Hallelujah ... Still Standing

Have you ever heard of that party game wherein everyone picks a little piece of paper out of a hat or basket, said pieces of paper having been prepared earlier in the day with the names of animals that make noises that can presumably be mimicked by humans? Then what happens is, a person is chosen to be "it" and that person is ushered from the room and placed in a soundproof booth. Or at least in the bathroom farthest from the room where the party is taking place. Everyone else is then instructed to remain silent when the time comes in the game when the whole crowd is supposed to simultaneously make the sound of the animal on their piece of paper. "Whatever you do," they are told, "Don't make a sound when the host says one two three go." Everyone agrees to be silent as the grave at that point in time. The poor sucker in the bathroom is allowed back into the room. He is told that the way the game will go is, at the count of three everyone will simultaneously make the sound of the animal on their piece of paper. Of course you know what happens: when the host says one two three go, that unfortunate individual is the only one braying or oinking or clucking or barking or neighing at the top of his lungs while everyone else laughs at him.

I felt a little bit like that last night. Not really, but sort of. No, I didn't bark or oink or bray or neigh. Sorry; much as I'd like to, I can't provide you with that visual! What happened was, last night at church our 100-plus-voice choir presented a Christmas cantata. It was very lovely. At one point the program included a medley of songs from Handel's Messiah, and in the medley was included the famous Hallelujah chorus. As you may or may not be aware, it is customary for the audience to rise to its feet when the Hallelujah chorus begins, and to remain standing throughout. In fact, yesterday morning our choir opened with the entire Hallelujah chorus, and the congregation appropriately stood to its feet as the opening bars rang out from the piano and organ. Last night the familiar strains occurred at the end of a medley, however, and the entire chorus was not sung. Why, then, oh why did my son practically punch me when he heard the music of the Hallelujah chorus, indicating that I should lead the entire congregation in standing? It doesn't make sense that the burden of this tradition should rest on my shoulders, but that's what ended up happening ... sort of.

See, I was actually sort of daydreaming when the medley segued into the Hallelujah chorus part. It was semi-dark in the auditorium and the music was soothing and I did not get a Sunday afternoon nap. I was a little bit sleepy and my mind, I am ashamed to admit, had begun to amble down a path involving all the Christmas shopping and errand-running I needed to do the next day. I was also actively craving my pillow. So, when Andrew thumped me on the arm and I came to my senses and realized what was being sung, I sprang to my feet as automatically as I do (and as all Americans do, or should) when the Star Spangled Banner is sung or played. I did it without thinking. But then, about three-quarters of the way to my full height, knees still soft, I realized that the other 600 people in the auditorium remained nailed to their pews. Wow ... that is simply an awful feeling. You might be thinking: "Please tell me you were sitting towards the back and were cloaked in shadows when you committed this ecclesiastical faux pas." Oh no! We sit in the third row at church. There was plenty of light; everyone behind us saw me. No one snickered audibly; for that at least I am grateful. I glared at Greg as if to say, "Why didn't you stop me, you knave?" but he just continued gazing at the choir, glassy-eyed, oblivious. He might not have even noticed I (sort of) stood!

This quasi-embarrassing moment got me interested in where and how the tradition of standing while the Hallelujah chorus part of Handel's Messiah is performed, began. I have always associated it with Queen Victoria, monarch of Great Britain from 1837 until her death in 1901. Actually, however, thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that the first royal of record to stand during the song was King George II, monarch of Great Britain from 1727 until his death in 1760. Since royal protocol demands that no one may remain seated while a monarch is standing, when King George II stood at the opening of the Hallelujah chorus, everyone else stood too. It is not clear whether King George II stood the first time because he was overcome by emotion (the popular view), or whether he simply arrived late for the performance, or was tired and just wanted to stretch his legs. We'll never know, but we do know he started a tradition that has endured to this day ... sort of.

I say sort of, because at the end of our choir's presentation last night, for the very last song, they launched into the full version of the Hallelujah chorus just as they had done to open the service that morning. But this time, for some reason, instead of standing as they had in the a.m. service, everyone again remained rooted to their seats. Several seconds into the song, my son looked at me. "I'm not getting up," I said, unwilling to reprise my earlier cheek-reddening performance. But as the song progressed into the second, third, and fourth bars, I felt really guilty. Suddenly my son sprang to his feet. Then my husband rose. I followed, and as nearly as I could tell, that's when everyone else stood too. There may have been others standing before we did, but if so they were not sitting near enough for me to see them. I wish we had all stood sooner, like we were supposed to.

It is not only appropriate but all kinds of wonderful to stand to your feet when this magnificent and triumphant piece of music is presented. You don't have to be hearing the most talented or trained voices or musicians in the world to be uplifted by it. The melody and the words transcend everyday music and become something otherworldly, even supernatural. Certainly the theme of the music and its words is the reason for this. King of Kings and Lord of Lords ... Hallelujah! ... the kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ ... and He shall reign forever and ever ... it's amazing. Generally you only hear this incredible message in song at Christmas, and Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ. I daresay no other piece of earthly music pays tribute to that fact with more stunning emotion than the Messiah -- composed by George Frideric Handel in just 24 days during the summer of 1741 -- and specifically the Hallelujah chorus.

When my husband and I visited Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, for three days last August, we were moved and impressed by a ritual that takes place there daily. At a certain point each evening, the flags on base are lowered and retreat is broadcast over the base-wide sound system, both indoors and out. This is followed immediately by the playing of the National Anthem. If you are on base and in uniform, you must stop whatever you are doing, face the music and/or the flag, and salute for the duration of the interlude. If you are on base in civilian clothes, you must stop what you are doing and stand at attention out of respect for our flag and our anthem. All vehicles on the many miles of roads that make up Lackland Air Force Base stop in the middle of those roads during this time. Some people get out of their vehicles and stand beside them. We were awed by the spectacle of everything in sight standing still for several minutes as honor was paid to our nation's symbols of freedom.

That's sort of how I feel about Handel's Messiah and the Hallelujah chorus. No matter why King George II stood or Queen Victoria stood, and no matter whether it's fashionable in this modern day to stand ... it's just not something you sit down for. You stand and with your heart you say Hallelujah! King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Merry Christmas, everybody.

Update on Monday, December 10, 2007 at 11:09PM by Jennifer

Steering Committee

Strange things keep happening to my children involving cars and parking garages! This past Tuesday the drama revolved around daughter Erica, a senior in college in East Tennessee. Erica goes to downtown Knoxville for her job every day at mid-afternoon, and of course she travels on the interstate to get there. I don't like to think about Erica traveling on the interstate in Knoxville or anywhere else, on account of, despite the fact that she's rather brilliant, she has, shall we say, air in her hair. BUT she's 21 and you've got to let them live their own lives! Extra prayer mandatory! Erica's wheels happen to be my old wheels ... a 1998 Buick Park Avenue that trickled down to Erica when I got my new (used) Cadillac CTS in October of '06. We've pretty much kept our kids in pseudo-clunkers from the time they started driving until they could afford their own cars. The insurance is cheaper and you don't have to worry about dings and dents! Plus it keeps them humble ...

Stephanie drove an aged Ford Escort which we bought for her while it was on its last legs, many moons ago. It was passed down to Audrey when I got the Park Avenue that replaced my aging Crown Victoria, at which time Stephanie began driving that car. She drove it until she got married in 2001. The day before the wedding, my husband demanded the keys. (I think she had been hoping to keep it, silly girl! But at our house, upon marrying you are officially on your own wheelswise.) The Escort died in an accident (no humans were hurt) while Audrey was driving it at college. Erica drove the Crown Victoria until it got traded in when I got my Cadillac, just to get it off our hands. I can't remember what Audrey drove from the time she wrecked the Escort until she bought her Chevy Malibu after college two years ago, but it doesn't matter. I can see now I should have named THIS blog Musical Cars, instead of the one I posted a few weeks ago ...

Cue Erica on the interstate on Tuesday, tooling along to her place of employment. Suddenly and without warning, she has no power steering. She panics. She manages to keep from causing a pileup while wrestling with the stiff, recalcitrant steering wheel and simultaneously fishing in her purse for her cell phone. She's a frog's hair from freaking out. She finds the phone and calls her dad, many miles away in South Carolina and very busy at work. Her dad does not like the panicky sound of her voice and barks at her to calm down. She begins to cry. He begins to yell (he hates it when the girls cry) at her to "Calm down! Calm down, Erica!" ... which of course has the opposite effect. She sort of hangs up on him. He begins calling her back. The whole time, she's maneuvering her car off the interstate at her exit and heading for the parking garage. Now, I would not have headed for the parking garage in a car with no power steering ... but then I'm not 21 with air in my hair. Erica has a parking pass courtesy of her employer, and she's in college and cash poor, and by golly she was going to park in the parking garage. All the way at the top of the parking garage, where the available spots are! How many ultra-tight turns might that be? With no power steering ...

So of course as Erica is doing all of the above with great difficulty and I am sure much sighing and exaggerated batting of her ultra-long eyelashes, her father is attempting to raise her on her cell phone, to make amends or at the very least make her cry some more. She does not answer the phone (says she didn't hear it) ... so he begins to leave messages. "Erica! Erica, call me back!" Click. "Erica ... please call me." Click. "Erica! Erica! Just call me please!" Click. She finally "hears" the phone and calls him back, at which time he informs her that he has called upon her brother to rescue her. "Just go to work and don't worry about it," he counsels, no longer barking. Not exactly purring, but at least not barking. Erica thanks him (about as stiffly as the steering column, I imagine), and trots off to work ...

Cue Andrew, just about to go off duty for the day at McGhee-Tyson Airbase about seven miles from where Erica works. Andrew drives a truck -- a big white pickup -- that he bought for himself and pays the insurance on himself. Boys are different from girls in more ways than one, y'all. Andrew's first truck was a clunker too, given to him by his grandfather, but he's had at least four different trucks since then. He's a truck man. He is also one of those kids who was born knowing what to do when a car experiences mechanical problems. He's a troubleshooting fool; he usually gets to the heart of the issue quicker than you can say catalytic converter. He's a godsend at such times as when you are 250 miles away from your daughter and she is having a nervous car breakdown.

(When our girls were little, it was always very traumatic when they switched from training wheels to a regular bike. I remember many tears and scrapes and trembling and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from all three -- or at least two -- of our girls when the day came to take off down the street on a two-wheeler. Not the boy. When Andrew was less than three years old, one Saturday his dad announced that they were going to remove the training wheels from his bike. Greg got the tools, ceremoniously undid the screws, and transformed Andy's baby bike into a lean mean traveling machine. "Now wait for me," he told the boy. "I'm going to put the tools away and then I'll teach you to ride." He turned around, walked to the workbench in the garage, laid the tools down, and turned back around. Andrew was riding the bike expertly around and around the driveway. He's been happiest when on wheels ever since. That's what I'm talking about ...)

At any rate, on Tuesday afternoon Andrew arrived at the parking garage, wound his way up and up and up to the sixth or seventh floor where Erica had somehow managed to park, and located the steering-challenged Park Avenue. He raised the hood, poked and prodded around, and in about three minutes (according to him) had determined the source of the problem. Some sort of a tension belt had melted or stretched or corroded or otherwise stopped cooperating. He knew what he had to do: replace it! So he jumped in his truck ... and realized he had no money to pay to get out of the parking garage. (Apparently he too is cash poor ... seems to be a trend in our family.) Not to be deterred from accomplishing the mission before him, he set out on foot and located an ATM machine about five blocks away. He got cash. He walked back to the parking garage and retrieved his truck. He drove to the auto parts store and got the part he needed. He drove back to the parking garage and replaced the worn-out belt. All this took about four hours from the time his dad called him. Erica reports that her car is running better than ever, and I think even now she is baking chocolate-chip cookies for Andrew. If she isn't, she should be ...

You Know How It Is ...

... you're at the fifth Christmas party of the season and it's only December third. You've met and greeted a whole passel of people that you see only once a year (or so) because in the main they are your husband's business associates. While consuming rice pilaf and chicken marsala with green beans almondine and a pumpernickel roll with butter, sipping sweet tea with a great big wedge of lemon and foregoing dessert, you enjoy catching up with the goings-on of the children of the folks with whom you share a table. You do your best to keep the conversation aloft by telling anecdotes and assorted cautionary tales and whatever else happens to cross your mind that is both appropriate to talk about and passably interesting. It's the social equivalent of a vanilla ice cream cone: pleasant enough but not exactly earth-shattering. Benign. Distinctly un-revelatory. Sweet, but prone to go a little soggy at the end. Okay! Just okay. Necessary but by no means evil. You get my drift.

In the car on the way to these things, after flinging half my wardrobe around the room trying to figure out what to wear that will serve the triple purpose of covering me up, making a sedately festive fashion statement, and not making me look as though I swallowed a whale, and after giving myself one last spritz of Magie Noire and checking my hair, despairing inwardly of it ever curling the way it's supposed to in back, I give myself a stern talking-to. It goes something like this: "Shut up. Just shut up! You always open your mouth at some point during these functions and, having done so, stick your foot in up to the ankle, but perhaps tonight if you listen a little more and talk a little less, you'll not only learn a new fact and/or concept but you'll come across as something other than a chatterbox that got turned upside down and stuck in that position, spilling an endless stream of words punctuated with laughter and big hand gestures and much eye-rolling, to the amazement and wonder of your table partners but of course NOT Greg, who has witnessed -- and now passively accepts -- this sickening display thousands of times over the last twenty-nine years ..." I trail off, looking out the window of the car into the darkness, knowing too well that the first person I see at the party -- unless they move away from me very quickly -- will likely receive the full benefit of my knowledge, opinions, viewpoints, recent victories, past regrets, heartfelt desires, New Year's resolutions, and overall cultural and socioeconomic paradigm. That's just the way the Christmas cookie crumbles.

This evening's soiree provided no noticeable disturbance in the pattern I've worked so hard to establish. The third person I saw was a lady I adore. I sat next to her last year and we yapped about Johnny Depp the whole time. Seems she's rather "into" the darling pirate just like I am, although not to the same alarming degree. Tonight, after we got caught up on what's been going on in our lives and the lives of our husbands and kids, she could not wait to ask me what I knew about Johnny's new movie that comes out in a few weeks. Of course she was rewarded for her fine and intuitive question by a lengthy dissertation on not only the movie itself, but the fact that as we spoke Johnny was in New York City for the global premiere of Sweeney Todd. What would he be wearing??? I couldn't wait to get home and see the new pictures, and I'm pretty sure she caught my enthusiasm. I think I had uttered 8,527 words, give or take, before the first cherry tomato entered my mouth during the salad course. It was that stern talking-to I gave myself in the car! Just think how I would have monopolized the conversation if I had not taken the "Just Shut Up!" chat to heart! I'm nothing if not a quick study.

After dinner it was time to do that aggravating gift exchange thing wherein everybody who brought a present got to approach the gift table, dither for an age about which box or bag to select, open it, show it around, and trundle the loot off to their seat. The next person whose number was called (the numbers having been distributed earlier) got to either pick a new gift or, in lieu of that thrilling prospect, take the one that had already been opened, until all customers had been served. Sort of a devil-you-know-beats-the-devil-you-don't setup. You could almost hear the second person thinking: "Do I take the battery-operated foot massager that Fred got, or pick a garishly-wrapped package that might contain something even less scintillating? Which begs the question, IS there anything less scintillating than Fred's battery-operated foot massager?" And so on, ad nauseam. I refuse to go to the gift table; we bring only one gift and I send my husband to do all the dirty work. Tonight we had the good fortune to be the first number called to pick a gift. Guess what it turned out to be? A Kitchen Gourmet Party Dipper! Yes ... a Party Dipper! Recipes included! Keeps your favorite dips hot! Great for parties! 0.65 qt. slow cooker! A miniature crock pot! A nifty appliance, you might say, but somehow not what I had hoped for.

So of course I brandished it every time a subsequent guest got up and walked toward the gift table. No need to open a new gift! You need a Party Dipper! Christmas is coming, with all those parties that will have stuff for dipping! But I got no takers and, in the end, I was stuck with it. I'm looking at it right now. It's kind of cute actually, and I can visualize using it to melt chocolate chips and heavy cream into a hot gooey sauce into which I might dip everything from strawberries to pound cake cubes. I'm "warming" to the idea. The only fly in the fondue is, on the way home as I clutched the Party Dipper to my bosom, I was gripped with the certainty that I had committed a social faux pas even more critical than talking too much! What if one of the other two couples at our table had brought the Party Dipper as their white elephant offering? And if so, did I offend them by waving it desperately at everyone who got up to select a gift? Paralyzed with the conviction that either couple one or couple two had in fact supplied the Party Dipper with which I had been so blatantly unsatisfied, I was practically speechless with shame all the way home. I doubt I spoke more than five thousand words in twelve miles.

You know how it is ...

But ... But I Thought ...

The funniest thing happened in Sunday School this morning. Our classroom is large, with ample area in the back for a refreshment table. My husband is the teacher and his podium stands at the front of a wide center aisle formed by two big sections of chairs being placed on either side of the room. People sit anywhere they want in the first ten or so rows of chairs, on both sides. This morning just as class was getting ready to start, one of our men walked up the aisle balancing his Bible with his donut and a cup of coffee, and sat in the first seat off the aisle to his right ... next to his pretty wife ... he thought. But actually his pretty wife was sitting directly across the aisle from where he sat! She had even saved him a seat! Turns out the lady he plopped down beside has hair of a color and length almost identical to his wife's ... and she was also saving her husband a seat. Donut-And-Coffee obviously wasn't paying very close attention as he approached the area where he usually sits with his wife, and he ended up sitting by the wrong lady. He was so embarrassed when he realized what he'd done! He's a funny kind of a guy -- you know, the class clown type -- so he laughed at himself and we all laughed with him (except the "wrong" wife ... I think she would rather the whole thing hadn't happened) -- and it was a pretty cool way to start Sunday School. Clearly I don't get out much.

I tried to make Funny Guy feel better by sharing that once, years ago when we attended the same church as my husband's brother and his wife, I made a similar mistake. See, my husband and his brother are nearly identical from a distance. They're both very tall, dark, and handsome. The service was over and I had gone to retrieve a kid or two from the nursery, and when I returned I surveyed the clots of people standing and talking, trying to locate my husband. I spotted him (I thought) a few aisles away and made a beeline for him. I may have gotten distracted by one of my kids on the way, which would account for the fact that, when I reached the suited form I thought was my husband, I grabbed and squeezed the arm of my brother-in-law instead! When he looked down and smiled at me and I realized what I'd done, I was horrified! We are Baptists! This is how rumors get started! Good thing I noticed that I'd plastered myself to the wrong man before I leaned in and whispered something racy like, "Meet me out back in ten minutes, for a good time ..."

Recently as we traveled home from our daughter's house in North Carolina, a very large bird mistook our car windshield for ... something else ... the atmosphere, perhaps? We were driving along the interstate at 75 or so miles per hour. It was a very windy day. Next thing we knew, this bird -- in size I would put it somewhere between a crow and a turkey vulture ("Hawk," my husband intoned ... he sees hawks everywhere ... which is why I call him Hawkeye) -- HIT the window just to the driver's side of the rearview mirror. It sounded like a five-pound bag of sugar had slammed into the car, dropped from a one-story building. The doomed bird's carcass bounced and flipped off the car's roof like it was not a roof but a trampoline, and landed in a heap of feathers over on the side of the interstate. Gone. Gone forever, because he thought my car window was his air road (or maybe just got blown astray by a gust of wind). Either way ... costly mistake.

Interesting how we are always looking, even subconsciously, for the familiar, the comfortable, the safe, and the loved. And when we look around and don't find it, we immediately begin searching for it, and we usually don't give up until it has materialized on our horizon once again. We try to forget the times -- sometimes silly, sometimes scary -- when we looked up and what we expected to be there, was not there. What was there instead was something -- or someone -- wholly unexpected and often completely unfamiliar. And we had to think quickly (if, unlike the poor bird, we were still alive and kicking and in possession of our faculties) in order to set the situation right. To get our little train back on the right track, as it were.

This reminds me of a terrifying and potentially dangerous experience which befell our daughter, Audrey, when she was barely five years old. I had taken the girls (Andrew wasn't born yet) to Water Tower Place, an atrium mall in Chicago. Stephanie was about seven; Erica was small enough to be in a stroller. We were on the third or fourth floor and were standing by the doors of one of the clear glass elevators that give eager shoppers fast, easy access to all eight mall floors, waiting for them to open so we could board the elevator. Several other people were standing there with us for the same reason. I can still see it, like in slow motion: the elevator doors opened; Audrey, standing closest to them, went through them and onto the elevator; the elevator doors closed. Just like that! No sooner had her feet touched the floor of the elevator itself, than the doors snapped shut and the clear cylindrical car shot upwards!

I remember being so stunned, I couldn't even speak. For me, that's pretty stunned. I looked around and realized that several people had seen what had happened and knew the predicament I was in. One lady stepped right up. "Let me take your two other children to the ground level," she suggested. "Right there is a security guard who will help you." She pointed to a uniformed guard standing at a nearby railing. I gratefully complied, running to him and telling him what had happened. He lifted his walkie-talkie to his lips and began speaking, pausing only to ask me questions about Audrey's age, size, appearance, and clothing. In the open mall I could see the lady standing on the ground floor, at the base of an escalator, holding a sobbing Stephanie's hand and watching over Erica in her umbrella stroller. I hastened down to join them and wait.

A few minutes later it was all over. Stephanie pointed, drying her tears. I looked up and there was Audrey coming down the escalator, grasping the hand of a security guard. If she was afraid she didn't show it. She told me that when she stepped onto the elevator and turned around to face the doors, they had already closed and she was alone ... she thought. Then she looked up and there was a man -- the only other person in the elevator -- looking sternly down at her. She didn't move, react, or say anything. The car went up a few floors, stopped, and the doors opened. Audrey walked out of the elevator and into the first store she saw, approached the counter, and told a saleslady: "I lost my mommy." The saleslady called security, and a few moments later we were reunited. Caught a break there ... and once again all was well. May it ever be so.