Shortnin' Bread (Birthday Lesson)

About a month ago I got a message from a woman with a special cello lesson request.  Her father would be having his birthday and she was hoping to give him a cello lesson.  Apparently he used to play the cello a long time ago and talked to his family about it all the time.  I had an extra cello that he could use in my apartment and so I gladly agreed to help out with the birthday surprise.

So as he walked into my apartment with his entire family, he had thought he would be having a photo shoot.  And then he saw the cello.  As it turned out, the last time he had played was in the 3rd grade and that was the only year of his life that he had played.  It was a program in his school and when he went on to 4th grade, the school didn't have the program or the instruments.  "I was good, always sitting at the front of the section.  If I could have continued, I'd be in the philharmonic or something."

And I wonder if that might not have been true.  I asked him what he had remembered, what songs they had played, and he remembered that they had done Shortnin' Bread.  He kind of hummed it and tried to figure it out and I managed to pluck out a version that we then spent awhile learning.  And then we plucked a little Beethoven, and he bowed a little.  His hands seemed to remember so much of what he had been taught as an 8-year-old, even (50?) years later, after having grown into adult hands, large and coarse.

And the whole time his family laughed with him and took pictures and cheered him on.  Even though the event somewhat depended on me, I felt like an outsider to this beautiful African-American family, reliving this memory that their father had had years before they were even a thought in his life.  It was such a thoughtful gift and such a pleasure to be a part of it.

And this morning at 8am, a semi-student came over to use my cello to record an audition.   I've been coaching her on the music for this particular opportunity, but don't usually see her otherwise.  And I sat with her mother and chatted for a long time before and after she did the recording.  Again, the house was warm with the people in it.