JUNE 19, 2023 – (Cont.) My earliest memories of the [church]—before Mother volunteered as choir director and thus, before I myself was in the choir—emerged from the first pew back from the junior choir box, my sisters on one side of me, Mother on the other. Straight ahead of us on the other side of the choir box, we saw the profile of Bernice Annon, the organist—before Mother volunteered for that job too. Mrs. Annon lived on our side of town and taught piano lessons out of her home. She looked much older than my parents but younger than my grandparents. Her salient features were a plump, round, non-threatening face, and really severe case of edema in her lower legs. While playing the organ, she wore what I called a “church hat”—a black beanie—and her white vestment glowed under the bright, concentrated light of a cheap wall lamp on a flexible stem, hanging out just above her left shoulder. While working the keyboard, she seemed to occupy a particularly sacred corner of the sanctuary, and in my view of things, she was God in heaven, even though we called God a “he,” while Father Hanney, our rector, was up there by the altar and in the pulpit, impersonating Jesus. I think I associated Mrs. Annon with God, since she never talked, just as God never talked. Mrs. Annon spoke through music, and I imagined that that was how God must speak—through intangible but more elegant means, such as music. I knew Jesus had talked. The Bible was full of Jesus “said, ‘this and that’” and so, it seemed, Father Hanney, with his entertaining accent and his elevated status over us in the pews, was more like Jesus, even though he didn’t look the part.
Father—Cyril—Hanney was from Wales. He was bald, short, solid, a painter, a musician, a pipe-smoker, a person totally genuine and comfortable with himself. He had a hearty, toothy laugh. He made Mother laugh. As a four- or five-year old, I couldn’t follow his sermons, but his beefy words, each so musical and richly delivered, were like luscious gardens crammed full with the brilliant colors of flowers I couldn’t yet identify. I remember looking up at Mother when she chuckled aloud, which, in my perception, was as good as laughing all the way out loud, since she seemed to be the only one in the congregation who reacted audibly to Father Hanney’s sermons.
At the time, I didn’t think much of it—though during the summer of 1965 it was quite a different story—but we wound up spending lots of time with the Hanney’s. There was Cyril’s wife, Nell, and their daughters, Gwenyth and Bronwyn, the same ages as my sisters Nina and Elsa, respectively, and the boy of the family, Derwyn, who was a year older than I, which meant I got to use his pedal-car only one minute for every 15 minutes that he rode it up and down the sidewalk when our family were guests at the old, rambling, gray stucco Hanney house, just up the street from the church. The day he showed up seriously late—all in a huff and puff—for the opening group session of Sunday school confirmed to me that he was a normal kid, notwithstanding the fact his dad was Jesus.
I found it somewhat puzzling that Dad accompanied the rest of us on those many visits to the Hanney home and seemed to enjoy himself immensely, even though he never (that I can remember) set foot inside the church. Those gatherings, usually around a meal, were lively affairs, filled with made-up games with complicated rules, theatrical productions written and directed by the girls, rousing music with Father Hanney in the lead, playing up a storm on his accordion and belting out an endless stream of old Welsh songs and ballads, and always lots of food, drink and hearty laughter, usually over witticisms that were above my understanding.
Cyril, as Mother called him (all the other many rectors who followed him she called “Father”), also spent a lot of time at our house, often during the day. He brought his infectious laughter, his music, and his superb talent with brushes, an easel, and a palette of oil paints. He gave Mother a number of his own still-lifes, a rare landscape—a partially harvested field of corn—and a magnificent charcoal drawing of a walking bridge in a garden. He also gave her painting lessons, and though she did not exhibit the sort of native skill that he clearly possessed, she worked hard at it, and turned out lots of work that I could fully appreciate only after I myself had taken a lesson from Father Hanney and saw that my efforts were a far cry from Mother’s.
“Cyril” also introduced Mother to home-made ginger beer. In time, she and Dad began to manufacture it themselves. Every so often in the evening, they’d go full tilt, turning our kitchen into a large-scale brewery, and at the end of their efforts they’d have a few dozen bottles of ginger beer to stock on some shelving that Dad had built for just that purpose on the wall next to the stairs leading from the kitchen down to the basement. It all ended one evening when the contents of a bottle must have fermented beyond its time, causing an explosion. I was in the kitchen with Mother and Dad when it happened. A second explosion followed closely the first. Then another and yet another, in a chain reaction that didn’t stop until every single bottle had been blown to bits. When all was quiet, Dad opened the door to the basement, and together, he and Mother surveyed the sticky mess that covered the stairs and the basement floor. It made for quite a story the next time Cyril came over. (Cont.)
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
