Facing the Music Read online

  It had to have been a difficult situation for him to navigate. Between my sister and me, I was often the confident ringleader, notorious for challenging boundaries. I’d fight until my last breath to stay the course of whatever path I had chosen, but I rarely came out the other side feeling as if I’d gained any ground.

  My stepmother’s account of contentious events usually won out, leaving me feeling crushed when my father appeared to choose her narrative over my own.

  Growing up, I would struggle to keep hold of how he loved me when it seemed he was powerless to change the circumstances of our home life. Between the hours when he seemed swept away by the current of our family brokenness, there would be times we could find peaceful moments of rest. Little moments of respite, like mending a fence or grooming a horse. The everyday chores of the farm would predictably bend to our will and hard work. From him, I would learn a kind of patience in suffering, of living between that which we had the power to change and a determination to survive what we could not.

  three

  Time spent alongside my father was precious.

  I delighted in the Saturday mornings when he would invite my sister and me to join him on his trips to town. The simple pleasure of being by his side was joyful. Long before the days when seat belts were mandatory, we would stand up on the bench seat of the pickup truck so that we could see the world speeding by. He would give us the rundown of the day’s schedule. A trip to the feed yard to buy oats for the horses. Out to Walmart for motor oil for our tractor. Then, off to the lumberyard to get supplies for repairs around the farm.

  Oh, how I loved going to the lumberyard! It was a place where the necessary tools of my father’s blue-collar world were laid out in full glory. I loved watching him in his element, potent and empowered among his like-minded peers. All the men would stand about in their worked-in clothes, paint spattered and dusty, talking about how they were going to tackle this project or that.

  The smell of freshly cut timbers and chugging noises of forklifts only added to the excitement. I was in awe of the organized library of treated pine, two by fours of various lengths and wood types, stacked so high in the warehouse. There were stacks of brick, pallets of colorful tile, sheet rock, and plywood, and bins of nails, screws, brass hinges, and knobs. Each was mysterious to me, but all were the tools of my father’s talent.

  As he confidently called for the cuts of lumber he required, I stood back, taking it all in. I believed each man there to be deft and skillful in his craft, astounded by their knowledge of how to shape all that waiting wood with nails and power tools.

  I saw my father as having the power to sculpt the world into shape. What would it be this weekend, I wondered? A nifty saddle rack? A ladder to the hay loft? Maybe a swinging barn door?

  With a few planks of wood and a hammer, my father’s skills inspired my creativity then as much as any Picasso does today. I’ll always remember him pulling back from a newly completed construction, wiping the sweat from his brow to clear his eyes so that he could survey his accomplishments. Sometimes, I wonder if the artist that I grew up to be wasn’t in some way inspired by his gift.

  Among the most treasured gifts he gave me were the leftover wood scraps, near-empty paint cans, and rusted nails that I could make my own creations. Sometimes, he would lend me one of his precious tools to assist me in my project. Oh, the terror of sawing off a finger! He sat aside any worries that I might pound my thumb to a purple and nail-less pulp when he gave me a hammer. It was his way of instilling confidence in my own abilities, though I might have been but a little girl. He trusted me to learn by doing, even if it meant the odd bruise or splinter.

  Those long hours that we spent, side by side, building our projects were our escape. We rarely spoke of the tension that came from the fallout of his and my mother’s life together. Nor did we speak of how to manage the growing anger and resentment that was becoming an everyday reality between my stepmother and me. Instead, the reassuring noises came from the rhythms of our construction. The calm pulse of my father’s breath in sync with the athletic whaah-hee! whaah-hee! whaah-hee! of the hand saw, or the tap-tap-bang! as he pounded in the nails.

  THESE OUTSIDE NOISES were soothing compared to those that happened inside our home, where we were a family of conflict. By the time I was ten years old, my stepmother’s mercurial personality was the force that we would all revolve around.

  It is difficult to lay hold of what exactly put her in such a state of unrest, as both my sister and I were, by most general description, two ordinary children. Reasonably well behaved, we were neither extraordinarily precocious nor disobedient, yet we could never seem to win her affection. I felt that we were always being reminded that we were our mother’s children. The implication was that we were born as evidence of my mother’s youthful pregnancy—errors in judgment and, above all, unwanted.

  If my sister and I did not adequately clean our room, or maybe forget to put away our crayons, she would snap, and, before I knew it, I was standing guard between her and my sister, who in tears, fell into self-preserving silence, while I held out for justice.

  Though my father knew that we were at war, he seemed unable to secure any kind of lasting peace. The best he had to offer was in trying to keep us separated as much as he could. Encouraging us to keep a low profile. Pleading with us stay out of trouble.

  I felt very isolated. My stepmother’s awful words would echo in my head long after our arguments had ended. I had difficulty at such a young age to find the words to explain to my father, or anyone for that matter, how those fights were chipping away my spirit. I needed to be believed. Protected. Cared for. But our house had turned into a zone of either icy silence or earth-shaking rage.

  I needed a peaceful place of my own to retreat, as my father found in his work. Going to school turned out to be my saving grace. There I would learn to read and write. Through the many books on offer at my school library, I found a way of floating away to other more pleasant worlds. From Bill Pete’s “Scamp” in The Whingdingdilly to Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, I was fascinated by how each character prospered despite their trials. I wanted to be like those heroes, unfazed and victorious through adversity.

  I related to the diaries of little Anne Frank. I recognized the feeling of being locked away, challenged by silence. I imagined that I, too, could grab a pencil and paper and write down everything that was going on inside my head.

  Writing was one of the few acts in my life that I felt I could control. The pages helped keep me sane. I couldn’t go to school and tell of my struggles at home. Who could I tell? What could I tell? I wasn’t being beaten. I had a roof over my head, clean clothes, and well-balanced meals. There were no bruises to give evidence to my deepening wounds. Maybe I was just too sensitive? Maybe this was what life was like for other kids? Whatever the case, I couldn’t seem to escape my sorrow and what felt like a rising tide of insanity. I didn’t want to be another suicidal depressed kid sent to therapy so that I could be whispered about. I just wanted to get on with things. So, onto the pages it all went. My fears. My anger. My plots for escape. Even if I didn’t have the courage to run away now, I could prepare myself for the possibility in the event of emergency. My imaginative contingency plans were invaluable in maintaining my sense of control. Maybe, one day, I could be just like Sam Gribley in My Side of the Mountain. Living on my own out in the forest, alone, challenged, but free.

  I was surviving by seeing my thoughts become real, legible evidence of what otherwise seemed invisible. It never occurred to me how I would feel if anyone actually read my thoughts. All that was about to change.

  It was subtle at first. I started to recognize that some of the comments coming from my stepmother sounded eerily like the worries I had squirreled away on my pages. It took me a while to realize that she was teasing me with my own secrets.

  Recognizing how the taunts were in the vein of my hidden
truths, it finally dawned on me. “Oh, my God,” I thought, nauseated at the realization, “she’s read my pages!”

  I changed my tactics and began to write in code. I wasn’t about to let her think that she had any power over me. I created my own unique scheme of symbols to replace each letter of the alphabet. They were simple substitutions that any fan of cryptic word games could solve, but it was my only defense. I wrote so much and so often that the second script became fluid and natural to my hand. At the very least, my stepmother would have to spend time deciphering it, and then she would know that I was onto her.

  It must have gotten on her nerves, because one day she snapped. In an elaborate spring-cleaning ruse, she instructed me to go and clean up my room. As soon as I opened the door to my bedroom, I saw that my pages were littered all over the floor. Seeing my secrets out in the open, a chill came over my body and I could only stand there, frozen in fear.

  She proceeded to rifle through my things, confiscating all my paper and pencils. Arcing toward an apoplectic fit, she shredded countless sheets into confetti, snowing my room with my private dreams.

  I had never witnessed another human being so overcome with anger, and now, without the sanctuary of my pages, I had no way to protect myself from it.

  My father heard about the incident when my stepmother told him that I had been falsely accusing her of malevolence in my diaries. I was grounded in my room for several weeks as a result, but in all, his response was muted compared to the tragedy it felt to me. He offered little acknowledgment that I was truly hurting inside. Several days would pass before I would realize that the significance of the episode had actually appeared on his radar.

  Not long after, my father presented me with an old metal toolbox. It seemed a strange gift at first, but then he handed me a padlock and some paint to decorate it. Without a single word about what had happened with my stepmom, it was clear that he understood. He made a way for me to find safety as best he could. He couldn’t rescind the punishment I was serving, lest he, too, encounter my stepmother’s wrath, but he gave me the combination to the padlock. He directed me to a place in the barn, high in the rafters, where he had constructed a safe hiding place for my new treasure chest. In one of the most enduring and compassionate acts of his life, he gave me what mattered most, his best available love.

  Now that I had a new place to keep my writing, along with the assumed protection of my father, the codes became unnecessary. Still, I had learned a valuable lesson. The secrets of the heart are vulnerable and more valuable than I had ever imagined.

  For as much as the experience changed the spirit of our home, it began shaping my writing as well. I was maturing. My thoughts and dreams were becoming less childlike and more cerebral in tone. I was shifting from the daily news to the more philosophical and poetic. I was noticing the world around me. I was becoming increasingly more aware of my own ability to contemplate the world around me: Who am I? What is life all about? What do I do with all these feelings I have inside of me? I began writing with abandon, hopeful and refreshed that my voice mattered, that somehow, I was capable of being heard.

  In many ways, what I wrote in those pages were like my prayers to God. My grandmother’s forced marches through Sunday school must have made some kind subconscious connection. I began to find comfort in the idea that what I spoke of in my pages seemed to find a sympathetic ear. As if, somehow, though I could not see the Listener, I was being heard. Life suddenly began to open up, not to just the things I could see with my own eyes. There seemed to be a kind of spirit weaving it all together. A sensation. A knowing. A presence of some spiritual nature that acknowledged my existence in the universe.

  I would find myself sneaking outside in the middle of the night to try to find it. I would lie on my back, beneath the big Kansas sky, and imagine myself as a single star. The distant waning howls of the coyotes seemed to echo my own prayers. I would imagine what peace looked like when I would come home tomorrow and will it to be so. I ached for grace, for ease. I would toy with my childhood understanding of God, search the black expanse of the heavens, and write.

  Poetry became my new cipher. I could write a poem about how the tornadic spring storms would bring both terror and rebirth. I could use budding flowers as a metaphor in the constant and reliable cycles of anger and hoped-for peace in my real life. I could write about the strength of our horses as they galloped through the field as a symbol of freedom that I could only dream of.

  My poems could be beautiful and wishful, or act as the dark vessels of all my sorrow. I could at last tell someone, anyone, at least a portion of what had long been mine to suffer alone. I could share these things with the outside world and maybe I would find a connection. With others? With God? I was learning that these experiences did not have to stay locked inside my head, eroding my spirit. I was learning new ways to survive. I was learning that I did not have to be captive to the grievous acts of others. I might never be able to change my stepmother. I might not be able to change all of my circumstances. But I was becoming aware that being alive is sometimes a conscious choice. No matter what happened, I wanted to be there, living.

  four

  If I wasn’t ambling in the countryside, or nestled away somewhere scribbling in my diary, I was equally enthusiastic about being in school. Beyond the relief it provided in being away from home, there were so many adventures to be had. I could spend hours fossicking around the library for a new and exciting book to read. I loved it all, be it math, social studies, or history. The thrill of rising to the top of the class and getting praise for my excellent marks made me an unabashed contender for teacher’s pet. It was a safe place, where I felt inspired to succeed. It was also the place where I fell in love with music.

  One day a week, a music teacher would visit our country school. We had no proper music room, only the gymnasium. The same gym that served as basketball court during phys ed also served as concert hall and cafeteria, depending on the time of day. When it was time for music, our teacher, a spritely little woman, would throw her shoulder into the side of an old piano and roll it out into the center of the gymnasium floor to begin our lessons.

  Heaven only knows how she managed to wrangle a class of energetic country kids into standing in place. I, for one, was more accustomed to running around outside, kicking balls, and climbing trees. The idea of standing in place for an hour at first seemed like a cruel substitute for entertainment, best reserved for rainy days. Still, she managed to keep my attention.

  She always greeted us with her startlingly wide smile and vivid appearance. She was like Rapunzel meets Janis Joplin turned school librarian. Her long, wispy blonde hair cascaded down her back, where it seemed to join in conspiracy with her usual long, cotton print skirt.

  There was always some part of her in motion. Her petite hands often guided us with light, feminine gestures, like a ballerina cum traffic cop. No matter that her directions made no earthly sense to us as she pointed and waved in rhythm with the music. When her hands were busy on the keys of the piano, her legs would tap and dance beneath her as she sat precariously on the edge of the piano bench, her hair joining in the perfect choreography of fully embodied sound.

  So what if the songs we were singing had only one-part ­harmony? That she led us in rousing renditions of the latest Muppets movie soundtrack didn’t limit her enthusiasm or purpose. For many of us, she was the first, and perhaps, the only, human being on the planet who could usher us into a world beyond that which was visible. That one day a week was a window into a world beyond our books, capable of launching us into a new realm of imagination.

  Long before I would learn to express my insecurities by saying “I can’t,” she began to teach us how to read the language of music. With limited resources, she found a way. There weren’t any blackboard or textbooks for her to use to help us decode the magical language of the music staff and black dots called notes, so she took to the hardwood floor. Ign
oring all the markings of the basketball court, she found a clear spot where she could map out five perfectly straight parallel lines, with four uniform spaces in between. She called the creation a “staff.” With the aid of a stuffed toy frog, she’d place it at various positions in the diagram and called out the representative letter that we would later call notes. The lines, we would learn by using the acronym “Every Good Boy Does Fine” and the spaces as “F.A.C.E.”.

  As we learned what to call the lines and spaces, she let us tap out these notes on the piano. I found it the greatest extravagance when I would have my turn to take the quiz. I would sit alone at the keyboard, where I could strike the corresponding key indicated by the stuffed frog. But one note just didn’t seem enough; I felt the urge to link the notes together, in rhythm and order to make what seemed so fantastic . . . a song!

  Eventually, part of our musical curriculum would come to include learning how to play an alto recorder. It’s a plastic, flutelike whistle of sorts that looks somewhat like a small clarinet. Once I got my hands on my very own, I couldn’t get enough.

  Learning to read the code of music as fluently as the written word was like cracking open the door to a magic world. I was mesmerized that I could take those little black dots on the page and breathe them into life. What to some appeared as frantic nonsense scored on the page, was, to me, something that I had the power to sing into recognition. I just couldn’t get enough of it.

  Some way or another I got my hands on a book of old American folk tunes. I must have played the tune “Erie Canal” a thousand times in this state of amazement. I played that song so many times that I began to feel, in my soul, that I was there, on the canal, walking and pulling my burdens alongside the famed waterway with the aid of my trusty mule. My parents, on the other hand, found themselves quickly exhausted. And who could blame them?