The Battle of Good and Evil

It’s a misty, moisty October morning less than a week before election day. The air hangs gray and damp over what’s left of the vegetable garden, decaying squash vines and toughened Kale. The scene reminds me of another autumn morning when my adult children were small.

Too cold and wet to play outside, it was a perfect day for a game of pretend, so when breakfast was over, I plunked the baby on the living room rug and pressed play on a cassette of the 1812 Overture, rousing classical music you may know with cannon fire at the end. In my childhood, it was the soundtrack for a Puffed Wheat commercial. As an adult, I learned it was not only the jingle for a cereal ad, but Tchaikovsky’s portrait of Russia’s miraculous defeat of Napoleon at the battle at Borodino.

Knowing nothing of Tchaikovsky’s narrative, my two older kids responded innately to the story within the music. At the call of distant trumpets, up the stairs they raced to the dress-up box. I heard them pawing through its contents for appropriate gear. My three-year-old son came back down in a Hawaiian-print shirt down to his ankles, and an antique safari hat. Brandishing a slightly bent cardboard sword covered in aluminum foil, he leapt from sofa to armchair to coffee table. Obviously on horseback, he galloped around the dining room table as a motif of “La Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, whispered above humming cellos.

My five-year-old daughter descended the staircase in the sawed-off tulle skirt from my Aunt Wilma’s pale-blue prom gown. The gauzy curtain wrapped round and round her head acted as crown, veil, and train all in one.

Kettle drums boomed and an oboe whined as if evil would surely overtake our home as well as Mother Russia. But my Hawaiian soldier flashed his sword as cymbals clashed, and my diminutive princess/angel/bride swirled her skirts and veil as the battle enlisted every instrument in the orchestra.

With ever descending scales, the music slowed. In the thrall of solemn violins, my little girl paraded the living room waving a chrome baton above her head to a melody evoking the divine snowfall that froze Napoleon’s artillery in the mud causing his retreat.

Tchaikovsky wove in a chorus of the Russian hymn, “Oh, Lord, Save Our People,” and my little boy joined his sister in a kind of grand march, their small hearts somehow attuned to the sovereign omnipotence marking each note.

Again, distant trumpets echoed, the tempo sped up, and the sound of officer’s whipping their horses from trot to gallop caused both children to mount their steeds and join the thunderous advance of the Russian cavalry.

Their baby sister sat on the carpet in awe as they raced around her, horses rearing, carillons chiming, bells pealing, cannon unleashing a rhythmic, final barrage above and beyond the harmony. Victory was in the room, and even the baby knew it.

While composing this post, I’ve listened to the 1812 Overture, again and again. They say Tchaikovsky never cared much for this piece even though it’s a popular favorite.

Listen to it for yourself and see if you can’t hear what my children heard years ago, and I confess, still brings tears to my eyes, the battle of good and evil, and the mercy of an invisible, invincible God who gave triumph to a weakened, destitute people, who’d burned their own towns to starve an overwhelming enemy.

So, with only days before our own nation decides it’s new leader, I’ll go out to my garden, cut the vines, and hope for spring, knowing that no matter what we fear or long for, God almighty is in control.