The sweet sounds of music

It was important to Dad and Mom that their children be exposed to the cultural arts. Being a closet artist, Mom sought to grace the walls of our home with beautiful artwork, and keep a supply of art materials in stock for our creative outlet. Mom and Dad’s mutual appreciation for good music resulted in a state of the art stereo system, and a significant collection of musical recordings that ranged from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and classical music to Big Band from the 1950’s and Broadway musical scores to the best of the Three D’s. Dad listened to Mozart, Wagner and Copeland while he read the paper. Mom listened to Vivaldi and Tchaichovsky while she did her housework, and to Christmas music when she was homesick. The girls danced many a private ballet recital to The Nutcracker Suite and The Waltz of the Flowers, and knew every word to every song from The Sound of Music. Although the boys professed to be less inspired by classical music I remember playacting with them to Peter and the Wolf (David especially liked to be Peter, while Brad was the wolf) and witnessing a spectacular three man sword fight to Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King. All of our listening to good music, whether intentional or incidental, prepared us for the chance to attend professional musical events with our parents. Dad and Mom would invite, and sometimes cajole, us to be their guest several times a year at some of the many amazing cultural offering in the Cleveland area, including ballet, opera, Cleveland Orchestra concerts and plays. I remember attending the opera Aida and, although I didn’t understand a word that was sung, being strongly affected by the emotion of the performance. I’m sure that Doug’s interest in the guitar inspired our attendance at the classical guitar recital at the outdoor Blossom Music Center. Blossom was also the venue for a fantastic Man of La Mancha performance and several Cleveland Orchestra concerts. When the Broadway cast of The Wiz came to town I think the whole family attended that performance, and came home singing “Ease on down, ease on down the road. Don’t you carry nothin’ that will be a load. Come on and ease on down, ease on down the road”.

Bedtime stories

I don’t know if Mom knew it instinctively, or if Granny Keeler had modeled it for her, but she seemed to follow Emilie Buchwald’s observance, that "children are made readers on the laps of their parents." I don’t recall when I began to learn to read, but I know that it was before my first grade teacher began reading groups. It seemed to be as natural as breathing to me, which I attribute largely to the considerable time I was exposed to reading and oral language from birth on. Mom was in her element when she put on her reading glasses, propped a pillow behind her back in the middle of her big bed, and let the pages fall open on the bookmarked page of the book du jour—be it The Tin Woodman of Oz, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, or Little Women. She’d flip back a page or two and recount the prior night’s adventure, then launch into the next chapter. Her penchant for drama would kick in, and soon she would transport her listeners to the Emerald City or the five little Pepper’s home or Aladdin’s cave. The natural vocal nuances in her oral reading drew in her audience so that, even when we were old enough to be well able to read ourselves to sleep, we would often sit just outside her bedroom door and listen with one ear while we worked on our homework. The fact that we all still enjoy reading and a good storyteller is likely a direct result of Mom’s efforts.

"You may have tangible wealth untold.

Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.

Richer than I you can never be –

I had a mother who read to me."

— Strickland Gillilan

Dad also contributed to our love of words. Although we weren’t blessed to have him as our nightly storyteller on a regular basis, we occasionally enjoyed his reading as well. I remember him reading excerpts from Peck’s Bad Boy, Maori Tales and poems from the two fat Poems from Home volumes. My favorites were “The Raggedy Man, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, and the eerie Highwayman:

“ The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding--

Riding--riding--

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.”

Establish a house of learning

Although they grew up in different circumstances Dad and Mom both came from homes where learning and thinking were important. They took both their formal and informal education seriously, which spilled over into their marriage and child-rearing. Early in their marriage they joined a book club through which they began collecting the extensive family library that we remember growing up. Making the accumulation of books a priority, rather than any one of a number of other possible collections that married folks embark upon, says much about what was important to them and what they had in common from the start. Somehow in their ever-busy lives Mom and Dad found time to read, often very early in the morning or very late at night. On a number of occasions I found one or both of them asleep with a book in their hands, presumably after they had tried to sneak in some personal study or relaxation time between their parental responsibilities. Their mutual love of learning has been evident throughout their life together, and has had a profound impact on their progeny. They have sought to follow the counsel to “Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith…Establish a house of learning” (D&C 88:118-119).

There was never a problem finding something good to read at the Thompson house. In each of the homes our family lived in, from Hamer Drive until the present, I have clear memories of bookshelves lined with books, and a variety of reading opportunities. One of my most distinct memories has to be of the study in the tudor home in Cleveland, which I always called the library. I loved to curl up on the window seat and read a book or listen to the stereo. The built-in bookshelves lining three walls of the room were brimming with hundreds of volumes Dad and Mom had collected, including the classics by authors such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Mark Twain. There were numerous church reference books, books on history, politics and philosophy, and a set of The World Book Encyclopedias. I remember perusing the titles on the book bindings wondering about books titled Jesus Was Married, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Naked Capitalist. Some of my childhood favorites from the “grown up” shelves included the beautiful origami coffee table book, the etchings in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the Especially for Mormons series, and many of the nature and travel books produced by National Geographic. I spent hours reading the Childcraft set (the children’s companion to the encyclopedia), especially the volume titled “Things to Make and Do”. The wide variety of books exposed us to numerous wonders of the world, so we each had the opportunity to choose topics of interest to explore that appealed to us personally.

Of course we had a library of children’s books as well, some housed in the big bookshelf in the upstairs hallway, and some personal favorites that we kept in our bedrooms. There were several large volumes of storybook collections (like A Treasury of Children’s Literature), board books for the toddlers, Little Golden books (I remember The Poky Little Puppy), Disney classics, all kinds of chapter books, science and history-focused books, scripture story books, and paperbacks that Mom let us purchase through Scholastic book orders (The Borrowers series was one of my favorites). If I had an hour of undirected time Mom knew she would often find me curled up with a book in the library or in my bedroom. This was heaven for me because, like Jorge Luis Borges, "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."