Mystery Tulips and Gratitude
by Elouise
My house is filled with small signs and symbols of my past. Sometimes covered with layers of dust. Sometimes sparkling in the sunlight.
This photo caught my eyes and my heart this morning. I was looking for something else, and found this instead. Reminders of who I am, where I’ve been and what I treasure.
The tulips are front and center. They arrived in May 2012, two days before Mother’s Day. The card with the tulips didn’t have the name of the sender. It did, however, have this quotation:
And so our mothers and grandmothers have,
more often than not anonymously,
handed on the creative spark,
the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see
—or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.
–Alice Walker
The tulips, sent by my daughter, are long since gone. The quotation is still on the bulletin board just next to my desk. A constant reminder of what I owe to my mothers and grandmothers—those related to me by blood and those I’ve come to love as part of my extended family.
The quotation is sad and true, like an elegy that grieves and expresses gratitude in the same breath. My mother passed on to me her musical ability, desire and need to play the piano. It was what she had to offer. Enough to carry me through for years, yet not enough to take me the full journey.
Playing the piano was like speaking a coded language. A way of expressing through my body, channeled through my hands, what my heart felt or wanted to feel. I still play the piano. Yet I find myself drawn more and more to writing.
Here’s how I see it now. Playing the piano was and is a crucial part of who I am. It isn’t, however, everything I am or yet will be. Without words, piano music is incomplete. Beautiful and moving, yet sometimes an elegant placeholder for words not yet birthed.
Today I relish the ability to put my inner thoughts and feelings into words. Things I could only think about, or didn’t realize I knew or needed to say when my voice was silenced externally and internally.
I’d like to think the skill my mother passed on to me also kept her safe and in touch with herself. What might she say today that she could only hint at or point to back then in her piano playing?
I treasure music. I also treasure my words. Freely spoken and freely written for myself, for God, and for those with whom I choose to share them. Thanks for your faithful reading.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 29 May 2015
Photo by Elouise, May 2012
Telling the Truth 
I can understand how piano playing and music are a refuge and less adequate than words for what you want to convey at this time. However, I feel that the language of music is more than adequate for expressing emotion, and even thoughts beyond words. And they can work together to tell a story. But you are speaking specifically of your call to speak truth with words. Pondering.
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Thanks for this reflective and helpful comment. When I understand the ‘story’ behind words and music (especially context), it brings more to life than the music alone.
Having said that, I also find music without words (spoken or sung) extremely moving–though more with reference to what I’m bringing to the music at that moment–which includes a connection to mystery that goes beyond words or thoughts. When I’m singing (‘borrowing’) someone else’s words to music, I’m often caught at a different, more personal level. The words become revealing about me.
Yes, my comments speak to my situation at this time of my life. I do, however, find myself grieving even as I appreciate and celebrate my mother’s piano playing. Perhaps the words/life lived that filled them with so much beauty would have been too painful for her to articulate or for me to hear. I don’t know.
In addition, my comments about being drawn to words may have as much to do with being a survivor not allowed to speak truth. I could play the piano at will. Yet even then, it was piano music of a certain kind.
Thanks, da, for helping me put more thoughts and words to these things. I’ve been pondering this for a couple of months, wondering how to put it into (!) words.
Elouise
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Thank you for that filled out reflection. Your mother did not have an option to say more than what her music was prescribing. Was it only part of her truth and yours? I will think about it some more, too, for myself. Piano playing for me growing up was a refuge in a family that did not know how to love or to communicate well. If I could have lost myself entirely in music, I would have done it. I still would if it were a option! 🙂 But maybe I have to use words, too. God bless you in sharing so openly from your heart. I appreciate it. ~DV
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Thanks, DV! About my mother and me. There were significant differences between us, yet the truth of her music was about beauty and deep faith. I embraced this with all my heart–though my voice was not her voice. At some level I think she understood this (about my voice), and perhaps felt slighted because of it. At least when I was living at home. So part of my silence was a choice not to get into it with her. I needed her as an ally. Music was our most common bond, next to gender. I can tell I’m going to think about this further! Thanks for your comments.
Elouise
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