She called me and my four brothers last month and said that she wanted to give a party on the Monday before Thanksgiving. She explained that she chose the date because four out of the five brothers and their wives could attend. She said that as we could not all see each other on Thanksgiving, a Monday dinner would allow us to celebrate the holiday, early, but at least together. She insisted on hosting us at a local restaurant and called the dinner her "Thanksgiving surprise".
I accepted, of course. I would miss seeing brother #five, his wife and two year old son who live in California, but would see my other brothers who usually spend this holiday with their wives' families. An early Thanksgiving, fine, but what was this surprise? I didn't ask. From her voice I could tell that it was something good. And something good from (sorry Mom) an 80+ year old, at least isn't something like a broken hip, or worse, the sort of surprise that I fear and almost expect. My first thought was that she and her 90+ year old beau, after ten years of dating, were going to announce their engagement. I kept this thought to myself and waited for the surprise day to come.
As it turns out, I didn't have to wait that long. My mother, in her excitement, just couldn't keep her secret bottled up. She told brother #5 who wasn't around to spill the beans. But then she let it slip again to bro #3, I'm guessing because it felt so good the first time and, anyway, the cat was already out of the bag. By the time she called me, she assumed I knew already that she had sold one of her cello bows and wanted to divide the quite generous proceeds among her five sons as a holiday gift.
The dinner was perfect and the gift will be well spent. It's hard to imagine that a cello bow could be so valuable. Yet, I would be happier if my mother could still hold that bow in her now arthritic hand and play her cello. Some of you know the sound a cello makes in a concert hall but for me it was different. I was weaned on its songs in the resonant enclosure of my parents' study. I grew up listening to that sonorous alto voice every day of my childhood. It is the voice of the depths of emotion, of sadness and tears. Listen to any movie soundtrack and you'll find that whenever they want you to cry, they bring on the cellos. Its lower register is the moan. Its upper notes are the wail. Bowed in long strokes it is Saint Saens' graceful "Swan" gliding down a still lake in France:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNbXuFBjncw&feature=related
Bowed in rapid bursts it is Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Flight of the Bumblebee":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5GkX70hrzo&feature=related
My mother was a professional musician. She played in orchestras and taught college courses. She played quartets in the house. Rarely, she took on a student. Mostly, she practiced. And practiced and practiced. She says that growing up she never had to be told to practice. As the young wife of a physician, her hours alone with her instrument brought her comfort. As the older mother of five sons they brought her peace. Once a year she would bring her cello into my school classroom and put the Swan and Bumblebee on display. Twenty years ago I saw a book lying on a table in my parent's den, "Learning to Bow". I thought for sure that it was an esoteric tome about cello technique. My mother got a good laugh when she explained that the book, by my brother's friend Bruce Feiler, was about his year teaching English in Japan and that in this case bow rhymed with wow. Bowing either way is not so easy and does, in fact, take a life to master.
In this holiday season permit me to paraphrase Bing Crosby from Irving Berlin's "White Christmas":
What can you do with a cellist
When she stops being a cellist?
Oh, what can you do with
A cellist who retires?
What a silly question. We're still following her wherever she wants to go... and doing our best to keep up! Now that's something to be thankful for.
