10-19-01, Side Streets, Kimra Traynor Herb, 954 words
Me and My Cousin Doris
By Kimra Traynor Herb
IPS Features
I have an older cousin named Doris. Doris plays the violin. Doris plays the violin VERY well. From the time I was a child, I listened to, and later participated in the family's band. The band is called: THE MAURER FAMILY BAND (the family name.... not very original, I know, but we make up for in talent what we lack in originality). Since she is older than me, by a mite, at least, Doris had the dubious distinction of joining the ranks and files Maurer musicians a couple of years before me. Watching her, with her glasses on her face and her chin resting on that violin, I was filled with........ seething, simmering jealousy.
"Isn't Doris wonderful!" Family members would crow, leaning over to pat my cousin on the back.
"Don't you hope you are as talented as Doris when you get older, Kimra?" others would ask me, as I lowered my eyebrows, crossed my arms and glared at my cousin, who had no idea she was the object of my contempt. It was nothing she did, really, except that she was so good, so talented, so FAR AHEAD OF ME, that I simply burned with resentment when she picked up her violin and began to play.
I grew up a bit, and began playing the flute. I joined the Maurer band, shared sheet music with Doris, and got pats on the back for my performances. Still....... she was always just THIS FAR ahead of me.......and I could never catch up to her level of expertise.
Before you knew it, we had both grown up, married, had children, and begun careers in other arenas. For both of us, however, music still plays a central part of our lives, and Doris and I continue to play publicly to this day. I have discovered, in the years bridging my initial jealousy over her playing, that Doris is as wonderful of a person as she is a violinist, and had I not been so bitter and angry as a child, I probably would have noticed it then.
Waaaayyyyyy back in my mind, trapped away in a tiny closet in my brain, has always been the idea......"what if I played the violin? If I were to play the violin, surely I would be so fine, so fantastic on the instrument that even Doris herself would weep in envy at the first stroke of my bow on the strings." Well, listen, I am a petty person, and I told you, this thought was LOCKED AWAY. Of course, my closets have faulty locks and so, I probably leaked my secret violin lust to my hubby, oh, a few hundred times, so I shouldn't have been too surprised when he bought me a violin for my last birthday. Our five year old had received a small scale violin for Christmas, and so it was decided that he and I would begin violin lessons together. I lined up our instructor, and then it began.
Ohhhhh Doris will be GREEN WITH ENVY..... a tiny voice in the back of my mind said as I opened my case for our first lesson.
I've been playing, if you can call it that, for a few weeks now, and the only kind of green Doris would be turning.... would involve her face of nausea as she heard me torture the instrument.
Who would have thought? I was sure by now, I would be bringing forth beautiful strains of Vivaldi and Chopin. Instead, I am screeching my way through "The D, D, A, A" song.... a song, which, you guessed, features the notes D and A. "Features" is an overstatement; the song consists ONLY of the notes D and A, and what makes matters worse is; I don't play the D, D, A, A song all that well.
Rats.
"Mommy." My five year old says to me, looking up over the top of his minuscule violin. "You are worse than me!"
Well, thanks a lot. This was a great blow to the old ego, but the truth is.....he is right. I am so torturously hung up on doing well at this new instrument, that I can barely LOOK at it without stiffening into a wooden mama. My arm, as I try to hold the bow correctly, is made of metal, unyielding and uncooperative. My fingers, gripping the violin itself, are made of metal- hard and unable to duplicate the flexible touch my instructor has shown me repeatedly.
And so it goes; I saw away at my D, D, A, A song, butchering the formerly unbutcherable, and will myself to get better. Alas, the more I concentrate, the worse I get. My affinity for the flute has thus far not been translated to Doris's instrument, and I worry that I will never learn another note past the D, D, A, A song.
Then I worry that I will never play the D, D, A, A song at any level beyond embarrassing, and just thinking about all of that causes me to further stiffen as I rosin my bow.
Cousin Doris made it look so easy, back then, when I was glaring at her in the Maurer band, and watching her, I never could have guessed that scratching out a two note song could be one of my most insurmountable tasks. Luckily for me, word has not leaked out to her yet, I think, that I have started violin lessons, so I am hopeful that in the next....oh, say, five or six years or so it takes me to advance to "Mary Has A Little Lamb", the family can keep the dark secret that Kimra's taken up the violin, in the closet where it belongs!