“Yeah, I told him you played oboe,” Ming said.
We were talking in the kitchen, and I was prepping veg. Paused at the cutting board, I waited for Ming’s acknowledgement of the joke, to share humor.
A few seconds passed, I realized it wasn’t a joke, and my jocular emotion turned to stark horror.
“You told him I played oboe?!” I demanded.
“Yeah!” Ming said.
Ming noticed my horrified facial expression and bent over posture, and suddenly it clicked.
“Not oboe! Not oboe!” Ming corrected. “What did you play?”
“Bassoon! I played bassoon!” I said.
“Oh yeah!” Ming said.
“God! Did you really say I played oboe!?” I asked.
“I’m sorry!” Ming said.
Then we collapsed into laughter, as you could imagine. Our laughter and hug let the tension melt. There’s a reason we can still like each other after 14 years.
word finding
We don’t need a cliche like “Getting old isn’t for sissies,” to describe the challenges of age. But age, death, disability, and all the topics our culture sweeps under the rug are so important. We need to discuss them somehow. I’ll take a cliche if that’s my only choice besides silence.
I’m going to tell the truth about disability including age and how we lose so much.
Not that anyone can’t have a language difference, word finding problem, or mix up two double reed instruments. It happens every day.
what is an oboe
“An oboe is small,” I told Ming. “For people with small hands. I played bassoon. It’s really big, like this big.”
Is bassoon even part of who I am anymore? I’d like to think the wood and metal vibrating in my hands, an extension of my body, fueled by my lungs and so much desire–that will always be part of me.
That experience helped make me who I am, even if disability keeps me from playing bassoon now. Or any instrument that requires use of the pinky and ring finger of my right hand. I miss playing tin whistle too.
path
I almost became a professional musician; I could have received scholarships to universities if I had chosen that path. So playing bassoon still does matter to me, if only because I stood at a juncture long ago and didn’t choose it.
What we didn’t choose can gleam in its own way.
questions for discussion
How do you diffuse tension in your closest relationships?
Are you losing much as you age?
Do the things you did decades ago still matter to you?
Are they part of you now?
Do words matter?
What do you like to talk about in the kitchen?
Is time real?
Are some distinctions important to you that others don’t understand?
Do names matter?
What did you not choose?
Are you happy with your lungs?
love
I’m happy with your lungs.
“I’m sorry I mis-instrumented you,” Ming said.
