A Daughter's Dilemma

Upon my father's death I took possession of his prized violin.  During the last few years of his life, when I made it known that it was the only thing of his I would ever want, he seemed happy to know that this one object of his meant so much to me.  Now, rather than bringing me comfort, it is creating emotional havoc as it sits idly in the corner.

My father and I had a complicated relationship.  He felt very strongly about his heavy-handedness as a parent.  I believe his approach to parenthood must have stemmed from his own misbehavior as a youth; he was suspicious, frequently feared the worst, and fought uncompromisingly to preempt behaviors he thought would result, inevitably, in bad outcomes. 

I try to remember that he was a product of a different time; he came of age in the early 1950s.  I often wonder how the treatment by his own parents factored into the parent he became.  He was raised in the most modest of households, by a mother who wanted far more than they could afford, and a father who didn’t live long enough to complete her in more transcendent ways.  Over the years I heard stories about how my grandmother forced my father to smoke a cigarette at the age of five so he would learn to be repelled by it.  Or how my father jumped on his bed until it broke, my grandfather painstakingly repairing it rather than spending a dime to replace it. 

Somewhere in this dark youth, just this side of Angela’s Ashes to my own mind, my father learned to play the violin.  I regret that I never asked him how or why this came to be, but I do know that he was nine years old when he began taking lessons.  It must have meant a lot to him, because he worked in his teacher’s lamp factory to earn money for his lessons.  After his Bar Mitzvah, he used all his gift money to buy a violin that he picked out with his teacher.  He would play this one instrument until his untimely death, two years ago.

My father was an outstanding violinist who was much acclaimed in his day.  The stirring beauty of his playing was a sharp contrast to the rough edges of this man, who was outwardly jovial but also stirred easily into belligerence.   I have romanticized for myself the pictures from his youth as if from a film—think Stand By Me, or American Graffiti.   I see my father’s younger self, clad in white button-down and khaki pants, white socks showing, practicing his beloved deBeriot Concerto #9 behind the closed door of the tiny bedroom he shared with his brother.  No more than ten feet away in the living room, his mother turns up the volume on the radio to drown out the squeal of the violin.  She eats her bland dinner on the small couch with a fork in one hand and a smoldering cigarette in the other.  His father and younger brother sit at the bleached wood table, the older man hidden behind the day's newspaper while the younger is eager to finish in order to escape outside to play in the yard.

I can’t remember the first time I heard my father play the violin, but I remember how it transformed my impression of him as a man.  He was very much about work and chores and discipline, but when he tucked the curvy wooden sculpture under his chin he was a conjurer of beauty—a master.  Eventually I would become a pianist in my own right.  The times I spent sight-reading through the great violin concertos as his accompanist, as well as the few public performances we gave together, remain some of the best memories of my life.  As musicians we were equal in a way we never were as father and daughter.

In my sadness following my father's death, I opened the violin; it's silence was final and palpable.   It is a treasure so much more to me than its value as an object or artifact; it holds the residual spirit of the man and the music we made together.   Still in its original case, it's smells trick my senses into believing that my father is standing beside me.  He was a man of many contradictions, but I choose to remember the man who, as a boy, managed to create beauty despite his bleak surroundings.  Perhaps the music saved him or set him free.  This notion is my comfort every time I catch sight of the violin case sitting propped in the corner of my living room, just a few feet from where I sit to practice on my Steinway.

As musicians know that music must be “made,” it is also true that instruments must be played.  A violin is a hand-fitted box under pressure.  Nothing will destroy it faster than using it as an accessory.  I have consulted some musician friends in the area who agree that this is a worthy instrument.  With their help, I’ve developed a plan for renovating the instrument and setting up a Trust so that it can be placed under extended load to an up-and-coming music student.  (This is done frequently with valuable instruments such as Stradivarius violins and cellos.)  I would retain ownership, but the instrument would be able to live out its natural life as an angel of music.

This seemed an easy decision to make until one family member let me know they would consider it giving the instrument away.   I would never give it away or sell it; rather, I see this as a way to perpetuate both the life of the instrument and my father’s legacy.  Ironic though it may be, in order to keep the instrument alive I feel I am forced to part with it.  My father was never any good at letting things go.   Some lessons we must learn for ourselves.

Coming tomorrow:  Blueprint for an Architect