Late in the afternoon of May 30, 2009, I stood poised in front of my childhood home, about to close the door to my family’s home of fifty years for the last time. I propped open the screen door with my right heel and reached into the front hall with my left hand to pull the heavy door closed. I glanced into the living room and took in the bare floors and empty space. That house was many things over the years, but empty was not one of them. To see it stripped down and naked felt inappropriate; I knew it was time to leave. There was nothing left for me there. My elderly mother had passed weeks earlier, and I had a new husband standing by in Warsaw, Poland. The dog sat in the backseat of the car, waiting for me to reverse out of the driveway to begin our new life. I sat in the driver's seat. To the left, stood the hedge I had delighted in pruning, first with a pair of clippers, and later, when I was older and braver, with electric trimmers. To the right was my mother’s r...
Chapter 3 I got first oboe, which means I sit at the head of the row and pretty much lead the section. There are only four oboists in the whole orchestra, so it isn’t that big of a deal, really, but I practiced super hard, and I’m relieved. I would have been mortified to be beaten by a seventh grader. When we were in fifth grade, Mrs. Gallagher, the middle school music teacher, gave a presentation about all the different band and orchestra instruments kids could learn the next year. One after another, she held them up, and then she played the chorus of that sappy song about hearts going on from the movie Titanic so we could hear how they sounded different from one another. In the middle of the assembly, I realized that one single lady knew how to play all those instruments—from brass to woodwinds to strings. Watching her, I felt like twenty different languages were floating around in her head all at once. She knew how to speak trombone and viola and ...
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