I feel the foot pedals of the organ in my seat, my back, like the organist is tapping my chair with his toe to the beat. A rhythm under the music, a shuffled bass note along measures, keeping time. The soprano to my left belts with the melody, the hesitant alto to my right whispers along.
A memory: I’m sitting beneath the keyboards as my grandmother plays the organ in her stockinged feet. I feel the same thick click of the pedalboard coming up through my bones. She sings as she plays, leading the congregation in song with her husky alto voice. I watch from behind the piano bench legs as congregants march forward, bow, receive the body of Christ, sip His blood, cross themselves, and walk away. The family dynamics — the men always usher their wives ahead of them, the children in front of the mothers. The bored altar servers follow the priest’s hands with pattens, willing someone, anyone, to drop the host so they might have something to do. The priest bends to place blessings in crossed thumb on foreheads. The ministers’ hands dip and dip again as they offer the chalices to lips without ever letting them go. Underneath it all, the music and the visceral bass crawl of the pedalboard.
My grandmother was a spitfire. Jazz pianist, organist, singer, single mom to eight kids, public school music teacher—you couldn’t go anywhere in Ontario, Oregon without someone asking about Joanie. I only remember a few snippets from her funeral: My aunts and uncles and cousins crowded in her little dining room, drinking cocktails. The photo of her they had up in the vestibule with flowers — her in her tweed blazer, her pearl earrings, the music note brooch. I remember the rain as they lowered the coffin into the ground at the cemetery on the other side of town, the umbrellas doing nothing to stop the tears from wetting collars.
The dreams I used to have after she passed. She’d walk into the dark bedroom I shared with my little sister, where I slept on the top bunk with a disturbing poster of Britney Spears in her “Oops!...I Did it Again” era thumbtacked to the ceiling. Backlit by the hall light, she’d stand in the doorway and I’d hear my dad say, “It’s okay, DJ, they figured out how to make Grandma better.” And I’d see Grandma smile.
Mom always said I was Grandma Joanie’s favorite for two reasons. First, I was the only grandchild she ever saw born, and she spent my mother’s entire labor throwing elbows at my father to get the prime seat behind the hospital bed, just so she wouldn’t have to see what was going on down there. Second, because my mom and aunts say I was just like her daughter Brenda, who died of leukemia when she was twelve years old.
Whatever the reasons, whether it’s true or not, I always felt like her favorite person. I think a lot of people did — it was her gift, to make everyone feel like themselves, like the best they could be. My mom told me the worst part of her passing was one of the days after the funeral, when she was cleaning out grandma’s house and she heard a knock at the door. It was the Schwann’s delivery guy, a freckled college kid, who was there to talk with Joanie. Mom told him she was really sorry, but Joanie had passed. The kid started sobbing there on the stoop. He used to make Joanie’s place his long stop of the day, and they’d sit and drink a cup of coffee before he went on the rest of his route. He was devastated, but it did explain the volume of Shwann’s frozen food—way too much for one lady, living alone—in my Grandma’s freezer.
I was only seven when she died, but there are a few things seared in my memory.
We watched baseball games together in her little white sedan in the summers, the team my dad coached playing on the rundown old field behind the fairgrounds as we basked in the air conditioning. She’d always offer me a drop or two of her breath drops from her purse after we finished our hot dogs and popcorn.
At her house, we’d make potato chip cookies or thumbprints with Hershey’s kisses stuck in the middle in her little kitchen. She’d always send me to grab the baking sheets from this corner cupboard that seemed big enough to house three of me. Afterward, we’d sit in her back garden and I’d gather sticks and flowers and leaves for fairy potions, or we’d go to the park a few blocks down and I’d swing or slide down the treacherous 20-foot metal slide.
I remember mod-podging napkins to clay pots with her in her basement craft room. I’d get distracted, often, by the piles of glitter glue, felt, fabric, thread. One of those pots sat in my childhood bathroom for years, the napkin preserved long after Grandma was gone.
As for the things she left behind: My mom had her pearl earrings made into two rings — one for me, and one for my sister. I wear mine when I need to channel her jazz pianist energy. I wore it for my wedding.
The other memento she left me was her gold cross and St. Christopher’s medal. I wear them around my neck when I feel like I need a little extra luck.
I’ve felt like that a lot lately. We’re expecting our first baby, and I wish I had something more to show our little bean about his or her great grandma than a few scratchy jazz bar recordings and some jewelry. Or more to give him or her than a distant sort of memory about how much she loved me—and would love her great grandchild—or how much she adored music, and life, and made the best out of what many would call an impossible situation.
I found myself wondering as I sang if the baby could hear the organ or feel the pedalboard yet. I hope our baby hears the music I grew up learning at my grandmother’s feet and feels as safe as I do.
What a beautiful remembrance of a special woman. We carry those we love with us for the rest of our days. And huge congratulations on your coming child! Best news of the year, DJ!