The Used Violin
The son of impoverished refugees was given a used violin for his tenth birthday which he neither asked for nor wanted. 
After months of attempting to master the instrument, he came to believe that screeching discord would forever be the fruit of his labor. He could not make it resonate with beauty. His heart would never dance when he eyed the thing in its ragged case or plucked its weary strings. And, though always a gentle boy, in a fit of frustration one day he smashed the violin and hid the pieces in his closet.
“Where are you going?” his mother called, as he attempted a nonchalant exit from their little backyard, where she was hanging laundry. “You have to practice.”
Suddenly overcome with remorse, he couldn’t look at her, knowing that she had saved pennies from her tailor’s wages to finally purchase the object he had just destroyed, an object that had been lovingly handled by scores of boys before him.
He never played an instrument again, but he loved his mother dutifully evermore and upon the birth of his first child he purchased a piano as an homage to her. His children became musicians and at each recital, each concert he felt her presence, her pride and her forgiveness.
We, the “Elderly”
Sent by a friend, without attribution:
- We grew up in the 40s-50s-60.
- We studied in the 50s-60s-70s.
- We dated in the 50s-60s-70s.
- We got married and discovered the world in the 60s-70s-80s.
- We ventured into the 70s-80s.
- We stabilized in the 90s.
- We got wiser in the 2000s.
- And went firmly through the 2010s.
Turns out we’ve lived through NINE different decades…
TWO different centuries…
TWO different millennia…
- We have gone from the telephone with an operator for long-distance calls to video calls to anywhere in the world, we have gone from slides to YouTube, from vinyl records to online music, from handwritten letters to email and WhatsApp…
- From live matches on the radio, to black and white TV, and then to HDTV…
- We went to Blockbuster and now we watch Netflix…
- We got to know the first computers, punch cards, diskettes and now we have gigabytes and megabytes in hand on our cell phones or iPads…
- We wore shorts throughout our childhood and then long pants, oxfords, Bermuda shorts, etc.
- We dodged infantile paralysis, meningitis, H1N1 flu and now COVID-19…
- We rode skates, tricycles, invented cars, bicycles, mopeds, gasoline or diesel cars and now we ride hybrids or 100% electric…
Yes, we’ve been through a lot but what a great life we’ve had!
They could describe us as “exennials” people who were born in that world of the fifties, who had an analog childhood and a digital adulthood.
We’re kind of Ya-seen-it-all.
Our generation has literally lived through and witnessed more than any other in every dimension of life.
It is our generation that has literally adapted to “CHANGE”.
A big round of applause to all the members of a very special generation, which are UNIQUE. Here’s a precious and very true message that I received from a friend:
TIME DOES NOT STOP
Life is a task that we do ourselves every day.
- When you look… it’s already six in the afternoon; when you look… it’s already Friday; when one looks… the month is over; when one looks… the year is over; when one looks… 50, 60, 70 and 80 years have passed!
- When you look… we no longer know where our friends are.
- When you look… we lost the love of our life and now, it’s too late to go back.
Do not stop doing something you like due to lack of time.
Do not stop having someone by your side, because your children will soon not be yours, and you will have to do something with that remaining time, where the only thing that we are going to miss will be the space that can only be enjoyed with the usual friends. This time that, unfortunately, never returns…
The day is today!
WE ARE NO LONGER AT AN AGE TO POSTPONE ANYTHING.
Pass it on to your best friends. Don’t leave it for later
Let’s Face It
That’s this pretty girl, second from right, at 17.
A pretty girl grows accustomed to being the center of attention. She is on the A-list, selected for teams and sleepovers, to star in school plays, and to go to ritzy beach houses on summer weekends and on ski trips in winter.
A pretty girl grows accustomed to being sought after by A-list boys, and longed for by boys on society’s fringe. If charm accompanies that pretty face, she often is teacher’s pet, with latitude granted for missed homework and poor quiz scores.
When I was in school in the 50s, a pretty girl believed it wise to compete with girls for boys, and not to compete with boys. Collecting varsity pins of stars who vied for her attention trumped any desire she may have had to pursue academic excellence.
A pretty girl who attended college in the early 60s, often on a quest for an M.R.S. degree, received high grades for work that might be mediocre, from professors (they were mostly men then) who primped as she entered the room, hoping to gain her admiration. Accustomed to “getting by on her looks,” a pretty girl sometimes felt bewildered by changing expectations of the era, but found that a pretty face serves as hard currency in any world.
A pretty girl is accustomed to being noticed as she enters a room. The waters part for her. She is fawned over by plain girls wanting to share the glow of her aura, and men are courtly. In the office or lab, she is offered raises and promotions (to a point), foreign travel and prime assignments. In marriage, her failings are happily forgiven by her besotted husband.
Woe to this pretty girl as she ages. We all know her story. Often her position at home or at work is usurped by a younger woman. She doesn’t quite get why her status has changed, because disappointment is a strange bedfellow. And when she looks in the mirror, she still sees a pretty face. She feels pretty. Her Gestalt is “pretty.”
Over time, this self-image wanes. The faces of her friends become lined and she may muse, “Is that how I look?” Then, one morning the face that greets her in her mirror is not the pretty girl.
I was a lucky pretty girl, in that I had it both ways. I never fully incorporated a pretty-girl persona because by the time my swan emerged, in late adolescence, I was used to being ignored by boys and had developed other interests.
But in the end, I am that woman looking in the mirror wondering where the pretty girl went. Because my pretty mother died young, I no longer see her face in mine. I see my Aunt Clara, who lived a long life.
My mom is on the left, Aunt Clara on the right.
I am sharing these thoughts because my friend wondered if the novel I’m writing addresses metaphorically my preoccupation with aging and the loss of physical beauty. My protagonist, Brenda Corrigan, is attacked and undergoes facial reconstruction. As she tries to cope with the reality that her pretty, though aging, face has been usurped by one misshapen and scarred, she is determined to rely on other strengths, noting that the blind hear everything, the deaf see all. Wit remains her mainstay: When a group of women enter a posh Beverly Hills restaurant, Brenda observes their plastic surgery results. “Were those faces all cut from the same stencil?” she asks her daughter. “They all look like gaping fish.”
Aging indeed is a theme of this novel. We all confront the loss of physical beauty and learn to rely on other strengths, if we are lucky.
Slaughterhouses
This is an excerpt from my novel, Brenda Corrigan Went Downtown:
As a child, I visited slaughterhouses. They lined a street so wide it could have been a boulevard. The asphalt shone with bloody puddles of sunlight. Trucks and cars backed into the curb for easy loading. Drivers loped determinedly in and out of doors, arms full, faces closed.
I always waited in my father’s car. He dealt lunches to factory workers from the deck of his station wagon, then we’d go to market to buy next day’s supplies. Sometimes I’d bring a book to read, so as not to see the blood. Sometimes I’d close my eyes, lean back against the seat, and dream. That the animals sang, that they played and danced in a happy zoo and these men who paced in blood were, like me, merely visitors.
But I always knew that the animals longed to be free. Their singing wounded my heart and I wished that they would one day trample the bloody aprons and dash onto the wide, free street. Oh what a fairy tale this would make!
Of course, they never strayed. They huddled in grand choirs, scraping the senses of all who still heard.
I learned to chant: “Chop! the chicken head. Ping! the pig is dead.”
Brenda’s 9/11 Dream
This is one of my favorite passages in my novel, Brenda Corrigan Went Downtown — a dream of 9/11 in Washington, DC:
Awash in the news, her former neighbors would converge on the lawn in front of their building, consultants wandering off to Café Deluxe to nurse a cappuccino; retired foreign service officers entrenched, waiting for official word of what to do next. The Romanov heir would twist his rings and murmur memories of his Paris boyhood. The General from the Shah’s army would pierce the air with his foul cigarettes, his wife silent at his side. Nannies would comfort toddlers alarmed by the sudden roar of an F16 . . .
All true and exactly how it happened in real life, when I was a Washingtonian.