How My Mother Came to Love Opera

I spontaneously wrote this story on Facebook, and because people seemed to like it a lot, I thought I'd make it more "permanent" here on my blog. I wondered whether I should put it on my writing blog (Playing With Words) or my Pollyanna Files blog, but decided on the Pollyanna Files because it's less business and more to do with life.  I've fixed it a bit, because hey, I'm a writer and I will tweak words forever if I had the chance. Anyway, here it is:

Between work and other stuff, I haven't written a whole story in a long time. But because I have a little bit of time, I am going to write a story here, right now on Facebook. It is a true story, one that really happened.

It is about how my mother came to love opera.

In about 1939 or so, when my mother was in elementary school in the town of Sasebo, the children were called into the assembly hall to listen to announcements from the Japanese government. The country was engaged in war, and was very nationalistic, and had decided to reject anything that was not Japanese, and of course this meant anything Western. This included books, magazines, music, and art. It was to begin the next day.

The music teacher, a lovely young woman with a classically-trained soprano voice, then announced--with the principal's agreement--that she would sing everything that she knew and loved.

The teacher began to sing all the opera she had memorized. She sang Puccini and Wagner, she sang Donizetti, Bizet, and Mozart. It was the most beautiful thing my mother had ever heard. She felt that heaven had entered through her ears.

After it was all done--hours that seemed like minutes to my mother--the teacher fell silent. All the children broke out in cheers and applause, but my mother noticed that all the adults--the teachers, the principal, and the parents--were weeping. She could not understand why the adults cried over such beautiful music.

After that day, the teacher never sang opera again. My mother did not hear that glorious music in all the years of World War II. She did not know what happened to that teacher during the course of the war, whether she lived or died.

But through all the deprivations, deaths, and starvation during and just after the war, my mother remembered that music, the beauty of it. She told herself over and over again that one day, she would hear it again, no matter what.

And so it happened. Many years later, when my father was stationed in Japan during the Korean War, my mother met and married him. When she came to the U.S., understanding that this was indeed the West, and therefore must have Western music, she heard it on the radio, and once we got a record player, she bought it. Maria Callas, Mario Lanza, all the greats.

As a result, I grew up listening to opera, and when I asked my mother why she loved it so, she told me.

And now, I am telling you.