Songs My Mother Taught Me

Last night I saw a program about the great opera singers of the world. It stirred memories that had not been acknowledged in many years.

My mother had a magnificent voice. She was a true diva. She had the flare, voice, beauty, and temperament of a diva. She was tall 5’7 and svelte with rich black curly hair, black eyes and porcelain skin. However, she was also possessed by an inability to break from an oppressive home life in which she was forced to give her wages as a seamstress to her parents. It was from her I inherited my gift.

At three, she was adopted from the Foundling Home in New York City. Unfortunately, when her new parents, who had dressed her in a white satin dress and a big white bow, brought her back to Ohio she was used as a slave child. They were immigrants from Italy.

Italy is a place of sun, warmth, and supposedly love. The thought of these people farming this child out for such work and her suffering even greater abuses at home brings me an unfathomable despair even now. I learned of this misery only upon the birth of my first child when mom thought that I was mature enough to hear of such things.

When her parents prevented her from receiving singing lessons from a well-known teacher, she settled for the boy next door, the ditch digger. However, only after she lied about a nonexistent pregnancy, which allowed for such a marriage in the thirties, was she allowed to marry my father.

Seldom, did she sing for others. Nevertheless, we went to the Metropolitan Opera often. We ate very poorly, but we went to the Met. Though the three of us sat in the highest tier of the old Met, just envision the stage being the size of a small matchbox, my sister, mother and I were always dressed in lace and satin, as she had become a seamstress of the finest caliber.

I spent many hours being dragged in tow traveling the Bronx from fabric store to fabric store looking for the perfect pieces for outfits for the next opera season.

When she was not sewing, she was at a local school for the blind where she worked in the laundry. I remember watching the churning washing machines after school while sitting on a stool in a corner. It was actually a child’s chair.

In retrospect, I realize that it was the only place she could sit in that room.

Even as a child I wondered how the loud plop plop of those huge machines affected one whose soul was anchored in melody.

I do not know how she did it, but she managed to teach some of the blind nuns how to mend their cloths. It was the early fifties and credentials were not as important as they are today. Ultimately, she was allowed to teach the children, branched out to all areas of activities of daily living, and ended up on the President’s Council for the Blind in Washington taking part in writing the original curriculum for home economics for blind children.

However, she never did what was dearest to her heart. She never sang. Instead, she cried. She cried when I sang, when my sister sang, when Beverly Sill’s sang and when Joan Sutherland sang.

I don’t sing anymore. Unlike my mother I was allowed to attend Julliard. I have had my time on the stage. Not long, successful on a small scale, but I at least had my chance.

Strangely, I never had a great desire to sing. However, that is another story. I had some fun, some recognition, and some challenges. Like anything in life, things loose importance. Friends ask me to sing. Ego prevents the sharing. The notes are not as powerful, the breath is weak. I am lazy and have found other ways of expression. In truth, some of the words to arias I learned as a child have tiptoed out of memory.

I have a good and happy life. However, last night I cried: For myself, my mother, lost dreams, relief from the responsibility of natural gifts. I was alone-it was a low cry-steady-with the measured breath of the past. It was almost as if it was another person. It came out of my mouth but emanated in my heart. It was my mother.

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar






Songs my mother taught me!

Songs my mother taught me
In the days long vanish'd
Seldom from her eyelids
Were the teardrops banish'd

Now I teach my children
Each melodious measure
oft the tears are flowing
oft they flow from my mem'ry treasure

ANTONIN DVORAK