The Return of Old Hurts, and My Take on "Little Women"

Well, it seems I am in a writing mode again, although I have not felt like revisiting my memoir.

I thought I was "done" with a lot of the old hurts that I used to write about, but I just found out that once again my teacher is helming a concert with his opera cronies and I am not in it.  I am done having an argument with him about this. He will just throw out one excuse after another.  I think he began agreeing to participate in nursing home concerts with me because at one point I made noises about leaving him so I could study with a teacher who put on "studio recitals".  Then at least I would have something.

Sadly, if I know how to leave "well enough alone", he doesn't.  His wife sent me an email about their concert which went out to a large email list of "family and friends".  I couldn't help but notice that when she tells people about my concerts with her husband, it's only a few choice people.

Anyhow, when I went for my lesson yesterday I didn't mention the email but when we were done singing my teacher did.  So I told him that first, I am not free on Saturdays, and second, that since I resented not being asked to participate, I wouldn't come anyhow.  Then he said he knew that.  So why did he bring the bleeping subject up???

As I mentioned in my previous post, my anger and sadness about not being able to break into the world of the no-pay opera companies has mostly receded.  Partly because of age, as I said.  All I really want is to do solo singing in front of an audience, wear something glamorous, and eat up the limelight.  So I can do that.  Of course it's not all a walk in the park.  If I want those things, I have to work hard, which I do.  And really church people are a lot nicer than opera people.  Interestingly, my teacher and his wife seem to have made a friendly social life in that milieu but I never found those types of classical singers to be a nice bunch. 

As to the second subject of this post (I guess it's a "twofer") I got to thinking about Little Women again because of the new movie that has come out.  Interestingly, the first chapter of my memoir is partly about my relationship to Little Women and how my mother was bemused by the fact that I did not identify with Jo.  "Don't all brainy women see themselves as Jo?" she would ask.  Well, first, at 11 or 12 I hardly saw myself as a "brainy woman".  I liked to read fiction, but what I liked most was playing the piano and trying new lipstick shades.  As for Jo being an "independent woman", well, in 1962 that was not as anomalous as it was in 1862. Most of the young women in their 20s whom I knew worked after they graduated from college.  Many eventually married and some stayed home (my mother did that and in fact considered being able to stay home a "privilege") but reading and writing was a calling or a job, not a "lifestyle".  I just realized recently that it was probably from reading Little Women and modeling herself on Jo that my mother bought into the trope that "brainy women", women who read and write, don't care about their appearance.  I remember her once talking about a close friend and saying "Well Hattie obviously doesn't take herself seriously as an intelligent woman because she dyes her hair."  To all these points, growing up I certainly didn't see Jo as "rebellious".  She was just like all the "politically correct" women I knew over the years who were always scolding other women for primping, or buying products that they shouldn't.  I mean selling her hair for a greater good? How goody two shoes can you get?  I mean I think it was a noble sacrifice, but it certainly doesn't fit my definition of "rebellious".

My role model as a 13 year old was Kim Novak's Moll Flanders (and after seeing the movie, I read the book). She looked just like me for one thing (at 13 I was five foot six, weighed 155 pounds, wore a bra size 36D, and despite all that extra weight had a tiny waist). Katharine Hepburn I was definitely not.  Recently, I saw the PBS Little Women and decided that if I had to identify with one of the girls it would be Amy.  She took herself seriously as a painter and loved pretty clothes, primping, material comfort, and flirting.

Of course I don't think my mother wanted me to grow up to be a literary spinster like Louisa May Alcott.  At the end of Little Women, Jo marries a professor many years her senior.  My mother did likewise.  Was it because she saw herself as Jo, I wonder? Jo loved the professor because he engaged with her writing (even if only to criticize it) not her femininity.

Ironically, I grew up to be a Lesbian who paired off with a butch who loved me for my beauty (in her eyes) and sweetness. When she could afford it she bought me flowers and jewelry.

Postpartum Depression

I don't really know what else to call it.

The Good Friday service went well.  It wasn't as exciting as I had expected (nor as well attended as usual) and when I got home I felt sandbagged by something I can only call "depression".

Is it because I am grieving over Abbie?  I have not really felt like crying over her loss.  Abbie was not a poignant, sympathetic, tragic figure, similarly to how my mother was not those things.  Abbie really was all the things my mother was, only nicer: cerebral, direct, not suffering fools gladly, hating sentimentality.  She was also someone who would always turn up and "do" if you needed her.  My mother was all those things but she didn't know how to "make nice", which Abbie did.  (My mother would have contemptuously dismissed that as "Southern").

In any event, the loss of Abbie is a loss and somewhat of a shock, but I don't feel sad.  Since she had moved to the Left Coast about four years ago we had not seen her.  And one blessing I now have is, after telling a church friend about my feeling of loss, particularly that I have now lost someone whom I always assumed would be there to be helpful when my partner died, this friend said that if she was "alive and mobile" (she is about 6 years older than I am) she would go to Maine with me to scatter my partner's ashes.

But I am feeling other losses as well. Yes, the Good Friday service went well, but once again it made me realize all the talent I am drowning in.  Although there was one thing of note, a situation in which I surprised myself.  The "boy soprano" woman I mentioned (she is not young; probably close to my age) sang really well, probably the best I'd ever heard her, and I was genuinely happy for her.  I told her it was the best I had ever heard her sing, which is true.  And she had the perfect voice for the plaintive "Agnus Dei".  I think the issue is that however bitter and envious I often am, I am happy when someone my age, who is still working on her art, does well.  Everyone kvells over the young talent.  They breathe up all the air in the room whether they want to or not.  So us older folks, who are by no means done and by no means a "finished product" want our moment too.  Of course the new dramatic soprano was the star of the evening.  Just because of her talent (she is certainly the opposite of a prima donna).  The tenor with whom I have had a relationship that runs hot and cold (I was stunned last year when he complimented me on singing Maundy Thursday) made a fuss over her, talking with his wife on the street afterwards.  On the other hand, her path forward may not be easy.  She has a much bigger and more impressive voice than Little Miss, but she is less versatile and less surrounded by a clacque although she does have a supportive voice teacher.  She is going to be singing a secondary role in a Wagner production somewhere.  I just so yearn to be special, which I will never be.

Easter will be a vocal anti-climax.  I opted to sing the alto part in "Worthy is the Lamb" from the Messiah.  It is a bleeping octave below the soprano part.   I think my teacher was right that the part was written for countertenors, not women.  I probably could sing the soprano part (particularly since we are not doing the "Amen" at the end which has a phrase that starts on a high A) but I didn't have time to sing it into my voice and the dramatic soprano will be there singing it, so to coin a metaphor, it is stupid to put the two heaviest people on the same side of the boat.  So, ironically, Easter, which is supposed to be a high point, will be a low point for me both vocally and otherwise, but then it will be over and I can go back to working on the "Drinking Song", which has a high A in it.  And when I show up for warm up on Sunday I will make sure I have warmed up at home to an A just because I can.

In a more intellectual mode, I was interested to read a quote from Nadia Bolz-Weber in which she said that the message of the Resurrection is that it is an opportunity for people to be resurrected from the graves they dig for themselves.  For me (someone who is totally skeptical about the "Risen Christ") this really resonates.  Maybe I can rise from the grave I'm always digging for myself? I can never turn the clock back and be a teen or a 20something with a clean, glorious voice undamaged by cigarettes and alcohol, making my way undistracted. So I need to "get over it".

Milestones

Today would have been my mother's 99th birthday.  This is a photo of us at her 90th, the last big celebration that she had.

My mother always did birthdays in style: hers, mine, friends'.  She made much of celebrations of all kinds, including Thankgiving and Christmas, this latter even though she was an atheist.  And any occasion at all was an opportunity for a meal out.  When I was younger I rolled my eyes over this, thinking of how fat she was (by the time the photo above was taken she had lost a lot of weight).  This one (below) is a better indicator of our respective sizes, taken at Fiorello's some time after the millennium, either for her birthday or Mother's Day.

We didn't plan anything to celebrate.  Last week we went to the ballet.  I always think of my mother when I'm at the ballet, or looking at art.  

My friend L is now in a hospice in Columbus, Ohio.  I hear she is "out of it" most of the time.  Since 2007 I have lost my mother and three friends to death (I am not counting L here at this point), three to moving out of state, and two to an endless round of out of state commitments (including Clueless).  I have no idea how to replenish the well, other than by engaging in various activities while I'm not working, singing, or caring for my partner.  Last week I started working at an after school program at the church where I sing.  Maybe that will lift my spirits and be a source of human contact.  I actually do have a lot of "buddies" and people I can have a meal with from time to time but socializing is pretty far down their list of priorities behind family and work - or travel, which they all seem to do either for business, family, or pleasure.

On a more upbeat note, I finally made contact with the woman at the senior center where I want to put on my birthday concert.  Once that date is on my calendar I may be able to shake off the rage and misery I felt over this past birthday that never was.  I am not sure what it says about me (and I am willing to take the blame) that I passed such a big milestone with no one giving a flying fig except the Medicare office and the MTA.   So this date will be on my calendar.  The day (it won't be the exact day, but the Sunday before or after) will mean something.  It will be special even if none of my friends do a bloody thing.  When I wrote back to the woman in charge I told her that I was putting on the concert for my birthday but that that was not relevant as far as the audience there was concerned.  That is would be a mix of classical, musical theater, and "old favorites" from the Gay 90s and earlier, and was meant to be entertaining.  I also said I could tweak the repertoire if she thought that was necessary.  I know my teacher has sung in operatic concerts there, although not recently.

And last but not least, I will be good to go with the high soprano part in the Handel for Reformation Sunday. It really is not hard.  It isn't as high as the duet I sang from Anna Bolena.  We sang through the piece several times last night and I did not get tired or nervous, nor did I start singing "off the voice" to try to keep the volume down.  So the drill is: I can do chores for my partner tomorrow, but not much talking.  So I will promise myself not to get into an argument.  And Sunday morning I will keep stumm other than singing the anthem.  There will be a small orchestra there, so let's hope we don't overrehearse it.  And I will bring a protein bar.

                                                                                                                        

Requiem: Further Musings on a Loss

The loss of this coach has hit me very hard, much more than I expected.  I didn't cry over the news, the way I did the day I heard that my 91-year-old violinist colleague had died, but that was a different situation.  I truly loved him and saw him dwindle day by day.  I regretted that I hadn't visited him one last time.  But it was not a shock.

I suppose much of this is about "why is she gone and why am I still here"?  She had a musical career that I can only dream of (it wasn't a big career, but she was always in demand playing for operas and concerts, usually ones in which the singers are not paid but the pianist is) and she had amassed quite a few regulars coming to the studio for coachings, myself among them. So she got to do what she loved on a regular basis and had the respect of her colleagues.

And then there is the mother/daughter thing.  That's a touchy subject with me.  One thing I have to remember is that however bad my relationship with my mother was, most of my friends and acquaintances' relationships with their mothers was as bad or worse.  I think it's a generational thing.  Mothers born at a certain time, even ones who fancied themselves as "enlightened" (meaning in my mother's case that she used the "F" word all the time and talked about sex in a clinical manner in a loud voice in public places) were still quite authoritarian (as in "my way or the highway") and didn't know how to respect their adult children as separate people.  The women I know who are under 45 have an entirely different kind of relationship with their mothers.  They can be different from their mothers and that's ok.  Their mothers are interested in them instead of trying to control them.

I know this is childish and pointless, but I really do think if I had had a different kind of mother (and a different kind of school environment, and different peers - or maybe none; my coach's daughter who is a rising young mezzo was home schooled) I might have done something with my musical talent.  I know character is important, and I probably lacked it until I was well into my 30s, certainly, but most people's successes or lack of it involves a synergy between the person's character and temperament and their environment.

My coach and her daughter adored each other.  As I said, this young woman was hand groomed to be a singer from childhood, but I never got the feeling that she was pushed in a way that she would resent later.  One sign of this was that she was independent enough to go abroad after graduating from Juilliard (which doesn't seem to offer as much to singers, as, say, Manhattan School of Music does, as a case in point, the woman in my choir whom I call "Little Miss Conservatory" has nailed a high profile mentor at MSM whereas my coach's daughter never did at Juilliard).

So again, the question is, why is she gone so soon and why am I still here?

Don't worry.  I am not feeling suicidal.  I couldn't imaging killing myself.  Things are not that bad; there are many things I enjoy in the moment: singing well, reading, going to museums, my favorite tv programs, cuddling with my SO and my cats, to name a few.  It's just that things are not that great either.  In addition to having a perfect life, I always was in awe of my coach's sense of wonder at how things turned out.  She was always not just happy or positive, but "elated", a mood I am almost never in, or if I am, briefly, all the much of toomuchness of twenty-first century New York, particularly here in the lee of Lincoln Center, comes crashing in on me.

In a strange kind of synchronicity, the night I heard the news about my coach's death, Verdi's Messa da Requiem broadcast on Channel 13.  I listened to the beginning, then my SO asked me to turn to something else.  I got to hear "Liber Scriptus", but not "Lux Aeterna".  I think we changed the channel at the point that we had had an intermission in my concert; after the big ensemble ending in "Amen".

I was underwhelmed by the men, for the most part, but of course my eyes and ears were on Michelle de Young who was the mezzo soloist. She sang well (not as impressively as some of the mezzos I have on recordings) and looked stunning. Her very long (bleached no doubt) blonde hair hung in tight curls, her makeup was more for the balcony than for a closeup, and she had on a black lace dress.  As I have said before, I covet all that as much as I covet being able to sing a work like that in a large venue with an orchestra and chorus behind me (no, I would not be interested in being a chorister in a large venue unless I was paid; I turned down an offer to do that several years ago).  It's funny, my partner said she looked "trashy", which I suppose is understandable.  She is obviously over 40, and her hair was obviously bleached and not a length recommended for "professional women".

On a more positive note, go me for being able to hear (and remember) most of the mezzo line when they were all singing together.  I am not a natural harmonizer and certainly had to drill, drill, drill, my part so as not to get distracted by the top.  Which is one reason I am grateful to have been singing with that church choir for all these years.  If I hadn't done that, I wouldn't have had the musicianship to sing the mezzo line in the Requiem.  

What I wish now, is that I could find some "takeaway lesson" from this loss.  I am not sure what it is.  Interestingly, at  my last lesson (which went superbly; the big breakthrough I made has held, especially in new art songs and church pieces; too bad I am not 20 years younger with all the big girl rep ahead of me to sing well, instead of behind me with memories of singing it badly) my teacher said that what I did over the past ten years has been important: taking care of my mother (even thought I did not like her) at the end of her life, and now taking care of my partner.  In the eyes of God, doesn't that mean more than having (had) a singing career?

A Timeline You Won't See on Facebook

Maybe it's The Artist's Way or maybe it's that my therapist is on a three-week vacation, but yesterday, suddenly, a lightbulb went off in my head about why, even after 8 years of therapy, I feel just as stuck as I ever did, albeit in a slightly different locale.

I had made a lot of changes.  I started seeing this therapist in the summer of 2004, when I was suicidal over the Mentor, my relationship with my partner, my dreary apartment, my wardrobe that made me look totally sexless, you name it.  By 2007 I had begun "dating", had a spot as a volunteer soloist at a Lutheran church, had one operatic concert under my belt, had gotten away from the Mentor, but had allowed his influence to linger inasmuch as I now had red walls, red sheets, and some new clothes that fit my curvy figure attractively.  And I had plans for the future.  I was going to produce a concert version of Samson et Dalila the following spring, and my play was going to be produced in Texas that fall.

Since then, here is what has happened:

September 2007: My partner, with whom I had not been speaking other than to be the recipient of nuisance threatening phone calls and hate mail, had a hip replacement.  Whatever she felt about me, I determined to not only be there for her the day of the operation, but also, when I came back from Texas and she was out of the hospital, to spend Sundays "doing for" her.  I considered it would have been inhumane not to.  It did not make us a "couple" again.

March 2008: Our best friend "DJ" died.  She was a huge support system to my partner, in that she called every day and helped my partner (who was beginning already to show signs of mental disorganization) "orient" herself.  She was also a friend to me, in that she helped me tread the fine line between being "humane" to my partner and taking care of my own life.  And she was the only person who could keep us from fighting.

May 2008: The day before my concert of Samson et Dalila, some unpleasantness surfaced at work, which was to haunt and torment me for the remainder of my time there, which thankfully was only another 18 months.  I was not allowed one nanosecond to savor my turn as Dalila.  Not one!  This unpleasantness was front and center on everyone's radar screen.  I don't even think anyone asked me how it went.

May 2009: My 93 year old mother fell down the stairs of her Brooklyn (rent controlled) walkup apartment, due to landlord negligence.  I now had to spend two weekends a month "doing for" her. She had a cleaning lady, but would not, for example, trust her to use the ATM.

October 2009:  I was blessedly liberated from the job I loathed, with a "retirement package" including health insurance for life and a year of career counseling.  No sooner was I in a state of jubilation over a chance at a second career than my mother was diagnosed with bladder cancer.

November 2009-October 2010:  While trying to have some "me" space to reinvent myself with the career coach, I was taking my mother (whom I didn't even particularly like, God forgive me) to a medical facility in Washington Heights, which meant getting up at 6 and picking her up in Brooklyn, and often not getting home until after 11.  I now spent one weekday "doing for" her in addition to spending part of the weekend "doing for" my partner.  During this period my partner was hospitalized for sinus surgery and upon returning home had a hemorrhage necessitating a repeat hospital visit via the emergency room.  In late September 2010 my mother took a turn for the worse and the Visiting Nurse Service set up a hospice in her apartment.  She died on October 10, with my holding her hand and telling her I loved her.  Whether I really did or not is not relevant.  I wanted to make sure those were the last words she heard.

I could see that there would be no exciting "encore career" for me.  I was lucky to have health insurance and be able to work at home as a freelance editor, squeezing paid work in the nooks and crannies between caregiving.  Other than my daily practice, my biweekly voice lessons, and my occasional choir solo, I really had no time for singing at all, except for a brief concert in a nursing home.

November 2010:  I had been cast in a tiny role in an opera production with an orchestra (for which I paid $450).  Despite coming there perfectly prepared to sing three pages of music that was not difficult, and having perfect French pronunciation, I was torn to shreds in front of a group of singers most of whom were less than half my age, for no reason that I could fathom.  People were sympathetic - they had no idea what was going on either, but it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I have not really "ventured forth" to do anything I don't plan myself since.

Spring 2011:  In addition to handling my mother's estate business, I now had to deal with my partner's huge decline.  I was actively working with three or four social service agencies to try to get her help, preferably a place to live that was cheaper and where she could have help. The latter came to nothing but she did get food stamps, meals on wheels, a free life alert system, and a free air conditioner. She is now better, but it was hardly an environment in which I felt free to pursue my bliss and let the chips fall where they may.

So there you have it.  Is it really a surprise that I've had no energy to milk my muse?  I speak about having little time and little money, but I see that I also have very little energy and I'm speaking here about emotional energy.  I just feel drained.  I can't put singing first, or even second after my editing commitments. It's just way down the list.  (When I speak of singing, I don't mean the act of singing I mean chasing and creating opportunities.)  All I have energy for some evenings is snuggling with my cat and watching reruns of Downton Abbey.


It's on days like this that I wish I still had the pseudonymous blog, but I am just going to post this and turn it over to the universe.

No wonder I was musing about whether singers as a group (certainly the ones under 40 who write about nothing but their gowns, their onstage flirtations, and their latest headshots) are self-involved. They are, and I wish I could be too.

Slowly Crawling Out

It's done. I resigned, and got a personally insulting email in response, but no arm twisting to come back (was I really that bad?)

I feel like I've really taken a beating and my confidence has been badly shattered.

There have always been areas in which I've had very little confidence: singing above a high A natural, singing softly above an E natural, worrying that I don't have the stamina I need, my lack of musical training.

But this conductor seemed to think I lacked musicality, and in a way that I could not perceive. I mean if I sing an ugly high note, usually I know, yes, that is what I have done. But what was wrong here? If I tried to sing legato he implied that I was schmaltzy and if I tried to sing without being schmaltzy he implied that I was mechanistic. And the worst part is that I didn't hear whatever it was I was doing that he didn't like.

The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed used to tell me I had no sense of rhythm. He said I knew how to count, but that that was not the same thing. So is there some inner flow that I am lacking? If that were the case wouldn't I hear it? I've heard tapes of myself singing and all that I've noticed is that my lower register sounded "talky" rather than "singy" and that (this is mostly fixed) my voice had a big weak spot right above middle C. My high notes actually never sounded that bad on tapes, just loud, but not ugly-loud.

I just haven't had the heart for singing today but I made myself practice anyhow!! I worked on the second soprano part for something were singing Christmas Eve. It's mostly just middle register but there's a gratuitous throwaway high A in the middle (it only occurs once - the second time that melody recurs the second sopranos are an octave below). After working on the new exercises I was actually able to do this. (It remains to be seen if I can do it sitting during choir practice but who knows? Or the choir director may ask the seconds not to sing it.)

Then I took out Wagner's Angel, the only art song I've ever sung (I just don't like art songs unless they're sacred songs for church. Am I missing something?), because it has plenty of legato. I was not all that thrilled with how it sounded. I'm not sure what the problem is. I vocalized up to a High C and sang the ascending phrase from Aida (I now just consider that a mandatory exercise whether I work on the rest of the piece or not) which went like a house afire. And my pianissimo G on "nieder" sounded great. But I got tired and my throat kept getting tight, which I don't remember happening before. I've sung this song almost every Christmas in church one time or another (won't this year - have missed the boat) and always got through it fine although sometimes that G was full voice. Well, I'll take it to my lesson on Thursday. I am not in the mood for any music that's not seasonal right now.

It's funny. My mother was an atheistic Jewish Marxist but she loved Christmas, which she claimed was pagan. I have happy childhood memories of caroling, Advent calendars from the Met, and our beautiful ceiling high live tree.

I just want to wallow in Christmas now. My partner and I have been being nicer to each other, probably because now we're all we've got. She has no friends who spend the holidays here (they all have grandchildren elsewhere, or country homes) and no family, and my mother is dead. I will sing Christmas Eve and then sleep over. We have been looking for a restaurant where we can have Christmas dinner but haven't found one. Everything seems to be closed. Well, then, as I laughingly said, we can be Jewish and eat ethnic and then come back to her place and watch the marathon of Poirot.

Saturday I am going to buy her a little tree.

Coming Back to Life

I haven't written anything for a while because my mother died on October 10, and I have been both grieving and busy.

I also have suddenly gotten in a lot of freelance editing, which is what I do to pay the bills. (In fact I have had to turn down work that people wanted back in 5 days.)

We have a good lawyer who will be co-executor of the estate with me, so I will have less to do. I will get less money, but I will waste less time. There isn't a lot, but there will be something I can add to my nest egg, plus a little for my personal savings account, in case I can't manage to work full time for a while, whatever the reason.

I want to say here that my mother died without pain or fear. I spent her last 12 hours with her, holding her hand. Despite her having been an atheist her whole life, she smiled as she was leaving us, and inasmuch as it was possible, she had a "good death", meaning she died at home, pain-free, with no medical interventions to prolong things pointlessly. She died in her enormous living room in the Brooklyn Heights apartment where I grew up, facing the trees.

I haven't felt much like singing. Not because I'm too sad, but because I'm too busy. My mother never really cared about my singing. She loved classical music, but mostly as a spectator or listener. Her thing was language and literature. I want to read, I want to write, and I want to work (with the written word, which is what I do, for an hourly rate scarcely more than that of a cleaning lady).

I haven't done any blogging either here or at the other place because my priorities are work first, then sing, then if there's no paying work on my plate, I can write. (This is a stolen bit of writing, because I have been working all day since 10 am with a small break for lunch.)

Yesterday I went back to choir practice. I am, I suppose, the de facto alto section leader on a Bach cantata. It is going well. I am in a quandary about where to put myself, section-wise, since as a mezzo I'm neither one thing nor t'other. Luckily, we sing a lot of pieces with two soprano parts, so I can sing second soprano. My problem isn't the tessitura (I'm solid up to an A) so much as having to keep the volume down, which fosters tension and undoes all the good work I do with my teacher and in my own practice.

Next month I start rehearsals for Carmelites. It's a very intensive rehearsal period, ironically, right near my mother's apartment, which I will probably be clearing out for the next several months. I have a very small part and it will be memorized by November 29!! And I have a choir solo on the 14th, a nice version of "The Lord is My Shepherd" by Dvorak. And when I can squeeze in a period of vocalizing I continue to use the dreaded ascending phrase from the Amneris/Radames duet as an exercise.

Now back to work!

Above is a photo of me and my mother, taken several years ago at Fiorello's, a place where we spent many Thanksgivings and Mothers Days.

Time Out for My Mother

My mother really is dying. They have set up a hospice in her apartment. I know this is mostly a blog about singing, but I just wanted to check in.

I know I have said many hateful things about her, and she was a very difficult person (not just with me but other people too) but she was always a lovely mommy to me when I was little, always comforting me when I had a nightmare, arranging birthday parties, understanding my grief when our dog died.

So I want to be sweet to her for the remainder of her life, however long it is - two weeks, two months, I don't know.

Unfortunately I can't be physically there for her all the time because my freelance editing business has just taken off and I desperately need money. Not just in the short term, but I need to earn a decent amount (which means satisfying clients) over the next several years so that I can collect a decent amount of social security.

I haven't really felt like singing at all. But I know I must do just the basic minimum, which means singing exercises at least up to a B flat (I can't lose that hard won territory) and being sure I am spot on with the alto part for the Bach cantata if I see myself as a de facto section leader. What's interesting, is that all the crying I've done (which I think has been spiritually cleansing) has done a lot more harm to my lower register than anything else (similarly to how a cold functions - I'm blessed that I get one about every three years if that). But this alto part is not low (which is why I'm singing it!) it's mostly middle voice (and the soprano part sits around high F and G!!)

I also haven't felt much like eating. Maybe I'll lose a pound or two, who knows. I do make sure I have something with protein three times a day. In between I have my beloved flavored coffee or juice. I just don't have the stomach for anything like an apple or a salad.

So I may not be writing much here. I just didn't want my last post here to be something cynical about my mother. I feel blessed to have time to make peace.

Today's Concert

I am really too tired to write much (more on that later) but I wanted to just say that this afternoon's concert in the nursing home went well enough. My bass colleague had a bad cold that affected his hearing, so at some point in the middle of the duet from La Gioconda we were not in the same measure. Probably no one noticed it and the pianist did a good job of covering it up.

I had a ball, as always, with the Habanera and "Mon Coeur". I did a bit of a vamp, but not too much, as this was not the venue.

I found the seniors very moving - they reminded me of my partner as most of them were frail and fairly quiet and you could see the appreciation on their faces. No, it's not the kind of concert venue the Forum crowd sings in, but it's a chance to sing the music I love and make some people happy, so what more can you ask?

I "did the right thing" and thanked the woman who had helped coordinate this. Last week I was annoyed at her for forgetting that we were going to be rehearsing but everything worked out in the end, so I would be happy to do something there again.

So next up:

January Mother Jeanne in Dialogues of the Carmelites. This will entail a very intensive rehearsal schedule but it's my first time ever singing in an opera with an orchestra.

Spring 2011 concert with my teacher. We will do the deadly Amneris/Radames duet but I know by then I will be as comfortable with those B flats as I am with the As in the Judgment Scene. Wimping out is not an option. I don't know what else we'll sing, maybe a scene from La Gioconda. I also don't know if it will be just us, or if some other people will participate too. The purpose of this concert is mainly to celebrate my teacher's return to singing tenor, after several years going back to bass-baritone.

Fall 2011 Carmen with my "Samson" (shown here)?

The reason I'm so tired is that my 94 year old mother is dying of cancer. We never got along very well, and I am probably not doing everything I could or should, but she lives in Brooklyn and I need to spend time editing manuscripts to earn money. My severance check will have run out after I pay the November rent, so I am literally living from hand to mouth (I have a 401k but the money in it has to last for the rest of my life, and anyhow if I take money out of it now I'll be screwed for taxes).

This is a critical period in my life in terms of my financial profile. If I don't keep earning enough money over the next five years I will not get a decent amount from Social Security, which will affect the rest of my life. And the relationships I'm building with freelance clients will affect my livelihood for the next decade, if not more. I can't make a false move here.

I know this sounds callous but my mother is 94!! It's not like I need to savor every last minute with her because she's leaving too soon.

So I do what I can. The most draining thing is fielding endless phone calls and emails from people who are concerned, are visiting her, have visited her, etc. Luckily there are many people in Brooklyn who are close by who can visit her on the spur of the moment which I really can't. Rather ironically, my rehearsals of Carmelites will be in Brooklyn so maybe I can spend more time with her then, at least sleeping over and having breakfast.

So I'm very tired.

Of course I feel defensive about continuing to sing (not to mention spending money on lessons) while all this is going on, but I'm 60 and this is my last chance, even to do this on a tiny scale. I love the way it feels to sing the Judgment Scene from Aida and how many more years will I be able to do that?