On the upside of the U curve

I haven't posted here since, it seems, 2009, although I wrote several unpublished posts in the interim. I have reached the age where news of death outnumbers news of births and marriages, and some of that has touched me deeply. My father died in 2012 after a brief war on lung cancer, and I lost my pseudo-brother suddenly and inexplicably last fall. The silver lining for the latter -- and I fight desperately every day to find one -- has been a strengthening of my relationship with his sister, my "pseudo-sister", who now finds herself an only child like me.

Despite these huge events, I find myself embarking on the upswing of the U curve cited by research on happiness among adults. Happiness, however they define it, reaches its nadir in the 40s, then begins an upward trend. One can't help correlating the curve with the age of offspring, with the nadir coinciding with the kids' teen years. Ok, I can't help it.

My life is more orderly now with two kids in college and the third in high school. The youngster is determined to give me a run for my money, but he's also very sweet, teetering on the fence between the little boy who still needs me and the capable young man who doesn't want to. They are all right where they should be, with all the angst that comes along for that ride.

Now my husband and I begin to become ourselves again. A grain of our youth remains, but we lack the physical energy to do all the things we imagine. We have purchased that large piece of land that we plan to leave alone as a refuge for ourselves as well as for wildlife. We can't wait to live there, but there is much to be done first, so it is an exercise in patience. But it has given us a new project, something to look forward to.

But it has also made it unbearably clear just how much -- or how little -- our children are still engaged in our lives. Our son is beyond excited about this property, full of plans and ideas, ready to spend every summer day there. Our oldest is too busy living her life to even visit very much; while she is living at home, she spends her time with her boyfriend and her friends, assembling her tribe. Our middle daughter is struggling with belonging somewhere; life isn't the same as it was in high school, so she's grieving a loss that none of us can quite put a finger on. As always, each of our children has had a very different reaction to this change: one highly positive, one negative (well, a don't care, really), and one in between. As it has always been, for everything.

What surprises me is how sanguine we all are about moving out of the house in which we have lived for almost 25 years. We spent our honeymoon there; the kids have grown up there; we have laughed and cried there. We are thoroughly done with it and ready to move on to our new adventure. I wonder if that will still be the case when the time comes to hand over the keys to another family.

The Music of My Life

Seventeen years ago, I walked into the sanctuary of the Presbyterian church for a Bach Choir rehearsal. The orchestra was playing -- it was among the last rehearsals before the concert, and the orchestra was rehearsing before the choir arrived. I walked down the center aisle, the pews around me sparsely populated, and imagined myself a bride. The conductor led the musicians with vigor, and I imagined that it was all for me. This was my dream for my wedding day, something I hadn't really thought too much about -- something I didn't really think would ever happen.

Two years later, I had my wedding after all, but there was no orchestra. There was very little music, and what there was was recorded. No one danced, no one revelled in music. It was rather subdued, actually, with a great deal of food. I married someone who does not share my passion for music, and, even though our wedding date was chosen well ahead of time, we spent far too much time choosing a home and far too little planning the wedding. It was nice, it served the purpose, but it was far from my vague idea of an ideal celebration.

Tonight I sang Bach's St. Matthew Passion with that same choir and that same orchestra. Some of the faces have changed, but the music is timeless. While the whole piece is full of emotion and drama, the last chorus is the most moving. In the story, Jesus' body has just been buried by Joseph of Arimathea, and all of the people who had been close to him gather around. Ruhet sanfte, ruhet wohl, they all whisper. Sleep softly, sleep well. This one chorus is, to me, the most passionate of all of Bach's work, much of which strikes me as beautiful in a matter-of-fact, almost mathematical way. This one's different. One can feel the wild extremes of emotion, from wailing grief to quiet reflection, just as someone very human might react to the death of a spouse.

As I anticipated it, and even as I sang it, I thought to myself: I want this to be sung at my funeral. If it can't be sung, then a recording should be played at full volume, so the walls shake. Music is a visceral, essential part of who I am, and this chorus needs to be felt in the bones. When I sing it with the choir, I feel the resonance of the singers around me in my body; I hear the passion in their voices, and I see the vigorous direction from the conductor. It is all so compelling; merely listening to a recording is far too passive for this music.

Once on my way down this path, I started to think about other music I would want to have at my funeral. Parts of the Faure Requiem, perhaps, maybe some of the B Minor Mass, definitely some Billy Joel, Susan Werner. But then I stopped short. What am I doing? I thought. It hasn't been that many years since I walked down the aisle in that church and thought about my wedding. Can it be that I've gotten so old that now I can only think of my funeral?

This is disturbing. But there is no other event for which I can plan any music I want. It is the only celebration of me that I can foresee; it's just unfortunate that I can't be there for it. I'd sure love the music..

Joy restored

I spent the last few months in a funk. Hiding from the telephone, telling my kids to leave me alone, burying myself in my iPod and the Internet. I felt like I was in mourning, but I didn't know what for. I felt like I was never going to be really happy again.

Tonight I broke out of that for a few hours. I don't know how long I can hold onto this feeling, but my heart is moved and my soul is full. I sang Bach and Mozart with my choir for two hours, after sharing a German meal with them. I could feel every cell in my body; I was alive to my core.

We had been on summer hiatus since May, when we had our annual Festival, our 99th. I didn't realize how much I missed it, how much I missed the people as well as the music, until I was there amidst it all. It had seemed like work that first week in May, with rehearsals every night, seeing my family only for a couple of hours each night, coordinating soccer practices and scout meetings with my rehearsals and concerts. But now, it's all just magic. We're learning new music (well, new to this particular group, and some is new to me), and it's Mozart, even though we're a Bach choir.

We began by singing his Ave Verum Corpus, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written (see more here and here). It is beautiful in its simplicity and reverence and brings peace to your soul. We then moved on to the Coronation Mass. You can hear Mozart's mercurial personality in the music. The arrogant boy, puffing out his chest with disdain for lesser composers, followed quickly by the awe-struck servant of God who is humbled by his gift. The Agnus Dei is reminiscent of the Ave Verum, but the Gloria breaks out in joy and contagious enthusiasm. I imagine Mozart as a very passionate and charismatic man-boy, someone whose supreme self-confidence made it impossible to take one's eyes off him, but, like so many geniuses, someone whose basic needs had to be taken care of for him because he just didn't register such nonsense. I feel in his music that he lived for it, that God began and ended with it, and that he had time for nothing else. Perhaps that's why he only lived to not-quite-36.

It is a miracle that we can feel the force of one man's personality 215 years after he died. Bach wrote truly great music, but, perhaps because I know it (well, the sacred choral stuff) so well, the force of Bach's personality doesn't hit me as hard as Mozart's. I may have become inured to its effects after almost 20 years of singing it (though the B Minor Mass still moves me to tears even after some 45 performances of it), but I think Bach's relatively long and happy life makes his music more straightforward, with less ambiguity. Not passionless, but passionate within the context, without the huge ups and downs of Mozart.

Music is a language -- really the only world-wide language. We don't all know the great composers of every country, but the universally-acknowledged masters, like Bach and Beethoven are known by all, even if peripherally. Imagine sitting down with a stranger from a foreign country and trying to convey one's feelings. All you need to do is find the right piece of music, and even if one's counterpart hasn't heard it before, s/he can get an inkling of what's going on in your head. It's Tower of Babel stuff! It's basic to our humanity, something that binds us as common inhabitants of Earth.

Douglas Adams said it best: "When I listen to Mozart, I understand what it is to be a human being; when I hear Beethoven, I understand what it is to be Beethoven; but when I listen to Bach, I understand what it is to be the universe." I think that's it -- it isn't that Bach's personality is less forceful than Mozart's. It's more that Bach's music is a basic ingredient of the universe; we're permeated with it, it feels like part of us, like it's always been there and always will be, like a force of nature, timeless. Its ebb and flow is our ebb and flow. Whoever the composer, communication is happening on a very basic, visceral level, and it can bring intimacy to strangers.

Joy restored. That's what it feels like. It was missing from my life, and now it's back. Listening to music is for me too far removed; I need to be part of the music, inside it, making it happen. I can't go to concerts because I want so desperately to sing or play myself. I like to sing alone sometimes, but sharing the joy is the real key. There is nothing like singing beautiful music with people who love it as much as you do. It's better than any drug.