In the late 1950s I sang in the Methodist church choir. Wednesday night was choir practice
night, a night when Tobby Burklow, Edd Hust, Edna Earl Vilines, and others
would get together to practice songs for Sunday’s service. I was the youngest
singer, and under the tutelage of Tobby Burklow learned to sing church tenor. This
was my social life on Wednesday nights.
Choir practice never lasted more than an hour and a half. But what frequently happened afterward
became much more important, and memorable to me over time. The night that
greeted me on these nights was inviting and demanded my attention. I remember
these winter nights being cold and dark, the air thick with humidity, driving
rain and sleet.
In those days my winter coats were never a match for the
winters they faced, a result of my lack of money to buy good heavy coats, and my
teenage need to look better than I thought cheap weather-efficient coats
offered. I also owned one pair of shoes, bought for looks rather than service.
So generally I was not prepared to exchange the warmth of
the softly-lit church for the darkness and damp that awaited me.
Rather than being put off by the weather, however, I
remember embracing it, being in no hurry to walk home. The rain and sleet
caressed my face, dripped off my nose, crept up my pant legs, and soaked my feet. Shivers greeted my
body and joined with the tenor line to “Holy, holy, holy” (number one song in
the old Methodist Hymnal) rolling around in my mind.
At my house, when it got dark, my daddy went to bed. When my
daddy went to bed, everyone in the house went to bed as well. In the winter,
darkness came as early as 5:00. So, when I got home on those cold Wednesday
nights my momma and daddy were asleep, the coal stove banked for the night
hours earlier, the un-insulated three room house wrapped up on the outside with
a coating of ice.
I remember opening the front door as quietly as possible,
the task made easier by the fact that we never locked the door. One did not
make noise in my house. If Big John were awakened, I was in trouble.
Dripping and shivering, still enjoying the feeling, I would
quietly make my way through the living room to the kitchen, where I slept.
We didn’t use sheets when I was growing up. I slept between
heavy blankets. My bed sat against a window. I would quietly open the window
just an inch or so and slip between the blankets. The sound of the rain
outside, but at my fingertips, complemented the experience of my shivers
warming the bed, and consequently me, as I lay in my dry warm nest.
This was pure innocent sensuality. And it has shaped me
considerably over the years.
I own several pairs of good shoes now and my winter coats
are well made for the weather in which I find myself. My house is warm and
comfortable. I sleep in a bedroom.
But when it is cold and rainy and dark, as it was one night
last week, I will grab a drink and a blanket and go sit on my deck and feel the
damp cold creep into my consciousness, welcome the shivers, feel the water drip
off my nose, and wallow in my now not-so-innocent sensuality. Occasionally, the
tenor line from that first song in the Methodist Hymnal will join me.
I wonder at the early sensual experiences that shape our
lives.
