Lost in the Moment
“You almost had a little brother once. Did I tell you that?” Mother said this to me as we sat together on wooden bleachers inside a large tent, waiting for the Mills Brothers to open their act. The San Mateo Fiesta was an annual Peninsula event, a merry mélange of carnival rides, stage shows, and a green Quonset hut filled with miniature gardens and floral arrangements. The smell of gardenias and carnations permeated the atmosphere. I was about eight years old at the time.
“What do you mean almost had?” I’d always wanted a brother, older or younger, I didn’t care which; but I also knew Mother would say anything to distract and entertain me, to snap me out of my childhood melancholy. However, what she said next was definitely not uplifting.
“He died, honey. The doctors did what they could. He was just too small to survive.” Mother pulled me near, so close I could smell the cologne from her sweater and scarf even through the heavy woolen coat she wore. “The Mills Brothers. Exciting, isn’t it?” Mother could subject-jump with the greatest of ease, and I knew then the discussion about the little brother I’d never have was definitely closed.
A little fanfare, the lights dimmed and the Mills Brothers appeared before us. Four men, one strumming a guitar, all snapping their fingers and singing in flawless harmony about buying a paper doll other fellows couldn’t steal.
“Relax, honey,” she whispered, “this is free and it’s terrific entertainment. Something you’ll look back on and remember. Enjoy the moment.”
I remember it was a Sunday. I always hated Sundays for they meant I’d have to wait another week to see her. That was one reason it was hard for me to focus on the present. I worried too much about the future. Back then, I was staying with a foster mother, Mrs. Cornelly. “It’s only temporary, honey,” Mother said, “just till I get back on my feet financially, then we’ll be together. You’ll see.”
So living in the moment was something I’d have to learn, and to this end, Mother was a great teacher. In later years, she would tell friends and relatives in an almost boastful manner, “Paul had a very adult childhood, full of grown-up concerns. I don’t think he ever was a child.”
Halfway humming along with the singers and sub-vocalizing the words “glow little glow worm, glow and glimmer,” Mother nudged me and said, “They have wonderful harmony, that’s why they don’t need a lot of musical accompaniment. It’s because they couldn’t afford instruments when they started out.”
I asked her how she knew all this.
“Oh, I read it somewhere. I might have heard it on the radio. They trained their voices to imitate strings, reeds, even an entire orchestra.”
I gave her a questioning look, for Mother was prone to exaggeration.
“Well, maybe a small quartet. But it’s their style, honey. What makes them special.”
“Famous?”
“Absolutely. We’re so lucky to see them in person.”
“Then why are they here in San Mateo?” I was an eight-year old. What did I know?
The San Mateo Fiesta Building is probably gone now. Mother passed away fourteen years ago, but sometimes when I hear a jazzy rendition of “Opus One” or a syncopated “Lazy River,” I travel back to a cold and damp building on the San Francisco Bay. I think about the Mills Brothers and how their near-perfect harmony symbolized something important to Mother, something beyond a small boy’s comprehension: a balance in life that always seemed to elude her.
If there is a heaven, I hope it will be these four men under a band shell, and Mother and I huddled together, toes tapping, cares forgotten, lost in the moment.
Copyright 2006 by Paul Alan Fahey
