A New Year--Freezing Temperatures

You always forget, or one tries hard to forget, the wind chill when living in climates such as New York or Boston. The temperature's dip to a single digit is alarming enough, but it's the wind chill that can make a grown adult weep while standing outside for a bus. Today, the third day of the first month of this new year, is one of those days when a brisk walk anywhere is recommended. Today is also the day of the much discussed, dissected, analyzed, and now much awaited, Iowa Caucuses. This may be the day when we may make history by having either an African-American man or a woman running for the highest office of this land, if not the world.

But instead of watching CNN all day long to see what the analysts will predict as the day's outcome, I find myself thinking about a New Yorker piece I'd read many years ago about a sales woman at the famous Steinway Piano store on 57th. The piece, like any in this magazine, was well written. But this particular story was especially moving in depicting one woman's dreams of a concert career sidelined into the selling of these venerable instruments. The part of this piece that resonated with me the most, and the part that made me weep, was when she called her dying father from the store after hours. After a few attempts at a conversation that didn't involve a great deal of hand wringing about the end being so near, he asked her to play for him. This woman, whose talents, which hadn't been great enough to solo in major concert halls, but good enough to showcase these instruments to potential buyers, sat down and played while her father listened on the other end, most likely lying in a hospital bed. That profile was one I'd thought about, and never forgot, so you can imagine my surprise and delight as I walked down 57th and walked past this very store. Of course I peered inside, noticing the beautiful instruments, but also two women, sitting at desks. I couldn't help but wonder if one of them had been the one who'd given her dying father the gift of music in that deserted music store, so famous for the instruments, but also for those who've played inside.

And in the end, the writer, whose name I never can recall, did his or her job in relating this very human story about thwarted dreams and mortality. That is, ultimately, what good writing should do, isn't it? I think about that every day as I sit, and sometimes sit, for hours with my fingers splayed across the keyboard, struggling with one word that would, or could, convey the whole of the emotional landscape I'm trying to paint. Someday, I will get the courage to go inside that store, trying hard to appear as I'm there, for no other business than, to pick out a piano, all the while wondering if she is the one.