It was certainly possible that we would be kicked off the stage steps and
tossed out of the auditorium, but I went with Barb year after year because to
hear Violetta die in La Traviata and Lucia go mad in Lucia di Lammermoor
from six yards away thrilled me. Concentrated in one night were all the bliss
and fear I had yet imagined. I felt proud going to the opera with Barbara in
the same way I had felt special when my parents took me in fifth grade. I was
going with someone who cared. It was my good luck to be with her.
After Barbara passed the bar exam and joined my dad's Duluth law
practice, she took voice lessons in Duluth and kept written vocal instructions
in a booklet lined with bass and treble clefs, as she practiced arias from the
operas we had seen as children. She did breathing exercises every day and
learned how to support the voice and how to locate the place where the
sound comes from, behind the bridge of the nose, deep in the sinus cavities.
Eight years later, Barbara was diagnosed with a brain tumor that started
in her visual cortex. "If I hadn't identified so strongly with Violetta when I was
a little girl,” she cried as I sat with her in the hospital, “do you think this
would have happened?"
Violetta, a young courtesan, is Alfredo's lover in Verdi's opera La
Traviata. Alfredo's father begs Violetta to leave Alfredo so that Alfredo's
sister can make a good marriage. Violetta, sick with tuberculosis, is reluctant
to leave the man she loves, and during the duet, you’re not sure what will
happen, she could go either way. Finally, generously, she forsakes Alfredo
and moves to the country to die of tuberculosis. Believing himself
abandoned, Alfredo rages. When at last he learns of Violetta's sacrifice, he
rushes to her bedroom and they are reunited. Minutes later she dies.
Barb and I grew up listening to La Traviata as my mother played it on
the old mahogany record player in the front hall. We both thought it could be
the most beautiful opera ever written. Verdi's combination of tragedy and
score – the troubled relationship of father and son, the family pride, the
illness-crossed love of Alfredo and Violetta, the courtesan who sacrifices so
another woman can marry in an almost feminist gesture – all of this thrilled
us. Oh, to be so grand, to love so well, to sacrifice so nobly. To die so
beautifully. Barbara had always identified with Violetta, I think because she
felt things wouldn't work out in her own life, and because Verdi's flowing
melodies express a bittersweet longing for all that is unattainable.
The story would be melodrama without the music. The despairing
"Addio" is filled with longing and the melody searches. Why do we enjoy
wallowing in sad music? Because the song's end promises, not joy, but the
knowledge that others have felt what we feel. If you know an aria, you silently
join in that place at the top of your soft palette where music soars. You feel
it in your chest and throat and lift your rib cage, involuntarily breathing as
though you were singing, and climb over and under, up and down, your
pleasure in the melody and the search propelling the aria forward. The music
of "Addio del passato," which Violetta sings at the end of La Traviata, melds a
sublime musical line with an earthly story, guiding you from loss, to rage
against that loss, until, eventually, over the course of the aria, you are able
to reflect on what happened.
After she got the tumor, Barb couldn’t see well but she could still sing
while I played. She sat scrunched against me on the piano bench, so close
that my arm couldn’t move. Then she stood. “It's better to sing standing and
better to see too,” she added.
"I can't see either, Barb," I said.
"You act like you don't believe I can't see. You don't want to admit what
is happening to me because it makes you unhappy. You're trying to make
me feel better, but it doesn't."
I was lucky we continued. I stilled my back and shoulders so they didn’t
betray contradiction. Only my fingers moved. She was so close I could smell
her if we hadn’t smelled so much alike that I smelled nothing. Would she
sulk? I couldn’t see very well but who could say how well I saw compared to
her or what made it dark – the light or the angle or the blindness caused by
the tumor? We had really believed, Barb and I, we could burrow inside each
other's skin or behind each other's eyes, that we knew what the other was
feeling. Now I couldn’t make the leaps of understanding that came so easily
before. I couldn’t be inside her head. I was careful not to look at her in case
that made her angrier. I couldn’t see what she saw. I could only see how to
find the keys in her purse and open the door to the porch, how to put bright
lights in her lamps, and when to shut the windows because it might rain. I
could only see that she wanted to sing and I waned to play. A match. Rejoice!
"Shhh," I whispered, meaning, "Sing softer."
"Were you telling me to be quieter? I haven't sung in over six months. I
am lucky to get out anything at all much less the variances necessary to do it
quietly!"
At the piano I kept silent, breathed slowly, acted calm. I loved playing
and hearing her sing the arias from La Traviata, Un di felice – A happy day,
Sempre libera – Forever free, and Addio del passato.
Ten years after Barbara died, I walked down a sandy hill to the Pacific
and felt the familiar tears welling up as I thought about Barbara’s lengthy and
violent dying. I had cried almost every day, sometimes several times, from
loss, guilt, anger, all the usual emotions of grief. Startling myself, I thought,
"I don't have to cry." I felt some guilt, as though I were choosing to ignore
Barb. I smiled anyway. It was a windy afternoon softened by warm moisture
from the sea. The hills were blossoming with bushes of lavender lupine and
on the sand were unruly spreads of fuchsia iceplant. I heard the brown
pelicans’ wings tapping softly against the water in Rodeo Lagoon when they
landed. In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, for which I imagine these
brown pelicans, nearly wiped out by DDT then, flap their wings in gratitude.
Carson herself died of breast cancer in 1964, but not before visiting Rodeo
Lagoon in a wheelchair to witness fifty brown pelicans gliding to the ocean on
their huge floppy wings and splash-landing in the water.
Before that day, I hadn't known that one could choose not to be sad,
not to cry, that one could move around in the mind like a chessboard, taking
a pawn and sliding it to a safe place instead of placing it directly in the path
of the queen. At the turnoff on Coastal Trail, I started singing. I had begun
singing lessons nine years after Barb died and I breathed through my
diaphragm and tried to flare my nostrils and smile, as my singing teacher had
instructed me. In classical singing, you pull your chin down, push out your
diaphragm, let your stomach flop, flare your nostrils, flatten your tongue,
make fish lips and smile. When I neared the east end of the lagoon, nostrils
flaring and stomach flopping, I thought I was singing well.
Addio, dorati sogni, cari fantasmi, addio. . . . (Farewell, golden dreams,
dear spirits, farewell. There is no room for you in my heart anymore.) My
teacher picked this song for me, along with Come Away Death by Sibelius,
Dido’s Lament by Purcell, and several other death-oriented arias. It troubled
me that she thought I was suited only for death. The music of Addio has an
agitated marching rhythm and an acrobatic melody but the lyrics are angry
and depressed: "Woe is me, in the strife of the world sorrow cannot be
forgotten. Death is the only true farewell and that pleases me." It pleased me
to sing the song, but I didn't understand its emotions until I remembered
Barb saying she needed distance from me. By the time she said that, I had
thought things would be peaceful but they weren't. I saw that it was
wrenching for her to pull away from the living and when Barb pulled away, I
felt like she'd socked me in the stomach.
Suddenly, in front of me in Rodeo Lagoon, a Great Blue Heron lifted its
terrific wing spread and flew to the next cove. My body on the shore seemed
utterly unimpressive and finite. I walked to the bridge over the lagoon and
she did it again, flying back to where my singing had disturbed her. She
landed on the grey rocks and was still. After a few seconds, I couldn't make
her out. Perfectly camouflaged. I began to sing again.
tossed out of the auditorium, but I went with Barb year after year because to
hear Violetta die in La Traviata and Lucia go mad in Lucia di Lammermoor
from six yards away thrilled me. Concentrated in one night were all the bliss
and fear I had yet imagined. I felt proud going to the opera with Barbara in
the same way I had felt special when my parents took me in fifth grade. I was
going with someone who cared. It was my good luck to be with her.
After Barbara passed the bar exam and joined my dad's Duluth law
practice, she took voice lessons in Duluth and kept written vocal instructions
in a booklet lined with bass and treble clefs, as she practiced arias from the
operas we had seen as children. She did breathing exercises every day and
learned how to support the voice and how to locate the place where the
sound comes from, behind the bridge of the nose, deep in the sinus cavities.
Eight years later, Barbara was diagnosed with a brain tumor that started
in her visual cortex. "If I hadn't identified so strongly with Violetta when I was
a little girl,” she cried as I sat with her in the hospital, “do you think this
would have happened?"
Violetta, a young courtesan, is Alfredo's lover in Verdi's opera La
Traviata. Alfredo's father begs Violetta to leave Alfredo so that Alfredo's
sister can make a good marriage. Violetta, sick with tuberculosis, is reluctant
to leave the man she loves, and during the duet, you’re not sure what will
happen, she could go either way. Finally, generously, she forsakes Alfredo
and moves to the country to die of tuberculosis. Believing himself
abandoned, Alfredo rages. When at last he learns of Violetta's sacrifice, he
rushes to her bedroom and they are reunited. Minutes later she dies.
Barb and I grew up listening to La Traviata as my mother played it on
the old mahogany record player in the front hall. We both thought it could be
the most beautiful opera ever written. Verdi's combination of tragedy and
score – the troubled relationship of father and son, the family pride, the
illness-crossed love of Alfredo and Violetta, the courtesan who sacrifices so
another woman can marry in an almost feminist gesture – all of this thrilled
us. Oh, to be so grand, to love so well, to sacrifice so nobly. To die so
beautifully. Barbara had always identified with Violetta, I think because she
felt things wouldn't work out in her own life, and because Verdi's flowing
melodies express a bittersweet longing for all that is unattainable.
The story would be melodrama without the music. The despairing
"Addio" is filled with longing and the melody searches. Why do we enjoy
wallowing in sad music? Because the song's end promises, not joy, but the
knowledge that others have felt what we feel. If you know an aria, you silently
join in that place at the top of your soft palette where music soars. You feel
it in your chest and throat and lift your rib cage, involuntarily breathing as
though you were singing, and climb over and under, up and down, your
pleasure in the melody and the search propelling the aria forward. The music
of "Addio del passato," which Violetta sings at the end of La Traviata, melds a
sublime musical line with an earthly story, guiding you from loss, to rage
against that loss, until, eventually, over the course of the aria, you are able
to reflect on what happened.
After she got the tumor, Barb couldn’t see well but she could still sing
while I played. She sat scrunched against me on the piano bench, so close
that my arm couldn’t move. Then she stood. “It's better to sing standing and
better to see too,” she added.
"I can't see either, Barb," I said.
"You act like you don't believe I can't see. You don't want to admit what
is happening to me because it makes you unhappy. You're trying to make
me feel better, but it doesn't."
I was lucky we continued. I stilled my back and shoulders so they didn’t
betray contradiction. Only my fingers moved. She was so close I could smell
her if we hadn’t smelled so much alike that I smelled nothing. Would she
sulk? I couldn’t see very well but who could say how well I saw compared to
her or what made it dark – the light or the angle or the blindness caused by
the tumor? We had really believed, Barb and I, we could burrow inside each
other's skin or behind each other's eyes, that we knew what the other was
feeling. Now I couldn’t make the leaps of understanding that came so easily
before. I couldn’t be inside her head. I was careful not to look at her in case
that made her angrier. I couldn’t see what she saw. I could only see how to
find the keys in her purse and open the door to the porch, how to put bright
lights in her lamps, and when to shut the windows because it might rain. I
could only see that she wanted to sing and I waned to play. A match. Rejoice!
"Shhh," I whispered, meaning, "Sing softer."
"Were you telling me to be quieter? I haven't sung in over six months. I
am lucky to get out anything at all much less the variances necessary to do it
quietly!"
At the piano I kept silent, breathed slowly, acted calm. I loved playing
and hearing her sing the arias from La Traviata, Un di felice – A happy day,
Sempre libera – Forever free, and Addio del passato.
Ten years after Barbara died, I walked down a sandy hill to the Pacific
and felt the familiar tears welling up as I thought about Barbara’s lengthy and
violent dying. I had cried almost every day, sometimes several times, from
loss, guilt, anger, all the usual emotions of grief. Startling myself, I thought,
"I don't have to cry." I felt some guilt, as though I were choosing to ignore
Barb. I smiled anyway. It was a windy afternoon softened by warm moisture
from the sea. The hills were blossoming with bushes of lavender lupine and
on the sand were unruly spreads of fuchsia iceplant. I heard the brown
pelicans’ wings tapping softly against the water in Rodeo Lagoon when they
landed. In 1962, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, for which I imagine these
brown pelicans, nearly wiped out by DDT then, flap their wings in gratitude.
Carson herself died of breast cancer in 1964, but not before visiting Rodeo
Lagoon in a wheelchair to witness fifty brown pelicans gliding to the ocean on
their huge floppy wings and splash-landing in the water.
Before that day, I hadn't known that one could choose not to be sad,
not to cry, that one could move around in the mind like a chessboard, taking
a pawn and sliding it to a safe place instead of placing it directly in the path
of the queen. At the turnoff on Coastal Trail, I started singing. I had begun
singing lessons nine years after Barb died and I breathed through my
diaphragm and tried to flare my nostrils and smile, as my singing teacher had
instructed me. In classical singing, you pull your chin down, push out your
diaphragm, let your stomach flop, flare your nostrils, flatten your tongue,
make fish lips and smile. When I neared the east end of the lagoon, nostrils
flaring and stomach flopping, I thought I was singing well.
Addio, dorati sogni, cari fantasmi, addio. . . . (Farewell, golden dreams,
dear spirits, farewell. There is no room for you in my heart anymore.) My
teacher picked this song for me, along with Come Away Death by Sibelius,
Dido’s Lament by Purcell, and several other death-oriented arias. It troubled
me that she thought I was suited only for death. The music of Addio has an
agitated marching rhythm and an acrobatic melody but the lyrics are angry
and depressed: "Woe is me, in the strife of the world sorrow cannot be
forgotten. Death is the only true farewell and that pleases me." It pleased me
to sing the song, but I didn't understand its emotions until I remembered
Barb saying she needed distance from me. By the time she said that, I had
thought things would be peaceful but they weren't. I saw that it was
wrenching for her to pull away from the living and when Barb pulled away, I
felt like she'd socked me in the stomach.
Suddenly, in front of me in Rodeo Lagoon, a Great Blue Heron lifted its
terrific wing spread and flew to the next cove. My body on the shore seemed
utterly unimpressive and finite. I walked to the bridge over the lagoon and
she did it again, flying back to where my singing had disturbed her. She
landed on the grey rocks and was still. After a few seconds, I couldn't make
her out. Perfectly camouflaged. I began to sing again.
