When the Time is Right

A couple of Saturdays ago, my friend Sonya was here. She came over to record a piano piece in my studio. But of course, as always happens with Sonya, we spent the biggest part of the day in deep conversation. I don’t see Sonya very often, probably about once every four or five months. We’re both busy with our respective arts and passions. But whenever we do get together, it’s as if we can take up right where we left off, sharing and comparing notes about… Well, just about everything! And before we know it, one of us will look at the clock and realize that HOURS have passed.

Sonya is almost exactly twenty years older than I. She is, in fact, the mother of a girl who was three years behind me in school, a girl who was only peripherally in my circle. In high school, three years difference in age seemed like a chasm. Funny, now that I’m 58, twenty years difference is insignificant.

Sonya and I became reacquainted when I was well into middle age. Seemingly by accident, but, as most of us know by now, there are no REAL accidents. I think, when the time was right, I was meant to reconnect with Sonya, and we would recognize each other as compatible old souls often sharing the same path on this most curious riddle of a journey we call life

The same thing happened with my husband. I’ll never forget the first time we met. It was 1966, I was fourteen and he was fifteen. I remember how his eyes lit up the first time he saw me in the hall at Oak Ridge High School. I was standing in the E Building when suddenly a curly headed boy with big, blue eyes behind thick glasses was standing in front of me. I remember those blue eyes shining with unabashed candor. If there is such a thing as love at first sight, I believe that was it. But the time wasn’t right. My father wouldn’t let me go out with boys until I was sixteen. By then, Bob was seventeen and away at college. He did a lot of hitchhiking from Atlanta to come see me but by then I was feeling anxious to try out my own wings at school in Virginia. And besides, I’m a slow learner. Looking back, I think Bob recognized me as being ‘the right one’ all those years ago, but I had some wandering to do and he did too. My soul mate and I didn’t get married until I was 36. It just took a lot of years for the time to finally be right.

Sometimes it seems like waiting for the time to be right has been the story of my life, not only with people, but with nearly everything, even music. Don’t get me wrong, I always KNEW I was a musical spirit. But while music was a gift, it was scary too. I played piano by ear when I was four, started lessons at five, was considered a prodigy, and was pushed by my Dad who was well intentioned but a perfectionist for whom no performance was good enough. I had the kind of stage fright that made me freeze like a rabbit. So when I was 16, I broke my father’s heart: no more piano, no more music: I quit, cold turkey. I went to the University of Virginia and I didn’t major in music either. After college, I did a lot of wandering and searching, finally married, had children, all the while piddling and diddling in every unsatisfying hobby I could think of: gardening, knitting, baking, sewing, playing club lady and school volunteer. I was lousy at pretty much everything. Then when I was fifty, I decided to get reacquainted with the piano. I took a few lessons and got my fingers back in practice. At first, I stuck to the printed page and my lesson assignments, but after a while I began timidly improvising. My husband encouraged me, telling me that my improvisations were beautiful and I should do something with them. Then, one magical day, I overheard him say to his cousin, “I think Martha should be a composer.” Eureka! Those words hit me like a bolt of lightening. Hmmmmmm…. one little phrase, and the time for music was finally right!

My life, in a lot of ways, has been a riddle even to me, a work in progress that has stalled, staggered, meandered and evolved in ways I could never have predicted. And I imagine most of us could say the same. I’m only sorry that my father didn’t live long enough to see me go back to music. I know I disappointed him, but I couldn’t help it…the time wasn’t right.

I’ve loaded a new song on my website. It’s called “Riddle Me This and Riddle Me That.” It’s ALL a riddle, isn’t it?

Be well and good luck.  Martha Maria (recording as MarMelodian)

other blog entries from »