Show & Tell: The Violin

Good evening Humble Readers... It looks like I need a tardy slip, because I'm late for Show & Tell. For those of you who haven't heard, show & tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Every week we can step to the front of the class and share something... be it silly or sublime. Check out Mel's place to see what the rest of the class is showing this week.

I've been rather sentimental this week. Thinking a lot about family in all its forms and how it shapes us. As I mentioned in my last post, my biological family isn't a big part of my life. But I cannot deny that they had a huge impact on my life.

One of the few things I have that ties me to them is a violin. A very old, very beautiful violin.

(the ugly black case)

For all my life, the violin has been carefully hidden away. As a child, I was never allowed to touch it. It resided under my Mom's bed, in an ugly black case usually covered in dust.

(look close and you can see Fredrick's handwriting... 1893)

I grew up hearing the stories of how my Grandfather's (not Grandpa from the previous post) great uncle Frederick made the violin in 1893. How Frederick played it in the Accrington (England) orchestra before the turn of the twentieth century. How my Mom was the first person in three generations to play it. There was a special family gathering when it was presented to her, and she played Rock of Ages. How my Grandfather was disappointed because to his tone-deaf ears, it sounded off key. How after one high school orchestra practice, my Mom's conductor asked her not to play it, except when she was given a solo because it sounded so much better than the school's instruments.

I remember when the violin was damaged. A babysitter looking after my sister and I (then 4 years old) got into my Dad's booze, and then started going through my parents' room. After rifling through my Mom's jewelry box, she pulled the violin out from under the bed, and proceded to crack the bridge and knocked out the sound post. It took eleven years for my Mom to find someone she trusted enough to repair it. The man who repaired it offered my Mom a large amount of money for it, but of course he was turned down.

Every time we moved, it would be either in the first load or the last. It traveled on my Mom's lap or on the front seat where she could keep it safe. This is a tradition that I have kept. Even on the long road from Lethbridge to Orlando and back again, it resided on the front seat beside me, and came into every motel room each night of the journey.

(with the original bow)

I am sorry to say, that the violin still resides under a bed... mine. I have long wanted to get it set up in a display box of some sort, where it would be safe from dust and humidity. I don't think it would ever get me a fortune on Antiques R.oads.how, but it's special nonetheless.

I have one more confession. I have never heard it played. Never. When I was born, the fall after my Mom graduated from high school, she put the violin away forever. The man who repaired it played a few notes on it, but I wasn't there to hear it. I hope that there is a point in the future, when someone (a child of mine, perhaps) will tune the strings and draw a bow across them.

I hope I'm there to hear it.