4-2-19 STRING II

Lila Shill, age 15.

Lent Writing note: We are half way through the season of Lent. If you've been following my daily writing exercises you know I have received a single word via a random word generator on the internet (www.randomwordgenerator.com). Each day I use the word as a trigger to my writing exercise, then I post what I've written here on my blog.

For the second half of my Lent Writing this year I will be repeating the words I have used already, but writing from a different perspective. On 3-12-19  The word was STRING. Today I'll use the same word in a different light.

I know strings. The kind with little knobs on the end, some of them thin and almost invisible if they fall on the floor, and some thick and wound with more string. I purchase them in quantities multiplied by 6. They are necessary for my guitars to fill the measure of their creation. It would be sad to be a guitar with no strings, or to be a string with no guitar.

If I were a harp string, I would want to live in the Shill house.

Sunday night we got a call inviting us to hop on over to our neighbors, the Shill's house, to hear Lila play her recital pieces. Lila is a beautiful, graceful and charming fifteen-year-old. Through the years I have heard her play her harp in church, not often enough. Things like Silent Night at Christmas. Her harp teacher requires her students to play their recital pieces for ten different audiences before their recital, and Dave and I got to be one of those audiences. Honestly, it felt like we went into this as a favor to our friends, and came out knowing full well that we had been the ones blessed. 

Besides the fact that this young girl had played, from memory, twenty-five minutes of very complicated harp music, it blew me away that she was able to hit all those notes precisely AND play with fluid pacing and dynamics. I watched her fingers flutter in and out of those strings, like mystical dragonflies. I was torn between closing my eyes to breathe-in the music and the stunning visual scene before me: lovely Lila with her flowing hair and dancing hands, her well-exercised fingers plucking out with strength and precision one moment, then floating in and resting gently against the strings, stopping their vibrations, like a mother hushing her child. 

This is what every body who hears Lila's music wants to do.

When Lila played her first piece she sat alone in the corner of their beautiful living/music room. Dave and I sat opposite her in soft chairs. By the third piece, nine-year-old Emma had wrapped herself in a blanket and laid herself on a pillow in the middle of the living room floor, her pink stuffy tucked against her chest. Caleb joined her there on the carpeted floor by song four. Mom and Dad perched themselves in quiet places, behind us on the stairs and tucked into a corner by the door. Lila's parents, Talmage and DaNae, have heard these songs played on these strings, no doubt, countless times, and yet here they were again, unable to turn away. The music, and the spirit of it all was magically calming and at the same time full of energy. 

After Lila had performed all her recital pieces we asked for an encore. Talmage, with some coaxing, lifted his guitar off the wall and joined Lila in a beautiful rendition of Dona Nobis Pacem. Talmage plucked away at the strings of his classical guitar while his daughter carried her own part on the harp. It seemed so representative to me; a father walking the path of his own, but weaving in and out of the path his oldest daughter took. It was just lovely.

Heaven in one little corner of the earth.

By the end of the night we had heard eleven-year-old Caleb play the strings of their sparkling grand piano, struck with felt hammers under the polished wood soundboard. And Emma gave us a magical tune on her little harp, remarkably played with the genetic gift of her sister. And then, with much prompting and urging, we were graced by the hands of their mother, Danae. Danae, you need to know, is the epitome of grace and loveliness. She is the powerful force behind all this talent, and in spite of a frightening recurrence of breast cancer that visited her this past year and a half, she has nurtured the little lambs of her fold, while fighting her own wearying battle. And to top it off, during all of this, she sits in the Suzuki lessons of her kids and has not tuned out the lessons but has been, instead, teaching herself to play harp. 

Caleb, who marches to his own drum.

Emma follows in the footsteps of her sister.

Last night, heavenly strains of music flowed through us as we visited the blessed space of our good neighbors. It felt like we were planted on a rock in a holy stream, and sacred waters swirled around us as we warmed ourselves in the light of the love that shone there. I am not being overly dramatic in this. It was literally how it felt. 

Through the waking hours of the remainder of the night, and into the rising sunlight of the mornings after, I have been pondering the family Shill. Each one of them represents individual goodness: Talmage, DaNae, Braedon, Elder Collin who wears the badge of a missionary every day, Lila, Caleb and Emma, and even Lucy the massive dog whose mighty tail bruises DaNae's legs when she gets excited... each one fills a spot in the love place tucked under my heart. But collectively...collectively they are like their own planet, rotating faithfully around the Son.

I told the kids, after they had favored us with their songs, that they are profoundly blessed to have parents who would invest in their children like this. Harp strings are not guitar strings. One string will cost as much as a set of guitar strings, and there are 47 of them. Just the cost of the instrument alone is prohibitive for most humans. And then there are the lessons. Enough said. The parent or the spouse of a harp player is the be applauded about as much as the musician. 

Talmage, whose hands work the magic of
a physician by day, and a music backer by night.

I bow with real respect to every musician who masters their strings, or their reeds, or their mouthpieces, or their mallets and sticks, or their vocal cords. I recognize and celebrate the makers of the instruments we play, the masters who understand the necessity of integrity in an instrument. Because, as it turns out, it takes a strong, well designed and executed piece of wood to hold the tension of a string. It's the tension that creates pitch, and it takes a willing and skilled set of hands to master that tension and create the magic of music.

Lila's magical hands.