May 21, 2005 at 9:05 PM

Imagine a Lullaby

Today I listened to a recording of the Brahms Lullaby played by David Oistrakh and, as always, it made me cry. I closed my eyes and opened myself to images, but no image of me as a baby in a mother’s loving arms came to me. What came was an image of myself cradling someone I loved. I was crying because I hadn’t been able to save him. Yes, I had saved him once or twice, but not ultimately. He was overtaken by the Evil Spirit in the form of serotonin or insulin or blood glucose, and I could not save him.

This evening I listened with a friend to a recording of an Enya song he had made with his synthesizer. Over the sound of the music came the laughter of a little girl, his three and a half year old daughter. He told me that she recognized the laughter as her own and often requested that he play the recording. Then he told me more stories about the fun the two of them had together. I thought of my own father and started crying. I thought about the friend I was with and other friends who have a lot of fun with their kids. This is some special kind of love. Later we listened to a recording he had made of a song I love, John Lennon’s Imagine. My friend told me about a defining experience he had had with this song. I told him that one of our friends had used this song for her wedding and that I had coupled the song’s title with a drawing by Picasso of a dove encircled by children – red, black, brown, and white – dancing. Near the end of this recording came the soft sound of a child’s laughter, and the sound grew louder and happier. It was his daughter again! He said, “That’s really what it’s all about.” I agreed and added, “When she hears this recording, or even thinks about it, she’ll remember that you love her.”

May 21, 2005 at 9:05 PM

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