Living Their Legacy

Today is my mom's birthday. 

I should warn you, before you read any further, that this post is likely to get a bit maudlin... since this is the second birthday that she hasn't been around for. But it's still her day, in my mind, and it's one of the hardest days for me in terms of my own personal "grief journey." 

Now, I don't imagine that my experience is all that unusual or special, or that it's any "harder" for me than for anyone else who has lost a loved one. Everyone's experience is unique, and we can never really understand what someone else is going through. So all I really know is what I'm going through. And what I'm going through today is hard. I miss Mom every day, and a huge percentage of my time is spent doing things that directly remind me of her, every day. I can't avoid the "triggers" because my career is a trigger. 

Today, as with most days, I spent a good portion of my day teaching music lessons. Which I love, don't get me wrong. And so did Mom. She was a fantastic teacher, and had such an amazing impact on the kids she taught. Being able to teach private music lessons is as much of a gift for the teacher as being able to take them is for the student. One-on-one focussed attention for 30 or 45 or 60 minutes, (at least that's the goal!) trying to make the student better at expressing themself, working to instill a love of music (and a passion for making music), and finding ways to communicate across boundaries of age, culture, experience, and at least two languages (music is one, English is the second, at minimum)! It's a challenge, but the more I do it, the more I realize why my Mom (and my Grannie, and my Great-Grandmother) did it for so much of their lives. 

None of them (to my knowledge) depended on the income from teaching the way I do. That extra bit of money certainly came in handy, but all three of them were the wives of men with steady, dependable careers, and while I was never able to discuss it with Grannie (or Great Grandmother Julia Graham, whose name I bear but who died before I was born), I know that my Mom considered her income as a teacher, pianist and composer to be "extra" money, used to pay for holidays and new music equipment, not for anything so prosaic as rent or groceries. So if they hadn't loved it, I imagine they would have just stopped doing it, but those one-on-one connections made while music lessons are happening can be so profound and life affirming that I can't picture myself leaving it behind, even if money were suddenly not an issue. (And Fates, I'm challenging you to put me to the test on that one by letting me win the lottery or something, just to prove I'd still want to teach!)

All this is by way of saying that I love what I do, but on days like today, I do sort of wish I could afford to just take the day off - my own personal memorial day, where I don't have to listen to myself counting out "Ta, Ta, Half Note, Great Big Whole Note" in just the same tone of voice I heard Mom use for years of after school piano lessons. A day during which I don't need to contemplate the hundreds (thousands) of shiny stickers I buy and give out every year, and why there are a few packets of similar stickers that I took from Mom's studio after she passed that I still haven't opened. (There's one package of Kokopelli stickers, for example, that I'm totally hoarding, maybe because they remind me so much of her that giving them away feels like letting go of her.) 

I was doing some teaching before Mom left us. Mostly voice, but I had started teaching piano, which I'd been terrified to do because Mom was so great at it that I couldn't imagine being anywhere near as good as she was. Also, I'm sure I was a miserable piano student, and I worried that karma would catch up to me (which it kind of has, although at least I can relate to those students - "I know... I always hated counting/playing 2 bars at a time until I got it right, too. And if you can find a better way to do it, let me know, because honestly, I've tried, and this is the only way")!

The thing is, though, that back then, teaching was still a sideline for me. I still had a waitressing job, or a retail job that was paying most of the bills, so when asked what I did for a living, I rarely thought to respond "I'm a music teacher, and a musician," (or vice versa, depending on the day). I do now. I've said before how much I wish she'd seen me make this transition, how much I would have liked her advice on billing, or what to do about that one kid who really makes you want to tear your hair out, or the one you know you have to pass on to another teacher because she needs more specialization than you can give her, even though you want to keep her just so she makes you look good at recitals! And speaking of recitals - how do you schedule them around the kids' other activities? Where do you have them when you have too many students to fit in your house but not enough to fill a theater? And how do you pay for them? So many questions I never thought to ask.

And a week ago today, I was on my way to a gig with my jazz band... the other half of what I do with my life these days. We play at least two, and often more, of my mom's compositions at every gig we perform, and I often tell little stories either about the songs, or about Mom, or about our album, which only became a full length album after she died and I felt the need to record her music... I know I don't have to tell those stories - I could, after all, just sing the songs and keep my thoughts to myself, but, well, she wouldn't have. 

She was a pretty open book, especially when you listen to the lyrics she wrote. While she did keep some things to herself in conversation, she laid it all out in her poems, stories and songs. I believe that's what kept her sane and happy and resilient. None of those qualities went away until her Parkinson Disease had progressed to the point that she couldn't play or write the way she wanted to anymore. Even then, the music she loved helped keep her with us until it was time for her to go.

I'm at the age now where I realize that likely there's more of my life behind me than before me, mathematically speaking. And since I don't have my own children, it becomes more important to me than ever to consider the legacy I'm leaving. One of my nieces or nephews might carry on the musical traditions of my family into the fifth generation, but right now, I'm the end of the line. And that's a great responsibility - one that I'm not entirely sure I'm up to. 

I wish I could ask my mom about it.