I never know about other people's lives or perceptions anymore. I can remember a time when I thought we were all more alike than different. I don't know when it changed and I determined I was wrong;we are all more different than alike. So when an administrator at summer music school was commenting on the new consolidated elementary school we are using this year and said one of the former neighborhood schools was an inner city school, I didn't know what she was talking about. I imagined her to mean that for some improbable reason we had been importing inner city children to our rural community. Not that they would want to be here in our white bread world or that we would be particularly anxious to adapt to them. But it was rather that we had within our community what she thought of as inner city children. This in spite of the fact that we have virtually no racial diversity, no city, no real violence let alone a drive by shooting or two, little drug traffic and no abject poverty.
This morning I was standing in the gymnasium of the school listening to the concertmaster of the Erie Philharmonic play his violin made by an Italian craftsman living in England, heard him demonstrate a French bow versus an English Tubbs bow, heard him coax the most exquisite sounds out of his instrument there in the middle of a beautiful summer morning for a roomful of raptly attentive students and teachers.
I reflected on how privileged I have been. In this small rural community where I have so often been charmed by nearly private performances; Philomel Club on a winter afternoon where the members play and sing so beautifully for one another, the voice of Lareau singing to me over the phone while we talk of this and that, my nephew playing for himself unaware of our presence in the church pew while he mediates between heaven and earth. I have no idea if this happens in other lives or if we have just had a serendipitous life. I realized we have been extremely blessed.
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