17 December 2007

Ravel


I stole this picture of my mom. And many more like it...I confess. Of course, "stole" is in the past tense, because once Maryann had passed away, I inherited all of her memorabilia. But this one I extracted from her New York apartment before she died, spiriting it back to my home base in the Maine woods so that I could scan it very large, and absorb it. Mom wasn't fond of my obsession with the leavings of her life--I memorized her high-school yearbook as a little girl, I pored over letters and Christmas cards she'd saved, and I burned the chronology of how she looked year-to-year into my mind. I know she thought I was odd for wanting to know so much, and for craving nostalgia from her that did not exist. One of the greatest arguments we ever had, actually, was sparked by my interest in family pictures. She raged at me that I must be crazy wanting to have all those faces up on my walls at home. (Don't worry, her counterpoint never swayed me for a second. It wasn't the first time that our opinions had been so diametrically opposed--no, I had invested decades in doing the opposite of whatever she would.)
 
This photo lived in her professional scrapbook: an imposing, black-covered, slippery-paged tome that was filled with press clips, telegrams from Broadway openings, 8x10 glossies, and other showbiz detritus. Undeniably, my mother was the least glitzy performer ever. Just look at her up there: she dressed beautifully, I'm not saying that, but look at her posture and her expression...and her nimble, blurred-in-motion hands. It's all about the music. Maryann did not get into playing piano for fame, fortune, or even attention. I'm not sure she even got into it because she wanted to. I believe she began to play piano because she was compelled by a powerful, overwhelming blend of innate talent and deep-seated alienation from the people around her. That doesn't differentiate her from other musicians, I'll grant you--but it sure as hell sets her apart from most people's mothers.

What did she hear in the music that she created? And what of the music that others performed, which she owned in recorded form and treasured? I wish I could ask her, but even if I did, she'd shrug off the question or give me a filmy half-answer. Mom was not a music librarian or completist (that was my rubric), but when she loved a performance, you can bet you'd be hearing it over and over in her household. Fats Waller. Count Basie. Oscar Peterson. Jimmy Smith. Ella Fitzgerald. Peggy Lee. Her chronology, her nostalgia was aural, rarely visual or verbal.

Another thing that set my mom apart from other mothers was her propensity for keeping me awake late. Jazz musicians are nighthawks; thus, much of the musical education she imparted to me was shared long after my peers were tucked in with a teddy. We went to Broadway shows, my dressy patent-leather shoes sliding on red carpets and giving me blisters as we searched for our seats. Sometimes we went to clubs or smoky restaurants to hear one of Mom's old friends play.

Even at home, she would wake me from a sound sleep and implore me to come into the living room to hear something. "You have to hear this, Nessa," she would say. "Listen. Do you hear it?" While her career had largely been forged in jazz, the music she woke me up for was invariably classical. I can still revive my feelings of grumpiness as I shuffled into the dimmed living room, wincing at whatever lamplight there was. "Do I have to?" I would whine, but she ignored me. Respighi, Stravinsky, Ravel...swirls of intoxicating, cascading, now-dissonant, now-resolved orchestral pieces. Romantic--I should say so, to the extreme. Completely contrary to my mother's everyday demeanor of distant practicality. As I snuggled alongside her on the sofa, leaning in a desperately sleeplike posture, she would regale me with stories of the composer's visions whilst writing the piece. She would also describe the revilement of contemporary audiences when some of these pieces debuted. How these composers were misunderstood, untouchable, way ahead of their time.

I remember Daphnis et Chloe most vividly. I never could catch the gist of the romance Ravel was depicting in this piece, no matter how many times Mom explained it. Instead, while I sat there, I was tugged by two distinct emotions: admiration for my mother's full-hearted bliss as she experienced this lush recorded music, and embarrassment that she was so ridiculously fond of it. The music seemed somehow maudlin and unseemly to my kiddie mind. I wanted to feel the swoops in the pit of my stomach as the crescendoes rose and burst, but this extravagant expression of prewar beauty was beyond my ken.

I wonder now if my parents had listened to these classical pieces early in their own romance, before things turned sour and negative. Tucked onto her single-mother sofa, was she revisiting snowy Montreal, the cosmopolitan isolation booth of a city that hosted their few happy years as young marrieds? Was that why her classical listening sessions were dampened by tears, always?

I can't play an instrument. In fact, I resisted Mom's attempts to teach me piano rudiments because I felt above those single-note lessons. She, in turn, steadfastly refused to flip past the first pages in the book, to see if I was somehow more gifted than the average student. I needed a solid foundation before I could start really playing, she insisted. I needed to know which keys were matched to which fingers.

Wasn't gonna happen. I'm too much of a free-associating creative type to follow the marching ants of sheet music. But I did inherit one shining thing: all of my memories are swathed in music. I find artists who speak to my sensibilities, and I return to them again and again. The past is brought vividly back as I listen, and every chance I get, I will see those performers in a live venue.

Yeah, sometimes I cry, too. I apologize to my embarrassed 6-year-old self whenever that happens, but I tell myself: I'm powerless. I can't help it. Give in.

"Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning." --Igor Stravinsky

13 December 2007

Internetus Interruptus

It's astonishing how mind-bending it can feel to be suddenly devoid of an Internet connection. Chez Reifsnyder, we are beholden to a humble sports-bar-like satellite dish in order to be web-connected. We've entered the stormy winter season (a little earlier than the recent usual, so take that, global warming!) and this means that our dish is exposed to all kinds of unruly elements. Sleet, ice, driving snow.... Under these conditions, it sputters, the little modem lights jitter and flicker and then...blackness. Well, modem blackness, anyway. That's been the norm since Tuesday (and yet still I am paying an exhorbitant fee for this non-reliable service HELLOOOOOO?!?).

That's not my beef, though. I mean, I expect to pay a premium, given that I live in a region where stores are not open past 6 pm, you know? We're lucky we actually have phones (and no, that doesn't include cells; they are confounded by our island terrain, apparently). But I'm just bemused by the disembodied feeling when I sit at my home computer and confront the reality--no casual web-surfing for you. No random checking a song lyric to see who performed it...no idle family-tree work...no e-mail, gaaaaah! no e-mail. And no facebook (which sets both me and my teenage son on edge a tad).
 
End result of this disembodiment: I sleep a little more (not much) and watch TV a little more (SoapNet rocks my world) and try to get all the pre-Christmas tasks done (intermittently successful). And as now, while I sit at my work station, I cram in a smidge of extra net-time to assuage my withdrawal symptoms. 
 
I earnestly hope there is some other 'net solution lurking out there for the denizens of ultrarural America. And a Target within 10 minutes' driving distance would be nice.

09 December 2007

Hockey

Peter and I had an instantaneous attraction when we met 22 years ago, but our relationship really began to take shape in the first few days after we'd realized that attraction. In those brisk fall afternoons and evenings, with classes done for the day, we engaged in an extended conversation about who we were. Families, religions, school experiences, favorite music...I remember those conversations as feverish, a rush to share and compare. And incredulous, as well: everything that one of us offered, the other came up with some parallel. We both loved vacationing at northern lakes. We both, unbelievably, had grandparents with New Brunswick roots--the same town, even! We both had spent childhood winters in cities, and summers in rural places that were not typically touristy. And then we talked about sports.

My affection for sports is from an audience-member distance, and really only goes as far as wondering how the team from New York in any given sport is doing. In this, we differed--Pete had been an enthusiastic athlete for years. He named off the sports he'd played: tennis, golf (my brother played those, I responded), squash (got me there), and hockey--

Hockey. Looking back, this was one of the sharp-focus moments when our coupledom became actual. Turned out that everyone in Pete's family was a rabid hockey fan. Whaddya know, everyone in my family was, too. Many, many nights spent gathered around a (usually black-and-white) television, with the ebbs and swells of crowd noises accompanying the players' ceaseless motions around that little black speck of a puck. Even though I was coolly unconcerned about every other sport...hockey, I took very seriously.

I'll take an indulgent moment to sigh and remember Peter in those days:


from his h.s. yearbook. The sight of him on skates always made, and still makes, my heart swoop.

Anyway. The mutual hockey adoration has been a durable part of our togetherness. Granted, Pete watches 80 times more of it than I do, and he follows teams with that odd statistical insistence that men (and some women, I'm sure) bring to the endeavor. You know, he's cognizant of where each team stands in relation to the others, who's maybe gonna trade someone, who the top scorers are.... Whereas I drift past, sit and watch with him a few minutes, banter about silly player names and bad uniform choices and WHOA that was a good pass, comeoncomeon SHOOT! awwwww. Then off to whatever else I was doing that evening. (Except when the Rangers start getting good. Then I sit down and stay there, and yell just like my mom used to while I root for them.)

Lately we have had the good fortune to befriend season-ticket holders for Alfond Arena, where the University of Maine Black Bears ply their trade. I've always been proud, in the back of my mind, that my home state of choice has such a fantastic collegiate hockey reputation. But in the past few years, we've actually been able to attend some games and see live hockey together for the first time since Bowdoin.

Last night was one of those nights. And we were able to bring our younger kids, Lydia and Desmond. It's rare for us to have quality time with just the two of them, especially so in this year of Zoe's college choices and Willis' singing performances. I found myself in reveries while we sat in the stands, treasuring the echoey sounds of skates and shouts and thudding checks, the slightly misty whiteness of the ice, the mishmash of Mainers in the stands, and the excitement of realizing that I really can tell when a good play is in progress...so that a goal never blindsides me. But also, seeing my children become part of this family continuum pleased me so much. I kept sneaking furtive cell-phone pictures as we watched:

I managed to take pictures when they were aware, too:

I have a fierce sense of pride for the Black Bears now. It's different than what I feel for the pros. It has a regional tinge--I feel like I belong a little more here for knowing about them. There's enormous tradition vibes on the Orono campus, too, and that taps into my genealogical jones. Plus, watching this team is reminiscent of watching Pete play at Bowdoin. I always had this nervy mix of maternal feelings and aggression when he was on the ice. It's powerful.

Last night's game against Merrimack was triumphant: 3-1 Maine, with all three goals scored by a kid from Windham, Matt Duffy. A hat trick. Fifteen minutes before that third goal, we'd bought Lydia a banner in the UMaine swag store between periods, and Des had gotten a baseball cap. He'd been fussing with the cap ever since, wanting it to sit just so on his head. (I know he's emulating his older brother, who's rarely without a cap.) When Duffy's third goal--an empty-netter--sailed in, the usual attendant fan chaos was accompanied by a shower of hats flying out of the stands and skittering on the ice. Des watched, astonished. "When one guy scores three goals, they call it a hat trick," I explained into his ear. He nodded soberly, fussed with his cap, then turned to me. "Should I?" he asked seriously. I could tell he thought it was obligatory. "No!" I yelped. I saw the whew! look pass across his face.

After the game, we finished up some Christmas shopping at Target, and he and Lyd scored Pokemon cards. They opened them in the van, and Des was ecstatic--he'd finally gotten a Mothim. (I'm shrugging, but this was really important to his deck.) "This has been a great day," he said with satisfaction as Pete maneuvered us out of the parking lot and into the late-night blackness of Route 1A.

Didn't take him long to fall asleep. I loved the way his new cap and cards were part of the tableau. It was a great day.

06 December 2007

Legacy

My family tree program is called Legacy. On it, I have logged 44 men named Joseph "Joe" Pinette. One of them is my direct ancestor: my nana's father, whom I never knew, but whose life was made vivid to me through the storytellings of those who knew him well.
 
One of those people who knew him well was also named Joe Pinette: my nana's nephew; my mother's first cousin. Indeed, named after the original Joe. I wish I had known him sooner, but my mom had 29 living first cousins on the Pinette side, and we didn't live near any of them. Only as an adult did I become a Mainer, and that placed me in proximity of many people I had not known before, even though I knew of them.

I met this Joe Pinette after I had attended a funeral for a different first cousin in 2003. I'd been conducting family tree research for three years, and was beginning to get to know Mom's generation over time. Joe Pinette was not at the funeral, but his wife and sister were. I will never forget the moment when they approached me after the service, both of them literally peering into my face, squinting--and then one of them exclaimed, "Now, she's a Pinette! Just look at the eyes!" We talked at the luncheon, and Joe's wife told me that he would be interested in my genealogy, and would be calling me.

His voice was gentle and manly all at once. There was an endearing catch to it, an occasional throat-clearing. The friendliness streamed right through the phone. He said that he had some information to share with me: Joe was the eldest of six siblings, and there had been eight others from his father's first marriage. Mom always had trouble relaying their names to me; now I was hearing it from the source. Did he ever have information for me! But quickly, my connection to Joe Pinette transcended mere data. In fact, it took my breath away.

We had something in common, Joe and I. Something strong as steel, invisibly massive, life-destroying and life-affirming all at once: We had both grown up in households where upheaval, alcohol, and shame reigned. We knew, deep in our souls, what it felt like to go to school and excel, forcing ourselves to behave in an upstanding and amiable way--while hiding a strange, distorted homelife that no one in our school worlds could possibly comprehend. We had both transcended. We had, in fact, soared. Our parents' marriages had blown apart, causing financial hardship and chaos; our fathers had been horrible drunks; and yet we completed higher education, we chose solid careers, and at the age of 25, we each married our soulmates.

Talking to Joe brought me to a place of level solace in my genealogy. It felt like a unified circle to meet someone of a completely different generation who knew, deep down, what it had taken to survive. And Joe, like me, retained immense fondness for all of his family members regardless of mistakes they had made or pain they'd caused--even for the small town that had stepped deftly, sometimes indifferently around his family's secrets.

Soon, we visited Millinocket together, that small town--my mom's hometown, too. We took a walk around a part of town called Tin Can Alley. This was where the poorest families lived, too many kids to feed properly, and in many cases with a dirt floor. This was where Joe grew up. He brought his street to life--told me about a family who'd lived across the street over there, others over here; showed me the low fence that had demarcated his world. Joe was not allowed to go past it as a little boy, so he stood at it and watched cars, other houses, other people, wondering. Behind him would have been a house with two toddlers and a baby...noise and conflict and worry. Here, he stood alone, a five-year-old already beyond his age in what he saw and knew.

We left that street and walked the half-block distance to the river that divides Millinocket. In Joe's youth, the Penobscot was not a clean river, as the paper mill discharged effluent into it routinely. There was undoubtedly a foul smell, and sometimes, unusual colors swirling in the ripples and current. Joe reminisced about goofing off, walking along the river with his pals as an older boy--and as he said that, we found ourselves standing underneath an old apple tree.

Joe looked up with a grin and saw ripened red apples hanging there. He joyfully reached up and plucked one and explained that for a hungry kid from Tin Can Alley, this tree was one of the best spots to visit. And then he ate the apple with a satisfied smile.

Joe was like a grandfather, father, uncle, and friend all in one. I knew instantly that I was loved by him, and he inspired that same devotion in me. This afternoon, his wife Gloria, who has been married to him for 52 years, since she was a girl of 18, called to let me know that Joe died a few hours ago.
My tears are sharp and insistently welling. You see, in the past 15 years, I have lost a grandfather, a father and mother, a treasured uncle, and a lifelong best friend, all of whom I am still grieving. And now, the man who helped me to sustain those feelings and connections has joined them...after giving me so much of himself. I can tell you that Joe knew how much he gave me emotionally, because that's the connection we had.

And my genealogy--that never-ending, joyful journey of discovery and familiarity--henceforth I dedicate to him.

God bless you, Joe, beyond the fence.

 

01 December 2007

A blank page of looseleaf

That's what this new blog is...empty and awaiting words. It's taken me hours to align everything the way I want it, and now I find myself without much to say. Oh irony.

So I'll start with a little news report: it's 16 degrees F here. That was kind of abrupt, the shift from gee-a-scarf-might-feel-nice, to o-m-g-my-nostrils-are-stiff-with-frost-helpmehelpme. I'm not exactly ready. I'm also not ready for the Christmas tree-decorating tradition, as our household added two cats last New Year's, neither of whom has ever been in contact with a towering, chewable, ornaments-dangling behemoth. What's more, last year we bought a lovely artificial tree (pre-lit...lordy it's convenient). This will only increase the chewiness factor, as far as Wookiee and Momo are concerned. I suspect the heirloom ornaments will stay boxed this year....

Despite all the above Scroogy-ness, I actually enjoy this season. There's a dreamy quality to December...work stress is temporaily derailed; the nights are darker, velveteen, endless; the cold makes indoors something to treasure--nay, to rush towards; lamps glow with more intense power than usual, staving off the elements. Also, my creativity engine goes into overdrive. Partly that's because I have to deliver multiple handmade Christmas thingies, but mostly it's because winter inspires me to seek color, patterns, textures, and shapes...I guess to make up for the loss of summertime's bounty.

Hence, a new blog. Inspired by tea. Maybe that's a tough metaphor to understand, but for me it resonates mightily. Perhaps with time, it will make more sense to the readership, whomever that turns out to be.

Ah, the wind is roaring outside. The last, brown autumn leaves are getting swirled and swept into the air, glancing against the windows. It was dark at 4:15 pm. It's here.