A Falling Leaf

Experiencing childhood musical trauma

In fourth grade, Mickey found it increasingly difficult to keep his attention focused on his studies. His gaze was often directed out the window, or else he focused inwardly on fantasies fleeting through his mind. He dreamed of far-off places; of tall stands of forest, of glacier-laden mountains, of vast seas and distant islands. His mind was rich in uncharted frontiers as well as exotic foreign cities, bustling with colorful merchants and smelling of alien incense. These places he traveled to in his mind were so much more enchanting and awe-inspiring than the dull rote of the classroom. The monotone of the teacher’s voice was too easy to block out. His descent into scholastic failure began.

But not completely! Whenever a subject managed to capture his wandering attention he quickly excelled in it. Such was the case when it came to geography. Why, his teacher must have wondered, was he the best student she had in geography, yet he was mediocre, or worse, in all the other subjects? The answer, of course, is that Mickey enjoyed it. He was infatuated with maps and he fervently enjoyed discussion of foreign places.

Music is the other subject that he excelled in — at least to a certain degree. It was not just that he enjoyed music, but he was a natural at it. An understanding of music came very easily to him and his teacher spotted this. He had a natural talent she told him and perhaps he had, and perhaps he could have taken that talent to untold heights. Perhaps he could have made a career out of it, and maybe even become famous. Who knows? Maybe he could have, but he did not. Instead, music soon became for him a nasty ugly problem.

Mickey’s older brother Paul had started playing the clarinet and was in the school band. Mickey chose vocal music, however, and it was the vocal music teacher who took a strong interest in him. She had season tickets to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and since her husband did not really want to attend, she used his tickets to take Mickey with her to all the concerts. She also took him to various string quartets, choir recitals, and piano competitions around the area. She even lent him some of her classical music records, saying that he should study music as hard as he could because he would be really good at it someday. She was responsible for opening his eyes to the marvelous world of music and he would always love her for that. He could not have been more excited. He looked forward to each concert date with great anticipation.

One of the concerts his teacher took him to featured a prominent guest violin soloist. Mickey was completely mesmerized. His passions were ignited. The music pulled him into a dimension of pure joy. When his teacher took him backstage after the concert to get the violinist’s autograph he was shaking with excitement. When the violinist handed him back the signed program booklet, he knew instantly that he had found his calling.

Meanwhile, Mickey’s mother was becoming increasingly agitated about this woman taking so much interest in her son. Just what were her motives? His mother felt that such an abundance of positive reinforcement coming from this teacher simply could not be good for Mickey. Was she setting him up for a major disappointment? Telling a child he has talent was a very wrong thing to do, in his mother’s eyes. Her belief was that no one is born with talent; one had to work most diligently to achieve it, and only after a lifetime of hard work and suffering could someone be called talented. His mother did not notice any particular musical talent in him. To her, he was just normal, and thank God for that, for his mother certainly did not want to have to deal with a prodigy.

Finally, when she could take it no more, his mother stopped the concert dates with the vocal music teacher and had Mickey transferred from the vocal music class to the band class. Although he was sad about leaving his teacher, he hastily agreed to switch to instrumental music, proclaiming that he desperately wanted to play the violin.

But oh no! His mother would have none of that. With her migraine headaches being as frequent as they then were, she was not about to put up with some kid screeching a violin. Pick something else, she told him. Pick a band instrument, like Paul did; one that is not screechy or too loud, and certainly not drums!

Mickey had finally found something to direct his passions into. Playing the violin was the one thing he wanted to do more than anything. It was the one and only certainty in his young life. And his mother took that from him. He was devastated. He pleaded and begged and threw fits, all to no avail.

His passion and drive for music were greatly thwarted. He went into band only begrudgingly and half-heartedly. His mother never realized what she did to him. And she was not finished, either!

He finally settled on the trumpet as his instrument, but even this was a problem. His mother told him to ask the band teacher if there was a school-owned instrument that he could play. She would not buy him a trumpet until she saw that he was serious and that he would stick it out and not lose interest. She was not one to risk money on a gamble.

To Mickey’s dismay, the school did not have any trumpets. They did have a baritone, however; in fact, the fledgling band sorely needed a baritone player. Unless he could provide his own instrument, he was told, he would have to play the baritone. Seeing how depressed he was lugging that huge baritone case home from school, his mother told him that if he did really well with the baritone, she would buy him a trumpet the following year. This did not cheer him up because what he really wanted, of course, was a violin.

Since Mickey was starting in the band halfway through the year, the band teacher asked him to visit her in the band room after school each day for the first few weeks so that she could try to catch him up on what the other students had been learning. He ended up visiting her after school only two times, though, for this is all he needed to catch up. That first day after school the teacher said to him, “For the last few months the class has been learning to read music. They haven’t even played their instruments much yet, so you don’t have to worry about being too far behind in that respect. But you will have to learn to read music quickly.” To her utter astonishment, Mickey learned to read music in about twenty minutes.

“Are you sure you didn’t already learn to read music?” she asked him several times.

“Yeah. I don’t remember ever being taught. It does seem… ah, kinda familiar… But I don’t think I’ve ever been taught this. It’s just simple, I guess.”

She was bewildered, yet pleased. She then introduced him to the baritone. She showed him how to hold it and blow into it and how to finger the buttons. Then she gave him some simple exercises to practice at home. The next day he played those exercises for her as well as some new ones that she put before him and she declared him ready to join her class. He was instantly her best student, if not her happiest.

The following year Mickey got his trumpet, but what that amounted to was a reward for NOT striving and NOT excelling at music, for, although he had gotten straight A’s in band, the beginning band class was in no way challenging to him and, in his depressed state, he made little effort to push himself beyond what was expected of him. He was rewarded for being good, but normal. He was rewarded for NOT being a prodigy. He was rewarded for knowing and staying in his place. To him, the best part of the reward was carrying around a much lighter instrument. That baritone was like carrying around an elephant with him to school.

But even this proved disappointing, for the band teacher pleaded with him to continue with the baritone. The band needed him, she said. His baritone playing held the band together. No one else could provide the bass sound to round out the sound of the band. Reluctantly, Mickey agreed, but he stopped bringing the baritone home with him. He did not need to practice to keep up with the band anyway. At home, he tried to teach himself trumpet.

Meanwhile, Mickey’s brother Paul, who was now in Junior High, was getting pretty good at the clarinet. Whenever the family went to Philadelphia, his mother insisted that he bring his clarinet and Mickey his trumpet. She liked to show the two boys off to the relatives. She would stage little concerts for them. First, Paul would perform something on his clarinet then it was Mickey’s turn. He vehemently hated doing this with every fiber of his being. First of all, his brother had been playing the clarinet already for a couple of years and he was pretty good. But the trumpet was new to Mickey, and he was teaching himself to play it. He was much better on the baritone. He hated being upstaged by his brother. Secondly, he had a bit of a crush on a girl in the audience; one of his distant cousins. He was terrified of embarrassing me in front of her.

One time, he was so nervous he could not play a note and ran out of the room. His mother came and got him. Clutching his arm tightly with her hand, she brought him back out in front of the relatives. While still in the other room, she had said to him, “Now I bought this trumpet for you and you are damn well going to go out there and play it!” She wanted a return on her investment.

But she was humiliating Mickey in front of the girl he had a crush on, and he just could not bear it. He did not want to be a performing monkey that his mother could show off to the relatives. His mother was squeezing all the joy out of music for him. With tears streaming down his cheeks, he blurted a few disgusting sounds through the horn, then turned to his mother and shouted, “There!”

He put the trumpet down and walked away. He went out the back door of his uncle’s house, walking quickly through their backyard then running into the forest behind their house. He ran until his crying stopped him. He cried and cried until there was nothing left but the stillness of the forest and the chirping of birds and the silent flight of a single leaf floating down from the treetops to the grave of the forest floor.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. See My Latest Stories Here

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