Billy Coffey

storyteller

Prayer adjustments

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com
It was a big deal for my daughter and me, a couple Saturday’s ago. We’d been skittish for most of that day. She battled nerves over participating in her first official piano recital. I battled my apprehensions because that recital was to take place at the local nursing home.

One small story first:

I was in kindergarten when my teacher decided it would be a grand idea for the class to make Valentine’s Day cards for the elderly. We plunged into the task with all the gusto five-year-olds can summon, after which we were herded onto a school bus and trucked down to what my teacher called “The Rest Home.” The name conjured all manner of fantastical images in my mind, all of which were proven false once I walked through those old wooden doors. The nurses had gathered everyone in a gathering room that was much less stately and much more moldering, where I was greeted immediately by an old man with hooks for hands (and no, I’m not kidding). The sight froze me such that the other people in class quickly distributed their cards to the nearest person and made a quick exit, leaving me all alone. I heard a murmur to my left and turned there, seeing a hand stretched out. I shoved my card into a set of bony fingers and looked up just long enough to see the woman to which I’d just wished a happy Valentine’s Day didn’t have a right eye, only a patch of red, seeping skin. For months, I prayed at night for God to never let me end up like that woman. The memory haunts me to this day. It’s proof that much of the weight we carry in our hearts has been there in some form for a very long while.

That’s what was in my mind during most of that Saturday. Sitting there on the sofa, listening to my daughter practice.

It’s also why I kept near the doors when we arrived that afternoon. Go ahead and judge me, I don’t care.

The gathering room stood empty but for the twenty or so chairs that had been laid out in neat rows. The concertgoers trickled in after—men and women dressed in khakis and dresses, combed and perfumed and bejeweled.

And you know what? It wasn’t bad, not really. They were smiling and talking and happy. They were, as far as I could tell, nothing more than a collection of friendly grandparents.

That all changed when a nurse pushed in the woman in the wheel chair.

Her hair was thin and the color of snow, arranged in a what reminded me of an abandoned bird’s nest. Beneath her white slacks and blue shirt laid the remains of what I imagined to be a vibrant and healthy body once upon a time, but was now little more than a thin layer of dried, leathery skin over frail bones. And right there by the doors, I prayed that I would never end up like that woman.

The nurse wheeled her into the first row as the recital began. One student after another, fingers dancing and sometimes tripping over the keys. The room became filled with applause. Only the woman in the wheelchair did not move. Her head lolled from side to side. I supposed that was the closest she could come now to clapping, and I prayed I would never end up like her again.

My daughter did well. Magnificent, in fact, though I am perhaps a bit biased. But I don’t want to talk about the songs she played or how straight she sat or how she really nailed the ending to the Flintstones theme song. To be honest, I barely noticed any of that. I was too busy watching the woman in the wheelchair.

It was in the middle of my daughter’s second song when I looked at the woman again, and only then because of the thin stream of drool leaking from her mouth. But before I could turn away, I noticed her fingers moving along her chest, playing the keys in her mind. She kept perfect time with my daughter’s song, even caught the parts my daughter missed.

And I realized then that she may have been confined to both a wheelchair and a fading life, but she was still hearing music. She was still playing her song, even in the wan of her life. And can any of us truly strive for more in this life? Could our prayers truly ask for nothing else?

Me, I don’t think so. I think that lovely old lady is better off than a lot of us. Which was why that night and every night since, I’ve asked God to let me end up like her.

Life’s soundtrack

You do things when you’re a dad to a girl, things you wouldn’t normally do. Things that under any other circumstances would make me question my very manhood.

Full disclosure: In the ten years since God saw fit to grace this world with my daughter, I have played Barbies and attended tea parties. I have let her douse me with rouge. I have painted her fingernails. I have oohed and ahhed over dresses and skirts and pretty flowers.

I have done all these things.

But I have never, until this day, attended a piano recital.

But here I sit in the sanctuary of my church, left side, middle pew, waiting as patiently as I can for my little girl to take the bench and tickle the ivories.

Thirty people or so have joined me, many of them fathers in their own right. Plenty of grandfathers, too, and of course a full compliment of mothers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, and what I believe to be a few stragglers who simply followed the crowd inside. All of us gathered together, all of us with strained ears and expressions that alternate between wow and ouch.

And I have to say, so far so good. The first three budding virtuosos have battled admirably. Now it’s my daughter’s turn. She stands, makes her way to the stage with a smile that is part fear and part joy and all happiness, and sits.

She performs three songs—“Merrily We Roll Aong,” “Train’s A-Comin,” and “The Old Clock.” Nothing too complicated, too over-the-top, but slow and easy and good. The right notes are intermingled with only a few clunkers, but she plows on undeterred.

She is rewarded at the end with a round of applause that leaves her red-faced and beaming. She takes her seat with the others and listens attentively.

Me, I’m glad I came. Being here is surely less of a threat than letting her paint my fingernails (which only happened once, mind you, and only because she was sick and needed the distraction and because I love her, so don’t you dare judge me) or playing Barbies. She was nervous about the whole thing, had practiced her songs every night for three weeks to the point where I almost prayed for deafness, but she refused to let fear get the better of her.

I am proud of her. For that, yes, but also for this. For what she’s doing, and for what all of these children are doing.

Because these kids are taking their first steps upon a holy path—to create music.

Seems like a little thing, doesn’t it? After all, we all do it. We sing in the shower and sing in the car and sing at church. We snap our fingers and whistle. We drum our fingers. And who among us hasn’t had occasion to reach for the nearest air guitar?

We’re surrounded by it. It’s on television and the radio, the computer and the phone. Our lives are infused with it.

But it even goes deeper than that. The Aborigines of Australia believe God sang the universe into creation. That might seem crazy on the surface, but there are more than a few physicists who now believe the universe itself is made up of sonic pulses.

In other words, creation has a soundtrack.

Which is why I think my daughter’s onto something. And why I just might go home and ask her to show me a few notes on the piano in our living room. Run the scales, maybe. Maybe teach me “Train’s A-Comin.”

Because the universe might be full of music, but I still think this world needs more of it. As much as we can give it. There are too many tears.

It’s all music

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com
My house has been filled with music lately. Most days it begins in some form before I leave for work, and picks up again (in some form) when I return in the late afternoon. I can only assume it continues on unabated in my absence, though I’m not around to hear it. I know this because of the phone calls I receive throughout the day, random check-ins and how’s-your-days with said music always in the background.

For the most part, I seem to be the only one immune to the music bug. Not so for the rest of my family. My wife caught it first, passed to her via a visit with the music leader at church. They were starting an instrument ensemble. My wife played the trombone in high school. Would be she interested in playing it again?

My daughter came down with it the following day. It was a variant—ivory keys rather than a brass horn—but just as bad a case. For the past week, she’s been practicing finger placement and note recognition at the piano in the dining room under the watchful eye of her mother.

Not to be outdone, my son has borrowed an acoustic guitar from the aforementioned music leader. He’s since become attached to it, would even sleep with it if I let him. We’re looking for a guitar instructor.

Fast.

Because, you see, whether just starting out or starting out again after years of neglect, making beautiful music requires three things—time, practice, and instruction.

All three are currently missing in the musical lives of my family.

It isn’t easy for me. My nerves are already frayed to the point of snapping. I’ve just finished driving my children home from their grandparents’ house, five miles of my son’s guitar and my daughter’s singing, both trying to match the perfectly-pitched tones of the Zac Brown Band’s “Knee Deep” that was wafting through the speakers. I’d spent much of that ride with my head out the driver’s side window, trying to escape the pain.

Yes, it’s that bad.

All you would need for proof of that is to be sitting here with me right now. Each of them are scattered throughout the house, trying to find music where music is yet to be. If I were honest—and I always try to be—I could say my wife’s attempt at the trombone sounds a little like two wounded hippos attempting to mate. And my daughter’s struggle at the piano sounds much like the tortured screams of someone walking over broken glass. And my son’s endeavor with the guitar is nothing less than the musical equivalent of waterboarding.

But still I endure, as do they. Because something is going on here that until two minutes ago I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Because that was the moment my daughter yelled, “Did you hear me play, Daddy?”

“I did,” I said, and let the second part of my answer—Pretty sure the whole neighborhood heard you, too—go unsaid.

“Am I getting better?”

“I believe you are.”

“Good, because I can’t tell. Sometimes the wrong notes sound as good as the right ones. Isn’t that silly?”

Ah.

“Not really,” I told her.

I suppose one would think the point of my family’s newfound musical training is straightforward—one learns to play an instrument in order to make good music. That’s where the time, practice, and instruction come into play. And yet my daughter has just shown me there is another something beyond that, a deeper and more necessary requirement.

I think learning to play music isn’t all that different from learning to live life. We try to do the best we can to make something beautiful, knowing all the while there will be a lot of the unbeautiful in the meantime.

There will be sour notes and awkward movements. Blatant frustration and unreasonable expectations. Failures abounding. And yet now I wonder if the beautiful lives we are all trying to build must be devoid of those things—if they must be perfect in order to be good.

I doubt it.

I think my daughter is right. Sometimes the wrong notes sound as good as the right ones. Sometimes a little girl struggling to play “Chopsticks” on the piano and a little boy trying to find a note—any note—on a guitar is better than even angel song.

When it comes to song and life, the point isn’t so much to play it well as it is to play it, to try and sing and dance despite the sour notes, and to believe and love and hope despite the pain that can result.

Because when it comes to God, it’s all music. Every single note.

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