The Music My Mother Gave Me

by editor Michele Catalano

One of my core memories is from when I was 16, in the spring of 1980. I brought some newish friends home from school to hang out and listen to records. We were walking from the bus stop, about half a block from our little house in the suburbs, when we heard music. We couldn’t make it out at first, but then I realized the music was coming from my house. The door was propped open, all the windows raised, and the music was loud and clear. 

“Is your mom listening to The Wall?”

Sure enough, Mom was indeed listening to The Wall. “Hey You” could be heard drifting down the street. This did not seem like an odd occurrence to me; she often had music blasting, and, while some of her choices made me cringe (Frankie Valli), most of what she played was surprisingly cool. However, I was 16 and very reluctant to give my mother credit for anything.

“Wait. Your mom likes Pink Floyd?”

Of course she did. Who didn’t? I wasn’t comfortable with the fact that two of my coolest friends were now in the “your mom is rad” territory. We were supposed to be talking about me and my small but passable record collection. They were supposed to notice my coolness, not my mom’s.

We approached the house and could really hear how loud the music was. This was just the way we listened to music in my house: loud, unabashedly, aggressively. “Is There Anybody Out There” was starting up, and the low drone of Roger Waters filled the air. The neighborhood was on alert. Mom was in a wild mood. Pink Floyd was a choice. Sometimes there was Jesus Christ, Superstar, and sometimes there was Elvis. But when there was Floyd, especially The Wall, that was when she was most approachable.

“Man, your mom is cool as hell!”

I’d get that all the time, and while I had my differences with her and sometimes felt like I knew way more about life than her, I also knew she was cool. She effortlessly talked about Pink Floyd with my friends, held her own in a debate about the worthiness of the Stones, and made sure the neighbors knew she had memorized all the words to Blondie’s “Heart of Glass.” The fact that my friends also thought this about my mom was something I wore like the first-place ribbon I won in a spelling bee in first grade. Having a cool parent was unheard of in my circle, and I happened to have two.

The first record I remember my mom playing for me instead of just putting something on passively was the original cast recording of Hair. She loved her show tunes; I had by age seven already memorized the songs she played from The Music Man, South Pacific, West Side Story, and The Sound of Music. She loved to play these records for me, excited that someone wanted to listen with her. Sometimes she explained the story to me, sometimes she just let the music play. 

Hair felt different. It wasn’t just on while we dusted and swept and went about our business. I felt like she really wanted me to hear it. Maybe she just longed to share it with someone who would appreciate it. I remember my aunts as musical sticks in the mud, and my father had no interest in musicals. So there I was, a willing student, an eager listener. Who cared if I was way too young to understand these lyrics? it was the bonding, the time spent with her, without my little sister and the baby around.

Mom kept the accompanying brochure of Hair in a cabinet above the fridge. I knew it was there but never had the urge to bring it down and look at it, until I did. One day I decided I wanted to see the colorful booklet. I was pretty sure it had pictures of the show in it, but, more importantly, it had all the lyrics. I had questions that Mom was not answering. So I got the stepladder when she was busy with the baby and got down the booklet down. I snuck it into my room along with the huge family dictionary and got to work.I innocently looked up the first words in the song “Sodomy,” closed the dictionary, said three Hail Marys, and stopped listening to Hair for a while.

My mom was and still is a connoisseur of many things. She loved her music, but she also loved things like mythology. She spent months making her own book of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, going off our encyclopedia and library books. She wrote it all by hand, and it was a fascinating, detailed filled binder that I studied as if it were schoolwork. Well, no. I studied it more than my schoolwork. 

I write this to tell you that my mother, in a remarkable similarity to me, obsesses over things. She will find an interest and dig into it for months on end, almost to a fault. Much like her oldest daughter, me. So it is with music. When she gets on a Pink Floyd kick, it means we will hear nothing but The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon coming out of her speaker for weeks. Or she’ll get on a Broadway kick or delve into doo-wop, the music of her youth. 

I picked up this trait from her, and I can’t say that it bothers me. I love obsessing about a song, a band, a genre. I will dive in fully and read any info about the band or artist, much like Mom, who every once a while will provide us with a fact in the guise of a question: Did you know that the ‘50s band The Rocking Chairs lived around the block from us? I learned so many music facts from her, along with my lessons on mythology and dinosaurs. 

I credit mom with my love of not just music, but all kinds of music. She gave me my desire to hear it all. When my peers were rallying against disco, I discarded my “disco sucks” button after my mother played some Donna Summer records for me. She gave me show tunes, she gave me ‘30s and ‘40s swing music, ‘50s do-wop. She introduced me to rock and roll and gave me a strong love for the Beatles. Mostly, Mom taught me to treasure all music, to try everything at least once, and to embrace new music no matter your age. In the ‘80s, she was dancing along with us to new wave, an endless source of amusement for my friends, who thought she was just the coolest.

Well, she is.

Happy Mother’s Day.