I haven’t been able to write very much lately because we have been very busy with our son and his cello life. I’ll write more about that in a bit, but my cello mom duties have been extra of late. It’s a wonderful life in so many ways because my son is highly creative, and you just always hope that a creative can find an outlet early on. It keeps me hopping, though–as do chickens, ducks, dogs, and kitties.
But I have big stories to tell…
First, Petty’s babies have started laying! We have just two laying so far–the first one early in the week was definitely Wednesday. She sings a big egg song and lets you know she laid an egg. She was proud, and I thought it was beautiful. There is a story there because Wednesday is, in fact, a high-maintenance chicken like her mama–Juliet. So I think I am maybe extra thankful for her beautiful egg. She makes me earn her egg.
This is (from the left) Tuesday, Lenore, Jacqueline, and Wednesday–all Petty’s babies–having pancakes the other day. They fly over the fence and do whatever they want all day long. I definitely have some stories to tell about them.
Then, on Saturday, I got a first egg from either Lenore or Tuesday, but I think it might be Tuesday based on the color of it. Tuesday is Ruby’s baby, and the egg color is similar, though Ruby’s is darker. I hope to write about the egg colors tomorrow because the genetics involved are always interesting to me.
But I had to write tonight to talk about Mary Jane. I wrote a while ago about Mary Jane being hurt and having to go to the crate in the garage. I am so happy to report that chicken is better! That meat chicken will be 7 years old if she makes it to June, and I am starting to think she might. I have to try to find out if anyone keeps track of such things, but I think she has to be one of the oldest meat chickens in America. I have heard of them living to maybe 5, but Mary Jane is exceptional–in many ways really.
It was great to get to connect with her a little bit extra while she was in the garage. I brought her treats a couple of times a day since she was just in there alone and bored. She didn’t seem to mind it at first, but after a few days, I could see she was ready to get back to the flock. I made her stay a total of six days, just to give her leg time to heal, but heal it did. She is back out with the flock doing great. I try to remember to pet her every morning when I am getting their food and water ready and every evening when I collect eggs. I tell her how awesome she is, and I am pretty sure she gets that she’s awesome.
Finally, I wanted to share about the cello concerto my son has been working on. He made the finals of the Maine High School Concerto Competition, which is a big deal. He has been preparing so diligently and working so hard, and in the week before the contest, which was held this Saturday, he got pretty nervous. He was extra nervous the day of the contest but handled those nerves fairly well and still played so well. He got second place and was sad about that, but I just keep trying to emphasize how beautifully he played in such a tough situation. I am pretty sure he was the youngest finalist. And, of course, we try to emphasize the learning. It’s all learning, isn’t it? But, my goodness, isn’t it hard to see that when you are a teenager? Still, I think we’re making progress.
Anyway, here is the video. I think it will surely bring you some joy.
After a solid month of Luna being grumpy at me because she had to stay in the house to heal, she gradually started to turn in a more positive direction toward me. Now, she is a complete mama’s girl, and I am honestly going to have a very hard time when we have to try to move her back outside with the flock in the spring.
Luna and I have learned to communicate well with each other. She lets me know when she has to go potty, and she also lets me know when she’s hungry for peas, is bored, or just wants to be pet. She has also taught me that she loves to fly.
Indian Runner ducks cannot really fly. I have seen them get a little lift-off when they are running and flapping their wings, but they never really fly-fly. Apparently, Luna wants to fly though because we do this thing when I hold her up and she flaps her wings like she’s flying. I carry her throughout the house, and I can tell by the movement in her little muscles which way she wants to go. She stretches her little legs behind her and just goes all in with her flying. It seems to make her very happy, which makes me really happy too. I did have to learn how to keep my hands in a certain spot because those wings flap hard–and they can hurt. I think we have it down to a science though, and my favorite part is when I am lowering her to come in for a landing and she puts her little legs down like she’s lowering the landing gear.
She talks to me quite a bit now and loves me the most. This is a surprise to me after she was so grumpy at me for so long. It’s like she realized I am here to help, and I guess I must be doing a pretty good job. We spend time together almost every evening when I grade papers. I sit and binge watch something on television, and Luna watches it with me. She watched all of Ted Lasso with me, and we just finished Lessons in Chemistry.
She still gets grumpy sometimes though, and we have found that the best babysitter is Bach, specifically the Bach cello suites.
Over the six years we have had these ducks, we have had four ducks in the house for an extended period of time. With each duck, we found that they really loved cello music. Anna Sophia loved it so much that she would come running from different parts of the house to listen to it. For Anna Maria, it was the only thing that could calm her down.
I did tests with each duck to see what they like. I tried different types of classical music. It turns out ducks hate the horns. I also tried country music, rock music, folk music, etc. Bach always wins. Bach and the cello.
In this little video, I captured Luna in her most totally relaxed state listening to the Bach cello suites this week. It’s the best.
Two days ago, we started putting Anna Maria into a separate fenced area, so she didn’t have to stay in the bathroom all day while she recovers from her injury.. She’s doing pretty well, though I know she wants to be back with her people. She is healing well, but is still separated from the flock.
I miss hanging out with her and listening to music with her. I loved seeing which music she liked. I could tell by her body language. In our time together, I have learned that Anna Maria makes a nervous back and forth movement when she is feeling anxious, but certain music makes her relax and listen.
Tonight, Ron was bringing Anna Maria into the house to sleep in the bathroom since she can’t sleep in the duck house. He said she was so scared being held that she was just trembling, but when Ron walked by the music room where our son was practicing his cello, he said Anna Maria stopped trembling and noticeably relaxed in his arms.
When my son was finished with the piece he was practicing, we asked him to play it again for Anna Maria. He said he was going to play something better for her. He played Bach’s Prelude to Cello Suite No. 1. This piece has a special place in all of our hearts because our son wanted to learn it so badly when he was little. When his teacher taught him how to play the whole thing, it was such a joy for all of us. And it’s a piece that remains a favorite for our son. He revisits old music fairly often, but the one piece he revisits most of all is this Prelude.
In fact, I have a series of videos of him playing it at different stages over the last few years. I think the first one was when he was 11. I said I was going to keep recording this piece his whole life to show his progress as a cellist, so every now and then, I get one on video. I haven’t recorded one in awhile, so tonight was perfect.
Anyway, I am so glad to share this video. It’s like my whole heart is in it–my son playing his cello, that beautiful duck, and Ron, holding that duck so she can listen to the music, and then that proud nod to our son at the end. Also, about mid-way through the video, you hear this scratching and sliding down the wall, that’s our cat, Betty, just being Betty. She was attacking the walls in the music room. She’s our wild child. Somehow, hearing Betty’s rowdiness just makes me love this video even more.
Tonight, I am writing my blog post while I am sitting in the back of a large church listening to an orchestra play Beethoven—and oh my goodness, they play it beautifully. They are mostly kids. There are a few adults, but these children are serious little musicians. They talk about Bach on their breaks. They are my son’s people—or at least as close as he’s been able to find so far.
The music is mesmerizing to me at times. Joyful at times. And, as a teacher, I love that the conductor is first and foremost a teacher. He explains things so well. He compliments often. He provides feedback with careful kindness. The coolest thing is when the musicians are not quite giving him what he wants, and he will tell a story to describe an emotion or grab a violin and demonstrate or sing notes. And, then, just like magic, this large group of child musicians gives him what he was hoping for. It’s absolutely a treasure to me as a teacher to watch great teachers in action. Because of my son’s cello journey, I have been able to watch a couple of master teachers in action—and I am a better teacher, parent, and human for it. My son is fortunate to have come into contact with such masterful teachers–but so am I.
When my son was in preschool, he started begging to play the violin because he heard a violin at his school. We dismissed this, thinking he was too young, and he was a rowdy boy. When he was seven, because the begging had continued off and on for over two years, I Googled violin lessons in our area and called to make an appointment to get a rental violin and lessons set up. I knew nothing about such things. I grew up in a culture without classical music, except for in the cartoons I loved. My husband, Ron, had played piano as a child but rebelled against it while he was busy rebelling against everything. I was so nervous about taking our son to classical music lessons, but I could see this fascination he had was something.
Less than a week before his first violin lesson was set to start, our son decided he really, really, really needed to play cello instead. He had been sitting in the car with my husband listening to classical music, and some cello piece came on the radio. And that was it. He needed that sound.
So I called and changed the violin lessons to cello lessons, and my son’s journey began. He’s been chasing a beautiful sound ever since—only it was my journey too, really a journey for our whole family, one that impacts every aspect of our lives, from the way I do my work to the number of animals Ron and I are able to manage on our little farmstead.
Early on, our son was smitten with that cello. He was pretty squeaky, of course, but not as squeaky as I thought he would be. His teacher at the time mentioned he had seen very few students learn as quickly as our son was learning. Still, it seemed our son was at such a disadvantage because there is a language and a culture to classical music that was completely foreign to all of us. I didn’t even understand at first that you needed a music stand, so for the first two months, I stood in front of my kid holding music.
It didn’t take us long to learn that our kiddo was pretty serious about the cello. One night, when we went to tuck him into bed, he started to cry. He didn’t know how to tell us without disappointing us, but he didn’t want to be a farmer like his daddy when he grew up. He wanted to be a cellist. He was just seven years old, but it seemed like he really meant it.
So I started reading everything I could and learning as much as I could. I found this blog written by a cello mom who also teaches writing, though her son was an extra level of serious. He got into Julliard’s pre-college program. Our kiddo is not that serious. I learned there were some sacrifices I was not willing for my son or our family to make. Still, I could see from the blog there was a culture to learn and that parents of little classical musicians had to be pretty devoted to the music as well—and to driving.
This summer, our son was at a camp on the coast of Maine. We would stay in the little town, sometimes, just sitting the car working or reading. I noticed other parents doing the same. I smiled so big when another cello parent got out of his car one day at the end of the day and said to us, “I need a chauffer’s hat. I’m really just a chauffer.” It’s true. There is a lot of driving.
There’s the driving. There’s the practicing. Thankfully, our son is just completely willing to practice his cello, but he also has to learn the piano if he really wants to be a musician. My son does not have the same love for the piano that he does for the cello, and sometimes, I have to be the nag about piano practices. I hate being the nag. Interestingly, once he starts, he will usually play and play. There’s also the keeping up with a schedule that seems to get more and more intense as he gets older—right when I am hitting menopause and can honestly barely remember what day it is from the menopause brain fog I am sometimes in. There’s snacks for orchestra. There’s making videos for auditions. There’s the constant worry over if he’s doing too much for a kid.
Thankfully, Ron and I are in this together. We make a good team. He drives the long distances. I drive the short distances. Ron also gives our son this kind of belief that anything is possible if you just work hard and believe in it with all of your heart.
And it’s all the most magnificent thing in the world to me. I have fallen in love with classical music and have found the cello speaks to me in a way other instruments do not. I guess my kid inherited this from me. The music has become one of the greatest joys of my life. It literally heals me. When I take my son to his cello lessons, I just sit and soak in the cello playing. I will literally feel a certain feeling in my arms, my legs, in my chest. I remember reading one time that the resonance of cat purrs is healing to both cats and people. Truly, the cello has this same power, the same kind of range of sound–or something—at least I am convinced of this.
And Ron has been changed for the better too. He plays classical music to his plants in the garden every summer. And the music is a part of the centering of ourselves that we both needed for so long.
The music brings me peace. It helps me connect to that magical thread that exists in the universe that only some of us are able to find some of the time. But it’s there.
One winter a few years ago, one of our ducks broke her leg on the ice. I was devasted. I thought she might have to be euthanized, but I read that healing was possible but would take a long time. Determined, we moved that duck into the house, and she lived with us for eight weeks. During that time, we discovered that she loved the cello. After she was able to walk again, when our son would start playing his cello, she would come from wherever she was in the house and sit at his feet. She loved the deeper tones the best. I am convinced the cello helped her heal.
It was a powerful experience for me, seeing this animal experience music so similarly to the way I experience music was a part of a kind of spiritual journey for me, one that involved connecting more deeply with animals. And, after that experience, every time we had a duck with bumble foot requiring foot soaks in our guest bathtub, to help calm them down, I would play classical music for them. I would play different pieces until I found one that suited the duck. I can say for certain that horns are not appreciated by ducks, but cello is. And Bach is a favorite for sure.
I have been writing so long tonight that the orchestra is nearly finished with their rehearsal. I Iook up sometimes to watch my son play and am thankful parents are allowed to sit and watch. I’m way in the back, but I can still see him a little. I love the way he sways to the music. I love that he gets to be a part of this big, beautiful sound, of something so much bigger than himself. He said one time he time travels through music, and isn’t that just the truth? Hopefully, he’s learning a skill that will help that empathic soul he inherited from his mom and his dad have some peace, some sanctuary, in a mad world.
And, oh my goodness, I love watching these children make beautiful music. By the way, they are rehearsing in a church named Hope. How perfect is that?
Today was just magnificent start to finish. My son, who is 12 and dreams of being a cellist when he grows up, had an opportunity to play a little cello concert at beautiful Lone Spruce Farm here in Maine. It was so much loveliness I can’t quite express it.
I am also worn from the concert and then the talking to people after the concert. I am an introvert on the best of days, but thanks to COVID isolation, I find that I am even worse than before when it comes to mingling and speaking to people. Still, despite the tiredness of having to “people,” I had one amazing day as a cello mom.
First of all, the setting for the concert was just a dream. This farm is gorgeous with its trees and animals and a cool breeze from being on a mountain side. Our little farmstead is down in the Maine woods, so we don’t get that same lovely breeze. Second of all, my kiddo played so beautifully. I hope to have a video ready to share tomorrow, but he played Despacito on the cello just for me. He told everyone he was playing it for his mom, and when he was finished, he said, “I love you, mom.” Yeah, good stuff.
I also noticed during the little concert that one goat in particular really seemed to like the music. I have mentioned before that one of our ducks really loves the cello, and I think this goat might be a kindred sprit. I am happy to report that I have a short video of this. It’s 14 seconds of cello and farm, which is just my kind of perfect.
One additional perk of the event was that a little boy, who is just 8 years old, was in the audience. His mom said he had been wanting to see a cello in real life. She said he loves cello music but has never heard one in person. Apparently, this kiddo was counting down the hours and then minutes waiting for this little concert. Well, after the concert, this little boy had questions. He wanted to know how old the cello was, how it worked, and when my son started playing. My son showed the little boy his cello and let him touch it. I watched as my son said, “put your had right here on the cello” and then plucked the string.
The little boy pulled his hand back and in an excited voice said, “It vibrates!” I could tell this kiddo was hooked.
I told his mom to get him to cello lessons, some how, some way. I hope she listens. When a kid is this interested, you have to give them a chance, I think. I am such a big believer in music lessons for children, but that’s another essay for another day. Right now, I must go play the duck game and put the ducks to bed. I’ll have to write about the duck game soon.
I do have a quick Ruby and Kate update though. They are both doing well, though when Ruby took her break today, I snuck an egg for one last candle, and I don’t think it developed. I didn’t have time to check any other eggs because Ruby came back and demanded that I leave her eggs alone. It will be interesting to see how many chicks we get from her this week. I can’t wait to see what kind of mama she’s going to be. I hope she gets at least three or four babies.
Today was a big day off of our little farm. That’s why I am so late to write. My cello mom work started early this morning and didn’t end until long after dark.
photo credit: Janderson Tulio, Unsplash
Our son is a cellist, and he’s a pretty serious cellist. Today, my husband drove us to Augusta, and we listened to one of the most beautiful orchestra concerts I think I have ever heard. There was the drive, the rehearsal, the making of food to eat in the car, the drive home. It’s a long day at the end of a long season of 10 weeks of driving, eating in the car, sitting in the car during three-hour rehearsals.
But, truly, it’s worth it and then some. If you have never heard The Sicilienne, the third movement of Faure’s Pelleas et Melisande, give it a listen here. It’s magnificent! And I just heard it played live by an orchestra—and my kiddo played in the orchestra. I have no words for the joy this brought me.
Thinking of the cello reminds me to tell you a story about the Eastern Phoebes who have made a nest on our deck. It was just a treat watching them build that nest over the last few weeks. Those birds worked so hard. Thankfully, I learned Eastern Phoebes tolerate people very well. How fortunate am I? I mean, I won’t get too close. I promised the female Phoebe I would be respectful of her space (I have a whole other story to tell about that later), but I am still in for some joy this summer. I read they might raise two broods! I am so glad these fantastic birds chose our deck.
Last night, when my son was practicing his cello, it started to rain, and I had to step outside onto the deck to bring in some aloe plants I had potted during the day. When I stepped outside, I could hear my son’s cello so loudly and clearly from outside the window, and then I realized the Eastern Phoebe nest was right above the window to our son’s music room.
For a moment, I worried about the nest being so close to that loud cello music, but then it occurred to me that the Phoebes would have surely been aware of the loud cello music while building their nest. Our son plays cello six days a week for about two hours each day. Maybe, just maybe, Eastern Phoebes like cello music, too.
“At least that A string,” Ron said when I told him what I noticed. “Yeah, at least that A string,” I thought.
We have a duck who injured her leg on the ice one winter several years ago. She had to live in the house for nearly eight weeks while she recovered. During that time, we discovered she loved the cello. When our son would start to practice, she would come from wherever she was in the house and park herself right under the cello. She would stay there for the whole cello practice! It was amazing!
I did some research and learned that birds process music in the same part of their brains as we do. How cool is that?
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Oh, and I have a quick Ruby update. She’s still on the eggs and took no break today. I gave her some leftover homemade waffles as a treat. She ate them out of my hand very aggressively and then gave me a good hard peck on the hand for good measure. Oh, Ruby!
