A Thread

When my grandmother died so suddenly, however many years ago, and the whole family was pitched into grief and then the inevitable dividing up of important items–one wooden giraffe for each grand child, the accordian for my aunt, the handmade kindergarten creation song booklet for me–my mother took hold of her, my grandmother’s, bible, which meant that her own bible, my mother’s I mean, came down the line to me. My grandmother’s bible is enormous. I don’t know how or if my mother has managed to lug it to her own home in Kenya. My mother’s bible is more moderately sized, leather bound, with high school and college scrawls of interesting insights from sermons and studies. I’ve been using it on School mornings to work through Proverbs with all my own brood. The King James Language is a point of beauty and interest, rather than a hinderance. “Why does wisdom have to be talked about like a woman” my son complains. “I don’t know” I say, “sometimes women can be wise. Later there will be an evil woman. Look, some of the men are good, and some are foolish and evil.” I do know, but I dont want to get into it with him. “Go practice the piano and stop fussing.” Its the standard response to all difficult questions. Stop Fussing. Practice the Piano.

The piano, like the bible, is my mother’s as well. In high school she really needed a piano. Its only possible to practice so much in other places. If you really want to be good, you need a piano. One of her very wonderful teachers, I forget which one, said that if she memorized a whole book of the bible, he would get her a piano. A whole book of the bible could be a breeze. At my own school people were always memorizing James. Some people I know who really dislike God now, managed to get through the whole book of James and keep a handle on it through till graduation, whole sections flowing off the tongue with no problem. I was too rebellious and stuborn for James. I only did Eccleisastes 13 and left it at that. Not a whole book, just a chapter. My mother, unbound by legalism of any kind, fixed on Hebrews. The whole book of Hebrews and at the end, one whole piano.

When my grandfather died, a few years after my grandmother, and the house really had to be sold, my mother contrived to get the piano all the way across the country from Portland to Binghamton. My children bang out Eye of the Tiger and Pachabel’s Canon on it. Their teacher, laid back and calm, let’s them learn whatever they want. My grandmother would be shocked. My mother, I think, is just grateful that they are learning. When she’s here, she coaxes them and persuades them to place the piano and its sound in high esteem. When she goes, I make the children wipe jam off their fingers before practicing. “Remember” I say occassionally, “This is Nonnie’s Hebrews Memorial Piano. Don’t bang on it. Don’t make it sticky.”

If it weren’t for the bible and the piano, I don’t know how things would have turned out for my own wonderful mother. They have tethered her to hope and beauty and Jesus, and through her, me. They are like the strong, sometimes invisible to others, but always clearly felt under the index finger and thumb, thread in the Princess and the Goblin– the thread that Irene follows through darkness and fear and evil to safety at the end. The world looks on and thinks, how can that possibly turn out well? But there, under the fingers, forming on the lips and in the heart, is the tether, the strong hope to which we are called, that cannot be abandoned or destroyed.

And now, go check out Laura who has written seriously and wonderfully about her own mother!