My sister Connie lived in a very private world, usually keeping people, even those closest to her, at a respectful distance, not because she didn’t love them, but rather because she felt that any problems she might be carrying should never weigh down those around her, and opening those locked doors meant releasing pain she did not want to share with others even if it signified receiving the regard and healing that those around her often wanted so much to give her. Part of this, of course, was based upon Connie’s fierce pride in her own independence, but part came also from her staunch personal resolution never to wound anyone with her own burdens.
The place where my sister found peace, beauty, and healing was in music. That is where the material world dissolved for her through seeing new harmonies and breathtaking melodies. Anyone who ever found the real Connie discovered her there, where musical invention came from her speaking to God and from God’s responses through Connie’s heart and down through her fingers at the keyboard.
My sister had a short temper and could, with little provocation, verbally julienne someone like a cat shredding window drapes. But, she also had a wonderful sense of humor, a generous heart, and a faith in God not often shaken, even by the enormous trials she faced.
I remember holding my sister in the little pink blanket used to bring her home from the hospital after her birth. I was seven years old. We became over time each other’s chief promoter and protector, and now that I will miss her, I am thankful for the fifty-eight years of memories we shared together. Thank God for Connie.
Just before she died Connie gave me a copy of the poem “On Playing Church Piano,” which she said expressed perfectly what she felt each time she sat at the keyboard on Sunday mornings.
On Playing a Church Piano
It’s something about the darkness of the place,
when I relax a moment to decide
what makes this work so pleasing; is it the thrill
of lights fixed on the tall bronze cross, or perhaps
the colored figures in the glass? But then
the stack of staves upon the stand cries out
for study, and my fingers arch again and dance,
though not gracefully at first — more like cautious
children avoiding creaky boards. Yet hidden strings
in the wood awake and sing –and the dark, cool room
seems full. And then I realize: It is.
About John
About John
John Bolinger was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, where he attended Ball State University and Purdue University, receiving his BS and MA from those schools. Then he taught English and French for thirty-five years at Morton High School in Hammond, Indiana before moving to Colorado, where he resided for ten years before moving to Florida. Besides COME SEPTEMBER, Journey of a High School Teacher, John's other books are ALL MY LAZY RIVERS, an Indiana Childhood, and COME ON, FLUFFY, THIS AIN'T NO BALLET, a Novel on Coming of Age, all available on Amazon.com as paperbacks and Kindle books. Alternately funny and touching, COME SEPTEMBER, conveys the story of every high school teacher’s struggle to enlighten both himself and his pupils, encountering along the way, battles with colleagues, administrators, and parents through a parade of characters that include a freshman boy for whom the faculty code name is “Spawn of Satan,” to a senior girl whose water breaks during a pop-quiz over THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Through social change and the relentless march of technology, the human element remains constant in the book’s personal, entertaining, and sympathetic portraits of faculty, students, parents, and others. The audience for this book will certainly include school teachers everywhere, teenagers, parents of teens, as well as anyone who appreciates that blend of humor and pathos with which the world of public education is drenched. The drive of the story is the narrator's struggle to become the best teacher he can be. The book is filled with advice for young teachers based upon experience of the writer, advice that will never be found in college methods classes.
Another of John's recent books is Mum's the Word: Secrets of a Family. It is the story of his alcoholic father and the family's efforts to deal with or hide the fact. Though a serious treatment of the horrors of alcoholism, the book also entertains in its descriptions of the father during his best times and the humor of the family's attempts to create a façade for the outside world. All John's books are available as paperbacks and Kindle readers on Amazon, and also as paperbacks at Barnes & Noble. John's sixth book is, Growing Old in America: Notes from a Codger was released on June 15, 2014. John’s most recent book is a novel titled Resisting Gravity, A Ghost Story, published the summer of 2018
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The place where my sister found peace, beauty, and healing was in music. That is where the material world dissolved for her through seeing new harmonies and breathtaking melodies. Anyone who ever found the real Connie discovered her there, where musical invention came from her speaking to God and from God’s responses through Connie’s heart and down through her fingers at the keyboard.
My sister had a short temper and could, with little provocation, verbally julienne someone like a cat shredding window drapes. But, she also had a wonderful sense of humor, a generous heart, and a faith in God not often shaken, even by the enormous trials she faced.