Voices of Women of Spirit and Faith
When I review my list of things to do, whose many items catch my eye, I realize my heart strings have been tugging at me since the beginning of time.When I look at my list, it seems to resemble the makings of a medieval palimpsest blinding contemporary eyes with irresistible twinges of potential luminosity. In other words, I have too many things to do. Instruments of another time and place, whether scribbled on a white-washed wall or on a post-it note appear overwhelming. I am drowning in an ocean filled with voluminous details. What is important? The absence or presence of faith?
For sure, I’d rather test my tired and aching body on the island of Skyros or swim in the caves of Aegean Sea awash in impossible shades of blue brimming with blue. Instead, I am destined to live in a world rife with violin strings, the disarmingly charmed world supple with violin bows, and a world of missed opportunities and juried recitals.
Just look at this! My to do list includes: black patten shoes, matching dress and a quaint vest soldered with wild bunches of embroidered nasturtiums, a change of underwear, yoga mats, a blanket, and finally, some sheet music decoding the inner recesses of the Broadway show tune “You’ve Gotta Have Heart”.
I’m sure I must have forgotten something riveting and important. Oh yes, the music stand! I wipe the sweat from my wrinkled brow. Life is frenetic and in this chaos, something still pulls at my heart strings. I’m wearing the wrong deodorant.
What my daughter, Naima, wants is a bow that is clearly unaffordable. Yet, if I adhere to the adhesive precepts of the post it note and buy the bow on time, the recital will already be over. She needs time to break the bow in; a new bow is always a challenge. Although the new violin strings I purchased last week sang and stung the insouciant ear, one string unexpectedly popped during a contest at Carefree Highway’s Blue Grass Jamboree Round Up Last Sunday.
Where do I begin to unpack the dream of the perfectly rounded to do list filled with equanimity that fails interrupt the shamanic drumming of the heart?
My heartbeat is slightly irregular, I admit, but it has never slowed me down. Yet, I have some regrets over my being so busy with what I decided to create. Another round of applause may be too late. Today, I wish I hadn’t called her violin teacher that day last April and insisted she give up voice. I was afraid Naima’s voice might falter and let her down in some way.
A violin, I told myself has more solid longevity than the human voice. Besides, what if she developed nodules on the larynx and could never sing another note?
A violin was something you can pick up and put down. The body I thought was not a sure container for irregular heartbeats. Veiled with an wholesome and sonorous sound, the violin assured a performer dignity, repose, and, of course you could escape the chaotic movement of daily life, right? That’s what I thought. I never asked my daughter what she thought about her hectic life. She was too busy performing to meditate on the meaning of life, the faith she had in herself.
In retrospect, what finally tugged at my heart strings was a glimpse of a another musician is life. She was playing an accordion plaintively on Boulder Mall. People strolling on the Mall demanded another song that she must play sculpted and shaped to their particular whims of their liking. What was asked for was delivered without hesitation. Was this indifference? Was it music of the heart? It was only when I examined the situation more closely, I was told by an onlooker: the girl has no choice. She was crippled from birth and can only play one instrument.
As parents we shape our progeny as we wish and deny them the choices they might have made. That, above all, tugs at my heart strings until this very day of the blog.
Elizabeth Bishop, Ph.D. is a candidate for a second doctorate at CIIS and writes poetry incessantly. visit her website by clicking here.
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