One of the first signs that holidays were coming was the old man humming (tunelessly) Christmas songs. My mother was a teacher, and holidays were often hectic for her, as she had tests and papers to hurriedly mark before vacation; this was on top of the fact that her charges were thinking of nothing but gifts under a tree and when they could go sledding on a fresh bed of snow. Her analogy was that they were so jittery that she’d swear they would just vibrate out of their skin and become lumps of viscera.
When they married, my mother (who was quite an accomplished musician) wanted a small piano like her mother had. My father, however, was in love with organs. The cheesier sounding, the better. In one of her more ill-advised marital accords, she agreed to one of my father’s ‘compromises’: we get an organ and you never play the piano again. A decision that filled mom’s waking hours (and, no doubt, many nightmare-filled dreams) with dread and affliction.
As November gave way to December, my mother and I would often huddle in her bedroom, watching a small tv, with her grading assignments spread out all over the double bed. In the dining room, the old man spent quality time drawing energy and inspiration from his beloved color TV set, usually tuned to deeply intellectual programs like Gilligan’s Island and/or shows that displayed young ladies in interesting outfits, like Petticoat Junction. Dissent was not welcomed, so watching shows that had glimpses of intelligence (say, Mission: Impossible) was strictly forbidden due to the fact that the world would stop rotating correctly if we touched his wonderful color set.
When the sound went off, we held our breath. The more silence that followed, the more dread and horror filled our little room. The silence meant he had walked over to the organ and turned it on. By the early 70’s, we were on our second organ and it had a multitude of buttons and levers that could alter the sound. The old man could not even play chopsticks, but he would sit at the organ and with one finger play the same note 4-12 times, pushing down buttons and changing the sound each time. boooooooooop Then a new note. Beeeeeeep. 10 more variations. New note, more variations. Baaaaaaarrrrrrrr High notes, low notes. Beeeeeeeeeep, Booooooooop Over and over
My mother would mutter the most unfeminine obscenities you heard outside of porn magazines. The playing of the organ was, apparently, some kind of romantic Christmas ritual, kind of like an elk bellowing. He could wait her out, going for 10 minutes or more, picking notes, holding them, and changing the sound. Ooooooooooo Endless variations of a person playing one note at a time hundreds of different permutations. EEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Sometimes he’d stretch his creativity and do three notes: bip-bip-beeeeee. Add vibrato: Beee-eeeee-eee-eee-eee
Mom would throw down her papers and walk in the living room. No words were exchanged. She’d sit down and crank out his favorites—Sleigh Ride, White Christmas, Let it Snow. The most joyous, happy stuff you ever heard—she’d throw in little improvised twists and you’d think she was having the time of her life. All the while, the old man would stand next to her, reaching over and pushing little buttons and levers to change the sound into something that made everything merry and bright. Then let’s do the song over with new variations. Never a smile from the old man. My mom gritted her teeth the whole time. He had learned not to ask why she didn’t smile, because the fact she had work to do was very un-Christmas-like. And she knew that if a discussion about her work re-occurred, she would suffer for three days of insults, dirty looks, and of course, even more Christmas carols on the organ.
As a teenager, I huddled in my room with Led Zep, Who and Springsteen, drowning out the clamor downstairs and wondering about why adults agreed to be tortured when they got married. Eventually, the old man realized that he wasn’t feeling merry and release my mother from her musical prison. The signal was that he’d walk out of the room and light a cigarette. Or a quick remark about ‘go back to your @#$%&*#! Schoolwork.’ There were a few occasions when she stoped and return to her work and he’d regress to his one finger musical torture, but it was also an unwritten commandment that he only got one session per night. My mother would close the bedroom door and return to marking papers, occasionally smiling a grin that was a cross between a lion gazing upon a baby zebra and an Alcatraz inmate released.