When I was in 6th grade, my friends and I started a fan club. I’m not sure what we were fans of. We each signed a fan club membership card, though, and we had at least two meetings in my friend’s garage to leaf through issues of teen fan magazines. Shawn Cassidy and Lief Garrett were on the pages back then, posing in leather jackets and bell-bottoms.
I didn’t mind babysitting on Friday nights in high school as long as I could put the kids to bed and watch Remington Steele. I was a big fan of Pierce Brosnan’s dreamy blue eyes.
The summer I got my driver’s license was the summer of Top Gun. We cruised down the highway in my aunt’s silver Cadillac, windows down and “Highway to the Danger Zone” blaring on the radio. I was a huge fan, not of Tom Cruise, but of Val Kilmer. I loved it when his character, Iceman, snaps his teeth at Maverick and calls him dangerous.
Nowadays, I’m not a big fan of many actors, although I do admit that David Tennant was an admirable Dr. Who. Rather than hot men, I seem to be more a fan of other things. I’m a fan of my morning cup of coffee. I love Kaffe Fassett fabric designs. Here’s a quilt block I just finished using “Paperweight” fabrics.
Double Star Block
I’m a fan of blogging and my readers, comments and Constant Comment tea. I’m a fan of morning walks and sunsets on the beach. I’m a fan of real chocolate and cheeseburgers. I’m a fan of hayrides under blue skies and spending time with my daughters. I’m my husband’s biggest fan.
You don’t even know what it’s like to live with an competitive pianist. Oh, the hours and hours of practice! Scales running up and down the piano keys over and over, and just when you think she’s done playing scales, she starts another variation. Listening to someone practice the piano is not relaxing; it is listening to the same few measures of music being repeated over and over again until it is absolutely perfect. And what’s worse, she actually LIKED to practice! I mean, who likes to practice the piano? It was all I could do to sit at that piano for half an hour, and she tried to get in THREE HOURS of practice a day!
I supposed that’s why my sister is a music professor and composer and I am not. While I like to pretend that her constant practicing drove me crazy, in reality I was very proud of her piano playing. (My other little sister was also quite an accomplished piano player. They both played the piano far better than I ever did, probably due to that practice thing they both liked to do.) I was more interested in reading books than practicing the piano, and so I would hole up in my bedroom and read while my sister practiced. Perhaps that’s the reason I can shut out the world when my nose is in a book; I trained myself to ignore the piano.
On our vacation, Ed and I were walking through the hotel lobby and a young tattooed man sat at the baby grand, playing quite well. “Clair de lune,” I knowingly told Ed. He told me it didn’t sound like Clair de lune to him, at least not the part he with which he was familiar.
Soon enough, however, he said, “You’re right.” Of course I was right. I only heard it being practiced a gazillion times, along with Chopin, Beethoven and Bach, to name just a few composers.
Now my sister is a composer of her own. She lives in California, though, miles away from Illinois. I’ve never been able to hear one of her pieces being performed live. This piece is one of my favorites. It’s based on a quilt square called “Flock of Geese”, which happens to be one of my favorite patterns. Meredith wrote three pieces based on quilt squares in honor of my mom, who was an avid quilter. She was able to play a simple version on her laptop for Mom when she was in hospice. Click the link below to listen:
Circle of Geese block (click the picture to hear Meredith’s composition “Flock of Geese”)
I used to have a Flock of Geese pillow my mom made for me a long time ago. The block was blue and white and I have no idea where it is now; I wish I still had it. What I do have, however, is the memory of Mom’s face as she listened to this beautiful piece of music. I could tell that she could envision those geese, flying away into the distance.
Written as part of Gretchen’s Spin Cycle prompt, “Music”. Also read about my other little sister here: Art Matters.
We use cookies to optimize our website and our service.
Functional cookies
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
