Sounds of childhood

[pbray]

Science tells us that smell is the sense most keenly tied to memory, but as a lifelong allergy sufferer, I've personally never found that to be true. My memories are tied most firmly to sounds, often in surprising ways.

Christmas in south Florida is a strange experience--I think this is the fourth year that I've joined my brother and his family for a Florida Christmas, but it still never feels like Christmas. It's just an odd time of year when there's decorations, small children wired on sugar and a gift exchange ritual.

This Christmas eve we decided to attend mass, the first time the girls had been in church since Camila's baptism. For most of my adult life I've only gone to mass when the occasion demanded it--weddings, funerals, baptisms, and escorting elderly family members. But as the priest spoke the opening blessing I was filled with a wave of nostalgia and longing. It wasn't the experience of mass but the sound of his voice. He spoke with the accent and cadence of a Kerryman, and I was immediately swept back to my childhood--the sound of my grandparents and their friends, and the mysterious folks who appeared at major holidays, whose connections with the family I never quite understood. Second cousins, godchildren, neighbors who'd grown up in the same town in Ireland, and a woman that had once lived in the same apartment house but was still considered family decades later, they filled my grandmother's house at the holidays, and gathered in the corners to share news of home.

Then, on Christmas Day, my brother unveiled his newest acquisition--an electric carving knife. As he revved it up before carving the turkey, I exclaimed, "You know what that is? It's the sound of every Sunday dinner at Outlook Avenue." He revved the knife again, and immediately agreed.

The electric carving knife was a very big deal when I was a kid, which was still the era of roast beef for Sunday dinner. (Unless, of course, there was a turkey. In the Sullivan family turkey was the meal of choice for special occasions, even in the summer.) But whatever the meat, each time the electric carving knife was ceremoniously brought out, and as the meat was carved, I'd be helping my grandmother carrying bowls of food into the dining room. Just hearing that sound made me feel as if I closed my eyes I'd be magically transported to her kitchen.

Other people remember the smell of pumpkin pie, or how the scent of fresh baked cookies filled the house. Me? I'm remembering the soft lilt of my grandparents' voices, and the way they called my name.

Comments

[allaboutm-e.livejournal.com]

For me, Christmas sounds like Burl Ives. :)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I can still recite nearly the entire Rudolph Christmas special.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

I can recite most of The Grinch, and probably Charlie Brown too.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

You said "electric carving knife" and Voila, I was at my patents' house. ;)

[pbray.livejournal.com]

It's such a distinctive sound.

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

(Er, parents', not patents.) Yes, it is.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Electric carving knife for me is dinner with the in-laws. I don't think anyone in my family even knows that electric carving knives exist.

I have strong associations with smells, but the strongest ones are music. I can't hear (or sing) "For Unto Us a Child Is Born" without remembering the first time my dad took me to hear my mom sing in Messiah, when I was four. (I had to take a nap in the afternoon. I insisted on choosing my own clothes, and ended up looking very silly. I was annoyed with my dad because he wore running shoes instead of fancy shoes, and no tie.) The Barenaked Ladies' "What a Good Boy" will forever remind me of the guy I dated in grade 12, who sang it to me in the car on our first date. (It was Christmas vacation, and very cold. The car was one of those '80s Oldsmobiles big enough to mow down a small country. We had gone out for pasta and to see Beauty and the Beast with my friend JR and her boyfriend. JR was stoked because she had succeeded in setting us up, and getting a bit obnoxious about it.) Anything from the U2 album The Joshua Tree takes me right back to Alberta Youth Choir camp in 1991. And so on...

It can be embarrassing, because bits of music make me cry, or laugh, or whatever, for no reason I can articulate to other people.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

A few songs will trigger me as well, and for one of them even thinking about the last time I heard it is enough to make me cry.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

::nods::

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

Nice post. When are you writing a memoir?

And is it possible to stay awake longer than fifteen minutes after a turkey dinner in summertime?

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

My family is not conversant with electric carving knives, either. For me, it's the sound of the Time-Life Christmas album -- the old one, from the sixties, not the new one that's all full of modern carols. The original was made up of very old stuff; The Boar's Head Carol, the Coventry Carol, the newest thing on it was the Huron Carol, and that's got to be 300 years old.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

The Coventry Carol was apparently my grandfather's favourite carol. (Why did a nice Jewish doctor have a favourite Christmas carol? Good question. Next question?) My mom used to sing it to us for that reason. I didn't like it when I was a kid -- it was too sad -- but it grew on me. Last night I tried to sing it to my kid. She didn't like it, because it was too sad.

I know probably a hundred Christmas carols, and every one of them is hardwired back to at least one very specific time, place, and group of people. Even the different parts of the Britten Ceremony of Carols evoke different sets of memories. (I think my brain may possibly not work quite like other people's brains.)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Huron Carol? The school Christmas concert, grade three. (They still called them Christmas concerts in those days, and you didn't get to weasel out of performing just because you were Jewish, nosirree.) I played the finger cymbals, as a result of which I was the only member of the percussion ensemble who got to sing.

This one has layers and layers, though. It's also two of the youth choirs I sang in (one here in Toronto, the other back home) that both at various times did a very wonderful SSATB (I think) arrangement in which the altos do a whole bunch of melismatic "gloria"s. And once we did a candlelight procession, and had to learn one of the verses in Huron, with the rest in English and French.

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

Whew. We did learn one verse in Huron in school, but we didn't have to perform it. It was, of course, presented with appropriate comments about subsuming other cultures.

The Boar's Head Carol, though, is almost impossible to find.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

My youth choirs were hard core. I remember once a conductor handing out Healy Willan's SATB Hodie Christus Natus Est at the Monday evening rehearsal and saying, "Memorize this, we're doing it at the Carol Festival on Friday."

The boar's head in hand I bring
Bedecked with [something] and rosemary!
And I pray you, my masters, merry be,
Quod estis in convivio!

I can't remember the rest of the words, alas. I think it goes on in Latin for a bit ...

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I still remember all the carols I sang in various choirs, and as soon as I saw your post, I was singing Hodie along with you.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

:)

Do you sing S or A?

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Second soprano :-)

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Cool :)

That's what I sing now, too, but I've bounced around a lot over the years, everywhere from first soprano to tenor (!). I find I'm smarter when I'm not singing first soprano, for some reason ... ;^)

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

The boar's head, I understand,
Is the rarest dish in all the land!

is another bit...
("Rarest" in this case, of course meaning "finest," since there's no reason the head would be any rarer than the rest of the boar.) and yes, lots of Latin. and really should be sung by a baritone, no?

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

Ah, Wikipedia!
The boar's head in hand bring I, (Or: The boar's head in hand bear I,)
Bedeck'd with bays and rosemary.
I pray you, my masters, be merry (Or: And I pray you, my masters, merry be)
Quot estis in convivio (Translation: As many as are in the feast)

CHORUS
Caput apri defero (Translation: The boar's head I offer)
Reddens laudes Domino (Translation: Giving praises to the Lord)

The boar's head, as I understand,
Is the rarest dish in all this land,
Which thus bedeck'd with a gay garland
Let us servire cantico. (Translation: Let us serve with a song)

CHORUS

Our steward hath provided this
In honour of the King of Bliss;
Which, on this day to be served is
In Reginensi atrio. (Translation: In the Queen's hall)

CHORUS

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

Ah, macaronic carols ...

My favourite is this one:

Psallite unigenito
Christo, Dei Filio,
Psallite Redemptori,
Domino, puerulo
jacenti in praesepio.
Ein kleines Kindelein liegt in dem Krippelein.
Alle lieben Engelein dienen dem Kindelein
und singen ihm fein.
Psallite unigenito...

I also like

In dulci jubilo,
Nun singet und seid froh!
Alle unsre Wonne
Liegt in praesepio;
Sie leuchtet wie die Sonne
Matris in gremio.
Alpha es et O!

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

Ah. I sang in Latin in college, but not so much in German...

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

It's not Christmas unless you're singing in at least three languages you don't speak ;^)

[jjschwabach.livejournal.com]

Of course not!

[pbray.livejournal.com]

We were so conditioned to turkey that it didn't make us sleepy. And besides, there were always stories to hear and tell.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

Even in summer? Sounds like a Bradbury novel. Idyllic.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Well, for years there was one window airconditioner in that house, and it was in the dining room. They only ran it for Sunday dinners, and chilled that room down to the low 60s, while my grandmother sweltered preparing the meal in the kitchen.

And my family are all turkey nuts. There were at least three years when circumstances required me to attend two separate dinners on Thanksgiving day, where I ate heartily at both, so neither host would feel slighted.

[scbutler.livejournal.com]

I did the double turkey on the holidays a couple of times when my kids were small. Both sets of grandparents lived two blocks away from one another and were miffed if they didn't get equal face time. I think we shut that practice down after two years.

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's rough on kids, and the whole separate but equal never really works. I did it in college after my parents split, and we knew it was insane at the time, but we still did it. Though if the traditional thanksgiving meal had been ham, I would probably have given it a pass :-)