The imperishable Lucy Kiser Emerson

In 1993, when I wrote the column that is reprinted below, I thought my mother, Lucy Kiser Emerson, was indestructible.

She was a small package, 5-foot-nothing, and, in her friend Kitty Ross’ words, “80 pounds of guts and humor.”

She had a very high pain threshold, and that came in handy while dealing with rheumatoid arthritis, whooping cough and my father.

Once in the 1970s she broke her leg slipping on one of the splintery steps of our three-story, 100-year-old, Addams Family-style house.

She walked around on a broken tibia for a few weeks until the ongoing ache made her see a doctor. The bone had already set by then.

But it turns out she wasn’t indestructible in the usual sense of the word. Breast cancer that spread to become bone cancer finally took her away, 12 years ago this month.

Yet her spirit will never die. It forges ahead, drawing us along behind it (us being her middling children), urging us to get out of bed, to lift our sights, to seize the day.

I think about her, and not just on Mother’s Day. We were lucky so-and-sos to have her as long as we did.

This column was first published on Dec. 14, 1993

Without music life would be a mistake. - Nietzsche

My mother, Lucy Kiser Emerson, has given me many things.

Adequate table manners. Also, “Walkin’ ” by Miles Davis, a Gibson mandolin and Handel’s “Messiah.”

We've kicked off our last seven Christmas seasons standing together in St. Luke's Episcopal Church, terrified, singing sixteenth-note quadruplets in the movement that begins "for unto us a child is born."

(If you listen closely to someone singing the word “born” drawn out over four measures of sixteenth notes, it sounds like “bo-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho … ” etc., which is a very Christmassy thing to be singing while you asphyxiate.)

My father, who can swing like hell but can’t carry a tune in a bucket, is not interested in attending musical events where dancing is discouraged. “I’d rather be smothered with a ton of wet chicken feathers, ” is what he might say. My wife also demurs, though less strenuously.

My mother and I feel just the opposite, and therefore we visit St. Luke’s each December without our respective spouses. Neither of us is a member, but we feel at home, and, since basses and altos gather to the left of the aisle, we sit together.

This is the latest phase of an ongoing musical partnership, which began with her playing "skipping music" on the piano for my kindergarten class at Spring Street Elementary School. She's been introducing me to good tunes ever since.

We disagree about many things, but it’s easy for us to see eye to eye on Mozart or Thelonious Monk. And we both respond to this 250-year-old oratorio in a physical way. During the alto solo “O thou that tellest good tidings of Zion,” she invariably closes her eyes and grabs my arm.

Like us, most of the other singers in this pickup chorus at St. Luke’s are either untrained or lapsed. But I believe Handel, who hammered out the entire 2 1/2-hour oratorio in a three-week bravado display of deadline writing, would approve of this kind of impromptu concert.

The St. Luke’s sing-along is a musical version of a pro-am tournament, where duffers can tee off with real singers, such as tenor soloist Sam Hagan; where we can receive backing from a 12-piece chamber group of real musicians (in black tie!).

In a 15-minute pre-sing-along warmup, our graceful musical director, Melinda Clark, gently leads us through the stickier choral sections and tries to put our fears at ease. “If we have, how shall I put this, a train wreck, ” she says soothingly, “I’m not above starting over again.”

That’s what I like. We’re going to do the best we can from start to finish, but we’re not going to break our necks. This is our Christmas present to ourselves, and our official starting gun for the season.