Voices Past and Present

I'm at that odd moment on Thanksgiving Day where things are cooking, but it's too early to cook the final things, and we're still waiting for guests to arrive. There's a short lull before the next flurry of events, and no one needs me right this second. In this bit of quiet I thought I should write.

We've been working on doing a real cleaning of the house this week in anticipation of hosting the big meal today. We have most of the downstairs looking presentable. We organized the game cabinet and moved furniture and dusted all the Mold-a-Ramas. Part of all that cleaning involved pulling all of my old collection of cassette tapes out of a few drawers. It was at the end of the night, and Aden and Quinn were the only ones still up with me. They helped me sort what was there.

I explained the fun of mix tapes. There was real effort to making a good one, often having to tape things off the radio, or a record. I have several old mix tapes--a few from an old boyfriend, a bunch from my brother when he lived in California, one I even made labeled "Baby Tape" that I used to play in our old kitchen as I danced baby Aden around in my arms to calm her when she was fussy. Do kids still compile songs they like to share in a digital format? Or is that completely passe?

I found some embarrassing recordings of my friend Gabby and I making "radio shows" in my basement. Oh we were annoying children--I don't know how our parents could stand listening to us laugh at nonsense all the time. I found bootleg tapes Gabby made for me in the parking lot of Pine Knob where I went to hear concerts by Sting and Nik Kershaw and Depeche Mode. Gabby was more interested in the pre-concert fun we had at those events than the music, so she'd wait out the show with a boom box and make recordings I could enjoy later. (She was and is a good friend, and we are still probably annoying to listen to when we get together and laugh at nothing, but thankfully there is no recorded evidence of that.)

Among the old tapes, I found a few I made of conversations with my grandma. One in particular stands out where all seven of her grandchildren were gathered in her kitchen in Ohio and she was making us breakfast as she told stories. I'd forgotten just what a good storyteller she was. I think of my grandma as more of a listener, but I loved hearing her talk.

I played that tape for my kids in the only working tape player I currently own--a small voice-activated thing I used for recording my lessons before they were born. I only intended to play a few minutes of that tape, but we all got caught up in the story of my grandma getting her first dog, and then about how she met grandpa, and what it was like when he was preparing to leave for the war. We listened to the whole first side of the tape before I decided they really should go to bed.

The tape I keep thinking about most was one from when I was about two and a half, maybe three. My brothers were babies who would occasionally squawk, but for the most part it's my grandpa asking me to recite nursery rhymes. My grandfather had a deep, friendly voice. Aden looked up in wonder when he spoke through my cassette recorder and asked, "Is that my great-grandpa?" She'd never heard him before. He died when I was fifteen. She teared up and listened intently.

In the background on that tape, somewhere behind me and my grandpa, are my dad and grandmother, who sound like they are at the kitchen table. They are chatting and laughing.

It's wonderful to hear, but at the same time overwhelming to realize how many people in that recording are gone. Even little toddler me doing a dramatic rendition of Little Miss Muffet doesn't really exist anymore. I miss my grandpa, and grandma, and dad. I miss the world where that littler me used to live.

I'm looking forward to dessert tonight, when we can break out the tapes for everyone at the table. We can listen to my cousins messily reciting the alphabet and adorably singing for my grandpa. We can hear Arno plunk out simple songs on the guitar, and me and my brothers doing a screamy version of Frere Jacques because we thought it was hilarious once upon a time. And we can listen to my grandma tell stories again. The way she used to at Thanksgiving dinner.

Time to take the turkey out, and start working on potatoes and beans and rolls.

Have a wonderful day, however you celebrate. And remember to be thankful for the people you share your life with. They aren't around as long as we'd like.

Escape to the Cottage

Mona at the cottage

We got a little time up at our cottage in Michigan right after 4th of July.  Ian, the kids, and the dog all headed out first, and I followed a few days later on the ferry because I had a concert to play, but it worked out well.  With everyone gone I was able to clean areas of the house and enjoy that they actually stayed clean when I walked away from them.  (Proof I am old that that made me so happy.)

It was wonderful to be at the cottage.  It's the one place where I don't feel obligated to really do anything most of the time, and I need that periodically.  It's a place to just kind of be. 

On the Radio (Babble)

In 2005 when I made a conscious decision to try my hand at writing the first thing I wrote was an essay for the This I Believe project.  It felt like a school assignment, and since the last place I’d formally written anything was in school it seemed like a good way to get my feet wet.  I posted the essay on my blog last year when it was selected for inclusion in a book.  This year I’m pleased to announce that they recorded my reading of the essay for broadcast on public radio.  If you happen to catch The Bob Edwards Show anytime the weekend of the 25th through the 27th you might hear me!

The show is not, however, broadcast in Wisconsin, so I won’t be able to hear it.  But they did send me a link if anyone wants to hear me read on the This I Believe website:

Amazing Grace by Korinthia Klein


It was interesting doing the recording.  I went into the local studio here in Milwaukee and worked with someone over the phone.  I would read, and they would record, and then the person on the phone would ask me to repeat a particular line with a different inflection or ask me to pause in a new place.  All the reading went fine.  It was the guitar playing that freaked me out.

It makes perfect sense that the producers would read my essay and then want me to actually play “Amazing Grace” on the guitar.  What a natural moment for radio!  Except that I don’t really play guitar.  I took some lessons in high school, kept a guitar nearby to mess around on in college, but I don’t really play.  Not the way I play viola in any case.  So when they asked if I would bring an instrument with me to the studio I got very nervous.  The stings on my acoustic guitar I’m pretty sure are the same ones I actually learned “Amazing Grace” on the first time.  There’s nostalgia and then there is simply ridiculous.  So I borrowed a guitar, practiced for a week, and then stumbled my way through the song in a real recording studio feeling rather guilty.  There are actual guitar players who slave away at what they do who will never get the kind of exposure my pitiful little plunking could get, even if it is just on a public radio show that I won’t even hear in my own state.  But it is what it is.  I did my best and I hope it works.
The link above does not include my guitar playing, just my words, but if I find a new link after the broadcast that does include my playing I will put it up.

Reviewing that essay again has put me in the proper frame of mind for the upcoming holiday.  I love Thanksgiving.  I love that it’s about making a grand meal and sharing it with others and remembering to be thankful.  This year we are having friends over to our home and we will eat too much and the kids will play, and our new dog will follow Ian around (Chipper gazing at Ian is the embodiment of ‘thankful’) and it will be great.
Then first thing on Friday morning I’m driving off alone to visit my parents for a couple of days.  My dad has been back in the hospital. He’s currently doing rehab again.  With luck he will be home by the time I visit so we can spend time at the house instead of in a hospital.  I don’t like associating Thanksgiving with cancer.  But I still like the holiday.  And I am thankful every single day.

This I Believe (Babble)

This is sort of a moment of shameless self-promotion, but I don’t profit from it so I don’t feel too weird.

Five years ago I was inspired to try my hand at writing by the ‘This I Believe’ project on public radio.  I’ve heard some fascinating essays on that segment, and have even printed out a few so I can revisit them when I like.  I’ve always enjoyed writing and missed not having an excuse to do it since college, and I’ve always regretted the essay I submitted with my school applications.  I was overly influenced by suggestions I’d read and didn’t write the essay that I should have.  I decided to write the essay over and put it into the ‘This I Believe’ format and submit it.

They loved the essay, but it didn’t make the final cut to go on the radio.  The local paper in Milwaukee picked it up and ran it on Christmas Eve and it got a very nice response.  After that, other than the link on my website to the archive of the This I Believe project, I didn’t think about it anymore.

But I got a nice surprise earlier this year when an editor from This I Believe tracked me down and asked if they could include my essay in a collection they were putting together specifically about love.  All proceeds from the book go to continue collecting stories for the project, and my compensation was a single copy of the book, but I was honored to be included.  I got my copy in the mail the other day and it’s still sort of unreal to me that I can open up something off my bookshelf and see my words in print.  With my name in a table of contents like a real writer.

In any case, there are some surprising and touching essays in the book which is called “This I Believe: On Love”, and is available to order now, as well as many interesting essays in the This I Believe archive.



Amazing Grace

My grandfather died twenty years ago. I was fifteen. He was kind, strong, fair, and very funny. When I was a young musician, he was my biggest fan. My grandpa used to applaud when I tuned, and I would roll my eyes and shrug off his enthusiasm as too biased. I played my violin for him when he visited, and he loved everything, but each time he had one request. “Could you play ‘Amazing Grace’?” he asked, full of hope and with a twinkle in his eye, because he knew my answer was always, “I don’t know that one!” We went through this routine at every major holiday, and I always figured I’d have time to learn it for him later.

About the time I entered high school and had switched to viola and started guitar, Grandpa got cancer. The last time I saw him alive was Thanksgiving weekend in 1985. My mom warned us when we turned onto the familiar street that Grandpa didn’t look the same anymore and that we should prepare ourselves. For a moment I didn’t recognize him. He looked so small among all the white sheets, and I had never thought of my grandpa as small in any sense. We had all gathered in Ohio for the holiday, and I’m sure we all knew we were there to say good-bye. I can see now that Grandpa held on long enough to see us each one more time. I remember how we ate in the dining room and laughed and talked while Grandpa rested in his hospital bed set up in the den. I wonder if it was sad for him to be alone with our voices and laughter. Knowing Grandpa, he was probably content.

The next morning I found my moment alone with him. I pulled out my guitar, tuned to his appreciative gaze, and finally played for him “Amazing Grace.” I had worked on it for weeks, knowing it never mattered if I actually played it well and choosing not to believe as I played that it was my last concert for my biggest fan. The cancer had stolen his smile, but I saw joy in his eyes and he held my hand afterward, and I knew I had done something important.

I argued with people all through college about my music major. I was told by strangers that music wouldn’t make me any money and it wasn’t useful like being a doctor. But I know firsthand that with music I was able to give my grandpa something at a point when no one else could. Food didn’t taste good, doctors couldn’t help, and his body had betrayed him and left him helpless. But for a few minutes listening to me with my guitar, he seemed to find beauty and love and escape. At its best music is the highest expression of humanity’s better nature, and I’m privileged to contribute to such a profound tradition.
So, this I believe: Love matters. Music matters. And in our best moments they are one and the same.