OCR Text |
Show 6 The secret of ee yoursel music: Family Weekly/ octover 18, 1970 You Are Shaping Your Children’s Memories The way a parentreacts in a seemingly unimportantsituation may create an impression a child will never forget By NORMAN M. LOBSENZ Some years ago, when my young wife wasstricken with a desperate illness, I wonIt’s just organized commonsense, saysthis 70-year-old home-study school. Their word-and-picture instructions take the mystery out of learning the piano,guitar, or any of 8 other instruments. It may seem oddatfirst—theidea of teaching yourself music. You might think you need an expensive private teacher to instruct you—andtotell you when you makea mistake. But the fact is, you don’t. Thou‘sands have learned music with the lessons we give by mail. So can you. Thesecretlies in the step-by-step wayourlessons teach you. Starting from scratch, they show you with simple words and pictures exactly what to do. You learn to play the right way—by note, from sheet music. Without gimmicks. But how do you know you're do- ing it right? Easy. A lot of the tunes you'll practicefirst are simple songs ou’ve heard manytimes. Since you Eaow how they’re supposed to sound,you cantell when you've “got them riglit.” Bythe time you go on to more ad- vanced pieces, you'll be able totell if your notes and timing are right, even without having heard the songs. Before too long,’ you'll. be playing whateverkind of music you like. Popular. Folk. Classical. Dance songs. For more information about this convenient, economical wayto learn music, mail the coupon. We'll send ou our free booklet, “Be Your Own usic Teacher,” and a free Piano “Note-Finder.” No obligation. No salesman will call. The U.S. SCHOOL OF MUSIC. Estab. 1898. I Port Washington, New York 11050 ! 1 i ea iN A i eal ee a oo, ak a ce ts ab oan aah anew an anil U.S. Schoul of Music mn i in learning to play the instruTas(chocked. below, Please’seed ene. your FREE booklet and a free Piano “‘NoteFinder.” under no obligation. Check the instrumet:i you would like to play: (check only one) ) O Piano C) O Guitar O © Organ- pipe, O electronic, reed O Steel Guitar © Accordion Saxophone (© Mandolin Violin O Clarinet Ukulele Print Naeme——________—__Age__ ‘Addtes City I was about 10 years old, and my mother wasseriously ill. I had gotten up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. As I passed my parents’ State _ etn Accredited Member, National Home Study | Council 7410 4 which memory, planted in childhood, will grow to be a rose and a strength, and which will become a weed. Weoften find that our most vivid and enduring remembrances are of apparently simple, even trivial things. I did not discover this myself until one bright, leaf-budding spring day when my son Jim and I were putting a fresh coat of paint on the porch railing. We were talking about plans to celebrate his approaching 15th birthday, and I found myself thinking how quickly his childhood hadpassed. bedroom, I saw the light on. I looked inside. My father was sitting in a chair in his bathrobe next to Mother’s bed. She was asleep. He wasjustsitting there, doing nothing. Startled, I rushed into the room. “What's wrong?” I cried. “Why aren't you asleep?” My father soothed me. “Nothing's wrong. I’m just watching over her.” Later I learned that for all the weeks of my mother’s illness, my father had sat by her bedside, all night, every night, with never a sign of weariness or self-pity. Tuat memory gave me the strength to take up my cwn burden. ! | ! I ! | | | || 1 ! ' 1 | ' a foarte te tate ce eee ae eee Ee 4 Licensed by New York State. £1969 U.S. Schoolof Music dered how I wouldbe ableto cope with the physical ard emctional burdens of constantly caring for her. One night, when I was totally drained of strength and endurance, the memory of a long-forgotten incident suddenly came to mind. author Sir James Barrie once wrote, “God gives us memory so that we may have roses in December.” His words applied not just to old age, but to any bleak December ofthe soul. No parent can ever really know B cannot say exactly how, but the memory was curiously powerful. The remembered light and warmth from myparents’ room had spectral quality, and my father’s words haunted me: “I’m just watching over her.” In any event, the role I now assumed seemed somehow bearable, asif a resource had bee: called from the past, or from within. In moments of psychological jeopardy, such childhood memories often turn out to be the ultimate resources of personality, dark prisms which focus ourbasic feelings about life. As British “Whe do you remember best?” I asked him. He answered without a moment’s hesitation. “The night we were driving the quiet of the night. “Why do you remember that?” I asked.“It doesn’t seem important.” “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t even know I did rememberit until just now.” Then, a few moments later: “Maybe I do know why. Maybe it was because I didn’t think you were going to stop and catch any for me—and then you did.” Since that day I have asked many friends to reach back into their childhoods and tell me what they recalled with greatest clarity. Almost always they mention similar moments—erperiences or incidents not of any great importance. Not crises or traumas or triumphs, but things which although smail in themselves carry sharp sensations of warmth andjoy, or sometimes of pain. What most of them remembered from childhood was not mere sets of facts, but the special feelings that ac- company them. Fordespite their appar- somewhere, just you and me, on a dark ent simplicity, these memories are com- road, and you stopped the car and helped mecatch fireflies.” Fireflies? I could have thought of a dozen incidents, both pleasant and unpleasant, that might have remained vivid in his mind. But fireflies? I searched my own memory, and eventually it came back to me. I had been driving cross-country, traveling late to keep a tight schedule. I had stopped to clean the windshield, when all at once a cloud of fireflies surrounded us. Jim, who was five years old then, was tremendously excited. He wanted to catch one. I was tired and plicated tense, and anxious to get on to our des- tination. 1 was aboutto tell him that we didn’t have time to waste when something made me change my mind. In the trunk of the car I found an empty glass jar. Into it we swooped dozens of the insects. Andwhile Jim watched them glow on andoff, I told him of the mysterious cold light they carried in their bodies. Finally. we uncapped the jar andlet the fireflies blink away into symbols which concentrate basic feelings we have about ourselves, about the world, aboutreality. One friend I spoke with was the son of an executive who was often away from home. “You'd think I might have bitter memories about him,” he said. “But do you know what I remember best? It was the day of the annual school picnic. Unexpectedly, my usually very dignified father appeared in his shirtsleeves, sat on the grass with me, and ate a box lunch—and then made the longest hit in our softball game. I found out later that he postponed a business trip to Europeto be there.” Myfriend is a man who experiences the world as a busy, serious place, but who basicaliy feels all right about it and about himself. His favorite childhood memory is both clue and cause of his fundamental soundness. Clearly, the power that parents have to shape the memories their children will carry involves an awesome respon- |