Free Stand Up Straight and Sing! by Jessye Norman Page B

Christian who served as the chairman of the board of deacons at Mount Calvary as well as head of our Sunday school, became very, very quiet—and just a bit perplexed by my ideas and thoughts about the afterlife.
    “I want you to understand that we are Christian people,” he said in a measured voice, “and when we die we go to Heaven if we have been good, and when we have not been good, we go to that other place.”
    “But no, Daddy, we come back!” I insisted. “We come back as other things.”
    My father shook his head in wonder. That was the end of this particular dialogue. My father did not go on to explain the holy doctrine that shaped the very foundation of his faith and belief system of the resurrected Christ and a place for believers in Heaven, after one’s earthly journey. Coming back to life in another form after death was not a part of the tradition. My father must have wondered how his five-year-old daughter, from a deeply religious Christian family, had come across, let alone chosen to believe in, the concept of reincarnation. Or maybe he convinced himself I had no idea of what I spoke, just youthful musings in the backyard on a beautiful day. I, on the other hand, stood firm in my belief that I could return to earth and be a tree if I wanted to, and that I could be that specific tree and this was a kind of secret that God and I shared. I guess that you can say that I found my version of faith in my own backyard!
    Certainly, faith was the center of our familial visits to my maternal grandparents’ farm, which they worked themselves and of which my siblings and I are the grateful owners today. When we were children, about once a month, we would drive to Wilkes County, go to church with Grandma Mamie and Granddaddy, and then retire to their house for big Sunday dinners with them and my uncle Floyd and aunt Esther and my many cousins, whose land was contiguous to that of my grandparents.
    Our cousins were our best pals. There could be as many as twenty people at these after-church dinners, prepared by the able hands of my grandmother, my mother, and various aunts and older cousins—each of them amazing cooks with the uncanny ability to prepare enough food for an army in an incredibly short amount of time. My sister, Elaine, has that magic touch: she can go into her kitchen and take things out of the fridge and freezer and assemble enough food for twelve, alongside the most delicious fresh biscuits one can find this side of the Mason-Dixon Line. I, on the other hand, can cook lots of things, but even with my full concentration, I cannot make a southern-style biscuit that anybody would want to eat. The ability Elaine possesses is in her DNA; it flows directly from my grandmother, our mother, and aunts, who made magic on those Sundays on the farm, where sharing food and laughter and play was a spiritual act. There would be baked ham and lots of chicken, whether roasted or pan-fried, and many serving bowls of vegetables, because they grew them right there on the farm, which, to this city child, was on a par, surely, with what the Garden of Eden must have been like. You could walk around the farm and see peaches and melons and collards and beans, all kinds of delicious things growing on shrubs and trees and on the ground, and you could pick them and eat them right off the vines. I remember my uncles bringing my grandmother milk, produced from the cows on the farm, and watching her seated with a tall wooden barrel between her strong knees and something that looked like a tall pole, as she churned the milk into cream and then butter, by hand. This deliciousness bore no resemblance to the same kind of products purchased at the grocery store. It was not until many years later, when I was invited to sing in Normandy, in northern France, that I tasted butter that pure and sweet again—truly a Proustian moment.
    It was nourishing on every possible level to be seated at my grandparents’ table, to have someone offer a