Beauty for Ashes Part 2

“…and There Shall be Music”

Tonight I watched our little girl climb ‘mountains’ of sand, and upon reaching the top, she would clap her hands and with sparkling eyes declare, ‘See Mama?  I made it!’

Several times she would sit on the edge of a hill and sing to the mountains around.  Not all days have been or will be as this one today.  But as days and years pass I pray that she’ll catch a glimpse of that little girl sitting atop those “mountains.”

(Mom about me at age two and a half).

There is a verse in the Bible that says, “…and the truth shall set you free.”  While I completely agree with that, I must say that when I was a child, music set me free.  In my family musical ability is like being able to breath.  On my dad’s side every single person in our rather large family has musical ability except one cousin who is tone deaf.  On my mom’s side, I think that all three of her brothers can sing, and my mom has a phenomenal voice.  The rest of us in my immediate family can all sing but my dad, my brother, Jayme, and I, all chose instruments as well, while Kati, Kelly, and my mom stuck with voice.  I grew up in a church that encouraged music and musical abilities.  I think I started singing in front of a congregation on my own when I was three.  Well, that shouldn’t be too surprising since I had no problem singing to strangers in the grocery store at age two.  My voice was the one thing that redeemed me in the eyes of those in our church who had decided I was a little brat and not wholly intelligent either. Too many people from church had kids who went to the same school I went to, and too many teachers from that same school went to our church.  As I mentioned, the pastor’s wife had been my kindergarten teacher, and she was indiscreet.

            When my parents pulled me out of the school I was attending, however, all that changed.  For one thing, at the private school I attended, I managed to catch up an entire grade level in one school term.  My test results showed that I was not an idiot.  I’m sure my mom appreciated having someone else second what she had suspected all along.  I had brains. 

            By the end of third grade I was attending a school in Riverton, Wyoming, 15 miles from Kinnear where I had spent my earlier years.  My parents had decided they didn’t want any more of their children to go through that school system, and they certainly could not have me in that situation.  So, rather than my mom driving us to school every day as she had me when I attended the private school, we moved to Riverton.

            I had mixed emotions about moving to Riverton.  I knew that I would have a better school experience there.  We were also moving to a really nice house that my dad had helped build, and my parents were really excited about it.  But it would mean not being able to see my grandma every day.  That was really difficult.  But she assured me I could stay with her every weekend if I wanted to, and the lure of having my own bedroom with blue carpet was just too good to pass up.

            My mom felt that I needed something to excel at, something I could feel confident doing or being a part of.  I had taken quite a psychological beating at my rural school, and she wanted me to feel that I was good at something.  It seemed only natural I turn to music, though my parents would have encouraged anything I wanted to pursue.  It wasn’t until I started fourth grade and met my new music teacher, Miss Duplicea, that I found my passion. 

            Miss Duplicea was amazing; the most amazing music teacher I have ever known.  She sang fun songs with us and had us move around as she played the guitar.  I was fascinated with her and the way she could play that guitar.  When she offered guitar lessons, I rushed home and begged my parents to let me take lessons.  We had no money for a guitar but my grandma had one with steel strings, a folk guitar, and I was allowed to use it.  It was very large for me, and the strings hurt my fingers but I worked on what my teacher gave me, diligently pursuing the calluses she said would come with time that would prevent my fingers from hurting when pressing the strings.

            Then on my birthday, after seeing I was serious about learning the guitar, my parents managed to buy me one of my very own.  I was giddy with excitement.  It was mine and I loved it.  It was not a child’s guitar, but full-sized with a rather wide neck.  My teacher told me I would have to really work hard to maintain correct hand position while playing, as my hands were small and my fingers quite short.  My guitar was a classical guitar with nylon strings, which were much easier on my fingers.  The wood of the guitar was much softer, and the tone when I played was beautiful.  I’ve played many guitars over the years but my Lyle still has the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.  I needed to be good at something that made me hopeful, and my guitar was that something.  I still have my Lyle.  It is now a collector’s item, but even if it were not worth much monetarily, there is no price I could place on that guitar and what it means to me.  The finish is wearing off.  It is not as shiny and beautiful as it once was, but when I pick it up I can still make beautiful sounds come from it.

            It wasn’t long before I outgrew my guitar teacher.  I wanted to move into classical guitar, as I found the music challenging and the sound cathartic.  I began taking guitar from a young lady who was a distant relative on my dad’s side of the family.  She was well known for her abilities in playing classical guitar.  I learned a lot from her and took lessons from her clear into high school.  I firmly believe had I not had the guitar as my main outlet I would not have managed adolescence as well as I did.

I used the guitar as a way of connecting with my inner self.  As I mentioned, I made a decision to cut off my emotions.  I was very young when that happened.  I remember my dad telling me one day that if anyone ever picked on me I should defend myself.  He explained that it did not matter whether it was physical or verbal, he would never punish me for defending myself.  I remember that conversation with him from my early childhood so clearly, and I believe it was a pivotal moment for me when I not only embraced anger as a source of power but also began to question authority.  Having permission to defend myself against whoever might attack me, freed me.  I believe that at that point I began to truly think for myself.  I decided that I would make my own decisions and suffer whatever consequences came my way.  My peers or those in authority would no longer overpower me, and I would never ever back down to domination again.  I am not sure that line of thinking was what my dad had in mind, but I believe, even in childhood, my thought processes had begun to head toward extremes.  I believe that for some, bipolar disorder begins slowly and accelerates with every triggering event until it blossoms into the full disorder.  That is what I think happened to me, and it started when I was five years old, building and building with every traumatic event I was forced to accommodate.

            I have had people in my life tell me that I have a problem with authority.  I suppose I do.  It comes from my childhood, being castigated by adults in authority over me, and my inability to protect myself.   One might say my parents should have protected me, but they knew very little about the daily trauma that went on at my school.  By the time I entered junior high, I had begun to understand the power of anger, and if applied to my extensive vocabulary it could render those who would attack me, immobilized by intimidation.  I finally felt I was no longer a victim.  What I didn’t know was that anger becomes uncontrollable. 

            Anger is like fire.  It starts out as a small flame, serving its purpose for the user, but it can very easily become a raging monster, consuming all in its path, taking on a life of its own.  My brother was a firefighter in the Marines.  I have heard him say that fire is a living thing and it eats or feeds on whatever is in its path.  That is what anger does.  I found that I was unable to control outbursts of anger.  Day after day of school, coping with classmates and teachers, doing things that I had to do because someone said so, compounded the anger that existed from wrongs done to me that were never made right.  I knew I needed to practice control, but I would use up all my energies just managing my anger throughout the course of the day.  If I had not exerted so much control, I would have been in a brawl with someone on a daily basis.  I would come home and run to my bedroom, slamming my door shut.  My mom would follow, goading me until I exploded, giving a verbal assault on all the details of my day.  I never felt peace or contentment.  I rarely laughed, and I found it difficult to relax. 

            Music was my only solace.  When I picked up my guitar and began to play, the anger dissipated, and I was able to connect with other emotions.  I was able to express myself through my music.  My parents remember lying in bed listening to my guitar music waft through the vents that connected their room to mine just below.  I would play for an hour.  I would play for 20 minutes.  No matter the time, I found relief.  During that time, I was whole—only to have anger consume me again, once I stopped.   

            Looking back I feel that much of my anger was triggered by my inability to handle environmental stimuli.  I was surrounded with too much noise, too many people, and too much input was needed from me.  I think that triggered much frustration and irritability.  I do not remember thinking, at that time, that I could not handle my environment.  The way I lived was all I knew.  However, I do remember feeling less equipped than others, often wondering if maybe I wasn’t as smart as my classmates. I remember my grandma Esther telling me over and over that I needed to learn to control myself.  I must learn to control my temper!  What a novel idea!  Unfortunately, I was ill equipped and ill advised.

            My eighth grade year of school was a very important year for me. At the end of seventh grade I tried out for the eighth grade jazz band with my guitar and got in.  The jazz band was a very prestigious thing.  Only a few kids got in.  It was a very big gig for junior high.  I was to play bass, so after promising to attend summer band I took the bass home with me.  I then proceeded to leave it in the case without even opening it.  I knew that it was different from the guitar.  For one thing the bass is in bass clef rather than treble clef like the guitar, so the music is different.  For another, there are only four strings and they are twice as thick as a guitar’s. 

            About a week before summer band, I opened it up and took it out.  It was electric, and I didn’t have an amplifier so I really was not all that interested in messing with it.  I was a little concerned, however, with the thickness of the strings.  It was difficult for my small fingers to press them down.  I was pretty confident with my abilities to read the different clef, having taken years of piano where I had learned how to read music and had had good bit of music theory.  As I mentioned before, my family is very musical, so from my mom and dad I learned about counting, rhythm, and many other aspects of music.  I had also played alto clarinet for two years in concert band in middle school, which fine-tuned my abilities in sight-reading. I felt pretty confident as I grabbed the bass and headed out the door for summer band.

            It was a hot summer day as my mom drove our red station wagon up to the chain link fence that surrounded the school building.  I remember the glare of the sun as it bounced off the pavement, causing reflection from the fence, as the heat rolled up off the ground in waves.  I grabbed my bass and headed toward the open back door of the band room, waving to my mom as I walked away.    

            Once inside, I noticed my band director and several older kids, most of whom I was sure were high school age.  Our summer program allowed kids from eighth grade up through twelfth grade to participate.  It was a little intimidating if you were one of the young ones, especially if you had only picked up your instrument a couple of times before coming to class.

            My band instructor motioned me over to the rhythm section area where I pulled out my bass and plugged it in, flipping on the power switch before tuning it.  I fiddled with the knobs on the amp for a bit, pretending I knew what I was doing.  I had played an electric guitar before, but not enough to create genuine confidence.

            The rest of the session has been deleted by time and my negligent memory.  I’m sure we warmed up, and I’m sure we exchanged names and such.  Actually, I know we did that because I remember a kid named Willy introducing himself as a junior in high school.  He was really tall and very muscular.  He was in all kinds of sports and played any saxophone you put into his hands.  He was incredibly gifted. But what I knew beyond any doubt about Willy after that first session was that he was an asshole of the highest order.

            I don’t remember the tune.  What I do remember is Willy playing a solo, but stopping in the middle to turn partly my direction, though making sure not to address me fully.  He said, “Where’s the bass?  I’m supposed to be playing a solo with the bass backing me up and instead all I hear is air!” 

            I was mortified.  I had been trying to figure out what I was doing.  Much of the sheet music in the jazz genre for bass is not written notes.  Much of it is just chords.  The bass player is to know the chords and the scale that goes with the chord.  From there the bass player plays a series of notes from the scale of that chord until the music changes to the next chord.  For instance, if I am given a C chord, I know it is made up of the notes C, E, and G, or 1,3,5.  The scale that goes with that chord is C, D, E, F, and G. So if I want, for the time that chord is written on the page, whether for one bar (measure) or two, I may play any of the notes in the C scale. 

            This was a bit beyond what I had done.  I wasn’t used to breaking down chords in my head as I played.  I remember looking at Willy, the pompous jerk, and feeling smoke pour out of the top of my head.  I packed that bass up and took it home.  I was determined to never be humiliated like that again. 

Later that year, around Christmas time, we had a concert.  The high school band teacher who happened to live across the street from us heard me play and commented to my parents and my band teacher that he thought I had exceptional talent.  He wanted me in one of his groups in high school.  That was wonderful, for it gave me a head start in high school in terms of finding my place. 

            Willy was a senior my freshman year of high school.  He heard me play and chose me over the other bass player who was a year ahead of me to play in one of his combos for State.  When asked why he chose me he said, “I want the best, and Lael is the best.” 

            I had detested Willy for some time.  What he had said, and the embarrassment of it rankled, but it caused me to strive and conquer that bass, quite possibly moving me beyond anything I might have been driven to become by my own volition.  I eventually began to really admire Willy and his dedication.  He was absolutely exceptional on the saxophone and he had an ethic I found myself striving to emulate.  I will never forget him taking a walk-on position in football at the University of Wyoming.  He had not received a scholarship for football.  He had people from all over the country trying to get him to play sax for them, but football was one thing he had not conquered, and that is why he chose to go to Wyoming to play.  I’m sure he never quit playing his horn.  That was a firmly established love affair.  He wanted to prove to himself he could succeed in football, and he did.  He played professional football for a time. 

            Willy is someone who stands out in my mind, a figure of great color and dimension because of his drive, ability, and unwillingness to compromise his dreams simply because someone else did not share them. What an amazing human being, and oh how he helped shape my life.  I found my truest contentment and serenity while sitting behind that bass driving an entire band, and much of that satisfaction I attribute to a hot summer day in eighth grade and a big blonde jock. 

            The first half of my freshman year was amazing.  I was in a play that was very fun.  I had a boyfriend who was a junior.  I was not allowed to date but could go places with a group.  It kind of worked out.  I made All State playing my contra bass clarinet, and the time I spent in jazz band playing bass was exhilarating.  I was on the swim team, which seemed to soak up the aggressive energy I continually lived with due to the anger that was ever ready to boil over.  Physical exhaustion was the only thing that seemed to keep me from feeling like I was about to spontaneously combust.  Academically, I was bored.  My teachers in junior high still felt I was of average intelligence, and had placed me in average classes in high school.  My English teacher in high school told my mom, “I have no idea what Lael is doing in my class.  She should be in an honors class to challenge her.  She is weeks ahead of the other kids and reads Louis L’Amour books every day.”

            Life was good.  And then it wasn’t.  It was as though the sun was out and then suddenly it went away.  It was gone for the second half of my freshman year and all of my sophomore year.  My parents were beside themselves, for with the dark came violent moods.  It affected the whole dynamic of our family.  My dad could hardly stand to be around me, for my attitude was caustic and my need to lash out like a cornered animal was unexplainable and inexcusable.  I didn’t really understand why I was that way.  If someone were to ask me back then why I was acting that way, I could not have told them.    My friends dropped me because they couldn’t handle the intense moods that were like violent storms.  It seemed as though I had turned a corner for some reason, and had gone down some dark corridor where no one wanted to follow and from where my mom feared I would not come back.

            I know now why, at age 14, I took a road that led to the labyrinth of mental illness.  Ironically, that labyrinth is what led me on the quest to finally become authentically me, and that is when I found an answer.  Now it makes sense to me and to my parents.  It is not an easy truth but “it is what it is” as my mentor professor often says.  I have often wondered why I did not know back then.  Why did I not see where the darkness was coming from, and why did not I say something to someone? 

I think I did what I’ve been doing since I was five.  I would take a hit, then get up no matter how bloody or damaged, shake my arms like a prize fighter, put my dukes back up and say, “Come on.  Hit me again.  I dare you.”  Anger had made it possible for years for me to keep getting back up. Kind of like an adrenaline shot.  But this time the hit was different. 

            When I think of what happened my freshman year of high school, I am reminded of one of the last scenes of Gladiator with Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix where Joaquin’s character, Commodus, stabs Russell Crowe’s character, Maximus, a mortal wound, and then has his armor put back on him.  He then forces Maximus to fight wounded.  I think that is what happened to me.  I took a mortal wound, then put my armor back on and headed back into my life.

            We had just had major victory, all the music groups, band and choir, all four grade-levels.  We were driving several hours back home from the music festival, and everyone was sleepy.  It was dark on the bus, but for just a few overhead lights. I had crawled under the seat I had been sitting on, with my pillow and coat, so I could stretch out.  I was sleeping soundly, but became slowly aware of something touching me.  I was in the kind of sleep one has after two days of intense activity with little sleep—almost a delirious kind of slumber.  I could not quite determine what was touching me but felt whatever it was moving over my clothes.  As I slowly floated to the surface of awareness, I realized hands were touching me, groping me, moving under my shirt and pants.  I was confused and frightened, not sure what to do.  I tried to move away, to say something but he stuck his tongue in my mouth.  I was confused, caught off guard, half asleep, and all together uncertain how to react. Then he stopped what he was doing and left, leaving me with the smell of Polo and spearmint gum. 

            Later, after I was home, I thought about what had happened, and I knew who it was.  I was to have yet another involuntary moment with him at Christmas when we attended the same party.  He was a senior, full of himself and quite certain I could not get enough of him.  I had dismissed the first incident, trying to talk myself into believing it had never happened.  Nevertheless, I was afraid of him.  I was actually dating his best friend, George.  George was out of town with family, so I had ended up at the party alone.  Several things happened, all out of my control, which led to me being left alone with the guy who had molested me once already.  I remember he had been drinking all day because his family’s bar had been broken into and he was upset.  He smelled of peach schnapps and Polo.  To this day I can’t stand the smell of either.  I instantly feel that I am going to vomit. 

            I remember trying to make light of his advances, walking around the table to keep something between us.  When he did get a hold of me, I did not resist, for then his grip just tightened.   I acted as though I was not repulsed, but then moved away as soon as possible.  At one point I ended up in front of the Christmas tree in the living room of the house we were in.  There was a couch and I remember him pulling me down, rolling me toward the back of the couch, pinning me between it and him.  I felt his hands loosening my shirt and fumbling with the button on my pants.  I squirmed, trying to verbally protest, but he put his mouth over mine.  The taste of stale alcohol was enough to make me gag.  I squirmed, trying to pull away, but he held me tighter.  I felt the panic rising inside me.  I remember turning my head toward the Christmas tree, just praying someone would come back before it was too late.  Then I left my body—like a kite being loosed from its anchor—It was as though I checked out.  He could have done whatever he wanted to me because I was no longer there.  I don’t know where I went. I just wasn’t anywhere. 

            I never told anyone.  In fact, I decided it was another thing I was just going to move on from.  After all it wasn’t rape.  Someone had come back before it had gotten that far.  And I had not fought him much, so he could have said I was a willing participant.  I reasoned all this out in my mind and decided no one ever needed to know.  My friends who had left me alone with him might recall that I had begged them to not leave me with him and had ignored my pleading, but I could not count on that.  So I let it go.  Besides, I had bigger issues.  He had told George when he came back from Christmas break that he had “made it with me,” and then proceeded to spread it around the school.  From then on George wanted nothing to do with me.  I tried to explain over and over to him what had happened but he just looked at me and said, “I don’t believe you.”  The irony of the situation was that I was a “good girl,” and everyone knew it.  One of my buddies told me one day, “Lael, I know lots of guys who would ask you out in a heartbeat, but they know you won’t put out.”  What was done to my reputation was devastating, and the fact that the guy I had been dating was willing to think I would cheat on him was a major blow to me.

            Even though I had more successes in my years in high school, and more people in my life, I never got over that experience, and I had no idea it had opened the doors on a mental fragility that one day would cause my entire little house of cards to come crashing down.  However, I feel certain that because I had something to excel at, I was able to maneuver through high school after what happened my freshman year.  I became an excellent bass player.  The awards I won in music covered the walls in my room, and I was recognized by colleges as being exceptionally talented on the bass. Even now, so many years later, music is what pulls me deeply into myself.  It is a soothing balm and a gateway to my creativity and my deepest expressions.  It does not heal me, for only God can do that, but it illuminates the dark places, a candle guiding me through the dark corridors of my mind, and it calls into focus that which I am searching for in the lightning blur of my racing and distorted thought processes.