playing by ear…

When I started this new blog, I promised myself I would post a new piece at least weekly.  This was my “it’s now or never” fresh start, a first step toward my dream of writing professionally.

Golly, where did a month go?!?

As committed as I am to developing as a writer, I still have the responsibilities that go along with being married with a job and a husband.  I spent more hours than I care to admit on the necessity of bookkeeping for my husband’s business.  Add laundry, a bit of housekeeping, meetings, work, and church, and time just gets away.  (Let’s not mention social media, reading, and sleeping…)

The inspiration for “playing by ear” came during a Sunday church service.  I am the pianist.  I can sight read, and I understand enough of the fundamentals to fumble my way through a simple piece on the treble clef using “middle C” as a reference point.  Otherwise, sheet music is like knowing sufficient words in a foreign language to find my way to the hotel and the necessary room.  Our music team uses chord sheets to ensure that everyone plays the same chord at the same point in the lyric, but I rely totally on memory to form the chords.  When I see a “C7” notation on a chord sheet, for example, my brain processes what a C7 should sound like, identifies from memory the notes on the keyboard which should form the chord, and sends a message to my fingers to touch those keys.  This occurs in a millisecond.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, the result is musical.

On that particular Sunday, that particular “C7” was the one percent, the sour note that sends shivers down the spine like the grating of fingernails across a chalkboard.  When the song service ended and I took my seat in the congregation, I couldn’t get my mind off of that chord.  As I listened to the sermon and followed the Bible passages, I jotted down a few thoughts for a blog as well.

I have spent most of my life “playing by ear.” My education and skills have come primarily from the school of experience and hard knocks.  While my friends went to college, I went to work, full-time, at the age of seventeen.  The clerical skills I learned in high school served me well and allowed me to work my way to a position where I was encouraged to take on tasks that were outside the standard “secretarial” skill set.  I’m told I’m a quick study, but where that fails I am determined to find an answer to whatever problem is at hand.  All this combined allowed me to transition, in my thirties, to the information technology field.  Today, I am blessed to be in a position that allows me to combine my writing, clerical, and technology skills.

I’ve learned in my fifty-plus years that one can never really predict what a day might bring.  Twenty-six years ago this week, my mother died suddenly of a massive heart attack.  Our family had just lost her mother two months before, and two months later we would lose our paternal grandmother as well.  There are not words to express the profound impact that year had on me, and on our entire family.  I realized only years later that I went through the motions of life for a very long time.  I did not know how to grieve, nor did I understand how to express my frustration at the notion that after some period of time I was supposed to “get back to normal” and go right along as though nothing had happened.  Thankfully, by the time my father passed nearly 16 years later, I had found my voice and declared that I really didn’t care what anyone thought was “normal.”

I have lived through more “surprises” than I care to recall.  I have learned along the way that I am stronger and more resilient than I ever thought I could be.  And still, I struggle at times to be as strong as I think I need to be. In music, sometimes what I hear in my head doesn’t match what I see on the paper.  In life, sometimes what I hear doesn’t match what I believe to be right and true.  I have more years behind me in life than before me, and I still have that feeling of not being quite sure what I will be when I grow up.  (Although now I suppose the more appropriate phrase would be “when I grow old.“)

I think I’ll just play that by ear, too.

Copyright 2015 Sherry Hathaway All rights reserved.