Pizzicato

10.24.06

Today Hanah instructs me in the proper manner of pizzicato, which I have been playing for a while but she is now learning as she picks up her new instrument. I am enchanted, of course, at her choice and already imagining us playing duets. She loves to teach, has perfect posture and will soon out do me on this melifluous instrument, as well she will in life generally. This is a human being, born three weeks early, short-changed of a kidney at birth (which she proudly tells everyone in excusing her inability to do soccer and kick boxing) yet enriched with pure oxygen in the ICU, for 2 weeks as they managed her blood pressure and figured out why it was 180/120. I like to joke that the extra O2 fed her brain and her early entry into the world pressaged this dynamo attitude toward life she has. Her mind never stops, her desire to inform and entertain knows no bounds and I tremble/smile at the growing alpha-girl she is becoming.

When children receive the nuturing and positive regard, safety and love of a stable home, anything is possible. I hear stories at work that break one's heart of sexual, emotional and physical abuse to my clients who now carry 100's of pounds of pain numbing fat. I see these faces, so round and chubby, younger looking always than their years and I want to whup upside the head the parents, step parents, foster parents, foster freezes and social forces that creatved world that needs me, a health educator, and bariatric surgery to stem the constant influx of food into these empty holes.

My clients often have no other ways to soothe themselves and I am so grateful for my hobbies, passions, relationships that fill my life in a way food never could. Having suffered my own food obsessions, I can relate and now try to remember what helped me get over them. Was it my mother's death which ended a difficult relationship or my marriage shortly following? Years of therapy? Middle age? Has it really ended when occaisionally I substitute gum, coffee and cigarettes? I was told today that I look too thin and frail. Have I lost my own body image as I try to help these outsized souls? As I peel away the superfluous in life and try to find my own self?

Music, the first voice we hear in the womb, followed by teh sing-song lull of our mothers' voices. The cooing as we learn language, the rhythms around us from construction sites and street crossings and kitchens cooking and books shuffling, all form melodic backdrops in our lives. What happens when we step back to listen to the true silence of solitude? Do we find ourselves and who are we? One of my clients when invited to do a vizualization of a safe, relaxing place (like teh beach or mountains as others reported) went back to being 10 and having his stepfather pour hot sauce in his mouth while he slept. My heart broke to hear this tale. Could he find no other safe place in his mind? Is that why he fills up on food and drink because that painful place is better buried under burritos? Has he no Bouree's to fill that space?

My daughter plucks her strings and corrects my form. She is bold and self confident in a way I never was, sitting tall and putting on her stage face. She has been a role model, of the girl I might have been, the girl I now discover within, coming out to play more and more. Through her I am re-learning the joy of discovery, of laughter of rolling on the floor in glee and making faces and squealing in delight and the deliciousness of burnt Easy Bake oven cookies. She plucks and soon will bow and I will watch and play with her as long as I can and when the time comes I will step back and watch her take center stage, see her bask in her spotlight and I then will step aside, grateful for the re-birth she has allowed in me.