My mother's greatest gift

I grew up in Alberta, Canada, but now that I'm a concert pianist based in Pennsylvania, I don't get home much. I'm blessed to have parents who are both healthy and sufficiently comfortable financially to visit every year for at least a month. Such a prospect would make some people cringe, but I look forward to it. Besides, it's important. Tomorrow isn't promised to any of us.

My life doesn't slow down much when they visit, except as a result of the much-appreciated help they lend with cooking, cleaning, and errands. This means that I still spend hours practicing the piano, regardless of my parents' presence. When the piano is available, however, my mother often sits and plays her favorite hymns. Eva Marie Caisey Thompson is the literal definition of an amateur: She plays simply because she loves it. I love it, too, but I rarely play the piano for fun any more. The fact that she plays just for her own amusement inspires me.

Her love of music began early. My grandmother, Cecily Richardson Caisey, studied piano at the New England Conservatory of Music and taught in Bermuda, where my mother grew up. Grandma let her skills decline after the birth of her third and fourth daughters, but when there were only two (my mother was the eldest), Grandma practiced every day, often playing children's songs during her sessions and inviting her girls to march in rhythm.

A break at age 11

My mother's lessons began when she was about five. Grandma had many pupils, so Mom could practice only at night. Grandma's baby grand stood in the living room, near two very large, sepia-tinted photographs of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother (whose father, a freed slave, built the house). Over the next ten years of rather sporadic training, Mom learned how to play well enough that music became a constant in her life, as well as an important source of income.

When she was 11, the Bethel AME church— which her great-grandfather had founded— asked Mom to replace the Sunday school pianist, who had moved. At first she only played when there were notes in front of her. On many occasions, however, the Sunday school teachers would choose choruses for which no music was available. My mother felt stupid just sitting at the instrument doing nothing, so one day she went home, tried to play by ear and discovered that she could. This is still her preferred approach to hymns, at least at my house.

An organ opportunity

A few months after she turned 15, Mom began earning money to play the organ at evening services. She had no organ training at that point— and, indeed, didn't formally study the organ until ten years later, and then only for six months. But she had an excellent teacher: Dr. Drummond Wolfe, the organist at Bermuda's Anglican cathedral, who later became dean of music at a university in California.

Grandma responded to Mom's obvious talent by pushing her to study music at the New England Conservatory or Radcliffe. Mom responded by rebelling. She refused to spend a year practicing nothing but the pieces for the yearly Royal School of Music exams. (As a consequence, Mom always made sure her own children studied a wide variety of repertoire).

A battle of wills

Practicing to be a concert pianist involved more work than she was willing to do. She had always loved classical music, especially Mozart, but she lacked the passion to make piano her career. The violin might have been a different story: When Mom was ten, she heard Fritz Kreisler in concert, and he so enthralled her that she asked Grandma about lessons. But Grandma refused. Mom wasn't practicing enough on the piano as it was, she reasoned. Why buy another instrument for my mother to neglect?

The main problem, though, was simply that my mother objected to having her life planned by someone other than herself.

In the end, my mother majored in anthropology and geography on a Bermuda Government Scholarship at McGill University in Montreal. There she satisfied her musical interest by taking elective courses in form and analysis and music history, singing in school choirs and accompanying the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship's hymn sings.

Setting up house in Jamaica

At McGill she met my father, who was studying dentistry on a Jamaican government scholarship. After they married, my parents moved for several years to Jamaica, where my brother and I, the eldest of their four children, were born. Before long, my mother became the occasional organist at a local church. She also acquired her first formal piano students (as a child, she had occasionally substituted for Grandma). One of her students was my father, who seeing how much she missed having a piano, bought her one for Christmas two months before I was born.

My mother didn't like Jamaica (especially after a strange man wandered into the house one day while my father was out), but the Bermudian government (which was then often biased against West Indians) denied my father a work permit, so my parents settled in Canada. Mom's six months of organ lessons as well as her innate gifts led to a half-time job as a church musician, a job I shared with her from the age of 14 until I left home at 20. Grandma advised my mother not to take a volunteer position, warning that unless she was paid, Mom wouldn't be appreciated. My mother agreed, although not entirely: Even volunteer work, she said, forced her to maintain her skills. Besides, she didn't mind contributing something "in the service of the Lord."

From a hobby to an income

My mother was what used to be called a housewife until my father contracted diabetes in his late 30s. His illness convinced Mom that they needed another source of steady income. People in our small town already knew she could play the piano, and that she was teaching her own kids, who were making good progress. Before long, she was in demand as a piano teacher. Her 17 students paid for the college classes that enabled Mom to become an elementary school teacher (they also paid for private French lessons for Mom's children).

She didn't pursue a master's degree because she would have had to become a full-time student. She wanted to be home when her children were home, just like Grandma. And although I've always thought of my mother as a working woman, she was indeed home every day almost as soon as we got in from school, just as she had intended.

The point is friendship, not money

Mom remains an occasional church musician in Leduc, Alberta, playing for Sunday services, weddings and funerals. She also plays duets with a friend. Their preparation time is often limited, but since the whole point is the friendship, it doesn't matter. At this point, I think Mom's first love is organizing concerts, especially for a worthy cause. In the past three years, the events she has pulled together for her church have raised thousands of dollars for several charities. She finds the musicians— often former students— makes up the program, sometimes acts as the accompanist (a role she enjoys less and less) and sells tickets. She also organizes the annual music and theater competition, which my parents helped establish. These activities keep music a vital part of her life.

I asked my mother how she felt about my becoming a musician. She told me that her only career aspiration for her children was that we learn to play the piano. The sense of dedication we'd derive from that experience, she reasoned, would lead us to succeed in a profession that provided a good living, whatever it might be. Still, she never discouraged me from a career in music.

A special gift

She also never pushed me, perhaps because of her experience with her own mother. She did push me to practice (which every child needs). And she strongly suggested that I get a doctorate, which turned out to be sound advice. But it was only about seven years ago that my parents remarked that they were proud of me and enjoyed my playing. The main point is: Nobody told me I must become a concert pianist, or even that I might consider it.

When my grandmother was an old woman (she lived to 88), my mother would play hymns for her; and Grandma, never an effusive woman, told Mom how much she enjoyed the music. About a year ago, during Mom's annual visit, I told my her the same thing: how musically she plays, and how lovely it is to hear her play hymns as I wash the dishes or perform some other chore. Subsequently Mom made a recording of herself playing hymns on the piano at my childhood home, and she gave it to me, with a picture of her standing in the living room on the cover. That way, whenever I need to be reminded of the joy of making music and what a blessing it is to possess the talent to do so, I can put on that CD and remember. â—†


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