Music has always been an important part of my life. I have a recording of my dad singing from 1957 (6 years before I was born). He was stationed in Germany and aside from his military duties he sang in a men’s quartet which entertained troops and sang at various military and civic occasions. He made a recording of his quartet singing, mainly gospel songs (apparently religion and the military weren’t such strange bedfellows) as well as him singing several solos. He had a beautiful, baritone voice. He recorded it as a Christmas gift for my grandparents. It remains one of my most prized memories of my dad.
As a child, and even to this day, I had insomnia. I would go to my bedroom at 8:00 and then spend hours and hours looking at the blackness all around me, invariably creating monsters out of the darkness which made the sleepless nights agony.
Occasionally, I would get out of bed to escape the monsters and wander around the house. Little did I know that monsters are real outside of a dark bedroom. One particular night I heard my parents in a heated argument. Well, my mom was having a heated monologue. Dad rarely threw barbs but rather became the object at which my mom hurled her venom. It sounds rather melodramatic but if anything it understates the level of visceral, hateful language my mother employed.
I crept to the room adjoining the kitchen where my parents were at. Mom was getting angrier by the minute (I was only 6 or 7 at the time so I have no idea what made her so angry). After a few minutes of listening to my mom verbally abuse my dad, I heard a non-verbal ruckus so I peered into the room to see my mom rushing towards my dad with a knife. My dad was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and had been trained in hand-to-hand combat so he was able to disarm her. He held her tightly against him for several minutes while continued to scream at him. You can imagine what was going through my child’s mind at seeing and hearing this.
When it seemed mom had sufficiently calmed down, my dad loosened his grasp of her and I hid behind a wall. About 30 seconds later my mom walked through the door into the room where I was trying to hide. She spotted me immediately, stopped, and stared at me for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds. Then, with a look that I can’t get out of my mind, she took a step in my direction, bent at the waist until her face was only inches from mine, and literally hissed, “I wish you were never born!” She stood back up and walked to her room.
What does a 6 or 7 year old child do with that? As I sat there in stone silence, my young brain tried to process what had happened. The monster of my bedroom had come to life in the form of my mother, the knife, the screaming, and finally, the one person who is supposed to love me unconditionally had just looked at me with pure hatred and told me she wished I was never born. My mind and spirit began to dissolve.
Then, from the kitchen, a deep, rich, baritone voice began singing, “Oh Lord, my God. When I in awesome wonder. Consider all the worlds thy hands have made. I see the stars. I hear the rolling thunder. Thy power throughout the universe displayed.” He sang quietly, barely more than a whisper. But in that melody, in those words, the voice of God spoke to me. It was God, using the sweetest, strongest man who ever lived, that sent music to cradle my mind and spirit in it’s melodious arms, as it’s deep, baritone voice, barely above a whisper said, “I love you, Dave.”
Music has been part of my soul ever since. It has literally saved my life countless times. I hope you will join me as I explore the magic and mystery of music.
Music 3:16 