Memories

My friend and I were talking about playing the piano last night. It's one of my biggest regrets...quitting the piano. I wanted to quit for so long, but my parents insisted that I take lessons until I turned 13. So happy when I quit...and so quickly regretted quitting.

But it reminded me of my great Aunt. This woman is quite spectacular. She's the youngest of 11 or 12 siblings. My grandmother was the 3rd eldest and her name was Maria Alida Nannetta Josephina. My great aunt just Ekaterina. It's as if they ran out of names or something. But they lived in Holland, in Amsterdam, during the second world war and my great aunt tells stories of how they survived on nothing but tulip bulbs and potato peels. She is a classically trained pianist and used to sing opera and learned tons of different languages travelling all over Europe singing opera: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Russian to name but a few. She immigrated with many of the family members to Canada, following the second world war, and became an opera teacher.

One of my fondest memories is from family gatherings, usually around Christmas. Her birthday is on boxing day and so there is always a party thrown for her. She's the only one left of that generation...the matriarch of that side of the family. And always at some time during the festivities she would quietly make her way over to the piano and start playing these elaborate concertos or sonatas...always from memory...Chopin, Schubert, Beethoven...she'd play forever. And I'd always follow her and sit cross-legged on the carpet to listen to her.

She's the tiniest woman, my great aunt. Probably only about five feet tall, and weighs maybe a hundred pounds on a good day. But she has these hands...long elegant fingers...and they dance across the keys as she plays the scores in her mind. She used to wear this pair of rings on her right ring finger. Two silver rings each with a large silver ball that sort of sat to each side. The two fit together, overlapping. I'm not describing it very well. But I remember that the balls used to fall to the side, slipping under her finger as she would play...her hands flying across the keyboard....and they would clink against the keys. And I remember how she used to flip the rings back around with her thumb...never missing a beat...never missing a note.

She's in a home now but she still has her own little room, and we still go over to her and drink tea with her (always loose ...she has a beautiful silver tea strainer embellished with elaborate filligree). We always bring dutch cookies of some kind - ginger cookies or the little fingers filled with almond paste. And at some point she'll take her walker and take us out to one of the common rooms where they have a piano and she'll play for us. She doesn't have the same repetoire any more; she generally plays the same thing - a piece by Schubert. But she still plays beautifully.

Recently I noticed that she doesn't wear the silver rings with the balls any more and so I asked her about them. She doesn't remember them. Maybe they weren't that significant to her...I mean, truth be told, I probably wouldn't remember every piece of jewelry that I've ever owned. The funny thing is that I remember them...so clearly. The way they hit the keys, the flick of her thumb, the way they looked so large against her slender finger, the warmth and contentment I felt as I sat and listened and watched her play.

My grandparents have long been dead, but they used to have these brown cord jackets that they used to wear. My opa's coat used to smell of pipe tobacco; my oma's coat of butterscotch lifesavers. I remember that too. I remember lots of other things about them too...things they used to say or do, bad things like when my Opa was sick, or their funerals, or how upset my mother used to get when my Oma was deteriorating. But those were things that happened. I just think that it's interesting the memories we have attached to inanimate objects: a cord jacket, a silver ring. I just think that it's interesting how sometimes we can recognize the significance of something as it happens, and other times it sort of slips into our memories benignly, and develops meaning and significance unconsciously. And then we remember...so clearly...as if it were yesterday.