The Note and the Notes

My father, the 91-year-old co-owner of the very big Ace Hardware in my very small hometown, never forgets a birthday, including those of in-laws and grandchildren, but he often forgets to mail the card in time. When he does, he never fails to call and wish the recipient a happy birthday. On Saturday he called with greetings for my husband.

Dad asked if I’d received the note he’d sent me recently, along with a copy of an article that he found applicable to both of us–me as a brain injury victim and him as a nonagenarian. I hadn’t found it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t somewhere in the pile of mail on the kitchen table.

I dug around and soon found the business-size envelope addressed to me, in his familiar handwriting. The clipping was headlined “Fish More, Live Longer,” and it began with the observation that time seems to pass more quickly as we age, whereas kids seem to be forever impatient for things to hurry up and happen.

The theory is that children are constantly getting new mental images and experiences but that, as we age, “we lose this intensity of perception, and the world becomes a dreary and familiar place–so dreary and familiar that we stop paying attention to it.”

So lifelong learning and challenges are the key to keeping or regaining a healthy brain, as is taking time to “fish more” (or stop and smell the roses).

Dad and I are literally on the same page! Not only does he go to work at the store every day, he participates in numerous community activities and is locally famous for his garden and fish pond.

And about that note? The best part was the phrase “I think you and I have a lot in common.”

Besides paying me an enormous compliment, I think he was kinda-sorta suggesting a blog idea, so I was going to get right on that after the relaxing weekend I was having with my husband, whose birthday coincides with the long Fourth of July weekend.

But Saturday evening, as we were relaxing outside in the shade of the patio umbrella listening to music, a familiar classical piano piece came on, and so did a lightbulb in my head. “Hey, I think I used to play a simple version of that!”

Ted told me it was Beethoven’s Fur Elise. So I ran inside to try it out on my “piano” (electronic keyboard). Muscle memory didn’t work, but I quickly figured it out, scribbling down the notes (just letters) as I went. I asked him why my fingers didn’t remember the notes, as often happens with songs I’d learned in childhood. He said, “Maybe it was from that piano class you took in college.” What piano class??? (That’s brain injury for ya.)

Yeah, so apparently sometime after I met Ted junior year, I took a piano class. Before graduation I also managed to squeeze in History of Rock and Roll and History of the Beatles, which I do vividly remember.

When I posted about the musical memory/non-memory on Facebook, along with a photo of my musical-ish scribbles, one of my friends replied with a cartoon clip of Shroeder playing the opening of Fur Elise in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Hmmm, I says to myself, maybe I was just imitating Shroeder.

The next day, I sat down at the “piano” bench again. I’ll let Facebook tell it: “ON SECOND THOUGHT: Yesterday’s musical epiphany didn’t sound quite right when I tried to play my scribbles today, so I had another go. Still don’t know if I learned “Fur Elise in an unremembered college class or from Schroeder of the Peanuts. Either way, it was a good brain exercise.”

But then … a thought: What if this came from the songbook that came with my keyboard, which I received years after my TBI? I’m no good at sight-reading, and it’s hard to make recent memories stick, so maybe I labored over this thing and then put the book in a drawer and forgot it?

I looked through my songbooks and, yes, there was a version of Fur Elise. Rats!

So it’s still a musical mystery, but there’s something else here–something that ties together the note from my dad and the notes spinning (happily) in my head. The connection came, as connections often do, during a moment of quiet contemplation. I often find these moments, as Dad does, in nature.

Such moments also come during prayer or meditation. Today’s epiphany came at the end of yoga class, during savasana, a time when we lie on our backs with our eyes closed and our bodies and minds completely relaxed.

A song began playing in my head: Fur Elise! And suddenly I knew how the two competing topics would become one. My musicality came from my late mother’s side of the family. I can close my eyes and see her smiling and singing in church. Yes, I’m glad I inherited my dad’s energy and zest for life, and I’m also glad that my mother put music in my heart.