On Thanksgiving, and a Requiem for a Nightingale

I had thought of making this two posts, but there's no reason why they can't be one.

Thanksgiving is very important to me. It was on Thanksgiving 1976 that I got together with my partner, so yesterday was our 40th Thanksgiving.  There was only one that we didn't spend together: 2006, after we broke up and before I began taking care of her again.  As I posted on Facebook, I walked into her apartment that Thanksgiving (the kitchen and the front of the house looked better than they do now, because she had a roommate), one of three guests, but invited earlier than the others, to the sound of Stevie Wonder singing "Isn't She Lovely".  Of course it was on an old fashioned record player, because that's where music in the home came from in those days.  I was smitten, and the rest is history.  I laughingly say that if I had done my Jane Austen style due diligence, the way, apparently, young women do today before they get "hitched" (also, I know of almost no middle class professional woman who ended up with the person she dated at 25), I would have run like hell.  Here was someone who had been on public assistance for quite some time (you actually used to be able to live on it if you took the odd babysitting or dog walking gig), who was in trouble with the City Marshall for having defaulted on a credit card, and whose bedroom looked like a war zone, but she nailed me with her charm, wit, and flair for romance.  And so she has kept me.  Even now, when all we have are fragments of a relationship, she brought tears to my eyes by, when we were walking home from the bus stop, pointing out some ginko leaves that had fallen and saying "see, these are shaped like hearts, just for us!"  Priceless.

As for Thanksgiving, I was realizing that the last time I sat at a table in someone's home where the people were related by blood, I was in my 20s, my grandparents were still alive, and my mother and her sister were still on speaking terms.  After that I spent Thanksgiving at my mother's house with my partner and some of my mother's neighbors, or at an AA party (sometimes my mother's boss would invite her for the Thanksgiving weekend to her house in the country, knowing that I actually had somewhere else I would rather be).  In later years, when my partner no longer could climb the stairs to my mother's apartment, we all ate in a restaurant.  And now that my mother is gone, my partner and I continue that tradition.

I know that AA says "don't project", but I worry a lot about what will happen when I am left behind (if I am not killed by a terrorist or run over by a bus).  I will have noplace to go on a holiday that is so synonymous with family.  Which is why I don't damn, across the board, stores that are open on Thanksgiving.  Whereas I think no one needs to buy a flat screen tv on Thanksgiving, maybe some of the store's employees are lonely and would like to forget that it's a holiday and have something else to do. (I definitely think that no stores should make anyone work on a holiday.  They should ask for volunteers.  I'm sure there will always be some, particularly if there is extra pay - or a free tv! - dangled as a carrot.

It also makes me sad that my Thanksgiving is so simple and bare boned, rather than a rich tapestry of the good, the bad, and the ugly that I can talk about afterwards.  Not much to say, really, about a meal at El Quijote. We were probably in and out of there in 45 minutes. Then we had some pumpkin pie at home, from La Delice, a pastry shop on the corner near where my partner lives, which I think is the best pastry shop in the city.

When I was a teenager, I hated Thanksgiving, because I saw it as a time when my obese maternal relatives all got together to stuff their faces, and I, with a BMI teetering around 25, average for an adult, but huge for a 14 year old, struggled to try to say no to all the rich desserts.  In retrospect, though, what I remember was all the jollity as well as the food, and how lucky I was to live amidst all that abundance, that I wasn't medically obese, and that I could have had a different life if I had had different values.

Now I am even a tad heavier than I was then (although not when compared with my age peers) and have no family and little jollity.  Just a lot of hard work caring for someone I love, and trying to ferret out a few treat crumbs.

When I came home, I got some very sad news, via Facebook.  My upstairs neighbor, a coloratura soprano with a Juilliard pedigree, apparently died the day before, while waiting for a kidney.  I know that she had been on dialysis for a very long time.  She was five years younger than me.  She was one of the loveliest people I have ever met, certainly among professional singers, most of whom are snooty and snarky, at least in my experience.  When I first moved into the building in 1986, I would hear her warbling the Queen of the Night aria and other coloratura standards, or she would be playing the piano for students (I think she was also a coach).  A few years after I started singing she stopped me once and said that she admired how hard I worked and how much I practiced, and that she could hear that I was sounding better and better as the months went by.  She even came to my DIY performance of Samson et Dalila.  And I saw that she had "liked" my little DIY Facebook fan page.  My heart is heavy.  All this reminds me that life is short and that I am of an age when people die and that it's sad, but it's not a freak accident.  How ironic that her life ended at the age when my life, at least as a singer, was just beginning.

I feel now, even, as a senior citizen, that I am only just beginning. Obviously I am not a "beginner" in terms of studying voice, but I feel it's only now, in the past year or so, that I have a solid technique, that I don't get as tired (do the extra pounds, which may partly be muscle, help, I wonder?) and no longer panic or at the least strategize every time I see a note above an F sharp.  I just sing.

My Christmas solo will be "O Magnum Mysterium" by Lauridsen.  The other day I sang through it and all the high climaxes on G (and there are a lot of them) were just business as usual.  So when I step into the church to sing this I have to remember that this new voice is now me.  (It also will help that the accompanist will be the Director of Music Ministries, not the original choir director who simply does not like big voices and makes me feel inhibited.)

And I have been singing up to a high C sharp every day now.  If Lani were there now, she would be proud of me.

 RIP Lani Misenas 1955-2015

I Will Be Recording!

At long last, I have a date to record the Bach aria "Hochster mache deine Gute" for my friend's short film.  It will be December 4.

It's been almost two years since we began discussing this, and it has worked out for the best, because now I am much more technically secure singing something in that kind of high tessitura, so I will sound good and won't strain.

Once it's recorded, I will be really excited about tracking the progress of the film, and who knows?  I may get to go somewhere!  The filmmaker lives part time in Nova Scotia and part time in Paris.

I had a bit of egg on my face last night at rehearsal when the choir director handed out a four-part Mendelssohn piece with a high-ish soprano part (meaning a lot of Gs) and because I don't really sightread, and had not only never practiced this, but had never even heard it, I was fumbling for notes, which is not conducive to good singing technique, which is all about having a physiologically based plan for what to do with each phrase.

Well, so now I have my work cut out for me.  Both the Bach solo and the choral piece would use the same type of high light approach (not the same thing as singing "off the voice" to whiten the sound), so my technique will stay consistent and I won't be switching back and forth.  It will represent a nice break from Carmen.  Venus will have to wait, now, although I have been listening to that scene and getting it into my ear.

I also spoke with the Director of Music Ministries about a Christmas solo.  It will either be December 27 or January 3.  I suggested the Lauridsen "O Magnum Mysterium", "Rejoice Greatly", and "Et Exsultavit".  He is supposed to get back to me in the middle of next month.

Manifest Me a Grounded Groundling

These days I (we) are very blessed by all the help we are getting.  My partner has a regular caseworker whom I also see once a month, and she now has "help" once a week: a cleaner comes on alternate Wednesdays and a home attendant comes on alternate Tuesdays on the opposite weeks.  She only has to pay for one visit by the home attendant.  Also, an agency that helps "the elderly who hoard" is sending an intern to try to shovel the place out, on alternate Wednesdays.  No one has ever succeeded with this in the almost 40 years I've known my partner, but hope springs eternal.  She also now has a "medical navigator", that is, a nursing student who takes her to doctors' appointments if they are not serious enough for her to need me there.

But the most recent blessing is a caregiver group that is just getting started, that meets once a month.  I  had gone to a weekly group at the LGBT senior services center but it was full of unmotivated depressives of both sexes, and bi-phobic "angry dykes" whom I am just so done with.  I felt like the mentally healthiest person in the room (with one exception), which led me to conclude that I was in the wrong place.  This new group is a mixed group, and the woman who runs it is a former opera singer, who was married to a famous opera singer, and is now an interfaith minister.

Yesterday, no one showed up, so it was just me and her.  We talked a lot about singing, first.  She told me about herself (because I had asked) and I told her my singing story, in chronological order, something I really have never done except in these "pages".

I also told her about what had been going on lately, most notably (I have not written about this here) an episode two weeks ago when I thought my partner was dying, because she made no sense when she spoke and kept going to sleep.  I said that this, as a more serious manifestation of the gut-wrenching upset over my non-birthday, underscored that I (we) simply do not have close friends.  Anyone I am close to emotionally doesn't live here any more, or is always somewhere else, and other people are, well, to be blunt, acquaintances. Not the sort of people you'd call in an emergency.   I had called her cardiologist, but he told me to take her to an emergency room, which she refused. So, yes, it would have been so comforting to have a "family member" (don't have those) or equivalent to use as a sounding board, even someone who might come over and make an assessment. Finally I did call a professional home health aide from the church (who did things for my partner prior to her getting all this free help) and asked if she would take a look at my partner. She said she could do it Sunday after church (this was a Friday) so that was where we left things (my partner didn't look like she had had a stroke, and upon closer inspection didn't look like she was dying, so worse come to worse I would sit with her until then, or if she got really bad I could call 911). As it turned out, by the following morning, after having slept for 24 hours, my partner was back to her normal self.  We figured either she had accidentally taken an extra allergy pill (she takes two at night that make her sleepy) or that the new generic the pharmacy had given her didn't agree with her (she is now back on the old generic). But again, this just underscored my need for close friends, and I haven't a clue where to find them.  (I meet tons of people all the time, but as I have stressed, they are always busybusybusybusybusy either with family, work, or their endless time in the air galivanting hither and yon.)

When I mentioned this to the minister/counselor, she said "why don't you pray for a friend to manifest?"  Then she added "be sure it's not someone needy who wants you to take care of her!"  I wouldn't have thought of that, but what I did think of is that I need, first and foremost, someone who has time for me, and that's what no one  has.  (I don't mean "me" in the personal sense; these people don't have any time for anyone who is not a family member - some are now awash in four generations of these - or someone to "network" with.)  So, we see each other when we see each other and exchange pleasantries, and even some sympathy where it's needed - and I get a lot of the latter on Facebook - but then everyone scurries home, or to another job, or a concert, or a meeting.

So I think the friend whom I want to manifest is a "grounded groundling".  Not a loser (I have met quite a few of these at various groups), but someone who is looking to fill their life, rather than pare it down.  Another groundling.  Someone who doesn't have children or grandchildren, or money to travel (except maybe once a year for a vacation).  Someone who is here.  Who will be here tomorrow, here next week, here for lunch, here if I call and need help because well, they don't have anything all that important to do most of the time, certainly not after work hours.  I think this health aide fits the bill. Of course if she takes care of my partner I will pay her (I have my partner's power of attorney so I can do that with her money, whether she "wants" the help or not.)  But she said that I can call her any time.

Musings on Life as a Groundling

More and more, it seems that most of the people I know spend half of their lives in a plane.  What are they doing and where are they going?  Even when I had money to travel (and paid vacation), I traveled at most twice a year.  Once for the big vacation (Europe, Texas, the West Coast) and maybe once for a small vacation (the North Fork of Long Island).

One of the consequences of not procreating that I never foresaw, is that I don't have issue dispersed throughout the country (or the world).  One of the consequences of being self employed at home is that I am not "sent" anywhere as part of the duties of my employment (and anyhow, that was petering out in many workplaces thanks to the Internet).  I managed to work for 13 years in a high level management job and went out of town "on business" exactly twice: to Cleveland, and the first time I went I fell and smashed up my knee, which was, in retrospect, the last day I felt "young" (I was 54).

Now I don't go anywhere.  This apparently has become extremely unusual.  It certainly didn't used to be.  Most people I knew grew up here, stayed here, had children here, and, if they had demanding jobs, often never even took a vacation except to fix up the new house they bought or catch up on movies.

Suddenly I feel in a position of having to apologize for being here.  And yes, I'll be here Monday.  Yes, I'll be here the third Sunday in November.  Yes, I'll be here on Thursday six months from now.
Except for one week in Maine last year, I have not been farther afield than Brooklyn since 2009.  I have not been on a plane since 2007.  I have not been out of the country since 2004.  Of course, this is true of many people, but it's not true of people like me, you know, "middle class professionals" (which apparently is what I am according to the Hollingshead Index, a formula for figuring out what socioeconomic stratum a child comes from, which I discovered in a reference in one of the articles I edited).

I used to think of myself as a prisoner and my studio apartment as my cell.  I get time off to sing in a church (good works), tutor children (more good works), and take care of my partner (yet more good works) and to shop and see social service providers and doctors, and then it's lockdown time, back to my workstation cleaning up grammar and syntax the way real prisoners make widgets, or whatever (apparently when Anne Perry was in prison as a teenager she made cotton bras on a sewing machine).  I need to add here that I love singing, the new tutoring that I'm doing, and taking care of my partner (well, I love her, if not the mountains of dirty laundry), but it is still a familiar routine.

After doing a lot of reading about real prisoners, some in solitary confinement, I decided that this was an offensive analogy, so I dropped it.  But I still need to read about real prisoners to remind myself that I am not one.

Yesterday after spending an evening at one of my women's Moon Circles (which I love, and find nourishing, but which also, disappointingly, seem to be yet another magnet for ambitious successful professional women who need some New Age downtime and spiritual nourishment) I decided that what I am is a "groundling".  This term originated in Shakespeare's time, and was used for the people at the Globe theater who were too poor to have regular seats and had to stand in the pit.  A third, metaphoric meaning of this term is "someone who lives or works near the ground".  So yes, that's me.  I am not in the air, I am on the ground.  And even thought my small patch of ground (really, I live between Houston Street and 100th Street from York to 10th Avenue) is the most highly prized and most exciting patch of ground in the world, it is still only one patch of ground.  I am of the neighborhood, neighborly.  No grandchildren in California.  No business meetings in Paris - forget Paris! not even any business meetings in Boston.

Of course, I always could go somewhere, but wait.  My number one priority is taking care of my loved one, for however many more years she has.  She can't travel.  She is too fragile.  I have no money, or very little.  Yes, I take voice lessons and buy astronomically expensive medicine for my soon to be 20 year old cat, but that's about sustaining life (and even if I could bundle up my partner and take her somewhere, what about the cat?  who would medicate her?)  So my priorities right now are right here.

Actually there are a lot of interesting things to do here, and I do do them occasionally: go to concerts, go to museums, sit and take pictures in pretty little pocket parks.

But I don't have a lot of show and tell.  And if you're always going to be here, people tend to take you for granted.

New Stuff

Finally, I have some new things to report a propos of my singing.

My teacher and I have decided to put Carmen to bed now until April, except for drilling the notes in Act IV, which I am expanding beyond what I had sung a few year ago.  The last few times I sang the "Seguidilla" I was confident with the high B, so it's a good idea to leave it alone.

I just love, love, love the solo version of the Lauridesen "O Magnum Mysterium".  It is a big piece, compared with what I usually sing in church, so it would have to be for a special occasion, probably not when the regular choir director is there because he doesn't like the sound of a big voice singing high, and that's his preference.  If there's a spot for me to sing early in the season I can sing "Bereite Dich Zion".

My teacher just saw the HD version of Tannhauser and he said, yes, I should look at Venus.  Working on that in German would be a good companion to singing the Bach.  German is my weakest language, so I need to improve it.

He also said I should sing through Santuzza's "Voi lo Sapete".  This surprised me as he once told me that the role was for a soprano and it wasn't for me.  Years ago I tried to sing the "Easter Hymn", hoping it was something that I might sing in church (HAH!) but found the tessitura too high.

I told my teacher I felt guilty that after successfully nailing the phrases with the high B flats in the Amneris/Radames duet I just didn't feel like singing it again right now (didn't want to push my luck?) and he said that was fine.

In other news, I had mentioned working at the church after-school program, and last week I got to work with a child one on one for the first time and I really loved it.  I never wanted any children and have never spent much time around them, but I volunteered for this because they urgently needed people and Monday afternoon is an ideal time for me to do something (weekends are for eldercare and I am not crazy about being out at night, particularly once it gets dark early and there might be snow on the ground).  I figured if I have trained lots of editors over the years I can help a child with English homework (I begged off helping with the math homework!)  Well, once I sat down with a real live little boy, it just made me so happy!  I felt connected, which I never do sitting here editing at my laptop alone in the apartment.  And I got to use my imagination and intuition, faculties that have rusted over the years in corporate environments.  Anyhow, I now really believe that God was at work once again in my life, bringing me something joyful, in addition to singing, to break up the tedium of my dull work and dreary (and sad) eldercare.  It was refreshing to be at the other end of the life cycle, which I never am, because I never had children and don't have siblings.