Remembering the Melodies

I remember the words to many of the old hymns we sang in church. I can rattle off all four verses like I can recite my old phone number at the house where I grew up, or the Pledge of Allegiance, or the song of McDonald’s Big Mac: “Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun…”

Ok, now I want a hamburger.

Anyway…

It’s interesting how much easier it is to recall information I learned in childhood than, say, today’s phone numbers. I still have to look up my wife’s cell phone number.

But the old hymns come back to me in the early hours. I hear the four-part harmony of a cappella singing when I was young and sat with my mother and came to understand the rudiments of harmony. I also remember sitting in the company of men trying to sing the bass line with them. 

Most of the time, I didn’t notice the words. But they drifted in and out of my head like my old phone number and are permanently stuck there. When I really think about them, I’m often horrified by the delusion and manipulation my beloved melodies bore.

For the last several years, I’ve had to put all that music aside because it mocked me with its messages, and I don’t sing like I did in the pew, in the church chorus, or onstage when performing a solo.  My guitar sits in the corner. I gave away my banjo. My recorders and harmonicas gather dust on the shelves.

But occasionally, in those early morning reveries, the music of my people comes to me without the verbal baggage, and the affectionate harmony reverberates in my chest.

We choose to replay our memories, like old vinyl records. I tend to replay the more painful ones repeatedly. Perhaps it’s okay to sift through and pick out the notes of joy that once sustained me.