One of the toughest dilemmas raised by a personal disaster like my brother’s traumatic head/brain injury is this: what is the role of normalcy in the lives of the loved ones? What do we place on hold? What obligations or responsibilities do we wave away? And is it okay for us to immerse ourselves in activities that, at least for a short time, spirit us away from our sadness and frustration … especially when Nathan himself is facing this ordeal with hardly anything at all in the way of distractions or diversions? Hard questions.
Right now, I find myself cursing my busy life even while embracing it and giving thanks for it. I’m cursing it because there is this part of me that desperately wants to be at my brother’s bedside as much as possible – and that feels both guilty and embarrassed that my presence in Madison has been and will continue to be so brief and intermittent. But there is this other part of me that is grateful to be busy because it gives me a channel for my energies and stress that otherwise would have no outlet whatsoever, except for excruciating worry and frustration.
It felt really weird this past weekend when I soloed with the Choral Arts Society for their opera concert and several members of the chorus came up to me to thank me for not canceling – for persevering through this tough time. I just smiled and thanked them for their kindness, but inside my head I was thinking just the opposite: that there wasn’t anything courageous about singing on that concert. If anything, I should have been thanking THEM for providing me with such a Sweet Distraction from the sadness and worry that my whole family is feeling right now. And this concert really was that: it involved opera, which is my very favorite kind of music … it involved collaborating with some brilliantly talented (and, I might add, kind-hearted) young artists …. it involved some steep challenges for me (like just keeping up with these iron-voiced twenty-something singers in some very challenging music) …. it involved being in the comforting presence of a group that I know so well and who knows me, plus a pianist I hugely admire ….. and it even meant being on the receiving end of some applause and cheers. It was fun and satisfying – and it was hard not to feel a little selfish for having experienced such pleasure- or a little guilty for having not seriously considered pulling out of the concert altogether. (Conductor James Schatzman had already weathered a couple of frustrating setbacks of that nature, and I wasn’t about to add to his list of headaches.) So anyway, I sang …. was grateful to be singing …. but sang with Nathan still very much on my mind.
I have also been busy with rehearsals for the Racine Theater Guild’s “Beauty and the Beast” – although director Doug Instenes helped to facilitate the cancellation of one rehearsal (which I appreciated) and I’ve found ways to abridge a couple of others. If there has been any time since Nathan’s hospitalization where I found myself swept away from those cares completely, it was Sunday night when I was rehearsing the full ensemble. I think it was due in part to how tricky and challenging it is to be listening to such a large group of people singing complicated music; it didn’t leave any space in my personal hard drive to be thinking about anything else. And it probably helped as well that the choruses in Beauty and the Beast are pretty much nothing but jubilantly joyous. (There’s plenty of sadness in the show, but it’s served up in some of the solos.) So it was during that Sunday night rehearsal that I smiled more than I have during this whole tough time.
The other powerful escape, if you want to call it that, has been in the voice lessons I’ve been teaching. There is an intensity to my teaching right now that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before; it’s like I’m hyper-aware of every single detail, and hungry to tackle every single one of them. All three of the lessons I’ve taught today were very much like that. One of my freshmen, Andrew Rewerts, is probably one of my most eager students, and something about his eagerness was like a spark today- and we ended up having probably the best lesson we’ve ever had. A little bit later came Josh Hamm, a much older student whose renewed commitment to his singing is exciting me a lot – and again, like with Andrew, I felt like I was teaching him with all of my burners on high heat! And then came Max Dinan, one of several students I will soon be taking to an important competition. We worked incredibly hard today, tackling some very tough challenges in Mozart’s back-breaking aria “Il mio tesoro” …. and it was only as I was saying goodbye to Max that I realized that during the course of his 45 minute lesson, it was as though the rest of the world did not even exist. It was just me and Max and this music by Mozart. Nothing else. No one else. And there was something quite exhilarating about that- and it made me realize that whatever happens with Nathan and his recovery, I don’t ever want to forget what these voice lessons have felt like. Even when there’s no heartache from which I want to distance myself, I hope I will still teach the way I have been teaching for this past week. (And who knows- maybe the students have noticed no difference …. but it’s a difference which I feel.) Actually, if there’s a difference, it’s that I am a little bit emotionally closed-off from my students right now- less inclined to hug them, less inclined to say anything remotely mushy. It’s more about the business at hand.
By the way, I realized just today that this intensity extends even to my proof-reading! This coming Saturday is the junior recital for Nick Huff and Mike Anderle, and on top of teaching them their lessons, I’ve been proof-reading their printed program, including their program notes. And after sending off an email with five more corrections and/or suggestions, I realized that I’m proofing this program more thoroughly than I probably proofed my own master’s thesis. And it’s only now dawning on me that every moment I spend proof-reading their program is a moment when my mind is diverted away from my brother. Isn’t the human mind an incredible thing? Somehow it knows that I need to be digging deeply into every task, if only to stay grounded.
Amidst all of this, I am thankful beyond words for Kathy. I know there is no manual for how to act around one’s spouse when there is something so troubling and sorrowful weighing on them – but one way or another, Kathy has struck just the right balance in how much to focus on Nathan’s situation versus the rest of our lives. It only occurs to me now as I’m writing these words that Kathy has very subtly pulled away from voicing frustrations about work and other things that have recently caused her irritation. It might be that something like Nathan’s injury throws the everyday irritations of life into much better perspective. But I suspect that she is also making a very conscious (or maybe a lovingly subconscious) decision not to burden me with very much of that. And she asks about Nathan all the time and is anxious to know anything at all that I’ve learned from dad and Sonja or my siblings. But she also knows that life goes on, and that converting our house into a hospital waiting room two hours away from Madison does neither Nathan nor us any good. So life goes on ….. the dogs still have to be fed …. the garbage still has to be taken out ….. homemade chili (probably the best batch she’s ever made) still tastes wonderful on a chilly Monday night ….. and “The Big Bang Theory” is still hilarious …..
So I am grateful for each and every Sweet Distraction which life is serving up to me right now ….
…. the delicious turkey dinner which Kathy and I enjoyed at Polly and Mark’s Sunday night ….
…. the fun-filled dress rehearsal last night for the upcoming junior voice recital of Lizzie Calombaris and Fletcher Paulsen ….
…. the intriguing interviews at WGTD I’ve been able to record in the last week, on topics ranging from the Salem Witch Trials to Mental Illness Among the Young ….
…. playing my “O the Joy” folk service Sunday morning at church, and listening as my senior choir sang their two anthems so beautifully ….
…. and so much more. I am so thankful for NORMAL – and more than anything, I want some Normal returned to my little brother, who had just about all of it savagely wrenched away. It’s only when that happens to you or to someone you love that you realize how much we should cherish the normal stuff of our everyday lives.
pictured above: the singers with whom I sang on the Choral Arts Society opera concert: from near to far: Nancy Ann Davis, Edson Melendez, Timothy Rebers, Erin Sura, and Brianne Sura. I snapped this as the six of us were running through the famous drinking song from Verdi’s La Traviata, which finished out the concert.