Crazy to Sing!

Early in the tenth grade at University High School, one day at lunch in the patio, a cluster of us from Emerson Junior High were spooning up our yogurt when someone said, “You know, we should also form a Tri-Y.”

Already the most popular girls—the honey blondes with boys hanging off their edges—The Roulettes (The Big Wheels)—sported their club bomber jackets of sapphire blue. Across the patio flashing their bright red jackets, so super, were the girls second tier in popularity/pzazz, The Coronets (The Crown Jewels).

We Goodie-Goods finally got it together…could think of no name we all liked except the Colleens, and by then the only color left in bomber jackets was dull gray. Damn.

Tri-Y clubs were sponsored by the Westwood YMCA and were intended for girls to learn about community service and good character. Can’t remember what we did for the community, but as for character, our parents knew how to engender that. We Goody-Goods became teachers, scientists, engineers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, artists, writers, managers, orchardists, and one a Methodist minister. (What became of the Roulettes and Coronets? No idea…)

But to the point of my tale.

Each year there was a Spring Sing–the annual meeting of all the clubs focused on the competition of clubs singing.

I was thrilled. I’d never been near a choir. Could I sing? Somewhere I’d been told I had perfect pitch, but who knows whether or not it was true—and whether or not pitch translated to vocal chords.

Rules of The Spring Sing’s ten-to-fifteen-minute presentation were that any melody was permitted but lyrics had to be original and pertinent to the Tri-Y experience. Thus the Spring Sing was an opportunity for creativity and fellowship.

Now we Colleens had a secret weapon: Mary Ellen Green. Meg’s father conducted the choir for the Methodist Church and she had logged countless hours in his choir loft.

The Spring Sings of 1950 and 1951 our club won nothing, but we had fun. And were determined to win as seniors.

For our song, I’ve no idea of the melodies but I know lyrics were a collaboration from a bunch of us. Our song was warm, bright, funny. We began rehearsals…we all were able to drive by then…three times a week for weeks and weeks and sang. Sang. Sang. Sang.

Learned. Learned. Learned. I can hear Mary Ellen: “Kids, it’s not clear!” “Ladies, you’re not on key!”

Until then in my young life I’d loved being a ballerina, watercolorist, cook, baker, gardener even. One day I realized being immersed in a corps of likeminded friends singing our hearts out touched me deeply. It felt other-worldly. I L*O*V*E*D* singing in a choir!

You know we Colleens won First Prize.

After that, I so wanted the experience in my life. I didn’t go to church, and when Gene and I married and joined a synagogue, there was no choir. There also was no time in my child-raising life.

But years later—1980 when we moved to the mountain–I discovered there was a community choir at a church and I asked the choir master if I could join. He said yes. I was euphoric. But Gene said I couldn’t. He didn’t give a reason. Didn’t have to. My husband was a genius writer who needed me twenty-four/seven. A couple more times till he died in 2001, an opportunity for me to sing in a choir would turn up…I’d tentatively float the suggestion and my poor husband would say “No.”

In 2011 I married Bill. A devout Catholic convert, every Sunday morning we were at Holy Cross Church* for the 8:30 mass. About the third Sunday sitting beside him in the pew, for the first time I became aware of THE ETHEREAL MUSIC FLOATING OVER MY HEAD. I looked around then wowie zowie lo and behold, THERE WAS A CHOIR SINGING ABOVE US IN THE LOFT AT THE REAR OF THE CHURCH!

I turned back around, gave it a split-second’s thought, then said to my angel husband, “What would you think about my singing in the choir?”

“That would be lovely.”

Oh bliss.

After Mass, I found Sister Barbara—leader and heart and soul of the choir—and asked if I could sing for her—“I’m a soprano, I’m told I have perfect pitch…”

“I do need sopranos,” she said. I didn’t need to audition. She scribbled down the time and place of choir practice.

I sang with the Holy Cross Church Choir every Sunday and every holiday for seven—maybe it was eight, it’s a lovely blur–years.

I had not just glorious music in my life but a wealth of friends—the soprano sitting beside me was also a writer, younger than I, and one day she passed me a note that read, “Sylvia, when you die, can I have your socks?” Just great.

The experience of singing with a group of people–you know they are like-minded regardless of background and political POV and what they’ll do when they walk out the door–cannot be compared to any other experience that I know of. Well, perhaps being on a longstanding team devoted to any goal gives the same all-embracing connection, but is a passion for music comparable to a passion for baseball? (Idle thought, of no importance.) The Holy Cross Choir was made of nurses, doctors, college professors, computer programmers, landscapers, high school administrators, community activists, housewives, horse people, retired who-knows-whats, nuns, and writers. I was fond of each and every.

Bill didn’t mind my spending Wednesday nights in rehearsals. And he didn’t mind occasionally sitting by himself on Sundays–for years the wife of a fellow chorister sat with him. After mass, a handful of us went out for breakfast. It could not have been dearer.

The music–Bach, Palestrina, Haydn, Schubert, von Weber, Cherubini–was sublime.

But then the Easter of I forget which year finished me. Easter week is intense in the Catholic church—three and sometimes four masses in three days–and by the end of celebrating, I was a wreck.

Reluctantly, I told Sister Barbara I could no longer come. She was ever gracious.

Bill and I then went to mass at a church closer, and then took to watching it from Toronto, very nice. When occasionally we’d drop into Holy Cross, I’d look up at the choir loft with a pang.

Well now, last Saturday was a funeral mass for one of our choir members. Lil was the heart of the choir, blessed the community till she was ninety-eight.

Sister Noella had told me of the mass and Bill and I went, ten o’clock. I sat down beside him in the pew. Then it struck me and I said to him, “Would you mind if I sang today? If I left you?”

“Of course not, darling.”

Sister Barbara was at the piano at the front of the pews. Heart pounding, I went up to her and asked, “Sister, would I be able to sing for Lil today?”

Sister Barbara is a flinty eighty-ish, strong as steel, a gifted musician, amazing woman.

“Of course,” she said.

I hugged her, got my walking stick from Bill.

As I passed Mary, a wry woman who sits on the aisle two rows behind where Bill and I sit, Mary said, “Can you make it up the stairs?”

I just smiled and pinched her.

Climbed the stairs. Yes it was an effort, but I made it.

Sister Noella, the glorious soprano who for years sat behind me and poked me in the back to make sure I was on track, told me where to sit. Choir members welcomed me one by one, all were wonderfully warm.

“Robes!” Although a Saturday, it was a holy day and even though we didn’t go downstairs to sing, we wore our red robes to honor the occasion. I’d hoped to find my robe on the rack, but didn’t, found a fresh scarlet robe my size, grabbed it, pulled it on over my head, went back to my chair. Felt glorious.

Alida, the soprano next to me—Alida is a nurse, a flautist, and another German Shepherd enthusiast—was most helpful finding the music for me.

When the Mass was over, I went up to Sister Barbara at the organ and said, “Do you think I can come back? But I can’t come to practice—”

She said, “That’s alright, you can look on YouTube to rehearse the music, will you do that?”

I threw my arms around her.

So I’m back in the choir. Eight o’clock Sunday mornings.

A fine way to spend a Sunday morning.

Thanks to the Colleens and the Reverend Mary Ellen Kilsby…

*The church is on the plaza close to a small recreation of Mission Santa Cruz, twelfth of California’s twenty-one Franciscan missions.