The guitar feels strange and unwieldy in my hands, on my thighs, so much larger than my own beautiful violin. The extra strings confuse me and it seems impossible to differentiate between them as I haphazardly swipe at sound. I can feel my eyebrows drawing together as I concentrate on where my fingers are supposed to go. Across the table from me, Peter watches for a few moments before his own guitar seduces him and he slides out of basic chords into Jim Croce into Cliff Compton, his jamming partner for as long as I’ve known either of them and my uncle. Marie makes little jabs at reminding him: “Peter, I think she was wanting to learn ‘Amazing Grace.’ And then he moves from ‘Come Out Of the Wilderness,’ which you’ll never find in any contemporary Christian collection, and into another song, slower, and as he comes to the second verse, she joins in with the harmony.
Peter has the family voice. His father and mother could both have been professional opera singers, his twin sisters sound like angels, his oldest son has the most amazing bass, his daughter is growing into what will be a truly spectacular soprano, and he himself has a voice that nails peoples’ feet to the floor. His second son doesn’t have the voice as strongly, but he has what the eldest is missing: the Gift. Joel can play all of the songs he has ever composed, he hears the music in his head, not just the rambling melody lines that I hear but everything, and he remembers, oh, it has to be hundreds of songs. He puts lyrics and chords together in a way that I can’t even understand, but it works. Peter has the Gift, and so does my Uncle Cliff. As I listen to Peter playing Uncle Cliff’s songs I remember sitting in the old house in Visalia, watching Joel, feeling a stillness moving into me as I realized that I was watching one of those musical geniuses you hear about sometimes, and that he was mine. He was beautiful, the guitar slung low on his hips like a rock star, his face intense as the music consumed him, like it does. We used to jam together; in fact it was our excuse to be together when we were still hiding from each other, standing in the middle of Lithia Park in the dead cold of winter, under the reaching bareness of a tree while we touched each other the only way we dared. Later I would have to kiss him while he sat ‘noodling’ on the couch, since his lips would purse with the effort of getting the chord just right. He was my poet, my music man. I loved him. I love him.
Peter turns his attention to me again, heeding Marie’s advice that he ought to teach me something else and realizing that I have no clue about strumming patterns. I love jamming with Peter and Uncle Cliff. When I’m with them, something inside me opens up and the music that gets trapped in the corners of my soul escapes. With them I’m suddenly truly a musician – not just a violinist in the church orchestra or the girl with the crazy vibrato, but part of the stream that rushes with music, a servant to a passion that otherwise would never show. I ask Peter to teach me one more song and he tells me to watch his strum pattern, to put swing into it, that emotion is the most important part. And looking at him, just for a moment, I see Joel, my Joel, laughing as we sang ‘Valentine’s Day Is A Drag,’ everybody with their own verse and hear Marie saying “‘Eggshells And Onions’, play ‘Eggshells And Onions’ for her!’ Have you heard this one? It’s great, it’s about Peter coming home.” And then it’s gone and Peter’s in front of me and Marie’s wheelchair is sitting in a different living room, but I don’t mind all that much. After all, I’m learning the guitar and I can still jam when Uncle Cliff or his daughter come to visit. But as I say goodnight and get ready to leave I say “tell Joel I’m really offended he didn’t call to sing us the Valentine’s song,.” But what I really mean is “tell Joel I still love him, and I still haven’t found someone that I want to take his place and I’ve been looking, and he’s still my poet and my music man.”
Posted by melindam 
Posted by melindam 