“I have lost friends, some by death—others through sheer inability to cross the street.” —Virginia Woolf
NO ORDINARY RECITAL
Jack:
Songs I recognized from at least twenty years ago rose from my daughter’s kitchen CD player. Amy seemed to prefer a beat to match her syncopated movements. So-much-to-do, although she never let anyone know what that so-much was, only some vague importance to taking out the garbage.
She stirred a pot to the rhythm of a rock band. She hummed as she turned up the oldies. However, when she turned to me, she reacted as if a snake-oil salesman had opened her back door, and then he had the audacity to sit at her kitchen table with a cup of her freshly brewed coffee.
My grandson had brought me the cup, as if it had been some kind of prize, before he left with my son-in-law for rehearsal. I’d visited because Mikey had invited me, the grandpa he wanted to know but didn’t. Yet.
Temporarily, I had moved in with Amy’s brother, at least until I could get back onto my own two feet. Amy saw the possibility of my walking a straight line as likely as a change in the Law of Gravity.
I had played keyboard, guitar, violin—you name it, lead guitar in a band, taught myself trumpet. I’d worked in an everyday office by day and ruled the stage at night. Before I lost just about everything. To king alcohol. A few months in jail.
The sweet jazz quartet calling from the player in a niche in the corner could have been the news reporting earthquakes downtown, or worse in my daughter’s backyard. Ten feet from the back door. Two feet from where I sat now. Then again, I felt an earthquake tremor begin in my chest and work its way to my stomach. My coffee grew cold. My daughter grew colder.
She stared at me with that look I recognized. Can’t-count-on-you-Dad didn’t need to come to her lips. Instead, the anger showed in her eyes, voice, the tight pull of her lips.
“So, you say you’ll be at Mikey’s recital Friday night. On time.”
“Yes.”
“And you will be sober.” She leaned over the table. “Not, but-I-only-had-two-drinks. Two quart-sized drinks?”
I had talked to Mikey. Before I’d set foot in the house. He’d run out to meet me. “Oh, Grandpa! My recital. It’s going to be great. You know what Daddy told me?”
I’d admitted I didn’t.
“Daddy said you played violin, too. You played really, really good. Could you play for me now? When we get inside.”
“How about some other day?” I’d answered. “Right now. I’m way too excited to hear you play.”
A partial truth. My heart wasn’t ready for music yet. It reminded me too much of what I’d thrown away.
I’d put my hand on his shoulder and Mikey didn’t pull away. He didn’t have the storehouse of empty promises in his memory his mom had. Her brother, too. He had taken me in—to a bed in his basement, next to the hot water heater. The upstairs door remained locked. I had to knock to get in. I’d stolen from both my children. I admit it. Giving back wasn’t easy.
“Did you used to live in Florida or California?” Mikey had asked. “Or was it another country?”
I’d bit my lip. I’d lived ten miles away before I passed out on the job. Mikey had no memory of me at all in his seven years of life.
Since then I’d managed to get a car, guaranteed only to be a car. I had my license back. I had a job, more of a pity offer with pittance pay.
Respect? That was going to take more time.
Amy: three days later
Mikey’s recital is about to begin. I know I should have told him about the call about his grandfather’s death. Jake, my chicken-husband won’t do it. The police swear the accident wasn’t Dad’s fault. He was stone sober and wearing his seatbelt. Probably wasn’t paying attention, however, as the semi crossed the middle lane.
Damn! I’d like to think something positive about my own father. And my insides feel just about as cold and empty. Maybe I didn’t give him much of a chance to apologize.
Mikey’s group is up last. Jake told him the best gets saved for the end, so nobody needs to follow it and feel less-than. Mikey thought that made sense. Of course, he believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Jake says. “Are you okay? Or at least as okay as anybody can be…under the circumstances.”
“We can’t just pretend Dad beamed up into a spaceship.” My voice doesn’t leak sarcasm. It explodes it.
“Mikey doesn’t have the same complicated memories you have. You can’t shield him from hurt. You can’t assign your feelings of guilt to Mikey either?” Jake’s voice is soft, but he doesn’t blink.
“What guilt?” I raise my voice and the lady in front of us turns around.
“Sorry,” I say to the woman, feeling heat rise to my cheeks. Guilt. Maybe. Dad tried to apologize. He said something about making amends. He could have been talking to an oncoming train.
Jake pats my hand. “I could have been kinder, too.”
I want to swat him but don’t. Not here. His words are like a fresh stab in a seeping wound.
I hear each musical presentation, the way I hear a passing train while waiting for safe passage. Yet I wonder if safe passage exists.
Mikey’s group appears. He doesn’t seem to see us right away. I don’t wave and make a point of the fact his newly discovered grandfather is missing. Then, Mikey begins his solo, an Irish song I recognize from forty years ago, when I was small. I asked Dad to play it all the time, and then danced across the floor.
My son’s technique and timing improved. He adds style I didn’t know he knew. Jake looks at me with his brows pulled together. He shrugs. Apparently, he wonders when Mikey transformed from a good violinist at age seven to a prodigy.
He is beaming as he leaves the stage. Several people grab and hug him before he gets to his dad and me, but his eyes seem to scan the back of the auditorium.
“Mom, Dad!” he calls. “Where did Grandpa go? He was here a minute ago. Why didn’t he tell me he was going to be part of the show?”
“He. Did. What?” I ask.
“With all those lights around him. In the back. You’d think everybody would be turning around to look at him! But I got it, the way he held his fingers on the strings and moved the bow—to make the song sound better. He didn’t seem so far away. He felt right next to me. I’m not sure how. For real. Not sure I could play the same way again without him.”
“You’re sure that was Grandpa?” I said, “because…” I choke on words that won’t fit together.
When we get to the car it is locked. However, Dad’s violin is lying across the back seat.
“A gift,” I whisper,” from Grandpa. “That was his. I’d recognize it anywhere. I knew Mikey would hear the story of his grandfather’s death in a different way now, a way he would be able to accept long before his dad and I could. Mikey believed in miracles.
Now I needed to believe in forgiveness.
originally published in Piker Press on May 8, 2017
Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” ― Primo Levi
Dachau, May 1938
(Six months before The Night of Broken Glass)
Part I
The little girl overheard Mama tell Great Uncle Benjamin, “I feigned interest in marketplace pork.”
He answered, “You can’t fool Nazis. You should be true to yourself.”
The little girl was pecking the piano one key at a time, black and white, high and low tones. Uncle’s happy songs lay hidden inside the sounds like secret buried treasure, with a beauty that stretched from one side of the keyboard to the other, sweet sounds that rose and fell, music that told a story she wasn’t allowed to repeat, not even in whispers.
She wondered why the sons and daughters of Abraham and Jacob’s Traditions should anger anyone. The child searched and found only dissonance under her fingertips when she added more than one key. Uncle had promised to come at noon the next day and lead her small fingers across the scales, but it would take work, an attentive ear, and love. She would practice. And learn.
But dark filled the sky And Uncle never arrived.
Papa came home and said Uncle had been taken. Papa had missed capture by a shadow.
He’d found a way to leave Munich with her and her mother, a passageway as narrow as the eye of a needle used for silk, dangerous, yet their only hope.
And the little girl followed, believing that Uncle would come someday and lead her hands into music because she could work, and listen, and love as well as anyone.
Part II
Benjamin felt the heat of the men next to him, a herd, silenced by fear so strong it had an odor, gut-wrenching and rancid.
One of the guards outside the gate glanced at Benjamin and then looked down. The guard’s face looked familiar.
Benjamin and the young guard stood beside a message bent into the metal: Arbeit Macht Frei, Work sets you free.
The guard had been his student, a youth who expected a golden sound from a flip of the wrist and a closed ear.
Benjamin’s six-year-old niece tried harder.
He imagined her waiting for him as he dropped his shoes next to the others, outside the sign marked brausebad, the bathhouse, the place of cleansing, perhaps the beginning, perhaps the end, but never destruction.
He prayed that even if he couldn’t return, and his niece didn’t learn his song, she would create her own.
The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails. (William Shakespeare )
I wrote this song while Ella was in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital. Twelve years ago. At birth, she weighed three pounds and three ounces. The song created positive energy while I waited for Ella to grow and heal.
Eric Hauck, my incredible guitar teacher, provided professional backup and recorded the music on a CD. For a student in her mid 60’s. Hey, so I’m a late bloomer. Just a later-than-usual variety.
Recently, a beautiful young friend from the YMCA created a private YouTube video for me from that compact disc.
Ella loves to listen to her song. Now. As a real-life, almost-teenager. Someone I never could have envisioned from a tiny creature held together with oxygen and tubes.
Since I fractured a metacarpal in my right hand, guitar strings and I don’t get along as well anymore. However, music lives. I hope these two minutes lift your spirits.
A kind word never broke anyone’s mouth. (Irish proverb)
Sometimes someone needs to hear about the good
he or she does, not as a reward. As an acknowledgment.
A chance to give kindness a fresh shape. Not an avalanche
of compliments. A moment of recognition, a boost.
After all, life is both sunshine and storm.
I won’t share the full printed note sent to my
daughter-in-law about her son, Dakota.
I don’t know the music director who
wrote it. Her words were directed to
Dakota’s mom. His mom and I are close
friends, and she shared the message with me.
The message in Essence: Dakota, is a ten-year-old, fourth-grade boy. He is learning to play the bass. And learning to play well. He works without expecting immediate gratification. Dakota also helps his fellow bass player. With whatever she needs. Dakota is a neat child. He helps clean-up after class. He doesn’t need to be asked because he is an independent thinker.
My addition: The child has depth. I know because one day while we were collecting rocks in an old wagon, he said, “You know you won’t live forever.”I answered. “True. So, let’s enjoy the day together. Make it worthwhile.” He smiled and we continued our play. Dakota and two old, yet still-moving rocky wagons. The message from his teacher was a precious gift, but not a surprise. Dakota is a young boy with mature insight. I am blessed to call him grandson.
terrypetersen 