Somewhere, Music Is

Since I've retired, I've been trying to bring music back into my life. Once, I was able to play the piano well enough to bring the music out of its keyboard, but I quit playing well over a decade ago. I didn't stop for any particular reason, I just drifted away from regular practice, and somewhere in there, the music stopped.

For the past two years, I've been trying to restart it.

I got some basic piano books from a friend of mine who used to teach lessons, and diligently worked my way through them. I've had very little formal piano training, so as I worked, I tried to undo some bad habits, tried to learn to play correctly.

It kinda-sorta worked. By sitting down at the piano most days of most weeks, I was able to learn to play the notes on the pages. The notes, yes, but the music, no. I could press the keys and get them to make the 'correct' noise, but the notes remained unconnected; random bits of noise.

For a while, I blamed the piano itself. I bought it as a gift for myself after I got divorced some thirty years ago, and time has not been kind to the inner workings of the instrument. I could, and did, get it tuned up, but tuning can't fix the worn and hardened hammer felts. Its sound is less on the mellow and rich side of the scale these days; it has tipped to the bright and tinny side of life. 

Then my piano teacher friend came by one day and played it for a few minutes. While the sound was not as rich as my heart remembered, the music was in there for her fingers, so I knew the instrument itself was not beyond hope.

And so, I kept persistently plogging away, patiently plunking the keys. Hoping anyways, that some skill would return, that the music was not lost to my fingers forever. 

Then, last week, as I finished learning a song and was playing it through, magic happened. The music returned! The disparate notes connected themselves into phrases. The phrases connected through into an unbroken line of sound. The main note in the chord emphasized itself, the others took their proper place as subordinate color. The vibrations of the strings melded together into a single wave of sound which spilled out of the instrument, into the room, and into my soul.

As I finished the song, I was unsurprised to find my cheeks wet with tears, just a few. 

Long ago, my mother-in-law gave me a small sign that said, "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible, is Music."

I've always agreed.

And have no words for the gratitude I feel that creating Music is back within my reach. If I keep practicing, now I know it will return.

*happy sigh*

Almost Spring

 

The weather has been unseasonably warm here for the past week, and as I was out walking the dog this morning, I spied the shoots of some crocuses peeping through their bed of dead leaves. I wanted to cheer - it's a sure sign spring is on the way. I wanted to push them back under their covers - hadn't they seen the forecast?  The temperature is going to plummet back down to the mid-teens in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

I had to have a stern talk with me this morning as I was driving to my exercise class. Despite the beautiful weather, I was fretting about the cold days to come. Hasn't the last decade taught me anything about enjoying the days I have?

As a way to reground myself, as I left class to drive home, I put the top down on the car, still whining just a bit because it's too cold in February for such nonsense. But, I was wrong - it was just right.

The air was cool, but not cold, and the sun warmed my face and hair as I meandered down the road. I stopped at a stoplight and lifted my gaze to see a hawk drifting overhead. My ears thrilled to hear the soaring song of a pair of cardinals.

Ready or not, spring is just around the corner. 

I think it might be the after-effects of repairing Grandma's quilt, but as these winter days slip away, I've spent many hours pondering the little I know of her life. I've tried to put myself in her shoes, on that homestead farm in north-central Minnesota. She started her life in a house lit with candles, heated with an iron stove. In her first married years, she did the laundry for her brood (which grew to eight boys and one girl) in washtubs, eliciting help from the boys to turn the crank on the wringer. She lived as technology started to change the world for the better - was one of the first in town, according to the family history book I was looking through, to get a gasoline-powered washing machine. She saw the birth of the electrification of this country, the changeover from horse-drawn equipment to automobiles and tractors.

How long ago those days seemed when I first learned of them as a child. How close they feel now, as I quickly approach the age she was when I first remember hearing her warm welcome as we piled from the car into her kitchen.

I once thought time was linear, orderly. I no longer see it that way. Where the seasons once cycled in a  leisurely fashion, the color of each iteration new and sharp and distinct in its turn, they now take on more of the aspect of a kaleidoscope, the jumbled color fragments no longer distinct as the moments tumble by, but still beautiful.

Life is Good.

Happy Canceversary To Us!

 

Perhaps one year the middle of February will roll around and I'll forget that it was on the days surrounding Valentine's Day - on the 13th and 15th - that Kate and I had our respective initial cancer surgeries, but (assuming my mental faculties remain intact) I rather doubt it.

It's been eight years for her, eleven for me.

So far, knock on wood, we've landed on the life side of the odds, and every year the cancer stays gone, chances are better it won't come back for a while.

I am grateful for my sake, even more grateful on her behalf - there were so many things I wanted to pass on to my daughter; cancer at age 30 was not among them.

Once those first nightmare days of treatment passed, they left behind a so-far indelible residue of gratefulness. No, life isn't all peachy-keen, but 

I. Am. Here. 

I still get to have new experiences, to watch my grandchildren grow. I have a whole 'nother decade's worth of memories to mull over as I go to sleep at night. I still get to be alive. (I can't even think that without being sad that Libby didn't get the same answer we did. I miss her.)

These days, I feel better. I have lingering neuropathy in my feet, but it no longer affects my daily activities. I still miss my breasts. ("They" said after a year or two, I'd not even notice they are gone. "They" lied, but I'm guessing "they" also never got body parts amputated, so have no clue.) My energy has mostly returned to normal - no longer having to answer to an alarm clock has certainly helped my healing in this arena.

I have started to make plans again. There is still an element of "God willin' and the crick don't rise" behind every calendar entry I make that's more than a month or so out, but I'm making the plans anyways. Hiccups in my plans will happen. That's OK. I will change the plans if and when I need to - the important part for me is that I make them.

I am living the days I have.

This is the best gift I can give to Libby, the best way I know to honor the lessons I learned as I walked beside her on her cancer journey.

I am here.
Thank you.
Amen.

Grandma's Quilts

My Grandma John, it is told, made a quilt for each one of her grandchildren, and she had 59 grandchildren. It was a beautiful labor of love. 

I still have my quilt, the patches worn beyond repair. It sits at the bottom of my blanket cabinet, and every so often I pull it out and wrap it around me, enjoying the flood of memories embedded in its tired threads.

My sister Maria's quilt ended up in the hands of her son. It's not quite as worn as mine, and after one of his many army moves, it found its way to my hands for repair.

This past week, I finally pulled it out to see if it could indeed be fixed. The back is too worn to save, but it wasn't anything special - one of those old corded twin bedspreads, its harvest gold color advertising its decade of origin. The front now, the front is in tolerable condition. Just one of the random fabrics she used to assemble its cheerful striped face has given way to time. 

So, I've spent the last several days working to bring it back to usable shape. It took me longer than I'd anticipated to undo Grandma's handiwork. The normal guideline for sewing is 10-12 stitches per inch; this piece has at least double that, so when picking the stitches out, I needed to take great care not to damage the fabric.

As I worked, I thought of the hard-working hands that had assembled the quilt so long ago. She was not as OCD as I - the edges of her handiwork are not precisely lined up; that is part of their beauty. (But then, I'm pretty sure I'd let go of my OCDness if I were working to assemble more than half a hundred quilts, so there is that.)

I grew sad, because as I searched my memories I couldn't find a moment where I'd ever had a one-on-one conversation with her. The memories I do have are good ones - feelings of loving welcome when my family showed up at one of the large family gatherings held several times each year - but I was always one in a crowd. I wrote her letters when I was in college, but ours was a one-way correspondence; by that time she was unable to respond.

As I continued to pull apart the seams, I like to think I felt her hand on my shoulder, letting me know those memories of love were real. No, I have it wrong. It's not that they were real. She was letting me know her love IS real, reaching across the miles and the years, woven into the threads of the quilt I am working to repair.

Love Is.