I’ve been taking violin lessons off and on for about three years, since right after the Mortal Peril. Back in college I had played the viola, earnestly and badly. The violin is smaller and more comfortable to play, and fiddle tunes are simpler, so when I switched over, I played earnestly and adequately. There’s a particular satisfaction in making a musical sound, rather than… sound.
And the body remembers—all those neural pathways remained intact, even when the Mortal Peril had erased memory and sense of self, my sense of where I was in my body and in time and space. Which is a fancy way of saying I was in a state of constant brain fog. And my joints hurt, and I kept falling down.
Those first lessons were particularly consoling, the body remembering, reorienting. The simple tunes were a comfort.
Over the years, the lessons became half chatting and half playing, and I came to love my teacher, her husband, a luthier, and their children.
Earlier this summer, they moved to the sticks, to a farm in rural northeast Oregon. During my last lesson, little Finn came in repeatedly to check on our progress—he’s never done this before. Usually he checks in at the beginning and the end of the lesson. He’s six and outgoing, and the pandemic has closed his little social circle. Finn and I have an understanding. I think children respond to those of us grownups who prefer their company to the company of other adults. So that day, that last lesson, each time he’d creep into the studio, he’d sidle up, lean against me, and we’d look at our watches. I would show him how many more minutes until the end.
When we were actually finished, “FINALLY!”, Finn and his four-year-old sister Dinah burst in. As I packed up my instrument, Finn got out a sticky note to show me how he could write my name—N I K O L.
“My name has a trick, a silent E on the end.”
He added the E.
And then both children wrote their names in my music so I would remember them every time I practiced.
When it was time for me to go to my car, we found that they had tied up the gates, both front and back, to keep me in. Rather an elegant design, too, with red yarn.
“Instead of squishing her, why don’t you use your words to tell Nicole how much you will miss her?”
He was getting, as we used to say about our own Seth, a little violent with his affection. Many high fives and hugs later, I was finally able to get into my car. But we had to make an arrangement for me to come back to play with the children while mama and papa pack. Win-win. Except for the moving part.
I did go back to say goodbye, at the end of their long packing day. The moving van was filled, the house empty, and those two feral rascals climbed up into the truck cab to show me. (It was, in fact, space-ship level impressive.) We sat together and watched a silly cartoon on my phone, snuggled up.
Then I accidentally called Dinah by her given name.
“Ooops. Sorry. I meant, Dinah!”
Her brother was on it. “Oh, you’re in trouble now,” he said. Then, turning to his sister, “What do you say, Dinah, when someone calls you Franny?!”
I have almost never heard tiny Dinah speak—Finn often speaks for or over her. Not rudely, but he’s a big lively boy, and he is still learning to give her space. Which he did.
“What do you say, Dinah?”
She giggled, and then in a wee, mouse-squeak voice, she piped up, “I fart in your general di-rection!”
That was a good goodbye.
Aaaahhhhh, poignant AND hilarious! A rare combination. <3
I was going to say that my name has a trick "E" as well, but then I realized my name starts getting tricky at the 3rd letter and keeps on trickin'.
Your name is all kinds of tricky! Something I think about every single time I use voice-to-text and need to write your actual trick-tricky name.