Robert Schumann’s Kinderszenen Op.15.No.7 (Scenes from Childhood), specifically Träumeri (Dreaming) is a piece of music that sends me into a happy, quiet place. Turn up the volume, close your eyes, and listen. You’re probably familiar with it.
But it’s quite unlike my own childhood. Mine was a household of movement and bombast. Eight children, and I was the youngest. There was a lot of talking, argument, clearing of dishes, banging of pots and pans.
And not only did we have eight kids. When most had grown up, moved and gone on to lives of their own, we had foreign students live with us. At one time we had nine students from other parts of the world (China, India, Thailand), besides my parents and me. Listening to four Thai boys and one girl chattering away in singsong indecipherable words around the kitchen table was a daily practice. Then there was the 80-year-old PhD student from China. She was a character and a half, but she was quiet.
Mom played the piano at least once a day, usually noisy pieces. Not like this bit of gentleness. You’d think she would have needed the tranquility in the midst of the bombast.
But, on the other hand, maybe her nimble fingers needed to vent. Maybe she wanted to scream! She was a concert pianist who cooked and did laundry for ten people, for goodness sake. And she had been an only child. Was her personal childhood concerto more like Schumann’s? Then as an adult in a house full of noise and confusion, she yelled with her fingers up and down the keys?
In spite of all that noise, or who knows, maybe because of it, I am a pretty quiet person. So maybe this concerto really is fitting for me, if not my childhood. It’s definitely what I want to hear as a 50-year-old woman.
But it’s quite unlike my own childhood. Mine was a household of movement and bombast. Eight children, and I was the youngest. There was a lot of talking, argument, clearing of dishes, banging of pots and pans.
And not only did we have eight kids. When most had grown up, moved and gone on to lives of their own, we had foreign students live with us. At one time we had nine students from other parts of the world (China, India, Thailand), besides my parents and me. Listening to four Thai boys and one girl chattering away in singsong indecipherable words around the kitchen table was a daily practice. Then there was the 80-year-old PhD student from China. She was a character and a half, but she was quiet.
Mom played the piano at least once a day, usually noisy pieces. Not like this bit of gentleness. You’d think she would have needed the tranquility in the midst of the bombast.
But, on the other hand, maybe her nimble fingers needed to vent. Maybe she wanted to scream! She was a concert pianist who cooked and did laundry for ten people, for goodness sake. And she had been an only child. Was her personal childhood concerto more like Schumann’s? Then as an adult in a house full of noise and confusion, she yelled with her fingers up and down the keys?
In spite of all that noise, or who knows, maybe because of it, I am a pretty quiet person. So maybe this concerto really is fitting for me, if not my childhood. It’s definitely what I want to hear as a 50-year-old woman.
Portrait of my mother as a child that stands on Lesley's piano in our house
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