D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

childhood memories

The “Holls”*

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(Your humble narrator sighs, then carries on.)

As a kid in the 50s, I, like pretty much every kid in America who wasn’t Jewish, couldn’t wait for Christmas morning. My sister and I would get to open two presents on Christmas Eve—one of our choosing and the other one holding the new long flannel nightgowns our mother had sewn for us at times when we weren’t around to see. Our nightgowns themselves were no surprise—the color/pattern of the flannel was, though it was always holiday related.

Not me

Christmas Eve night was a sleepless affair. I’d lie in bed staring at the clock all night, wishing to sleep, wishing it was 6 a.m., the time of rising on Christmas day declared by my mother. It never was. It never, ever was. My sister slept the night through (lucky kid), and I’d have to wake her when it was time. I didn’t always get what I wanted, and that was disappointing. But after all, the anticipation of a moment is almost always better than the moment itself. And that was the Christmas of my childhood.

Not my tree

I continued to decorate as an adult, collecting ornaments and eventually a 4’ fake tree, until the year my dad died in 2008. I just couldn’t. And I didn’t for six years. Then, in 2014, I pulled the tree out and set it up again, early in December. I loved the lights, how prettily they twinkled, especially at night. But when Christmas Eve hit, I realized that tree hurt. My soul screamed in pain at the sight of it. I don’t know exactly why.

I’m not a child anymore. I have a tiny family, the members of which either celebrate Hanukkah or work many extra shifts the month of December, and are, therefore, not available. (Yeah, bring on the whine and don’t forget the gouda.) I’m alone, and it’s depressing. Why salt the wound with the presence of the tree?

I took the tree down, stored all the decorations dutifully and tossed the tree itself in the trash. It had seen better days, as had I, and it was time to let go of something that no longer worked in my life. I haven’t put up any decorations since.

Not a photo. (I mean, look at the shadows.)

That is not to say I don’t observe the winter Solstice—that moment when the sun appears to turn and head back to the northern hemisphere. That holiday has substance, requiring no faith whatsoever. It’s a scientific fact—the face Gaia presents to the sun will shift as she makes her way around her star.

That is also not to say that I disrespect those who celebrate any of the myriad of holidays which “coincidentally” land at this time of year. To all of you celebrating out there, enjoying your families (I hope) and expressing your faith, I wish you all the best for now and the new year. (And don’t forget my special holiday gift to everyone—Fractured and Tainted free through Christmas Eve!)

*From my Aussie friend who wrote of doing something “over the holls.”

Bang the Drums

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Listening to the bagpipes played at the various events celebrating John McCain’s life this week left me in need of a bagpipe fix, so I downloaded an album from iTunes. There’s nothing like the sweet tune played on the pipes’ chanter accompanied by the rousing blare of the drones. If you’ve never heard them in person, you have missed an encounter that cannot be equaled. They kick the heart and churn the soul until you simply cannot help but stand up and declare yourself free of all earthly bounds.

My father played the drums in a bagpipe band when I was a teenager. As I began listening to this album I’d chosen at random, the first song, “Scotland the Brave,” moved from single bagpipe to a chorus of pipers to the inclusion of the drums, and I remembered with poignancy, awe and not a few tears my father’s struggles to master the damn technique of those Scottish drums. I don’t understand the intricacies of the differences between any other percussion style and those of the Scots, but I do know he did a fair amount of swearing as he practiced for hours on his little homemade drum pad. But master them he did.

Every Wednesday night, our family—Dad, Mom, little sister and I—would head to the military industrial complex where my father worked. While my sister and I took Scottish dancing lessons in one of the out buildings, outside the pipers and drummers would practice both the mastery of their instruments and marching, both fast and slow. And every Christmas, band and dancers together would march in the local holiday parade. We’d wear our little dancing slippers which really weren’t meant for marching, but the magic and joy of following the band led by its drum major lives on in my memory forever.

I miss my daddy. I listen to the drums on this bagpipe album, and there’s a part of me that wants to squeal with a child’s delight. If you ever hear a bagpipe band, whether recorded or live, pay attention to the drums. They’re the best bit of percussive work you’ll ever experience.

My Daddy in all his glory

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Thank You for the Music (A Father’s Day Orchestration)

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I’m sitting here tonight doing what I do nearly every night—listening to symphonic music on my Walkman while I write. And as I was writing and listening, I grew aware of my highly trained ear and its evolution. At the moment, it’s the soundtrack to the Sci-Fi* channel’s Children of Dune, the first cut, “Summon the Worms.” The piece begins softly with mournful strings and then begins to build until the strings and brass play point and counterpoint back and forth on the same theme. And then it bursts wide open with the tympani leading the rest of the orchestra into the billowing centerpiece. I play it over and over again because it, quite simply, makes my body tingle.

When I was in elementary school, my father would sometimes take me to his weekly orchestra rehearsals. He belonged to the local community orchestra which put on maybe three or four concerts a year. I would sit at the back of the rehearsal hall at the local high school with him and rejoice in the music that surrounded me. He played percussion. If it wasn’t brass, strings or woodwinds, he was your guy (except for piano and harp, of course).

orchestra
The Pomona Valley Symphony Orchestra in rehearsal  circa 1958

My very favorite instrument he played was the tympani—the big copper kettledrums. I loved, and still love, that deep-throated pounding sound, almost like the beating of a heart. You have to tune those, you know. There are usually two or more in the orchestra, and they’re tuned to different notes. Each time before my dad would perform, he’d spend many minutes with his ear within millimeters of the drumhead tapping it lightly with the padded tympani mallet, and as he did so, he would turn one tuning screw a skosh clockwise or counterclockwise to get the desired pitch. (The drums typically have a range of a perfect fifth, according to Wikipedia.) And then he’d repeat the process with the other one. He loved those drums, but they didn’t belong to him. The school district owned them.

DaddysPOV
The orchestra from my father’s point of view

Dad would also let me sit with him during performances. That’s when all the hard work week after week came together in a perfect whole. I would sit on a chair just like his chair—an angelic-looking little blond girl—and watch and listen as the orchestra gave life to black dots on paper. I learned to play the piano starting in first grade, moved on to accordion and then violin along the way, but I believe that the greatest music education I ever got was sitting in that orchestra absorbing the contribution of every instrument alone and then together. I can tear “Summon the Worms” apart and appreciate its soaring due to the time I spent sitting at the back of that orchestra.

DaddyLauraMe
My father, my younger sister and
myself in a publicity photo for the orchestra.

So, to my father who’s been gone for nearly six years now, I say thank you. Thank you, Daddy, for the music, all the music. My life would falter were it not for my love of music. And while rock-and-roll is great and I love it dearly, it’s the magic of an orchestra that never fails to take me places I’ve never been before.

*That’s what the SyFy network was called when the miniseries first aired.