Burgmüller and Other Defining Moments

When I was thirteen, I had a piano concert.

I had been a long time student and that year, I received the coveted first chair position. As one does with such an honor, I chose the piece that best reflected my talent and would impresses on the audience the challenge in the pace, the grace of my finger movements and the sheer grit it took to make the piece my own.

I chose Burgmüller’s Arabesque.

Arabesque is a stunning, daunting musical endeavor and is just as intoxicating to watch the hands that play it, as it is to hear it performed.

For weeks, my piano teacher sat with me to practice the performance. She didn’t work on teaching me the song; I knew it already. The song was my Opus. Instead, she worked to combat my increasingly gripping anxiety. Sometimes she would sit alone in the chairs on the far side of the room, sometimes she would invite whoever was around. But every time, every single time, I faltered. She would send the audience away, come back to the bench and sit beside me and once again, I would perform as I did at home- as if the piece and I were one and no one else mattered.

We practiced calming techniques. I was encouraged to not look out into the crowd- to keep my eyes only on the keys. To drown out the world and play in the way that I enjoyed most- for me.

On the day of the concert, the room darkened as I perched confidently on the bench and began the first few measures- flawlessly. Then, the awareness settled. My fingers slipped once, then recovered, then slipped a few more times. The heavy weight of the audience’s eyes clawed my back, intently glaring over my shoulders at my fingers- salivating in anticipation of another failure. It wrapped it’s talons around my neck and my mind went blank. I sat back, hands on my lap and looked at the keys. I had no idea what note came next. I had no idea how to start again. I had no idea how to move. I was frozen. I was devastated. I had let everyone down. My teacher intercepted and guided me off stage and soothingly walked me back to my waiting family members.

I heard my dad ask my mom why in the world he had been paying all those years for lessons if I didn’t know how to play.

The arms that reached for me belonged to the man who’s arms had always been my steadiness. Carpenter’s hands rough from the craft and age, he placed them on my head and gave me cover and refuge from the dense fog of judgment that filled the room. I cried into his shoulder- silently, waiting for the second performer to adjust the focus of the pitying crowd. I had shelter, and I knew that I had that shelter for as long as I needed.

It’s been 25 years since then. In the car this morning, on my way to work with my iTunes set to shuffle, Arabesque filtered through the speakers. I was transported to that evening, a defining moment in my life, not because of my very public failure but because I was old enough to appreciate and recognize the unyielding rock that was my grandfather.

As the song filled the car, my mind jumped from one moment to another: At 15, after my parent’s divorce, he and my grandmother dancing in the window where I could see their shadows…and see that love still existed. At 6, running him over with the too-fast sled he built me after he insisted I go down the big hill, and then had to jump in front to save me. Daily walks after elementary school where he let me talk. And talk. And talk. And pick honeysuckles and look for ghosts of civil war casualties. Memories of our only big fight-where we didn’t talk for 24 hours-about the man I would end up marrying, and how we laughed about it years later. Looking through photographs of my wedding and seeing the candid photo of him- the only person still standing for the bride long after I was at the altar. Our evening commute phone calls where he relished in every tiny detail of his great grandchildren’s accomplishments and quirks. Knowing how much my boys were deeply loved- and how proud he was that they would carry on his legacy. How he would close his eyes, smile and shake his head when he was overcome with pride and love.

On his last birthday, as my grandma helped him into bed and spoke of the great day they had, he thanked her-as if he was saying a lifetime of thank you’s to the woman he loved since he was 16.

“Oh honey…you’re so welcome.” She whispered quietly, with more love in her voice than the culmination of all their 65 years.

They had no idea I was in the next room listening, sobbing.

They had no idea that I watched their shadows dance in the kitchen.

A lifetime of defining moments.

Then, a single moment where there is one last breath. A two o’clock in the morning phone call.

And a defining person is gone.