Old Dreams, New Hope
- Christine J. Seymour
- Christine J. Seymour
I knew this woman many years ago. As a girl she was eager, ambitious, playful and enthusiastic. She was a young woman with a dream on her way to making it come true. It was a dream based on the romance of a career in music. She saw life as a musical on the stage. When she thought no one was looking you might catch her bursting into song as she walked down a deserted street.
Her road was paved. She had successes that assured her of more. She had been selected for every prestigious singing group and singled out for solos through junior and senior high school. She auditioned and was accepted into the School of Music of her dreams. She entered the building that had held her in awe throughout her youth with all the confidence and anticipation of a beauty queen about to receive her crown. She walked proudly down the corridors lined with closed doors that opened into sound proof practice rooms, and found her world behind one of them. Four walls and a piano made it the most beautiful room on earth.
She worked very hard to fulfill the requirements of the study of music, already visualizing herself in the setting of junior high school choir room showing anxious adolescents the joy that could be theirs if they would just sing. She worked hard and she could recognize the chords of the theory classes by name and face as they appeared on the written page, each note taking its place on the lines and spaces of the music pages like colors on a painter's canvas. She could feel the resonance and dissonance of each chord, major and minor.
When she sang her voice soared from her heart and lifted out to a place she could almost touch. Her pitch was perfect when it was the only sound to be heard.
When the first semester was completed she went into her finals determined that nothing would keep her from fulfilling her dream. There had been suggestions by certain teachers that she was not hearing things correctly. That was ridiculous. She only had a slight problem understanding what people said sometimes. Yet she went into her finals fearful. What if they were right? What if she couldn't show them they were wrong? She entered the room. It was a recital room where she had been before and had viewed with such hope that it had seemed as if there was sun, when in fact there were not even any windows. This time it was a cold room with a piano, a stage, and a group of music professors with malevolence in their faces. There was a darkness about the room and fear emanated from every part of this woman whose whole life would be decided in the next few hours.
The dream was smashed! The chords, minor 7, major whatever, were to be identified by key, by sound, not by face and name. When her crystal clear voice rang out, it was slightly off pitch from the piano accompaniment. And when she attempted to render playful sound from the piano her devastation was already so great that her fingers froze and she ran from the room in tears. Her whole life, her heart, her soul had been ripped from her by a simple effort to sound forth the most important joy in her life, music. Now there was nothing.
I lost my friend after that. For many years I wondered what life had become for her. What new joy she might have found. What new endeavors might have renewed her enthusiasm for life. Did the darkness lift for her, or was she sucked into the abyss of a life lamenting the loss of her greatest love? Perhaps there was no other dream. Was she so consumed with despair that she was blinded to any possibility of a happy life? Did grief become so comfortable that she chose to not to try to emerge from it? I wondered and I worried for she could not be found.
It's been twenty-five years. I got a postcard from Christine. Life is grand! I love you! I miss you! Get in touch!
When I came within her sight her arms flew open and her pace became a run. She took me in her arms and hugged me as if reuniting with a long lost child. There was such warmth and love in that hug. There was no fear, no shyness, no sense of twenty-five years gone by. There was just genuine joy such that I myself had not known before this moment. She held me out at arm's length and smiled with a radiance I had never seen in her before, even when she had her dream in the palm of her hands years ago. She smiled and she said," I am deaf, you must look at me when you speak so I can understand you."
I didn't know what to do, what to say. My heart ached for her, yet she seemed at such peace with what she had just told me. She saw the sorrow, the sympathy in my face and again she hugged me to her then held me out and told me that it was OK. She had lost nothing. She had been given the skills she needed and then she was given silence. She spoke of her deafness as a gift, as an opportunity to learn and grow and help others.
"But, what about your music!" I cried in despair for her. How could she accept not having her music? Again she reassured me that nothing had been taken from her. She still sings, even bursts into song when walking down a deserted street. She explained that she can watch her favorite musicals and hear the voice of the actors that she remembers so well. Nothing has been taken from her. Her music is in her heart, not her ears.
I was in awe. Here before me stood a woman who, after having a life long dream smashed, had been handed what seemed to me the most devastating blow, was absolutely in love with life. Here was a woman whose very being was projected in the effervescence of her voice, her face, her body. She spoke of life guided by a divine spirit in such a way that I did not raise my eyebrows in disbelief but instead smiled in wonder as I looked into her face that was aglow with joy. It was as if her heart, a brilliant valentine, was reflected in her eyes, and pure love was in her voice.
When she spoke of the challenges in life as opportunities to learn and grow, it was impossible for me to not want to seize it and feel a bit of that enthusiasm of my own. It was impossible for me to not smile, to not slip out of my own pain, and share this love of life in some small way.
I know when she is alone, and she looks in the mirror, she fluffs her hair, examines her make-up and sees the glow for herself. She is not disappointed, not critical. She smiles, and a bit of the wonder that she sees in the faces of those around her is there in her own eyes. She says to herself, "Who is this woman? Where did she come from?" She raises her face to the heavens, then lowers her eyes down toward her heart and says," I'm Christine. Thank you."
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