A Decade Examined, Part One
Photo by Lili Popper on Unsplash
October 18, 2024
This is the first of a series of posts examining my last ten years as I look forward to my 70th birthday next spring. I’m curious to uncover significant experiences, what they’ve taught me, who I am, and who I want to become. So I’m looking back at each year, starting with 2014, with these questions in mind:
What happened? What was a significant experience or milestone for me? For my family? How did this affect us?
What was the impact of world events on me, my family, and my community?
What did I gain? … lose? … learn?
Did I come upon any place where “two roads diverged” (with a bow to Robert Frost) and what do I think about the one I didn’t take?
As my 59th birthday drew near, I wanted to take action on my long-held dream of playing the violin. This actually was the instrument I chose when, at age 9 and entering fourth grade, I could begin to learn to play an instrument in addition to the piano, which I’d been learning for two years by then. However, my father, the decision maker in this matter, had another idea, and in trying to sell it to me he pointed out some some difficulties.
“You have to tune a violin,” he said, his tone clearly indicating this was a deal-breaker. Luckily, he had a solution. My older brother had played the clarinet a few years earlier but didn’t take to it. We still had his instrument, so, come the start of school that fall, I became a clarinet player.
A little aside: I’m still a clarinet player, which is another story.
Several decades later, when my homeschooling daughter was 8, she wanted to learn to play the violin. “Yes, of course,” was my response, though I was surprised because I thought her personality would match better with, say, drums. So we found a teacher, right in our small town, and the daughter commenced taking lessons.
Another little aside: Her facility for learning and playing the violin is phenomenal, as is her memory. She advanced to high levels and eventually took up the viola, which became her primary instrument. Though she’s not playing much at this stage of life, she can pick up either instrument and sound like she practices hours every day.
When the daughter was 11 her teacher moved away so we found a new teacher, with whom she studied until high school graduation. It was this teacher that I called as I was turning 59, and nervously asked whether she would take me on as a student. She said yes and in May of 2014 I started taking lessons.
A few months later, I answered a survey question about what I wanted to achieve in the next year and why it was important to me. I wrote, “I want to be playing violin with other people—to be able to play well enough to do that. It’s important because I love it. Don’t care that it doesn’t contribute anything to anyone else. It’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
What I’ve learned from this is that I can persist at something that’s hard and not always rewarding, like learning to play an instrument from scratch as an adult (more about that here). I’ve learned that the unrewarding dry spells, which can last for a long time, eventually lead to times of joy in playing and realizing my progress.
Now I’m occasionally playing with others, for instance in my music camp adventure last summer. As for the rebellious bit in what I wrote ten years ago (“Don’t care that it doesn’t contribute anything …”) I’m still moving toward believing that I’m really allowed to make music just because I love it. Even if I can’t see any connection to the greater good. Even if I’m not very good at it.
In my 60th year I felt mostly isolated from the effects of world events. The only one I remember is an intensely cold, snowy winter. In the unknown future were the wildfires, hurricanes, and intense heat and drought; the wars in Ukraine and Israel-Gaza and so many other places; my older brother’s relapse to bipolar disorder and substance abuse after two years of stability; and my discovery of my younger brother.
Speaking of that younger brother, this week B and I are visiting him and my sister-in-law at their farm in Alabama. My niece, her husband, and their three young children plus two dogs drove here from Knoxville for a day, just to be with us, which I find immensely touching and exciting. Our grand adventure was an evening at the county fair—such fun to be with children in a place so full of scenes from my childhood and evidence of the growth in the whole fair industry.
Seeing the livestock (it was goat competition day) and the chickens of innumerable sizes, shapes, and colors was one thing. Then, walking through the displays of canned and fresh garden vegetables and all the arts and crafts—quilts, needlework, ceramics, paintings, photography, houseplants, flower arrangements, and more—I marveled at the strength and drive and brilliance of human creativity.
We all are channels through which flow divine intelligence and beauty.
