I played the organ at Hillcrest Church Sunday, substituting for David Warrack. It was Mother’s Day, the first Mother’s Day since my mom passed away.

I played one of her favourite melodies as the Offertory. Ack Värmeland du sköna is a song we heard Jussi Björling sing, and a tune she sang the last time I saw her (she sang the melody, not the Swedish lyrics).

My version was simply an instrumental played on the organ. I remember being impressed that she heard the resemblance between this folk tune and the melody of Smetana’s tone poem about the Moldau.

I’ve been looking at old photos and books. I found an album with pictures from the 1990s reminding me of trips Zoe and I took to Ottawa, taking my mother along to visit her old friend Norma Freitag in Eganville Ontario (no wait…I realize it was at a cottage on Mink Lake, not actually in Eganville).

Norma had helped my mom in the difficult period after my dad passed away in 1960, a fellow member of the Lutheran congregation in Toronto. The album of printed snapshots that my mom assembled includes Norma’s obituary from 2001.

I realize now that motherhood takes many forms. My mother was a single mom in 1960 with four children. Thank goodness for the help she received from people like Norma. This picture from the 1990s is long after the fact (I’m grown up with my own daughter), and my mom is the one taking most of the pictures, from a time when we printed pictures and kept them in albums.

It all feels so remote from the present day.

Norma had a nephew (I think) who was at the opera school at the same time as Peter. George Reinke was in that same Ariadne that I wrote about a few months ago. I think his part (Officer) may have been as tiny as my brother’s (wig-maker), but please note I’m digging into my memory, fascinated by how little I can remember.

George Reinke was in the tv broadcast of Louis Riel. He’s one of the soldiers we see at the very beginning. If I recall correctly he gets the second or third line of the opera, as the soldiers encounter the fortifications of the rebels. He says/sings “it’s laced with wire”, and I think it was delivered in the same sprechstimme –a mix of speech and singing– that we encounter in the current COC production of Wozzeck that I saw again on Saturday. While I have lost touch with George (and can’t find him anywhere online) it’s very cool to think he has immortality in the CBC broadcast of Harry Somers’ centennial year opera.

I am going to quote something my friend Carol said a few days ago that rang true (I almost said “wrung true”, but that gives the sentence and the metaphor a different direction). Carol said “Emmett’s kids aren’t going to know me.” Emmett is her grandson.

Lately my mind boggles as I contemplate history and the passage of time. My father died in 1960, and I have almost zero memory of him. I vaguely recall his voice from one thing he said, a very kind statement. Over the past five years I spent a lot of time with my mom, as a caregiver taking meals to her, transcribing her rhymes, watching films & tv with her, listening to her thoughts. And I feel already that she’s slipping away from me, even though she only passed away in December 2024.

It is in that spirit that I try to recall those visits to Norma in Eganville, peering at the pictures. Norma made us a dinner one night with deer that was road-kill. I recall her giggling about it, something about the Lord providing. And I remember she made the venison taste quite wonderful.

The drives up to Eganville were a fun time with Zoe, when she and I drove my mom to visit Norma. We’re both so much older. I think it was roughly 30 years ago.

I looked at the photos, seeing my mom, Zoe, myself, Norma and her sister Elaine. I am humbled by the remoteness of the memories, so much more recent than what I recall of my father 65 years ago. I was reminded of my mom’s sports-car, a Datsun 240Z (or was it a 260?) by my friend David Wright in a recent email exchange. David was in the boys chorus in The Luck of Ginger Coffey, an opera presented in 1967. It was the other opera that nobody every talks about from Centennial Year, given that Louis Riel (that I mentioned) was revived for the Sesquicentennial, in 2017, while Ginger Coffee seems to have been forgotten. I vaguely recall the sound of Mignon Dunn singing the name “Ginger” to her operatic husband Harry Theyard in the opera. That’s all I recall. I remember even at the age of 12 thinking that Mignon Dunn was stunningly beautiful in the way a 12 year old boy notices such things. I think I also saw her sing Carmen. But while I recall that voice, until David mentioned the sports-car, I had forgotten about it. Music seems to stay with us, thinking of my mom’s Swedish tune, George Reinke’s or Mignon Dunn’s voices in my head.

How much else have I forgotten?

This morning as I was preparing for the church service I had an impulse, a kind of inspiration. I couldn’t figure out what to play for the postlude, and then thought of the song “Let it be”. It was 8:30 am, when I searched for the lyrics, printed them, practiced them. I went with the key of A major so it wouldn’t be too high for me to sing. The congregation seemed to enjoy it. My own private experience is irrelevant, I suppose, given that the song speaks to motherhood and reconciliation, universal themes appropriate for Mother’s Day. I feel so lucky to connect with the Hillcrest community.

I write these little blogs to help my memory. Whether it’s Speranza Scappucci or Yuja Wang or the COC, taking the time to analyze the experience and then to write about it makes it a deeper experience for me. My mom had a different relationship with each of her kids, as each of us brought out something different in her, so each of us has slightly different memories.

Erika and I had dinner today with Peter & Connie, including lots of conversation about opera and song cycles, and then we went downstairs where I coaxed Peter to sing a bit, including some of the Pagliacci Prologue and some of Siegmund from Act I of Die Walkuere. Peter wasn’t feeling great, perhaps getting over some sort of throat infection, but ha the piano lured him into singing, hitting the high A as Siegmund and the A-flat as Tonio. While he was a superb Silvio (a higher lyric baritone) in his day with the COC he’s much older now, with a sound that would work as Tonio: although I don’t think he’s planning to sing the role.

Too bad. He sounded really good.

And funnily enough while I have been harping on things we forget, Peter remembered the Italian & German lines and the notes really well, while I scrambled around at the piano. Fun.

I wondered if the reason I had the idea to sing Let it be was inspiration from my mom, whose presence I feel a lot lately. And I wondered too if Tonio was also her idea. What in heavens name led me to start playing those C-major chords that begin the Pagliacci prologue? But I feel my mother’s presence.

It was a really good day, and we were glad to have the visitors.