Adagio

         The school I went to obliged us to attend a shop class where we made trivets, doorstops and boot-jacks but offered next to nothing by way of musical instruction. A private school for boys founded on the British Public School model, our teachers were ersatz, vaguely effete “Masters” imported from Canada who wore three-piece-suits, French cuffs and watch-chains, and referred to us as “Dear boy”. A brush-cut ex Marine, Mr. Beggs, conducted a music class from first through third grades where we were exposed to the rudiments of the language of music, at which point the far more important languages of Latin and French put an abrupt end to such trivial pursuits. The only instrument available or encouraged was the recorder, and we were forced to attend a weekly, command performance by a consort of half a dozen Masters noodling away on a deeply dreary repertoire of Elizabethan favorites. On rare occasions these gentlemen might be joined by one of the women who taught Lower School, adding a mandolin, dulcimer or guitar, in which case we would be compelled to sing round upon round of such lachrymose, Highland numbers as “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” or “Last Night There Were Four Marys (Tonight There Will Be But Three)”.

   Of course, we all wanted recorders; they came in little felt bags with bottle-brush accoutrements, and, in the absence of anything else, seemed pretty exciting for a day or two. When - in Middle School, perhaps - the rest of you thrilled at the chance to choose a band instrument from a giant pile on the gym floor, those of us who had shown even the slightest proficiency on the recorder might be selected for a go at The Bells. This was a pretty heady appointment; boys wore a single, white cotton glove on the right hand, the bells themselves came in felt-lined leather boxes and I was assigned, based on my size alone, a massive carillon, a B flat about two octaves below middle C, which I held aloft for hours on end but don't recall ever actually having to ring. Not once.

   Later, my younger brother, by then at a rural public school in Duchess County, dragged home the cello one afternoon as his improbable selection from the pile. His interest flagged quickly, overtaken by a mercifully brief dalliance with the bag-pipe and a somewhat longer affair in poultry. There must have been a lease or some other sort of encumbrance on his cello, as it was only a matter of moments before my mother adopted the thing, much the way she'd welcomed into the family any other stray that might have turned up at the door. Unlike the rest of us, Mom possessed a casual and effortless perseverance with these things; whether it was etching or bee-keeping, fly-fishing or needlepoint, she'd quietly plod forward in our periphery long after we'd ceased to notice. Her daily practice sessions, attended by an adoring menagerie of harmonizing house-pets, evolved over time from caterwaul to cadenza and, though she remained shy and self-conscious in the presence of her less than charitable children, she sought out other neophytes in the community with whom she formed string quartets, eventually securing a chair with such august assemblages as the Mid Hudson Community Pops and, years later, what must have been an absolutely terrifying flirtation with the Augusta Symphony.

   Mom would never have referred to herself as a cellist; after twenty years of hauling that buxom hardbody all over the Hudson Valley and beyond she was as mortified by the thought of someone listening in as she was at being caught speaking French to the dogs. She went beet red and flustered at finding me in the house after one practice. “Was that Borodin?” I asked, “ I thought you were listening to Casals.” I'd only recently learned who Borodin and Casals were myself, and whereas the latter may have been gilding Mom's lily a trifle, there was no mistaking the section of the String Quartet she'd been working on, even with the accompaniment of livestock.

   One day towards the end of her life – before we knew it was the end of her life – I happened to come by the house on a late summer afternoon. It was hot and still, the windows all thrown open to catch what little breeze the Sheepscot had to offer. I could hear her cello from across the Head Tide bridge and shut off the car, coasting into the driveway so as not to disrupt the session with the noise of my arrival. Reaching for the car door I paused, recognizing the almost painfully beautiful Barber Adagio, and slumped back into my seat. I listened for five perfectly flawless minutes with tears streaming down my cheeks: tears of pride and joy at what had been, at her achievement. Tears of loss and sorrow, perhaps, for what was yet to come.