Closet

I have decided to stay back in New Hampshire for another week- there were still a few things that the doing of other events had left undone. It was the participating in these other events that brought me back here. Unlike in the past, where coming here to my parents’ house was usually the obligatory annual visit to check in from across the country and generally set out to set right, on my mother’s terms, what was wrong in the garden. I had my small victories in not using this chemical or not chopping that bush into the shape and size of its imagined dwarf , mutant cousin. I learned not to turn these differences in battles, since after I was back in to the Island, if it mattered that much to her, Mom would hire somebody to put it “right” anyway. It was her money.

            This time around was different though. This time around Mom was residing in the closet in the front hall in an urn of green marble alongside an enlarged, smiling photo portrait of her taken by my brother-in-law last fall near the family cemetery plot that was to be the destination of the second significant event we were pointing toward during my stay. The first event was the second memorial service we’ve had for her in order to accommodate friends and relatives in both Florida and New Hampshire. I chose not to say anything this time around at the church service. I had felt I’d said all that was necessary in Florida back in December. One of my earliest childhood friends, who has become a minister in the long interim agreed to do the service, and she covered all the good things to be said about Mom with anecdotes and snippets that were better than anything that even a detailed family written bio might have revealed about her.

            I had hoped that all of this was going to take place later in the year, as I was looking for more time for a small surprise I was wanting to bring to the ceremony in the graveyard. While I don’t use it as any of my passwords, Mom’s maiden name is McLaren. As an extra incentive toward learning to play the bagpipes, I’d had it in my mind that piping out Amazing Grace with Mom and her parents and two brothers as captive audience would be the best thing I could offer to the proceedings. Since things never go quite as one plans, I semi-scrambled to follow up on a mention I’d made to John Dally last summer that the pipes were on my list of learning curve items for the near future. When I got back from the ceremonies in Florida I started to make further inquiries, and sometime in late February I had my first lesson.

            One of the odd things about the bagpipes is that you learn to play them in pieces, starting with scales and simple tunes played on the practice chanter. The blow pipe, the bag and the drones all come along later after you have mastered the non-intuitive, seven holes in front, one in back fingering. And then there is the tedium of the scales that tests your willingness to go on. I am still trying to figure out why treading up and down the do-re-mi’s is way more odious a task than turning laps in the pool or racking up bike miles on the road, but they are boring while remaining just as necessary- the scales that is.

            About two weeks before heading to New Hampshire John showed me the fingering for Amazing Grace. Unlike Mary Had a Little Lamb, this involved moving from the bottom four to the top three holes as a part of the playing, which sounds simple but requires an entire shift in the lower hand fingering in order to climb the scale. Fortunately the chanter is more forgiving than the full set of pipes and allows one to cheat a bit without missing key notes- I don’t ask why, I just welcome the beginners latitude. Once we had gotten to the family plot in downstate New York I reassembled the chanter and tried a few notes. Everything seemed to be fine, although the reed had slipped further into its socket than it had previously, causing me a slight bit of concern. At the end of the service I was given the nod by the minister and I offered a bit of a disclaimer about the brevity of my bagpipe tutelage. When I blew into the chanter, nothing came out. The fingering didn’t seem to be to blame, so I twisted apart the two chanter sections and readjusted the reed. This time I got some awkward squawks out of it, so I paused, pulled it apart again and made more quick tweakings in the string that wraps the base of the reed. Feeling confident that things would work this time I took a deep breath and let fly. The notes played out as my fingers raised and lowered, and as I finished, the minister who had been a bit stand-offish at the start of the ceremony was now beaming and heartily shook my hand. I didn’t look to the trees as I had during my uncle’s ceremony there many years before when I thought I had caught just a glimpse of his approving gaze from the leafy boughs, but I did feel as though I had spoken to everyone in attendance, both the living and the dead.