Violin
I never learned to play the violin.
My grandfather on my mother’s side was a great violin player, and my grandmother a piano teacher, so if you can imagine notes floating out of their bedroom, warm summer days spent listening to Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, that was my childhood.
From the day I was born, my grandfather always imagined that I would play the violin. He’d had one sized just right for me, waiting, waiting, waiting. I’d come over, sometimes for a day, sometimes for weeks, and he’d bring it out.
“Do like this,” he’d say, gliding his imaginary bow over strings of whimsy and hope, his head cocked to the left and a wide grin aimed straight at my 7 year-old face.
“No,” I’d answer every time. “I want like this,” I’d say, my arms stretching back and upward, propelling hoop dreams in an arch towards the highest of typical Pinoy adolescent ambitions: to one day be a professional basketball player.
I don’t remember when he stopped bringing it out of the closet.
Every time I hear the purposeful stirrings of string, I’m reminded of those airy melodies and the unclaimed violin that is now twenty years too small.
