Suite Memories

: "1. Grand Canyon Suite - On the Trail - Arthur Fiedler "

[Rhapsody members click on the title "Suite Memories" to listen]

Traci came out from the bedroom this evening; I was sitting quietly in the big lounge chair reading my book. Traci put our cat, Puff, in her lap and began moving her paws to a tune she hummed—paws moving in unison to the beat. Dum, de dum, de dum, de dum dum de dum…..

“That’s the Grand Canyon Suite!” I’d blurted as the cat’s limbs bounced easily in Traci’s arms. Traci gave me a ‘so-what’ look and continued playing with her marionette. I hummed the tune with her and she became mildly more interested. She put the cat down and I raced to the computer to find the music I hadn’t heard since I was a child. While I searched the web I asked Traci where she knew the song from. “I think from old western movies.” That would make sense. It was perfect music for riding slow horses down the open trail.

The music meant something more to me. It brought me back to our living room in Rochester, NY. A time before my parents divorced; before I had to leave home for my own desert community, before harder times. It was when life was still simple and full of discoveries. My mother had bought the album and I fell in love with the orchestrations the moment I first heard it. She would narrate it for me as I sat tucked into her lap: “This part is the sunrise coming over the desert, a cloudburst, loping down the long trail, a mouse poking its head from its hole.” She painted pictures for me that accompanied the music. We often stole precious moments of time to sit together and listen to it. I played it endlessly; it was my introduction to orchestration, and my very first love.

I’d let it lapse into dim memory until Traci pulled it to the surface playing with the cat. As I played the various movements for Traci on the computer, I struggled with tears as the memory of sitting by the Hi-Fi with my mother swelled with the music coming from the computer speakers. In a moment I was transported back to my mother’s lap, a vibrant woman younger than I am now, but since passed away. She was as filled with wonder and curiosity as I was. And she loved music—big music. She loved orchestras and piano movements and she passed those loves on to me.

And Traci brought it all back in a flood of emotion by sitting there and humming a little tune while playing with the cat.