Bits for Sunday, December 13, 2009

Last night I went to hear the IWU Chorale sing The Messiah. They did a fantastic job, but the whole time I was there, I couldn’t help remembering my last trip to hear this musical presentation. It was back in my college years, and I will not associate a number with that because I can’t handle thinking about how old I’ve become.

I wrote about that adventure, and I know my mother has long wished that this story would reach the masses, so I’m just going to take this opportunity to share it with you…virtually unedited from when I wrote it in days of yore. Enjoy!

I’ve always considered my relationship with my parents educational – both for them and for me. Don’t get me wrong…I love my parents very much, but our wide generation gap sometimes provides much entertainment. This was the case last December when I invited them to a cultural experience…

The University Chorale was going to sing The Messiah about a week before Christmas break. Two of my roommates were singing in it, and I planned to watch them. I thought it would be a nice gesture to invite my parents to this cultural event, so I got three tickets.

Well, the week before the concert, I came down with one of the nastiest colds I’d had in a long time. I informed Mom and Dad that if I was still in the severe coughing stage on the night of the performance, I wasn’t going. I told them it would be rude of me to go and ruin it for everyone else while I hacked in their ears. But by the night of the concert I was doing fairly well, so I went.
We arrived a few minutes early in order to get a good seat. The doors weren’t open yet, so we waited around outside. After a few minutes of waiting, Dad said he was going to the men’s room. He left….with the tickets. No sooner had he disappeared than the doors opened, and the people all around us filed inside to take our seats. Dad finally returned, and we went inside. Now for me, finding a seat is no big deal. You find something in the back – on the aisle. This is not the philosophy of my parents.

“Now,” my mother said, “do you want the back of the front section, the front of the back/middle section, or the front of the back/side section?”

“I just want an aisle,” was my reply.

After much debate, we chose the middle of the back/middle on the aisle. We had hardly settled in when Mom and I decided we needed to check our hair. We left Dad with our coats and went to do our hair check. We came back and sat down – I was on the aisle with Dad beside me and Mom on the other side of him. Every two seconds or so, I leaned across Dad to point someone out to Mom. Apparently this was unamusing to Dad, because he stood up to trade places with Mom.

We had just gotten comfortable when Dad decided to take one more field trip. Mom and I stood to let him out, which of course meant we had to stand up to let him back in. Fantastic. I felt like I was sitting with a bunch of two year olds!

At last we were all settled…just in time for the concert to begin. We were okay for a little while, and then Mom dropped her program on the floor. Dad leaned over to pick it up. She dropped it again. Did I mention I felt like a babysitter? At this point, I had a flashback from my early years. I seemed to remember someone snatching similar papers out of my hands when I couldn’t hold onto them. Wisely, I refrained from doing the same.

Again, we were fine for a while. Then I realized there was a family behind us who had apparently never been taught to stay home from cultural events when they were sick. First the father coughed. Then the mother. Then the kid. It was like an assembly line – right down the row they went. It felt a bit like a doctor’s office and was very distracting. I was fighting the same problem, but I waited until the soloists were done and the choir joined in before I coughed.

By this time, we were to the Hallelujah Chorus, which is not the end of the program, if you were not aware. Dad was ready. Reading ahead, even. I think the first note might have started before he was on his feet, but maybe he even beat the music. While everyone else was still untangling their feet from the cramped quarters, Dad was standing straight and tall. Great. Culture does exist in our family.

I thought surely we were about to the end of this experience. To be honest, I was rapidly
approaching utter exhaustion. To quote Mark Lowry, “But I was not so fortunate.” One of the soloists was sick and decided at the last minute to forego his last solo. My ever-attentive-to-the-program parents picked up on this and began trying to figure it out during the sixty-fold “Amen” at the end. I thought I should, at this point, snap my fingers like they used to do to me when I talked when I wasn’t supposed to. Again, I wisely refrained.

Well, my evening of fun was almost over, but not quite. The music finished, and the wave of a standing ovation began. I appropriately waited until the people in front of me stood, and then I stood and clapped. I had been standing for probably ten seconds when I realized not everyone was standing. All the people in the auditorium were on their feet, except two. They were still sitting beside me, discussing the missed solo. In total exasperation, my parenting skills kicked in and I gave them that stern look (pursed lips and all). I reached down with one hand and gave Mom a firm tap. I wanted to say “What part of STANDING ovation confuses you? You weren’t having any problem during the Hallelujah Chorus!”

I was exhausted after it was over, but I remained proud that my parents had attended a cultural event and had done fairly well. I made mental notes to help them with the standing/sitting/dropping programs/talking thing, but overall they did well. I haven’t had the energy to take them to another cultural event yet, but maybe in a couple of years I’ll be up to it again.

** update note: “a couple of years” has not arrived yet.