From the Relief Society Magazine, March 1938 –

Moment of Glory

By Christy Lund Coles

From the time he was old enough to show definite personality the family knew that he was not, in a sense, one of them. Drew Hartwell, even as a child, could not adapt himself to the pinch of poverty, could not be happy nor contented in the squalor of the poorly furnished house. He would cry out to his mother, “I want a pretty house, I want nice clothes, I want flowers on the table when we eat … Teacher says we should have them.”

Then in a sudden boyish anguish he would conclude: “I don’t want to be poor.”

Martha, his mother, would shake her head and ask wearily, “Who does, son?”

Deep within her she knew that her life-blood indeed flowed in his veins. She remembered how as a girl she had dreamed of a life filled with beauty, peace, the tranquility of well-ordered days; a dream that had blurred beneath the hot pressure of reality.

She had married Carl when she was eighteen. They had been happy – after a fashion. But they had always been poor and there had been so much to do. Her strength never seemed to reach to the day’s end where the blessedness of sleep became life’s one panacea.

As she looked at this boy of hers, so foreign to everything about him – with his straight nose and his deep, brooding eyes, his sensitive mouth and wistful smile, she did not expect him to know or understand that once she had been much as he; she hardly expected him to love her enough to overlook her fading youth, her drooping shoulders. She told her husband:

“He’s already ashamed of us, ashamed of this house, of our clothes.”

When her husband answered, “He has no business being ashamed of us, I’ll beat it out of him,” she smiled, saying,

“You’re wrong, Carl, he can’t help it. He’s different from the other two. I think maybe he’s a genius of some sort.”

She laughed a little as she said it but she knew it was no joke. For a long time she had planned and figured on ways of getting him to study music. She had even prayed about it …

One day in early April that prayer seemed to be answered: A rather shabby little man came to the door and half apologetically told her of a course of violin lessons (violin included), surprisingly cheap. She invited him in, listened breathlessly as he talked. Finally, she asked, “Would it make it any cheaper if he were to have his own instrument?”

“No, the price is the same. It’s the lessons we’re selling.”

Unceremoniously, unthinkingly, she took the three dollars she had saved for a new pair of shoes and paid the first payment.

When he had gone she sat for a long time holding the inanimate thing in her arms. The time passed slowly until the hour Drew should come from school. But she waited happily. He came in, breathless, excited, and demanding.

“Moms, where’s my migs? Grant’s going to play marbles with me.”

Her heart was pounding. “They are in the right hand buffet drawer, dear. But don’t get excited … look what I have for you.”

He was so occupied in his search that he did not even hear her until she repeated it the second time and brought forth the violin carefully, saying, “Look, it’s a violin. You’re going to learn to play it.”

He turned, glanced at it, turned back to his marbles murmuring, “Um-hum. My one dough-baby’s gone.”

In another moment he was gone and the room seemed suddenly very still. She felt awkward … foolish. “It’s just that we expect too much,” she assured herself. “We wait for our moments of glory but they never come.”

She put a lump of coal into the gaping, rusted heater and set about making a cake for supper as she had promised Martin, the younger son, she would do. But her feet were leaden.

That night, however, when Drew came in he said, “Moms, may I take my violin now, may I?” There was the light in his eyes now she had wanted to see before. He was excited … but she was calm. She put it in his arms and he held it as though he had always held one. She would not have been surprised if he had begun playing.

“Gee, it’s sweet,” he cried. “I’ll learn to play and someday I’ll earn a lot of money and buy you some pretty dresses … and everything.”

He threw his arms about her and held her tightly while she kissed the soft curve of his cheek, hungrily.

Several days later they discovered, after climbing three flights of musty, rickety stairs, that the lessons were taught to a group of twenty or thirty children simultaneously. There was no individual instruction, just general, crisp explanations from a teacher who played, Drew thought, “pretty enough to make you cry.”

Martha sat in one corner of the large room that had at one time been a lodge hall, and watched and listened … and dreamed. Here were dozens of little boys and girls, most of them poor, thin, and wide-eyed. Somewhere were dozens of mothers and fathers, sacrificing, working to send them here, all passing on to these little ones the fragment of their own frustrated dreams. Some of the children didn’t listen, they talked and laughed, they made faces for the amusement of the others, but Drew was not one of these. His dark eyes never left the instructor’s face. He turned his fingers slowly to hold the bow as they were told to do; he held his shoulders back and bent his head carefully above the chin rest.

That night when they returned home they changed their best clothes for older ones, then went into the uncemented basement beneath the house. While he filled a pan with potatoes she rummaged about in an old trunk until she brought forth something she had been looking for. When they reached the light he saw that it was a violin.

“You didn’t tell me you had one,” he accused her. “Let me see it.”

“Be careful. It is very old and very valuable.”

“You mean, it’s worth money? Why don’t you sell it then?”

“Because,” she told him patiently, smiling a little bitterly, “it was my great-grandfather’s … and it was mine when I was as young as you. I learned to play a little … listen.”

She picked it up and with a few noticeable squeaks and hesitations she played the old-time favorite, “Hearts and Flowers.”

When she had finished she said, “There are things worth more than money. I want you to play for the joy you will be able to give others and for the satisfaction you will have in doing something well.”

Ten years passed. Years much the same as the ten before had been, filled with worry and work. Martha watched Drew going ahead with his music with mingled joy and dread. His ability to learn had been astounding … but it was private teachers now and with all the other expenses she often said that the Lord only knew where the money came from to pay for the lessons. But it always came, even though her husband berated her and said the boy should be out doing a man’s work instead of taking their bread and butter from them.

Yet, Drew was a genius. What did anything else matter? What if he didn’t seem to appreciate the long hours she held him to his practice, practiced with him, saying, “No, dear, that last note is A” or “Not quite so heavy on your G string.” What if he did accept their money with little or no thanks as the day when he said, “No, Mother, Bertrani can’t teach me any more, he says so himself. Please let me study with Adaire. … just give me another year. I’ll pay you back, honestly, I will. All right then, don’t. I’ll go out and dig ditches. I’ll ruin my hands so I can’t ever play again. Is that what you want? Do you want me to be satisfied living like this always?”

“No, dear, no,” she assured him, trying to quiet him, to avert one of his tantrums that would be followed by a dark, speechless moodiness for two or three days, “You can have the lessons. It’s only that the whole family has to live a week on just a little more than your lessons will cost.”

“Yes, it’s more important that you buy sauerkraut to feed their hunger. None of you have ever known a heart hunger, never wanted anything but just … this,” he cried, gesticulating about the room, the room she had tried so hard to make as he would have liked it, scrimping to buy little scarfs, flowers, lamps. Suddenly she wanted to slap him, wanted to cry out to him that she had never known anything but heart hunger. Heart hunger she had never dared admit even to herself. She wanted to tell him how she had been starved for rest through the hours she had held him to his practice; how she had been starved for the relief of tears since the day as a child he had said, “Don’t cry, Moms, ever again. You look ugly when you cry, it makes your face all red,” and she had never dared cry before him since; how her spirit starved to stand tall and erect and her tired body wouldn’t let her. Heart hunger …

But she said nothing, she merely turned from him murmuring quietly, “You can start with Adaire tomorrow, but don’t tell your father.”

Her patience with him had seemed spent, but when he came to her later that evening, put his arms about her and kissed her, she knew he was saying he was sorry. He smiled at her with his little-boy smile and said, “Will you listen to something I’ve written? It isn’t so good, but listen anyway.”

Carl had gone to a wrestling match, the other children were playing ball, so they were alone in the dimly lighted room and as she sat near the window in the summer twilight he played for her, played as she seemed never to have heard anyone play before. There was strange, haunting beauty in the melody he played which faded to a pathos so poignant, so real, that it was like the remembrance of baby fingers on her breast.

He finished and the room seemed to carry on the tune which could have been a hymn or a lullaby or a dream. she wanted to speak, to cry, but she could do neither. He turned. He was waiting for her to say something. “What shall we name it?” he asked, finally.

Almost unthinkingly she answered, hoarsely, still feeling the touch of warm, tiny fingers on her breast … her heart. “Name it Lost Lullaby.”

He was thoughtful a moment, turning the name over in his mind while she had sudden misgivings lest he should laugh at it and say, “Oh, not that.” But after a moment he smiled and cried, “yes, Mother, Lost Lullaby. Yes, and it shall be our song, yours and mine.”

It was only a short time later that he was chosen as the most promising student of the great teacher Adaire, was scheduled to give a concert and receive five hundred dollars for the one performance.

“Why, it’s all the money in the world,” he had told her. But she had smiled, knowing this was only the beginning. Now he would belong to the world. He would go away from her, forget the happy hours they had played together, the other hours when he had teased for cookies … just as though he wasn’t a genius at all … her little boy.

The night of the concert came. The house was in confusion. Drew was having difficulty with his tie. Martha was running back and forth bringing him one thing and another. they were both trembling. her heart was waiting and straining within her. He had promised to get at least two tickets but he had said nothing about them and she was afraid to ask …,

The door closed on his handsome figure. His night of glory! Nothing would ever be the same and she wouldn’t … be … there. He had told her he was going to play their song, was going to tell the audience it was dedicated to his mother. But that had been in a moment of generous impulse. He had probably forgotten that, too.

She whispered to Carl, “He forgot the tickets,” and he said, kindly, “I couldn’t have gone anyway. My suit’s shot. But you get ready and I’ll see that you get there.”

She shook her head and went into her son’s room, began picking up the clothes he had dropped across the bed. As she picked up the coat, something fell from the pocket. It was a program of his concert and folded within were two tickets – fourth row, center. Then, he hadn’t forgotten … he hadn’t forgotten!

As thought it had been waiting for her, the curtain went up just as she slipped into the luxurious seat and pressed her hand hard against her heart to quiet its pounding. She was praying: “God, don’t let him be afraid. Let him play well. Let these people like him.”

In a moment he was on the stage. In a moment he was playing, playing as one inspired: “Humoresque,” ‘Hungarian Rhapsody,” those hard ones with the difficult names. Then he was stepping forward, smiling, waiting for the applause to die down so he could speak. She knew he was going to play their song and tears welled to her eyes. But she mustn’t cry … she mustn’t. she blinked hard, looked up, caught his eyes straight upon her. he dropped his gaze, the smile left his lips and he announced his song briefly but he didn’t mention her nor did he look that way again.

She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. he played so wonderfully well. he seemed to be playing on her very heart strings. She felt that sometime before he was born, she had put that song of love, of tenderness, of lost hopes and hunger into his soul.

She would have liked to have gone back-stage but instead she slipped out unnoticed and hurried to the corner to wait for the streetcar that would take her home.

It was only now, as the spring wind pricked at her coat, and seemed sweet with something of all the springs in the world, that she would admit the hurt she had felt. It was such a little thing to have done for her. No one would have known who his mother was – but she would have known!

Out of the night, a car swerved to the curb and stopped. It was a taxicab and Drew was stepping out of it, concern in his eyes.

“Why didn’t you wait?” he asked. “I had to break away from everyone to find you.”

She said, “I wanted to hurry home and have something for you to eat.”

“Oh, we’ll get something to eat, down here,” he assured her, gaily. “Won’t that be a lark, Moms. Just you and me having supper in some nice café.”

He was sorry. he was trying to make up to her. But her heart was quiet.

When they were seated in a booth of the restaurant, he asked timidly, “How was I?”

Her voice was sincere. “You were splendid, dear, wonderful.”

“They liked my – our piece, didn’t they?”

She nodded her head and those silly tears crowded into her eyes. He looked down. And after a moment he said, “I’m glad you came. I was so sorry about the tickets. I thought of sending a messenger. I prayed you’d find them. I wouldn’t have played if you hadn’t come.” And after a strained moment, “When I got up to announce my number, gee, I wanted to tell them it was you who had made me whatever I was, tell them it was our song. I’d seen myself doing it a hundred times. But when I looked at you, I couldn’t.”

“You were afraid I’d cry, weren’t you?” There was just a note of bitterness in her voice. He missed it and pressed his hand over his eyes as he said in a small, dear voice,”‘No, Moms, I was afraid I would. You looked so beautiful sitting there with tears in your eyes, so sure, so sweet. I thought, ‘One thing real and sure in a mass of strangeness.’ I tried to remember if you always looked so pretty when you cried but I couldn’t remember seeing you cry before.”

So he had forgotten that boyish remark of long ago. He had forgotten.

When she did not speak he reached across the table and laid his hand over hers, “And Moms, dear, I just didn’t want to share you with all those strange people. You’re so much more wonderful than any of them.”

It was one of the moments that come, to some people – once in a lifetime. Something surged and swelled within her. She knew it would pass, but it didn’t matter. She had had her moment of glory and she knew that long after the world had snatched him from her, after the lights and music of this night had been laid away in remembrance, through long days of weariness and work, through nights of loneliness, through moments when people would smile on the streets at her shabbiness and her drooping shoulders (not knowing, of course, who she was), she would be wearing the glory of this moment on her heart.