In Praise of Playing the Piano Badly

 After a 39 year interval, I am taking piano lessons again. My goal is to play some songs for my students, and to learn how to count. Although my teacher Kim tells me I am making excellent progress, my playing sounds wooden, and nothing like music. It doesn’t really matter; mostly I play as meditation. 

I started playing the school year before COVID as a way to deal with work stress. Although I had taught at the same rural school just outside Kingston for years, my school, and my job changed dramatically in 2019. For the ten years prior that I had taught there, and according to many parents at the school, who had also attended back in the day, the neighbourhood of 1950’s brick bungalows never seemed to change. Then, in the fall of 2019, a new housing development was built nearby and our school population ballooned in a short time. Many of my new students came from at-risk families living in poverty. Suddenly, I had significantly more students who struggled with food security. Our school also saw a rapid rise in students coping with anxiety and depression. And, we also saw a sharp increase in children whose parents suffered from addiction. Many of those children had experienced trauma as a result. While we previously had a food-sharing program at the school, we now also sent one student home with food over the weekends. At Christmas I tried to purchase enough non-perishable items to help the family get through the holidays. 

Teaching children who live with unpredictability makes for unpredictable classrooms. My French lessons often didn’t go as planned and sometimes my back-up lessons needed their own back-up plans. Many days I spent more time dealing with complex behaviours than I did teaching French. I left school at the end of each day exhausted. 

When I got home, shell-shocked from the day, I’d sit in my living room and try to play my piano. It didn't matter how terrible I was. The concentration required to coordinate my hands, and if I was feeling ambitious, the pedals, emptied my brain of school thoughts. I couldn't think about students and butcher “Lean On Me,” at the same time. And, when I was finished banging out the chords to Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting for You,” I was ready to tackle dinner and conversations with my own pre-teens. 

That year I was writing my YA book, Cleaning Up, that came out this spring. The protagonist Jess, who cleans houses for a summer job develops an imaginary friendship with a girl whose room she cleans. Jess was like many of my at-risk students from the 2019 school year. She ate from the snack bin at school and struggled to show her emotions because of experienced trauma. She was a child who scanned her father’s arms for track marks. Jess wasn’t any specific student, but she reflected a growing number of children I’d taught in Ontario schools. 

As my day job leaked into my writing, I realized Jess needed an outlet other than cleaning houses and fantasizing about rich girls. I wrote her new friends who had a band. Jess sang backup, and like me, learned how to play the piano. Jess also played poorly, but it didn’t matter. As she made her way through “Hot Cross Buns,” or Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” music became a way forward, away from busy thoughts toward calm. It was important to me that Jess have not only a financial way forward, and new social experiences, but also an outlet for her stress. 

These days I have a new teaching position in a French Immersion program. Most of my students come from middle-class families, play hockey, take swimming lessons and vacation at Disney World. Like their counterparts at other schools, they struggle with anxiety and ADHD, but few worry about food security. Mostly I teach ten-year-olds, but I’m also responsible for art and music to a grade one class. Each day we dance, pretend to be animals, paint penguins and sing. Mostly we sing in French, but sometimes I take them across the hall to an empty classroom with an old piano. The kids sit on the floor and for a special treat, we sing in English. I don’t have a lot of piano repertoire for children yet, but I’ve taught them to warble the few songs I know how to play. And so we sing,  Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on. 

And everyone feels better when we’re done. 

Music for everyone!

Hiking in the Himalayas in 1998

Next week my husband Rob’s two best friends, John and James, will come to our cottage north of Kingston, ON for the week. I’ve known them for twenty-five years, ever since I met my husband when he was backpacking with them in Dharmsala, India. The three of them travelled with a guitar and played Beatles songs and other hits from the 70’s, as well as songs they wrote themselves. Meals in simple cafés frequently turned into concerts with Tibetan waiters warbling along to Stones’ tunes. It was a heady way to travel, and those songs formed the backdrop to my falling in love with Rob.

In the years since our India trip James and John have come up to our cottage to play those old songs and write some new ones. James, a retired teacher with a romantic bent favors James Taylor and Sandy Denny tunes. John is more of the Johnny Cash/Fred Eaglesmith enthusiast and has been known to write songs poking fun at my husband’s attempt to find me in India, his obsession with Indian motorcycles and other country-influenced songs. 

John and Rob write the latest cottage hit. 

 During our week together the guys will write new songs, plan a potential trip to Nashville and fantasize about touring. Also, old songs the guys wrote themselves during our trip to India will be sung. I crafted the lyrics to a few of these songs. I can still distinctly remember the heady excitement of coming up with lyrics that expressed how I was feeling about being in love with someone not Jewish – and then having James turn them into music. The lyrics to the song I wrote, The Ocean, feel a little too on the nose to me now, but they expressed exactly how I felt in 1998. 

Love always seems a sacrifice to me 

caught between you and my family 

words that cross my lips sound insane 

Sometimes culture is hard to explain 

A few months later, when Rob and I temporarily went our own ways and wondered if we could sustain a relationship that faced the challenges of not only cultural differences but a significant age gap, Rob sent me a mixed tape that included The Ocean, but also a new song, Time Has It’s Way, that James had composed from letters Rob had written to me. 

Time has its way with me 

But it hasn't diminished my longing for you 

I have played the strong lead 

Supporting you as best as I can 

As I travel around this lonely land 

And take on a role I just don't understand 

And wonder in my soul about the whole circumstance 

I find I'm still caring for you. 

John, Rob and James on the dock, with Dassa

These songs not only let me express the complicated feelings of my youth, but also provided the experience of being part of a musical collaboration. I could barely sing, and I couldn’t play an instrument, but I could be a lyricist.

I have closer friends than James and John, but with no one else do I have this musical connection that results in my words becoming music. 

 James, John and Rob have written a lot of songs over the years. A few of them are excellent, some of them, like a song entitled Garbage Truck, are just for fun. A few years ago the four of us wrote a song called Saturday Night. It wasn’t a particularly deep or meaningful song. We wrote throw-away lyrics like, We’ll go dancing Saturday night/and if we do it’ll be all right. The slightly more meaningful verses were about the challenges of being in a relationship, a theme discussed often among us. The lyrics were recorded in a journal, sung a few times, then largely forgotten. 

 Then, when I was writing my newest book, Cleaning Up, I decided to look at the song again. 

 Cleaning Up is about a girl named Jess who has a summer job cleaning a country house in the Westport area. Jess, who comes from an impoverished background, has been so intent on school and part-time jobs to try and improve her life that she hasn’t made a lot of friends. However the summer she lives in Westport she becomes friends with a guy named Matt when they bond over their mutual interest in growing vegetables. Matt is also in a band and convinces Jess to play tambourine on a few songs. For Jess, being in a band is a new sense of belonging, both to a group of friends, and also a musical community. Music enables her to see the possibilities of her life in ways beyond escaping poverty. Jess even has the chance to perform with the band’s signature song, We’ll Go Dancing Saturday Night. I used the lyrics with permission from the song I wrote with Rob, John and James. 

Cleaning Up is about learning to be who you are, and also about using music to forge relationships and enrich your life. I wanted Jess to have a future rich with friendship and music. 

 I hope you all have music in your lives, whether you sing or play an instrument, or are merely a good listener. The world always needs good listeners.

 

This past week I was in beautiful Vancouver visiting family and launching my book Cleaning Up. When speaking to a Vancouver crowd about the book’s setting of Kingston, ON, I realized I have lived in Kingston for 17 years, almost as long as I ever lived in Vancouver. 

 

I spoke to the audience about living and teaching in the Kingston area and read a section about the book’s protagonist, Jess, cleaning in the Westport area. The house Jess cleans in is actually based on a real house that I stayed in many years ago, The Stepping Stone Inn, located near Westport, ON.

I loved The Stepping Stone Inn’s beautiful 1830’s limestone exterior, wide-plank floors, peaked roof and the jacuzzi tubs in the bedrooms. Since my husband and I were the only guests staying so late in the fall season, we were able to prowl around the house and gardens.

The house somehow stayed in my head and became a key setting for Cleaning Up. I kept the location and look of the house the same – that 1830’s peaked roof and wide front porch – but changed parts of the garden and interior to make the house less like an inn and more like a private residence. I kept a picture of the house on my computer desktop to remind me of the setting.

While researching the house I learned it was actually a historic home, The David Laidlaw House. The house was built between 1849-1852, by David Laidlaw, a Scottish immigrant in The Rideau Cottage style, which features one-and a-half stories, two chimneys and stone lintels over the windows.

Many readers, including myself, love reading books where they know the location and can imagine themselves in the same locations as the character in a book. So, for those of you who know the Westport area, now you can imagine Quinn Gupta’s house. And for those of you not familiar with the area, here are a few pictures to help you out.

I didn't include this pond behind the house in Cleaning Up, but it's a beautiful feature of the property and I'm sure Jess would have loved the landscape challenges it would present to a gardener. 

This barn isn't on the property of the David Laidlaw house, but it's what I envisioned as the barn where Matt lives behind the Gupta house. 

Gardening for Hope

Spring is slowly coming to Ontario. Each day I stand in my very damp
garden and hope. I hope the peony that looks totally dead will come back and that the alliums won’t completely take over the front beds. I
hope the squirrels haven’t eaten all the tulip bulbs and that my hydrangeas come back. I am truly a terrible, lackadaisical gardener, and hope is all I have. 

Gardening, planting little seeds that look like rocks in dirt, is truly a hopeful act. We plan, but mostly we wait and see and hope.

 

All this hoping can be a religious act too. Recently I had the opportunity to attend a Baptist service in Harlem, New York for Easter Sunday. It was a tremendous experience with a rocking gospel choir, two organs, a contemporary dance performance and a lot of ‘ah-mens’ and ‘yesses.’ I was deeply moved by Reverend S. Raschaad Hoggard’s sermon. As a Jew I know very little about Jesus or Easter and the violence of the crucifixion has always worried me. Yet Reverend Hoggard explained that the resurrection is a message of hope because despite his death, Jesus rose again. Whether you believe in the resurrection or not, the idea that those who stand against injustice, hate and violence will always rise is tremendously powerful. As Reverend Hoggard said, “When the resurrection is alive in our hearts, hope and love have the last word.” 

My novel, Cleaning Up, which came out last week, is also about hope and gardening. Jess, the main character, learns to plant seeds at school from her beloved teacher, Mrs. M. To Jess, who struggles with poverty, so many things in life are disappointing, but plants – growing blossoming green things from hard little kernels in dirt – blows Jess’s mind. To Jess who struggles with food security, the ability to grow things that are beautiful and can be eaten is astonishing. 

Gardening is also a way for Jess to invest in her future. She plans to study landscape design, get a job creating beautiful spaces, and end the endemic poverty that surrounds her. Planting and growing things are a radical act of hope for Jess. 

Jess also loves the book The Secret Garden

by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I loved this book too as a child, and I was taken with it as an adult when I read it to my sons a few years ago. Young Mary, orphaned in India, is
sent to an uncle in Yorkshire to live in Misselthwaite Manor a large, unfriendly house. There she finds a secret garden that needs to be brought back to life. Through the garden she finds happiness and also heals her sick cousin Colin. 

Jess re-reads The Secret Garden when she’s stressed and when she doubts her future. She has her own imaginary secret garden that she retreats to in her head. Both the gardens are places of solace and transformation. They are a way to keep hope alive. 

And that’s what we all need – to to sit in our Easter Friday pain for awhile – but then not let despair take over. Just like Reverend Hoggard said, hope and love have to have the last word.

It's Almost Here!

 My next YA book is almost ready for the world! Cleaning Up will be available this April from Groundwood Books. I have lots of exciting things planned to promote the book coming up this spring. Mostly importantly, I hope Kingston friends will join me at Novel Idea on April 20th for my launch. I'll also be on Global Kingston TV and in Canadian Teacher magazine in the fall. 

I haven't seen the actual book yet, but I am very excited by the cover, which was designed by Charlotte Day. Here's a sneak peek about the book. 

Jess finds a secret diary and imagines what it would be like to be a girl who has everything. Will she become so wrapped up in someone else’s life that she misses a chance to create her own?

Jess cleans houses to save money for college, because her dad — unemployed and off the wagon yet again — has moved the two of them out of the city into a decrepit borrowed tent and trailer. Jess wavers between anger at her father and fear that poverty and addiction may be her fate, too, and she decides she will do whatever it takes to avoid it.

She gets a gig cleaning a gorgeous country home and discovers the trashed bedroom of the teenaged daughter, Quinn. Jess wonders how a girl with a perfect life – private school, horseback riding – could have wrecked such a beautiful room. As she cleans, she finds troubling clues – including, tucked behind the bed, a diary.

Gradually Jess learns that Quinn’s life is not what it’s supposed to be. Jess begins to imagine becoming friends with Quinn, and when she begins to write down a new story for Quinn, she risks turning her back on the opportunities that are right in front of her – new friends, new interests, a fresh beginning.