Tag: ghost

The Story of a Balloon

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This past Tuesday my band Nymbis made an audition video for NPR’s Tiny Desk series. The project came upon us all at once, and some of the challenges it presented were where to record it so last-minute, and if we could somehow perform for a live audience. Once we decided on The Studio, the event just kinda came together.

The floor is now absolutely wrecked due to an immense and almost overnight surge of moisture from below the slab (no, there sadly was no vapor barrier in place) and it is now on the market with a handful of marginally interested parties. But I’m not worried. It’ll sell. It will sell when it’s time, I know it. Somehow, that place has always been quietly magical. The Studio will not be rushed.

There was such wonderful energy in the room this past Tuesday; so many good friends came by to enjoy the space one final time, and to support the band. Our percussionist and bass player welcomed twin boys in October, and the babies were there too. There were fine bottles of rye, cheap cans of Labatt Blue, pizza and bagels with shmear. Two friends brought a little summer picnic setup, complete with wine glasses and tiny charcuterie plates. We had a wild light show projected onto the large slanting ceiling and our lighting designer had brought some large white balloons to catch the black light. Such a fun and festive vibe, despite the single-digit temps outside and the failing floor.

That week I had a bad cold, and on Tuesday it was at its peak. In addition, my back was horrible; I had to be very careful and conservative about movements. But I had gear to move. Chairs and tables to load into my car and into the room. The usual stuff it takes to put on a show. Up until tape rolling I felt a mess, eyes watering, sneezing, back sore. But somehow, when we played, my body shut it all off. I consider that a small miracle. We all know the show must go on.

As I was assessing the room from my post behind the keyboards, it occurred to me that I was in the exact same spot where my father had sat at his harpsichord so many years before. Maybe not a big thing, but still, a thing. And although the events of the night were moving fast and there was no time to linger in nostalgia, I was able to take on the beauty of the moment. I was on stage making music with my some of my very favorite people, in a room full of friends whom I love, and we were all fully present and enjoying the moment. It was a rare epicenter of experience. Even as I played, I was able to marvel over my good fortune. Imagine, one last concert, one final party in that space. It had been dark for two years, and now here it was brightly animated and filled with camaraderie.

Could anything be more perfect?

The following day I came back to clean. Something I’ve done dozens of times. Post show, post Airbnb guest. The big room must always be swept and mopped. As funky as that floor is now, I still had to erase hundreds of salty footprints the crowd had made. It needed to be realtor-ready. I spent about an hour on the place. When I was finished, I stood in the center of the stage area. Underneath the floor where I stood were two hairs – one of my father’s (he had just died a month before I had the new floor put in) and one of mine. I had laid them both on the slab before they were sealed up by the boards. It’s always been the spot where I stand when I reflect on this place and all that has gone on in that gorgeous hall.

I sensed some movement, and so I looked up and to my left. There was one clear balloon drifting down from the center of the room and moving toward the back wall of the stage. I’m pretty sure my mouth fell open – I do remember saying aloud “Where the hell did you come from?” I swear I had cleaned that place. Emptied every last piece of detritus. It was empty.

I was compelled to follow it. The balloon came to rest against the stage wall, just at my eye level. “Really?” I asked it. I mean, this was crazy. I became still, I engaged with the balloon. I was there for it, witnessing it. I extended my palm and asked if it would come to me. It moved to the left, staying at eye level. I followed. We stopped. I extended my hand and it moved to the right. And there we rested, unmoving, together in an absolutely silent room bathed in the low-slanting rays of afternoon sunshine. A few moments passed, and I dared to speak my thoughts aloud. “Dad?” It seemed too poetic, too staged. Too too. We remained there for about five minutes, until I lost the staring contest and sat down underneath it, back against the stage wall, looking out into the large room.

After a few more moments passed I walked back to the spot in center stage. And I sang. I leaned into the stunning reverb of the room, oohing minor, medieval-sounding lines. Like Gregorian chants sent up into the tops of the snowy pine trees outside the balcony windows. I sensed movement again, and turned to see the balloon had moved to the front of the stage. It then leapt out into the abyss of the main room, did a small, slow circle in the air, and headed once again to the back of the stage. By now, I had adjusted. I was less surprised. I was under the spell of the balloon.

But there was nothing more to do. I had sung, I had communed with the balloon. I had sat in the purest and most absolute silence I have ever known. It was time to go.

I walked to the back of the stage where the balloon hovered, still at my eye level. I placed my hands on either side of it, and I kissed it. Then I left.

When I got in my car, I turned for one final look, expecting to see the balloon forty feet away at the back of the hall. I might’ve gasped for the small shock if I hadn’t already been communing with the thing for the past half hour. There it was, like a child in the doorway, watching a guest’s departure. Until this point I had been fully in the moment – grabbing my phone had not even entered my mind. But now, now that I was in the car and the spell had been broken somewhat, I felt it would be ok to take just one pic. Were it not for the photo, I’m not sure I could possibly convey the surrealness of my experience. I felt I wanted some evidence, some confirmation of what had just happened. Still in a state of disbelief, I continued to shake my head back and forth as I drove the roundabout. And I was just about to leave the property, when I took one last look back at The Studio.

The balloon now hung in the large picture window; it was a powerfully poignant sight. Longing, but not. Sad, but not quite. Matter-of-fact, really. Just a balloon quietly saying goodbye to me alone. Goodbye, balloon.

I shared this experience with Elihu. Not a thing about it was unbelievable to him. But then he and I have had a number of strange experiences, both together and individually. Now we share them as casually as recounting a funny overheard conversation on the subway. I was glad for his witness, and I was hoping that sharing it would pack it away neatly in my mind. But I couldn’t let it go. Had I done the right thing? Was it a missed opportunity? Was it dad? Was it a collective of energies? What had just happened here? I wasn’t satisfied to drop it.

Last night I decided that I would share this with my mom. That was a stretch, because she is not a believer of esoteric ideas (or so she says; she still prides herself on once learning how to perform Reiki) and jumping into such a conversation would need to happen at just the right moment. But that wasn’t going to happen. Her woodstove had cracked the night before, so that took up a good chunk of time of going over options and safety concerns. My vote – use the damn stove, it’s six degrees out. Next came the endless nattering and commentary on the news presenters. Last night her issue was with the glossy, blown-out and ironed hairstyles; she insisted that it was age-inappropriate on the older women. Here our country was, falling into a dystopian modern-era McCarthyism, and she was going on and on about hairstyles. Oh my god. This was clearly not the time to share my balloon story.

Curiosity, and the need for some kind of closure – something I could take as an answer – pulled me back to the darkened hall. After leaving my mother’s, I drove to The Studio and went in. I was slightly apprehensive, but reminded myself that there was nothing sinister here. Unexplained maybe, but not sinister. I flicked on the warm overhead light… The balloon had come to rest at the foot of the old roadside sign which we’d brought in for the show. There it was. The end of the story.

Confirmation. A single white balloon come to rest after its journey around the perimeter of the storied music hall. The definitive conclusion of an era.

Best ending ever.

Curve Ahead

Posted in An Ongoing Journal..., Mommy Mind4 Comments

Where to start? The cast of characters is growing, from Log Cabin Joe to Hillbilly Al and a handful in between, and the sub-plots are multiplying. A house is being built to the great heartbreak of all who live nearby, another beloved house which we all had hoped might stand is going to be torn down, people will be moving in, and people will be moving away. A ghostly visage was spotted, serendipity threw in a few hard turns, neighbors popped by unannounced and set to framing out a new step in front of my house (because I’d asked to borrow some scrap lumber to do so for myself), and a potential blind date turned into a new and interesting friendship. Neighbor Chad, a former professional speed skater and dad to those cutie boys Ryan and Brandon, faces surgery to repair a torn ligament he got from falling out of a tree while deer hunting last year, my new met-on-an-almost-blind-date-but-not-quite friend must wear a heart monitor for another week and remain in the company of people at all times, lest he pass out while alone, with no one to call for help (hence his staying on as my house guest.) A couple more art classes to go at the Studio, some concrete being poured and set, a wall going up in the basement, the lawn to be cut and a coop door yet to be hung, the various comings-and-goings that all of this activity entails, including the requisite gear; earth movers, spinning concrete trucks, tractors, trimmers, boxes of tile, great, heavy balls of clay, five gallon buckets and rags to clean up… All of this is chugging along, plus a small group of family and friends is planning for an intervention with my brother at the beginning of next week. A few days later, Elihu comes home. Whew!

The past three days have seemed almost like a week with all the chaos and activity. My guest, Ken, erupted in laughter at it all (as I casually pulled a dead mouse out of a drawer, dumped it into the trash and continued to start the morning coffee without missing a beat), just imagining the highly entertaining cable series he absolutely insists my life should be. “I’m just wondering where we should put the camera” he’d said, smiling, shaking his head… I’ts not often that friends get a view from the inside here at the Hillhouse. Yeah, I’ve had guests before, but somehow life here has never been quite as animated and unpredictable as it has of late.

Night before last, as Ken and I sat on the couch enjoying a rather deep, existential discussion, I saw behind him, approaching from the kitchen and through the short hallway, a rather healthy-sized bat. Living in the country as I do, you might think this has happened before. And indeed it has happened in every other place I’ve lived – but not here. Until the other night, that is. I was watching with great concern that the poor beast not knock over some precious breakable as she continued to encircle the room, but soon realized that this creature was deftly missing – with room to spare – every obstacle in her path. I was impressed! My friend, himself a pilot, must surely have been sharing my amazement… maybe…. I glanced over at the couch. Ken was clearly not bearing respectful witness to the miracle of flight taking place right before our eyes… Humor me if you will; picture a black Mr. Clean; tall, built; a take-no-prisoners kind of physique that lends itself well to the military and police work (he’s retired from some twenty years of exactly that) – and now picture that same gentleman covering his face with my over-sized pink velvet throw pillow, ducking down and shrieking like a girl every time the bat made another pass around the room. One had to laugh. Thankfully, he had to laugh too. We both did. I admit, that lil creature was movin fast, and to us it felt like a random, unpredictable flight that might easily have ended up in someone’s face. I was finally able to catch her by trapping her in between two frog nets, but then she hooked her way out, and flew off to the mudroom. The door to the mudroom remained closed, while the backdoor to the outside stayed wide open. My second house guest eventually left and did not return. So far as we know.

And there was the apparition. And the change in my route. Why had I chosen to double-back and take Locust Grove instead of 9N as I’d intended? Having just given Ken a brief history of my folks and the Baroque festival, I figured I’d use my mistake as an opportunity to point out soprano Ruth Lakeway’s empty house. When we crested the hill and I indicated the house, Ken told me he saw a woman in the porch. I gave him a look. “White hair, lavender colored, long sleeved top” he said. “Wait, you’re not shitting me?” I asked, in almost a panic. He insisted that as an officer of the law – not to mention an artist who painted and drew landscapes, people and animals, he was trained in observation. He knew what he’d seen. That was enough for me; I turned around and made my way back to the house.

There were in fact people at the house. They emerged from the garage – on the other side of the house – when we pulled in. Still, none fit the description. It didn’t matter at this point, and it was soon forgotten as I re-acquainted myself with the new owners, who were in the middle of a project. They were removing items from the house, preparing it. I kinda knew what was coming next. It was known that the house had done nothing but take on water since Ruthie’s death eight years ago, and that the mildew and moisture had finally won. Although the woman who now owned it had known and loved Ruth as I had, and had herself dreamed of one day living in the sweet house, it would never come to be. The house now had to be torn down. I looked at Karen to see if this was the truth, and her eyes teared up. She insisted they’d had every manner of professional opinion on the matter. It was coming down. I made no attempt to be stoic… I began to cry. It was clear that she was just as heartbroken as I was. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone in my grief.

In her day Ruthie had created a wide sphere of influence through her loving presence in the community and her unique, gentle demeanor. With no husband or children of her own, she had given her time and energy to her church, her voice students and so many more. This house was for me a sacred place, as it was to many others as well. I marveled over our being there, in that moment. Over the circumstances. Had I not made the ‘mistake’ of driving down her road, had Ken not spotted that visage in the porch – I wouldn’t have known this was happening. I wouldn’t have been able to take the lamp from her back porch so that I might use it in mine, I wouldn’t have been able to remove Ruth’s windchimes and then hang them on my own porch in remembrance of her. Did Ken see Ruth? Yes, I believe so. I believe she was helping as best she could to gather me into this event of closure. As we all stood on the front lawn, talking and comparing stories, Ken told them what he’d seen earlier. The consensus seemed to be that this was all meant to be, we had all found our ways there in order for this to happen. There were tears, hugs, prayers and goodbyes. And for me, there was gratitude.

From the insane to the mundane, the silly to the serious, it’s been a crazy mix of life here lately, and yet the next week may hold still more… Mom has finally come around to understanding that Andrew will never, ever get better on his own (yes, we’ve been here before, but I feel this time it’s different) and she can begin to see that he has only good things to gain by taking part in a detox and rehab program, and he has only potential danger and harm if he doesn’t. Plus this heaven-sent former cop of a friend has brought to our attention how devastating it could be should a civil case ever be made against Andrew in the event of an alcohol-related death. This is some serious shit, and although I’ve been making my case for several years now, it’s taken this financial threat to bring it home. That, and a little magical aligning of the stars. We’ve got a great family drama scene on deck, and I’m eager to finally see it through to its conclusion. Which will in of itself be but a beginning to a whole new chapter…

I checked in with Waldorf today, and it seems I’m just about off the hook. They’ve covered nearly every class except for a day or two of the high school. There’s a slight chance they might need me to cover for a bit, but it doesn’t appear that it’ll pose a conflict with my new work at the Studio. This is beyond my wildest dreams, and the feeling of freedom and possibility has me a little giddy. It’s almost like I have too much oxegyn, too much space, too many options, too much opportunity. My unexpected house guest and the little surprise detours of late have stalled my progress for the time being, but it doesn’t worry me. We’re approaching a Great Change. Middle School for Elihu, and with it all the changes of pre-teen life. A new situation for my mom and brother, a new career for me, a new house in the neighborhood, two new families moving in, one moving out. A parking lot going in the woods for the Studio along with a network of roads into the forest, a new heating system and myriad other upgrades. Networking, meeting people and growing programs, seeing plans become real…. I’m at the cusp of a whole new chapter in my life. I’ve been riding it out on a long, slow straightaway for the past few years, and finally now I see a big curve up ahead.

Breathe in, hands at ten and two… I’ll give it just a little more gas, and we’ll be taking that turn before we know it.