“So what’s the deal with the flute, anyway?”

On my trip to New York City to play Carnegie Hall, I was accom­pa­nied by a very dear friend, my col­lege room­mate. We cel­e­brated the thir­ti­eth anniver­sary of our friend­ship this year and I had a mile­stone birth­day a cou­ple of months back, while she will mark that same mile­stone later this year. We decided that this would be a great oppor­tu­nity to take a trip together and have some fun.

Some months ago, as we were cement­ing our plans, she asked me, “O.k., so what’s the deal with the flute, any­way?” I’ve got­ten the same ques­tion from a good num­ber of other folks.

To sum it up suc­cinctly: Play­ing the flute is the achieve­ment of a life­long dream.

When it was time to start band in the fourth grade, I wanted to play the flute. Well, that’s not quite right. I longed to play the flute. Yearned. Dreamed. I begged my mother to let me take up the flute.

The answer? “No.”

Why? Well, I could just tell you the ratio­nale she gave me, but it really needs to be heard and under­stood in con­text, lest you think she was merely cruel.

My mother at five years of age with her two older brothers.

My par­ents sur­vived the Depres­sion. They were both born and raised in South Dakota, so they expe­ri­enced first-hand what it was like to live in “The Great Dust Bowl” that the prairie became dur­ing those years.

My mater­nal great-grandparents and grand­par­ents were Nor­we­gian immi­grants. My great-grandfather came to the United States in about 1882, made his way to Dakota ter­ri­tory, and home­steaded: 160 acres and a mule. He erected a sod hut and began work­ing the land. It was about seven years before he had enough money to bring his wife and daugh­ter (my grand­mother) to live with him. My grand­mother used to talk about the trip to Amer­ica and the expe­ri­ence of see­ing her father at the age of eight after being sep­a­rated from him for so long. Even­tu­ally, they built a mod­est home that never had elec­tric­ity or run­ning water, my grand­mother met my grand­fa­ther and, after they mar­ried, they all worked that land together. Dur­ing the Depres­sion, they man­aged to hang onto the farm — barely. Many of their friends and neigh­bors were not as fortunate.

My father grew up in a lit­tle town not far away. He grad­u­ated from the eighth grade and then, one of eight chil­dren, had to go to work.

My mother grad­u­ated from high school in 1934 and dreamed of going to col­lege. She used to talk about her efforts to secure the required funds, but there sim­ply wasn’t any money to be had or bor­rowed. Instead she ended up work­ing as a com­bi­na­tion house­keeper, cook, and babysitter.

Hence, incred­i­ble pres­sure was put upon my sis­ter and me to earn col­lege degrees.¹

Because of the extremely dire cir­cum­stances they sur­vived as chil­dren and young adults, my par­ents, like so many mem­bers of what Tom Brokaw termed “The Great­est Gen­er­a­tion” were, in my esti­ma­tion, as well as that of many other Baby Boomers, com­pletely dys­func­tional regard­ing money. They lived in fear of los­ing every­thing and return­ing to their mea­ger begin­nings — and that fear drove their decision-making.

Trag­i­cally, they never really learned to enjoy what they worked so hard to earn — at least not in the ways most of us today define “enjoy,” i.e., by trav­el­ing or splurg­ing on things we don’t need to sur­vive, espe­cially when it comes to tech­no­log­i­cal gad­getry. Know­ing the money was in the bank and the bank was insured brought them a brand of hap­pi­ness and secu­rity that few of us relate to today.

And my par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion did not dis­cuss money, at least not with any speci­ficity. When I was grow­ing up, about the only time I heard any­thing about money or finances was when I asked for some­thing — like a flute — and was told, “We can’t afford it.” I knew we weren’t poor, because we lived in a lovely home and never wor­ried about the essen­tials of life.  But I was cer­tainly led to believe that the “extras” in life were out of reach.

It wasn’t until we took con­trol of my mother’s affairs and sorted through all of her belong­ings that I devel­oped a tan­gi­ble appre­ci­a­tion of exactly what the Depres­sion had done to her.

I dis­cov­ered that, while not wealthy by anyone’s stan­dard, the real­ity of my par­ents’ finan­cial cir­cum­stances was dia­met­ri­cally opposed to their descrip­tion of it. As I said above, I always knew they exag­ger­ated, but on that day — which I will never for­get — I achieved a new level of clar­ity about one sim­ple, tragic fact: They lit­er­ally, as the say­ing goes, “worked them­selves into their graves”.

And then I found myself ask­ing, “Why? What good did it do them?”

I can attest that they took noth­ing with them when they departed this world. Sadly, the only thing they man­aged to do was leave a few mate­r­ial things behind for my sis­ter and me, and our chil­dren. I am grate­ful for those things, of course, prime among them being the home from which I type these words.

But after a few months of reflec­tion and self-examination, I reached an inescapable con­clu­sion: The cost was far too high. ²

I am not here to live my life for my chil­dren. I love them more than my own life, but my sole pur­pose is not to live for or through them. I am on my own path and they are on theirs. One of the pos­i­tive results of my par­ents’ atti­tudes and my life expe­ri­ences is this: I have made my own way and am assur­ing that my kids learn to do the same.

I am a liv­ing tes­ta­ment to the fact that it is truly never too late to pur­sue a dream.

Still … it isn’t easy when I expe­ri­ence an occa­sional reminder of the way things were when I was grow­ing up. Holly Dunn had a hit song a few years back called “Daddy’s Hands.” I can­not bear to lis­ten to that song because it makes me remem­ber the way my own father’s hands looked when I was grow­ing up. Lined with grease, no mat­ter how hard he scrubbed them, the next day he would be back at work over­haul­ing trans­mis­sions at the local Lincoln-Mercury deal­er­ship. He per­formed small jobs (brakes, tune-ups, etc.) at home in the evenings and on Saturdays.

It was my job to use one of my mother’s sewing nee­dles to pull out pieces of metal that had bro­ken off and lodged beneath his rough skin. It was also my job to coat the inte­rior of his wed­ding ring — that he only wore on Sun­days to church, for spe­cial occa­sions or on vaca­tion — with clear fin­ger­nail pol­ish because the chem­i­cals to which he con­stantly exposed his hands caused him to be sen­si­tive to the gold — and his fin­ger would turn green. It wasn’t until he retired that it became no longer nec­es­sary, as his hands grad­u­ally became soft and his fin­ger­nails devoid of the per­pet­ual line of black grease that had refused, for so many years, to budge. After he died, my mother asked me what belong­ing of his I would like to have. I had only one answer: “His wed­ding ring.” It reminds me of the work ethic that defined him.

As for my mother, she was the orig­i­nal “pack rat.” I call her the “Mrs. Win­ches­ter of Stor­age.” Like the owner of the Win­ches­ter Mys­tery House in San Jose, my mother kept the ham­mers swing­ing as she con­vinced my father to install yet another shelf, cup­board or cab­i­net and then pro­ceeded to fill it with com­pletely use­less “stuff” that she couldn’t bear to part with because “it might come in handy some day.”

When she no longer remem­bered that she had a house or knew who we were, we were left to dis­pose of such rar­efied trea­sures as the can­dle from my first birth­day cake that I found in a kitchen cup­board (for the record, that party took place in late 1957), old Toni home per­ma­nent rods and even some solu­tion (highly toxic, I’m sure), many vari­eties of curlers, the clips and bar­rettes we used in our hair when we were grow­ing up, the retainer that had not been in my mouth since approx­i­mately 1971, my baby teeth that were still wrapped in gauze and lying in the top drawer of her dresser, used paper dec­o­ra­tions from cakes eaten 40 years ago, sev­eral bags of used wrap­ping paper and bows … Believe it or not, she had even col­lected straws from var­i­ous restau­rants — washed them and stored them in a plas­tic McDonald’s Ham­bur­glar cup, along with oodles of nap­kins and other paper goods.

As if that weren’t bad enough, she tucked away the receipt and oper­at­ing instruc­tions for every appli­ance she ever owned in her life, as well as every piece of fur­ni­ture in the house. Every time she pur­chased any­thing, she wrote down not just the date of pur­chase, but the actual price she paid. So, for instance, in her closet, tags were strung on hang­ers with the orig­i­nal price crossed out and, in her hand­writ­ing, the sale price she paid noted. She did it not just with major pur­chases, but also with house­hold sup­plies. For instance, soap, paper tow­els, laun­dry deter­gent, etc. all bore the nota­tions — placed over the price tag in her hand­writ­ing. I can’t even imag­ine expend­ing the time or energy for such record-keeping. But it was impor­tant to her, apparently.

So with that foun­da­tion, back to the issue of the flute …

One of my mother’s child­hood dreams was to play the piano. But, of course, because of the family’s Depression-era finan­cial strug­gles, she never did. Hence, one of the pri­or­i­ties when my sis­ter became old enough to study was the pur­chase of a piano (which is sit­ting in my hall­way right now) and lessons. I also stud­ied from a very early age.

So you would have thought that, given my mother’s own thwarted musi­cal ambi­tion, she would have been more sym­pa­thetic when I came home and announced that, thank you very much but no, I do not want to play the clar­inet just like my older sis­ter. The flute was my instru­ment of choice.

Her dec­la­ra­tion that “The clar­inet was good enough for your sis­ter and it’s good enough for you” seems com­pletely illog­i­cal, doesn’t it? Her exact words were: “We’re not made out of money. We already bought one band instru­ment. We can’t afford to buy another one.”

It wouldn’t be the only time I would end up either com­pro­mis­ing or fore­go­ing alto­gether some goal or activ­ity. For instance, when I was in high school, two inci­dents stand out vividly.

As fresh­men, all of my friends were join­ing Rain­bow Girls, a club that met on Fri­day nights. They had secret rit­u­als and it sounded like a lot of fun, but they had to wear “for­mals” (long dresses) to meet­ings, plus pay mem­ber­ship dues, etc. Once again, I was told that my par­ents could not afford to buy me the dresses needed or pay the expenses. So I lied to my friends and told them that I wasn’t inter­ested in join­ing, even going so far as to make fun of their rit­u­als and dress­ing up. But I dis­tinctly remem­ber sit­ting home on Fri­day nights wish­ing I were with them.

And the one that hurt more was try­ing out and being selected for the drill team when a lot of kids in my school thought I wouldn’t make it. I dropped out when I real­ized that I would have to go home and ask for a uni­form, shoes, gloves, and hair acces­sories. So I sat in the bleach­ers at the Grape Bowl and watched my friends per­form at the foot­ball game half-times, know­ing that I had the tal­ent to be down there on the field with them, but I couldn’t join them because my mother would never appre­ci­ate how impor­tant it was to me.

It was the clar­inet or noth­ing. Because I really wanted to be in band, I reluc­tantly set­tled. Frankly, I was a pretty good clar­inet player for quite a few years. I could have con­tin­ued with that instru­ment, but I used to sit in band rehearsals lis­ten­ing to the flutes dur­ing sec­tional prac­tices, dream­ing of being over there with them. I used to ask my friends in the flute sec­tion to let me hold or play their flutes, and one actu­ally taught me the fin­ger­ings for a few notes and let me prac­tice a bit on her flute dur­ing breaks. For the most part, though, I just had to dream from afar.

In 1974, my first year of col­lege, I had a part-time job, so I decided that it was time to get the flute I had been dream­ing about. I rented one and signed up for a wood­winds class. I couldn’t afford lessons and did not dare ask my mother to pay for any. But after just a few weeks, a class­mate neglected to lock his car and my pre­cious flute was stolen. I was dev­as­tated. That was the end of my dream.

Until March 7, 2004, anyway.

That’s the day that I bought a Yamaha begin­ner model flute — and set­tled a very old “score” with my par­ents (my mother, primarily).

Two days later, I took my first lesson.

Six weeks later, I upgraded to an inter­me­di­ate model, open hole flute, and was already per­form­ing. That sum­mer, I joined the Lodi Com­mu­nity Band and in Sep­tem­ber 2004, I became a mem­ber of the Stock­ton Con­cert Band.

Back­stage at Carnegie Hall, March 28, 2007

Within 18 months, I pur­chased a pro­fes­sional model flute after shop­ping for it at the National Flute Asso­ci­a­tion’s annual con­ven­tion in San Diego. I am still pro­gress­ing, slowly but surely, with every les­son, every prac­tice ses­sion, every band rehearsal, every arti­cle I read in the mag­a­zines devoted to the flute to which I sub­scribe, every record­ing made by great flute play­ers like Sir James Gal­way and Jean-Pierre Ram­pal to which I lis­ten, etc.

There are not enough years left in my life for me to reach the level of pro­fi­ciency to which I aspire. There just aren’t enough hours in each day. But I work at it lit­tle by lit­tle and do the best I can with the time I have.

I took to the flute like a duck to water and I am con­vinced that, had my mother relented and pur­chased that instru­ment for me in the fourth grade, I would have gone “all the way” with it. There is no way to know, of course. But I think I would have loved it then almost as much as I love it now. I say “almost” because, hav­ing waited nearly 40 years to start seri­ously work­ing toward my goal, there is cer­tainly the “delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion” factor.

But I started play­ing keys when I was very young and I have never given that up, so I can see no rea­son why I would have given up the flute along the way. I may not have got­ten a degree in music and might still have ended up being a lawyer, but I can’t imag­ine that I wouldn’t be play­ing today, no mat­ter what.

Ulti­mately, the “what ifs” are intrigu­ing, but don’t mat­ter. That wasn’t my path. I am on the path for which I was des­tined. The path to which I was, as I have explained in my dis­cus­sions about the Wend­land case, called.

I learned great “life lessons” from the events of my child­hood, espe­cially those that were informed by my par­ents’ atti­tudes and behav­ior about finan­cial mat­ters. Most of all, I learned to appre­ci­ate the enjoy­ment I get from play­ing the flute in a way that I never could have had I started play­ing in ele­men­tary school.

That I played my flute on stage at Carnegie Hall with the Delta Winds con­firms that I am a liv­ing tes­ta­ment to the fact that it is truly never too late to pur­sue a dream.

Included in the Per­sonal Sto­ries of Change Blog Car­ni­val: Edi­tion 3 hosted by I Will Change Your Life.com.

1. Although my father died dur­ing my third year of law school and did not see me grad­u­ate, he did attend and thor­oughly enjoyed the moot court “Final Four” com­pe­ti­tion in which I com­peted, argu­ing a fic­tional case before three invited Supreme Court jus­tices from Indi­ana, Mon­tana, and New Mexico.
2. The “cost” of var­i­ous aspects and events in one’s life seems to be, unin­ten­tion­ally, a recur­ring theme in my writ­ing … serendipity?

Tech­no­rati Tags: Carnegie Hall, Delta Winds, Flute, Music, Stock­ton Con­cert Band

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