Worth reading for every parent

[Guest guest]

Hello to all,

I have just come accross a news article that not only brought a tear

to my eye, but also made me think about my child. Sometimes, I, as a

parent, wonder why my beautiful daughter, who is diagnosed with

apraxia, is missing that one element that would make her like all

other children around us - the ability to speak freely. This article

shows us that we can make due with what we have and succeed -

therefore I wanted to share this with all of you who never give

up......

Making music with what we have left

On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to

give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York

City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that

getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken

with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks

with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one

step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an unforgettable sight. He

walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then

he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the

clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and the other foot forward.

Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin,

nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while

he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain

reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait

until he is ready to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first

few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it

snap-it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking

what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.

People who were there that night thought to themselves: " We figured

that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the

crutches and limp his way off stage—to either find another violin or

else find another string for this one. "

But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes and then

signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he

played from where he had left off. And he played with such passion

and such power and such purity as they had never heard before. Of

course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work

with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that

night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him

modulating, changing, recomposing the piece in his head. At one

point,it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds

from them that they had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then

people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of

applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our

feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how

much we appreciated what he had done. He smiled, wiped the sweat from

this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said, not

boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone, " You know,

sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can

still make with what you have left. "

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I

heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the [way] of life—not just

for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his

life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden,

in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings. So

he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night

with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more

memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four

strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world

in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have,

and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we

have left.

· Jack Riemer, Houston Chronicle