Reunion

That would be Bill’s 60^th high school reunion…a daunting number, yes.  Bill graduated from Livermore Falls High School in 1952 (before I was born) and over a recent weekend we made the trek to Central Maine for the event.  I went purely out of a sense of duty and surprisingly ended up having a good time.  It certainly made for a few hours of superb people-watching!

As we arrived, a man taking photographs for a scrapbook exclaimed Hello there, Billy!  Did you bring your daughter?  I’m afraid he wasn’t joking-he was truly confused and later, during the meal, he asked Just how old are you?  The appetizer hour was full of stares and questions, but once people realized that Bill and I have been married for 29 years things calmed down.  I was at least 20 years younger than everyone in the room, but all the same I have lived a full 57 years and thought it much ado about nothing.

I was taken back to another time and place by everyone calling my husband Billy. He had long left that name behind when I met him. And it was interesting to observe these people, most of who had stayed within a few miles of their birthplace.  Superficially one could look at their lives and assume they had been dull and predictable.  But just start asking, and you hear about seeing the US in a motor home, international travel, successful business ventures and recovery after devastating loss.  When I asked one of the women at our table about her family, she volunteered that two of her four adult children had died within a year of each other.  I quickly lost my snobby assumptions about life in Livermore Falls.

Bill had spoken of one of his classmates, “the prettiest girl,” getting pregnant, going away to have the baby and subsequently giving it up for adoption.  Well, she was there at the reunion with her husband of decades, very sparkly and still pretty.  She told of their four children, a teaching career and a family business.  It struck me as a good example of overcoming a mistake, and I can’t help but wonder as I see many, many young unmarried women with a child or two, trying to make a life.

I came away from the reunion pondering, again…What would it have been like to stay in one place? Or even in one place for more than 10 years?  I have always wanted to see what’s around the bend and I thrive on bringing my particular skills and talents to a new choir, a new church and new students.  Although I would do it all over again, given the chance, I find that as I age my restlessness is subsiding. And I think that one of these days I might just stay put.

Comfort

Last night I heard a breathtakingly beautiful piece of music, Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirrors in the Mirror) for ‘cello and organ.  Performed in the resonant acoustics of St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor, the notes filled every nook and cranny of this magnificent space.

From the program notes: Spiegel im Spiegel, composed in 1978, is an ethereal lullaby.  It moves at an unvarying pace and is built from the simplest of musical materials: a continuous broken-chord pattern, subject to only the most subtle harmonic shifts; bell tones, deep in the bass and high in the treble; and long-held notes moving by fundamental intervals in the ‘cello. There is not a single chromatic note in the entire work.  The title refers to the infinity of images produced by parallel plane mirrors: tonic triads endlessly repeated with small variations as if reflected back and forth in ever expanding phrases.

There are performances on You-Tube, of course, but I can find none that begin to replicate what I heard last night.  Most are with piano rather than organ, and this work seems to beg for the sustained sonorities of the organ.

Beginning with my dad’s memorial service on January 1, this year has been filled with loss and challenge.  I feel much like the plants that grow in bogs, buffeted by difficult environments and struggling to grow.  Last night the first few notes of the organ touched me; I closed my eyes and my mind to the distractions around and listened. I was moved to tears and felt comforted in a way that only music can comfort.  I am grateful.

Otherwise


I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.


At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver 
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.


Jane Kenyon, Constance (1993)

This Is Why…

My darling student Lily, age 9, recently presented her Suzuki Book 1 recital. This means that she learned, polished and memorized all 18 pieces in that level and then performed them on a private recital. It took place at my house, with her parents, sister, grandparents and 2 friends in attendance.

This is always one of my favorite work-related events.  The student is excited, the parents are proud and generally some lovely music-making is heard.  By this point the young pianist has learned quite a lot and is able to play with dynamics, rubato and the like.  It is the jumping off point for the real piano repertoire of Bach, Beethoven and Schumann.

This recital was a little different, though, because since Christmas Lily’s mother has had 3 surgeries for cancer.  She is a beautiful, vibrant woman fighting for her life. Throughout this ordeal Lily has continued her lessons and diligent practicing and I have had the honor and responsibility of providing some stability and normalcy to what surely must be a petrified little girl.  Even at her young age she has internalized the music and made it a means of expression, which she desperately needs right now.

So at her recital we all sat in my living room and listened in wonder as Lily laid out her highest hopes and deepest fears.  And yes, this is why I teach piano.

So long, Chester.  Good boy.  1999-2012.

Good Friends, Good Food

There’s been a flurry of entertaining around here along with some experimenting with new recipes. Two of the best cooks I know, Joe and Jet, came for the last weekend of April. I am always a bit intimidated when cooking for them, but I know they’re willing to try just about anything.  Our meal was basically simple-salmon and asparagus- with an interesting grapefruit salad.  It was somewhat labor-intensive, but with Jet as my sous-chef it was a breeze.

Pink Grapefruit and Radicchio Salad with Dates and Pistachios

New York Times,  April 11, 2012

2 pink or red grapefruits

2 medjool dates, pitted and thinly sliced

½ medium shallot, peeled and sliced

sea salt, to taste

1 small head radicchio, halved and cored

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons coarsely chopped pistachios

freshly ground black pepper

Slice off the peel and pith of the grapefruits, saving the peels.  Slice the grapefruits into quarter-inch-thick rounds and arrange on a platter.  Evenly sprinkle the dates on top. Squeeze the juice from the peel into a bowl.  You should have about a tablespoon and if necessary squeeze some from one of the slices. Add the shallot and a pinch of salt; let sit for 5 minutes.  Thinly slice the radicchio and add to the bowl.  Add shallot and grapefruit juice and toss to combine.  Toss in 3 tablespoons of the oil.  Sprinkle grapefruit slices with salt and the remaining oil.  Place a mound of radicchio in the middle of the platter, leaving a border of the fruit exposed. Sprinkle with pistachios and black pepper and serve right away.  Yield: 4 generous servings.

Next up was a visit from my friend Susan, a transplanted Texan. She was game to try a seasonal dish of fiddleheads and pasta.  Fiddleheads are young ostrich ferns and I honestly don’t know if they’re available outside of New England.  Many people have their favorite, secret spots to pick fiddleheads, complete with mosquitoes and black flies, but I prefer to buy them in the supermarket (still fresh and local) or from a truck on the side of the road.  We cooked them with Portobello mushrooms and the combination was unusual but tasty.  Truthfully, I am good for only 1 or 2 servings of fiddleheads a year.

And last, but certainly not least, the organ guru who takes care of the tuning, repair and maintenance of the organ at St. Saviour’s came for dinner on a recent Sunday night.  Bill was in the area from Northampton MA to make a presentation at another church and do some checking up on our instrument.  He is great company and loads of fun, not to mention that he brings several bottles of excellent wine (we only drank one) plus old wooden organ pipes for kindling every time he comes over.  I made a tasty Moroccan stew of butternut squash and chickpeas, with plenty for leftovers.

I love to follow-up a good meal with a super simple dessert and a cup of decaf espresso made with my nifty little Moka (thanks, Emily).

 

Reading Proust

 About two years ago I decided I wanted to “read” Proust. I kept coming across references to his Remembrance of Things Past, I’d see it in a bookstore, and even Emily came home with the first volume in tow. In the New York Times I read of a group devoted entirely to Proust which met at the public library and I thought that sounded interesting. At the time I was still pretty new to Ellsworth and hadn’t found many non-work activities which interested me, so…I started asking around…a Francophile friend, a librarian, acquaintances who read serious books. And in the fall of 2010 five of us met at my house for drinks and madeleines and got started.

  Remembrance of Things Past (known as In Search of Lost Time in the newest translation) is a SEVEN volume series of the narrator’s musings on French life in the late 19th century. Paragraphs can go on for pages, descriptions include so many minute details that many readers want to throw in the towel, and once again, it is SEVEN volumes long! And yet…Proust was onto something. His observations of human character are superb, and the characters themselves, whether annoying or charming or both, are universal. With all his flowery language he still manages to speak to twenty-first century readers.

 Proust is most often associated with madeleines, small French pastries somewhat like cookies. It is the taste of a madeleine, dipped in tea, which brings a flood of early childhood memories back to our narrator. And, according to Jonah Lehrer in Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Proust actually anticipated the scientific discovery of involuntary memory; that sensory experiences of sight, sound, smell, feel and taste can trigger remembrances of things past.

 There are now nine of us in the group and we meet every 5-6 weeks for a marvelous potluck meal and “discussion.” We are all at different places in the seven volumes and our librarian member is always challenging us to go further with our analysis. She has even given us an assignment for next month: we are to read aloud a passage that has special meaning to us. That may be difficult for me because I have resorted to cheating by listening to the audio version as I drive back and forth to work. It is so much easier this way, and also somewhat abridged. To die-hard Proustians this probably doesn’t count, but it’s good enough for me.

 Invariably someone at our gatherings will ask if we should keep on, or might suggest another book as a diversion. And just as invariably the general consensus will be if not now, when?

 I’ve just begun Volume 4, and I promise to take a photo of the group at our next get-together.