Before that time, she was raised on a steady diet of Perry Cuomo, Sinatra, and Bing Crosby. She knew them all by heart. She loved a good crooner. She was a devoutly religious woman who used to talk about listening to Billy Joel songs as if The Stranger was her deepest, darkest vice. She loved southern gospel too. Without fail, she'd read her bible every morning and spend her drive to work listening to The Gaither Family Vocal Band. When her and my father retired from their work as Salvation Army Officers, their big trip was a Gaither Family Vocal Band cruise. She got to meet Bill and his wife Gloria. She was thrilled. She talked about it all the time.
It's hard for me to place why or even when my mother might have encountered The Sound of Music for the first time. She was never one for musicals. Maybe it was at its release in 1965, when she would've been 14. Maybe she came to it later in life after she'd committed her life to her Christian faith. But the many memories I have of my mother singing Edelweiss confidently off-pitch vouch for its impact on her. The film exists in the background of so many of my childhood memories, primarily in the form of my mother trilling her way through such standards as My Favorite Things, Maria, So Long, Farewell, or (god help me) Climb Every Mountain. For her birthday one year, we threw it on in the background while playing card games. She eventually retired to the couch for a nap, but was awoken by a terrible leg cramp. When my father sought to ease her discomfort by rubbing her leg, she screamed "get it off! get it off!" My sister and I roared with bleak, uncomfortable laughter. This occurred in the middle of Maria and Georg's climactic first kiss.
I only know the last part because I recently rewatched The Sound of Music for the first time since my mother's death. It will be four years in November. My memory of this film was hazy to say the least, but just as I recognized Maria's kiss with Georg, I found myself flooded with memories I didn't even recognize as being tied up in the film. I'd put off returning to it for sometime and there were multiple false starts. The prospect of rewatching a film that meant so much to my mother during her lifetime felt lofty. Often, I couldn't make it past the opening notes before I would feel my body begin to tremble, as if preparing to shake loose all of the sorrow that I'd attached to this film over the years. But a recent conversation with my therapist jarred something loose in my brain- I recalled how persistent my mother was. How, even at my parents retirement ceremony, she was described as stubborn like an ox. How after a series of serious health issues left her with an amputated leg, less than a year before she was to be honored at an award ceremony, she defied the pronouncements of her doctors and walked across the stage. The woman didn't know what it meant to quit. Somehow, it just felt like the right time.
I almost find my experience of rewatching The Sound of Music difficult to articulate. Often when I revisit films from my childhood, I find it fun to pick out little things that I've latched on to over the years. But I'm hesitant to even use the phrase "this was no exception" because I feel it undermines the sensation of being visited by an apparition. Which sounds absurd, I know. But to see this film again felt akin to shading in some unknown section of my own personal and filmic landscape. Like finding a missing puzzle piece, or the "conveniently missing" diary entry that explains everything. It felt like watching a movie that I always knew I loved, without ever having seen it before. Some aspect of everything I adore in film appears in this movie. And at the heart of it was was Maria.
Ostensibly a nun and woman of god, Maria is eternally, stubbornly, rough around the edges. Her zest for life frequently causes her to be late. She's singing or humming all the time and always tries to rope in those around her. Maria is a character who can’t help but be herself at all times, even in the face of a life that demands a rigid ideal. Her undoing is her big heart and the appreciation it lends toward the little joys we find in exploring the world. She is hilariously human and quick on her feet. She never sees an ending, only a forking road. It's this warmth and perseverance that carry her through the toughest parts of the film. Maria can't help but love others, just as she can't help but sing praises for the spoils that come from simply being alive.
If you look past the rather shallow love story and outmoded gender roles, I found it hard to ignore the feeling that I was watching the ghost of my mother in a way. Sure, Julie Andrews could sing my mother under the table, but the energy and humanity she brings to Maria felt entirely in league with who my mother was. There's plenty to love in a film as grand and sweeping as The Sound of Music, but what we end up falling in love with is never just the grandeur and romance. We fall in love with the characters as they move through the moment in their lives we've been so graciously able to peer in on. We may never be able to relate to spending your summers in an Austrian Villa or living under Nazi annexation (hopefully), but we still love what we love because of how much we see ourselves in it. The music, the movies, the games, the art. They are windows into who we are, who we aspire to be, who we've been. Even after we're gone.
When I watched The Sound of Music, I wept. Intermittently, at times uncontrollably. I am an easy crier, but I recognized these tears as ones of endless grief, pouring from the eternally fresh well dug into my soul nearly four years ago. I hummed along to "Edelweiss" and "Climb Every Mountain." I was charmed when Gretl complained about her finger. I was puzzled when the film took its hard turn into an Anti-Nazi survival film. When Maria returns during the reprise of "My Favorite Things," I damn near fell apart. There will always be some part of me that is a young child hoping for my mother's return, even as I'm now an adult who knows better.
My mother loved The Sound of Music while she was alive and having that connection to her life means so much to me now. More than it ever could have before. I will always have my memories of her and I will always have this film to remind me of those memories. In ways big and small, what we love during our lifetimes becomes an extension of our lives when we're gone. In this way, maybe, I don't feel so bad.
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