I struggled with this one. Right up until her heart broke I struggled with it. Much of it was written three springs ago, when you could practically hear the falling of shoes, the dashing of plans, the breaking of promises…and yet, the beautiful green and luminous spring…strangled by Covid. You could actually hear the heart break. Of all that could not be. My senior, un-seniored but not undone.

It is the first half. The second half is the hike we took, she and I, in the searing heat and hyper steps of that “pandemic” summer. (See GROUND July 2020). Stole three days– yes, in the middle of Covid, made out for the mountains, and found out what we were made of. Three years later, other lovely things die, and I find myself listening again for the music.

(The hike, Part I)

The arena is full,
it is the feast day!
The arena is full, from top to bottom;
The spectators are losing their minds,
The spectators began a big fracas!
Apostrophes, cries, and uproar grow to a furor!
Because it is a celebration of courage!
It is the celebration of people with heart!

It’s just a song. And the music for it, which now feels ancient, is just two pieces of paper, taped down the middle, notes penciled in. Seventh grade strings class. Viola. It’s just a sheet of paper. But today, the week of Sophie’s 21st birthday, it represents so much more. Time worn, kept (why?), it was a litmus of sorts, of what the girl was made of. Victory, for one, in that ever-playing soundtrack, never the credits but the music that opens a film, the trailer that hits all the high notes and salient moments–an invitation to a better party, always opening on a new movie and a better day. For another, this: life revisited, as if you really could go back and enjoy the best parts again. Don’t we all secretly wish or stubbornly bank on it? Like a Facebook repost, except having all the power to really put you there: Four years ago today. Seven years ago. Five. And finally: a rediscovery, a process of putting something back together that was never really lost, never really broken. Scattered, perhaps, but the pieces know themselves… a diaspora of the heart.

Strings was a highlight of her school years. Does that read like a sentence in a college essay? Because it was, or it came to be–that’s just what I’m about to tell you. Or was it a highlight of mine? Hard to know… all those helicopter blades whirring overhead sometimes blur the lines and color the memories. But, yes it was a highlight. Strings. Brought-out-of time orchestral strings class, laid over the busy life of a teenager. All those extra-curricular days–how we hummed along, keeping time, giving time, meeting and exceeding expectation, taking on just one more thing–all before the world came crashing down. She did three sports that year! Breakneck pacing. Hurry, hop in the van! I remember attending a Christmas concert at the local assisted living facility: under their “festive holiday attire” several of the musicians had on swim suits for a meet across town at almost the same hour. A handful of SWAT moms parked out front of the loop, engines running, ready to grab and go our musicians into the pool. Those were the days. We liked it that way. But Sophie left strings to pursue the million other things. As I recall, she let me down gently, waiting a full year after we had purchased the instrument (a sign of commitment) until she came to me with the request to drop.

Ironically, it was the song that got her in. It was what she thought of when the 2019 UVA admissions essay asked for “a challenge that you undertook and how you overcame it.” Huh. How about that? Five years ago the word “challenge” still brought music to mind. And a hardship thesis brought out the spunk and the staying power of a girl and her mountain, well before a global pandemic. Even though she wasn’t in strings class anymore, didn’t play the viola. It was on the Ebay chopping block by then to be sure. Still, she put the experience of coming up against a particularly tough piece of orchestral strings music in her college essay. I remember the editor in me recoiling a bit at the thought of writing about middle school in such an august and dignified forum. But there it was. “When I was in 6th grade, I took strings because my sister did…” and then her story about (a) differentiating and (b) conquering the music that wouldn’t be mastered. She told them about this piece, this most challenging piece, “The Toreador Song.” She told them about carrying it around in her backpack “everywhere” and tapping out the bow-strokes with a pencil “always” and “every chance she got.” Ah, for the absolutes of a kid on her way to college. Is there a more innocent a tune?  Youth music. Like I’m saying, high school composition about a middle school experience… for UVA??! Until she mastered it. At age 11. Ta-daa! Ta daa, indeed. They took her early decision, determination and all. Smile so we can see both those racks of braces sparkle.

A fine pick, pre-pandemic. Whoever that UVA admissions officer was at the time, flagging the most determined and resilient among prospective Hoos to make up the class entering 2020–well, give that person a raise. I believe those ambient non-committal strains were playing as we dropped her off on the third floor of a locked-down dormitory Freshman year–small, scared eyes peering out over her mask. None of us knowing, anything, really about what was to come; too frightened to hope. The diminished chord, I am told, is the darkest chord in music.

Three years later my daughter is well battered and changed by life’s unrelenting er–music, but the little pencil tapper of near ten years ago is tapping still. I wouldn’t compare the last three years to a bullfight, but there are similarities. And if Carmen is anything about endurance then Sophie nailed it that night she hit “submit,” even without the last three years. That final–ah, “curriculum” of her senior year (“Learning in lockdown!” and “No! You do not get to pass go!”) about finished us all. But she has kept at it, stayed the course, worked the hard bits and come out with a piece that is barely able to be played it is so beautiful. There is music like that, you know.

Over the years, especially lately, she has lamented her decision to abandon the viola. Playing a stringed instrument is no small achievement. I am a strong proponent (read “nutcase”) of music education for students who may never go on to play another note, simply for the effect it  has on a developing brain and the way it finds a home for all the other subjects, bits and pieces, and aspirations a young person may have. Since they did away with grammar in the classroom and the “life” room has just about expunged the last vestiges of logic–what have we left, O Aristotle? Not ethos….surely not logos… but yes, the pathos. The poetic. At the end of the day, the arts remain. No wonder. There’s a reason the fine arts are still on the curriculum, and why they must be “liberal” in order for one to be called educated. In a word, they are formative, so I was (helicopter parents unite) heartbroken when she dropped it. You would thought it was the day the music died. Eventually I came to see the meaning and necessity of the split, for not all loves are equal. And which do I admire more, the champion of the Torreador, or the girl who played for a solid year afterward, silent but for her heart and her music, her resolve and loyalty like rosin over some of life’s most difficult passages. Staying power still wins the day. Play, Sophie girl, play.

So, you can imagine how sweetly the notes of that song came back to me this winter, filtering in through the noise of a fast approaching end. She will be a senior again. Four weeks flown (years, I mean, years–but oh my, its feels like a few weeks and a blink and here we are) and she has been viola-less for five, a lifetime in a young person’s eye–young persons who think of thirty-year-olds as “old” and next year as next year. Be real. Everybody my age knows next year is tomorrow. One night on the phone, out of the bluest blue: “Momireallywishididn’t give it up – strings – i think i could still play…” My eyes go bug eye wide as my heart upon hearing her musings over the phone. I think I could still PLAY… WHAT?! Give it up? Give what up, why daughter it’s just a tiny bit done it’s just dormant like a virus–oops, no, like a long lost love, yes! – the romance suits; it is an old friend, my girl, coming back to you for your 21st birthday. Coming back to you… just as soon as mommy can hop on Craig’s list and Ebay and find one. I scour the Richmond area. I scour the online auction for choices all over the globe. I turn to social media posts. I turn to my “circles” which have shrunk to dots and spots these days, but you know what? People come through for you. Time. And time. Again.

Most successfully, I throw down a post on the UVA parents’ FB page. Now, here is a group of lovely people when they aren’t complaining. They are the chemistry of salt and earth. It was these same folks who last NYE had a panicked, postin’ mommy soothed with a waiting bed and a ride from the airport before Sophie had even stranded herself at the Denver airport. If your flight doesn’t take off before 5, I texted my lovely lone traveler, dutifully gate sitting as the delay clicked by, don’t get on it. But her phone was already turned off (or yes, I know, she was, already halfway to California in her mind. Or that other organ, that breaks). She was still in the air, I recall, headed for what I was certain would be a missed connection in a far away city. And already the pulled strings (get it?) on the hospitality of strangers had her safe and tended in ways I would happily do for another’s child, at any time, for any reason, and the chorus echoed – when? where? what time? Sure! Sure. The one word we’ve not had enough of these days: Sure. It’s a whole note.

So the birthday was all about scoring the lost viola and bringing it to C’ville for the birthday girl. Since I still sub for the strings teacher, from time to time I see the high school musician whose family bought our little castoff years ago. At the time, I was so eager to give another the same joy I passed on all Sophie’s music as well, the colorfully decorated middle school folders, the loose sheets, everything. In one stroke for a couple hundred bucks I purged our world of music. And why not? Another should enjoy. We were on to other things. My lament was silenced mid-cry. Now, note by note, chord by chord, it is coming back to me. I cannot actually buy back the instrument; girl is a senior, first chair even, got it going on. The instrument is rightfully hers. But Sophie’s music? Oh sure, she still has that somewhere. Sure I can have all that back. This is starting to feel a lot like the crib I sold on Craigs List. Most routine and normal of sales. Until it wasn’t. Until I shared with the buyer how much the piece of hand-me-down furniture meant to me and how I might be ever so slightly kicking myself for selling it off. Fah-root cake! What the heck. With eyes to see the next thirty would we really do and say half the things we do? So she offered–standing there in her driveway as I delivered the crib and took her money–she offered to ring me in two years or so when she didn’t need it any more.  And and lo and behold, she did. Crib is safely stored back in my attic. Now for a boomerang viola…

But it does not come to us that way. Instead it is another purging mother miles away who answers the plea on FB parents page – we have one! Sure, I can sell that to you. Sure, I’ll take it to our local shop to get it tuned and appraised for you. Sure, I’ll charge you a fraction of what it’s worth. And it won’t even cost you a round trip to Fredericksburg. Send it up to school via my daughter via a friend of ours goin’ up to visit and have it delivered to her doorstep. Another friend, hearing the tale, has an old and high quality bow to supply. People. This is how it’s done.

And so, in the course of things that come together from the furthest harmonies, that is what the other four of us are doing, driving around campus in the family truckster on a Friday night before meeting college girl to celebrate her 21st. We are tracking down the friend of a friend of a roommate of a former viola player whose mom is now my FB bestie. And into my hands she places a precious and purchased used viola. You woulda thunk she was handing off gold. No, the gold is those sheets of music, with 11-year-old Sophie’s notes penciled all over them. Ten years. We’re about the reconnect this–er, adult with the music of half her life ago. I’m not too sentimental, am I? Surely you can see….or – I know: close your eyes and listen…. can you hear it? It’s the sound of life. The universe, I’m told, vibrates at 432 hertz, which is also called the “love frequency” because that frequency resonates at the core of everything; connecting our heart, our spiritual nature, and the divine harmony. Can you hear it?

Maybe it is significant that this stringed instrument is not her original. This one has not yet told its stories. For Sophie, this relationship is new, and filled with hope and possibility. For reasons unsuited to social media, now is a really good time for that. Maybe it is significant she asked for it, on a lark but also because she wanted to recapture a part of her that came before. Something all her own. What else do you give a super hard-working, kind-thinking non-drinking college girl on her 21st birthday, anyway? You give her back a bit of herself.

Sophie tells me she takes it up to the music building on Saturdays to play, restricted during the week weekdays because she is not a music student and she too considerate to subject her housemates to the sound of her attempts. One note at a time, one measure, letting herself, unheard, go. I imagine I hear it on the wind sometimes…beginning with the sweetest strains of self rediscovery and rising to a crescendo that has the power to reach back through time to that little child, so determined and resolute, at her instrument. And nothing, and no one, can ever take that away.

Because it is a celebration of courage!
It is the celebration of people with heart!

I tell you what. Life has the sweetest refrains.