Although I felt compelled to repeat the caveats I had given Reta, I knew in advance that they would fall on deaf ears. Celia had always believed that the thought, the idea, the will was stronger than anything else and can prevail. Young Robin had grown up with music around her and had evidently inherited a musical gene as well. She responded instinctively to the material I gave her, and made rapid progress at the keyboard. So with Cheryl and Robin both onboard, I was off and running once again as a teacher.
Mom and Dad were delighted that I was still able to teach and was enjoying it as much as ever. They had been somewhat worried about my financial prospects. Dad had given both my brother and me portions of his family’s Iowa farm, from which we derived a modest income after each year’s harvest. But he knew that I was using my share as I went along, whereas Gary could save most of his.
During the next months, my own slow work at the piano continued the seemingly eternal search for breakthroughs. There was no “Aha!” moment. There was no time when something suddenly started working again. There were countless times when I had a fraction—or tiny hint—of a response, and I would immediately jump to the conclusion that one of the many channels I needed might be opening up. Far too often “maybe this is it” turned into “well, maybe not, after all.”
But I did have many moments that marked important progress. No matter how small it was, I treated each moment as if it might be the breakthrough. And it was these small, scarcely detectable gains that would eventually add up. I wrote to Webster at one point during that winter: “Occasionally I find some response out of the distant past, timid and rusty, being awakened as I try to put a couple of these newly acquired movements together. I grab onto it like mad where possible; sometimes it’s so fleeting that I can only recognize that a spot was somehow less wooden, or whatever. When that happens, I feel like a different person for a few hours.”
I continued to alternate that experience with thinking through a piece of music at a very slow tempo, so that every detail got built in, as well as thinking through the material as I’d ideally want it to sound—as a flowing piece of music. Both modes were necessary to allow my musical intent to direct my hands and fingers as much as possible.
As the months went on, when I was away from the piano I was thinking ever more clearly about what I wanted a passage to sound like; then I would go back to the piano and try to find paths to make it sound that way. I needed to keep going back and forth—to keep refreshing the musical idea in my mind. Otherwise, I was afraid I might accept a solution of lesser quality, just from being worn down by the process. It was still all too easy to collapse in tears. But in some ways, the back-and-forth technique kept me in better emotional balance.
I visited Webster a few times in Illinois but found it discouraging to be around his students, who had normal bodies and normal piano-playing equipment. He said he wished we could find someone else to work with me, as he’d exhausted his ingenuity.
That was the winter (1960–61) when I learned the entire Goldberg Variations, a major work for both harpsichordists and pianists. Each variation is somewhat complete in itself and satisfying to memorize away from the piano on its own. The variations went deep with me; I built my life around them for about two years, along with the three last Beethoven sonatas.
One evening my parents invited a couple of friends over and asked if I would like to play something for them. I had reached a tentative pact with my beloved Beethoven Opus 109, and could make my way through the entire glorious work without breaking down completely. I had mentally prepared myself to be able to restart at any place along the way, in case I encountered a blockage or a nerve shudder. In other words, I had studied the entire work in such minute detail that I could walk into a room and start cold on any note or chord during the entire twenty-minute piece. That may sound like an extreme precaution, but for my condition, there was no such thing as being over-prepared. I was fearful of outside ears, and yet was aware that if I could manage to play Opus 109 in front of an audience, that, too, would be a milestone. Dad was experimenting with a tape recorder he had rebuilt and asked if he could try it out for the occasion.
The “performance” was frightening beyond description; but at the same time, it felt like a miracle that I could get through it at all. Later, when the three of us were by ourselves, Dad hit the “play” button, and I was amazed that the musical message had come through, despite everything. I heard some technical unevenness, but it was not glaring, and the musical ideas had come across. It was an indescribably emotional moment for all of us, recognizing that I was still there somewhere, way beneath the handicaps and technical problems.
While I was at home, Mom and I talked a lot about other important matters, especially the fact that my onetime classmates, and other friends my age, were all married or in committed relationships. I knew that she didn’t want me to end up alone, and though she didn’t use the “dried-up flower” metaphor, she had a similar concern. I did go on a few dates with a friend who was also home visiting his family, but we soon agreed that we should just stay friends. I was twenty-seven, headed toward twenty-eight, and recognizing that some potential relationships might already have passed me by while I was in rehabilitation.
Life was changing for my Köllnerhof friends, too. David had moved back to the United States, where he was soon to marry his sweetheart, Eileen. He plunged immediately into teaching public-school music and volunteering at the Salvation Army center in Harlem, where he directed a young people’s brass band and a young people’s chorus, and even helped youngsters with homework. I loved the stories about David’s recognizable Volkswagen being sacrosanct in Harlem; evidently he could safely leave it on any street, as the word had gone out that it was not to be touched. Martha and Dady were very much together, and David gave them the Köllnerhof flat as a wedding present.
In late spring of 1961 I received an invitation to visit Carolyn Fisher in Los Angeles, along with word from Webster that he would be in LA at the same time. Since I would be staying with Carolyn, any session with Webster would take place at her home. One Sunday, after I had settled in for my “resident house pianist” role, Carolyn had an informal party for some of her psychology friends, former colleagues, and a couple of onetime students. It started in the afternoon and extended through the evening. I had a particularly good time talking with the two former students: Sam, who was now a psychiatrist, and Phil, a psychologist. Both were in their late thirties, considerably younger than the rest of the group, and both seemed attracted to me. I responded and found the conversation engrossing. By the end of the evening, Sam had invited me out to dinner, which I readily accepted. After everyone had left, I asked Carolyn some questions about both men. She explained that Phil had been married for several years, but that the relationship was currently rocky. Sam had never been married and had recently broken up with a longtime girlfriend.
What happened over the next few months was not what I had anticipated when I had come to visit Carolyn. A romance with Sam developed very quickly, and I was aloft with expectation and excitement. The relationship put everything into a different light. I found a modest little bungalow, about the size of a small apartment, on a hill behind the Hollywood Bowl parking lot and sent for the things I hadn’t brought with me, including my Steinway A.
Before long, we seemed to be an engaged, or nearly engaged, couple. Sam talked first about “our” restaurant, and then about “our” life together, and “our” plans. Here, finally, was the romantic partnership I’d hoped for. I felt as if all that was missing was a ring and a ceremony.
During our time as a couple, Sam and I had shared a few evenings with Phil, and the three-way conversations were warm and engaging. After those evenings, I sometimes wondered what would have happened if Phil had been available and had asked me out before Sam did. But the growing closeness with Sam felt “right” and seemed to have all the ingredients for a long-term relationship.
Then one day, out of the blue, Sam said, as if thin
king about this for the first time, “Well, you want a career, don’t you? You wouldn’t want children—you want a career.”
I was shocked. Sam knew that I had had polio, but he evidently didn’t understand its consequences. I answered that I had always enjoyed my relationships with children and assumed I would have my own someday. I went on to explain that I wasn’t thinking of—or, for that matter, fit for—any career besides teaching. I probably didn’t spell out to Sam just how remote a “career” was, as I was still downplaying the severity of the polio’s aftereffects.
But as we talked, I began to realize that this was the beginning of the end. It didn’t matter what I said; Sam had already decided that our relationship had run its course. Later, I found out that he had gone back to his former girlfriend, whom he eventually married.
Perhaps the main problem in my relationship with Sam was that, at the time, I was so uncertain about my life. Until he talked about having children, I had just assumed that at some point I would have children, an assumption based on a selective awareness of my post-polio condition. But if I could only with difficulty take care of myself and my own daily needs, how could I realistically have had children and continued any kind of piano pursuit? Although Sam didn’t express that question sensitively, or even correctly, he did see the inconsistency.
Despite my hurt and disappointment, when I was honest with myself I was not surprised at the outcome. I had had an affair the year before in Michigan, but on both sides it wasn’t meant to be more than that. I was farther along than I’d been in Vienna, for instance, when I’d met Earl; but the aftereffects of my illness were still turning out to be the game changer in the romantic realm.
After the breakup with Sam, I stayed on in LA, mainly because I wasn’t sure what to do next. Fortunately, my tiny bungalow was a short walk to Carolyn’s house, so I could easily continue that friendship and remain one of her “house pianists.” And because I was always looking for ways to improve my physical capabilities, I signed up for a movement class (a kind of ballet class for women who were out of shape). Among the class members were two people who asked if I would give them piano lessons. Once again, teaching appeared as a bright spot in otherwise uncertain territory.
Chapter Eleven
Amelia and the Death-Defying Leap
Later in the fall of 1961, Dad needed to make a trip to the West Coast, and Mom came along. It was great to share some time with them in the LA atmosphere. They enjoyed the warm Southern California climate and recognized its benefits for my polio-damaged muscles. They also approved of my little bungalow and went on walks with me up and down the hillside and through the pleasant, low-key neighborhood.
Mom and I talked about my romance with Sam, but she mostly wanted to know how I was moving forward with my life. She found part of that answer when we attended a party that Carolyn Fisher had planned with her circle of friends to coincide with my parents’ visit. Although everyone seemed to enjoy meeting each other, when Mom and I were alone afterward, she asked, “Honey, do you . . . uh . . . have any friends under sixty-five?” It was a fair question. Carolyn was in her early seventies, and her longtime friends and colleagues, mostly connected with UCLA, were also in that age range. I was heading toward my twenty-eighth birthday, and had no friends in the area anywhere near my own age.
Carolyn had encouraged me to practice at her house anytime I wished. That gave me a chance to vary the often-discouraging work—on my own piano in a small room and on her piano in a larger room. Practicing at Carolyn’s house also provided a sense of connection with another person close by. She had given me a key so that I could come and go whether she was home or not. Carolyn often went to lectures and events, and friends or former colleagues would come by for her while I was there practicing. If the events interested me, I occasionally went along, but I usually elected to continue my explorations at the piano, during which I still required frequent periods of “horizontal” rest.
One day, after my parents had gone back to Michigan, I was at Carolyn’s house, practicing Schubert’s great B-flat “Opus Posthumous” Sonata, which had become another of my “homes”—music that I found welcoming and comforting to live inside. Carolyn was going to a psychology lecture with a onetime graduate student of hers, Amelia Haygood, who was by then a practicing psychologist, and whose husband had died recently of a sudden heart attack. Douglas Haygood had been a well-known psychologist and former president of the California Psychological Association.
I was making my way through the Schubert while Carolyn was getting ready to go out. A few seconds after I finished, the doorbell rang. I got up to answer, but Carolyn had already opened the door to a woman standing there with a wide, friendly smile that lit up her face. On her head she wore a “baggie,” as large plastic storage bags were called then, and we all laughed about the unusual headgear. It had begun to rain, and the plastic bag had been the most serviceable “rain hat” to be found in Amelia’s car.
After informal introductions, Amelia told me that she had been standing outside the door for a while, not wanting to interrupt the Schubert. Standing outside, when it was raining? And she knew what I had been playing? She told me that she had several recordings of the work and that my treatment of certain elements in the final movement were intriguingly different from any she had heard.
I was stunned by her comments, amazed that a stranger who knew nothing of my struggle could hear some of what I was trying to express. Carolyn’s friends tended to be sophisticated about arts and literature, but this woman was obviously a classical music connoisseur. She told me whose recordings she had listened to and made interesting observations about my interpretation.
Even more surprising, my conversation with Amelia led from the Schubert sonata to Schubert lieder—German art songs—of which she also had an extensive recording collection. She and her late husband, Doug, had been avid fans of German and French art songs. Doug’s mother had been a pianist who often accompanied singers, and Doug grew up knowing the repertoire, playing the piano, and singing, since he’d also had a lovely tenor voice. We talked about some of their favorite lieder singers, including such artists as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. I hadn’t had a chance to talk about singers and art songs since I’d left Europe. Amelia was fascinated to know that I had lived in Vienna, where I’d heard most of the great singers perform many times. She and Doug had heard some of these same artists on tour in California. Carolyn joined the conversation for a few minutes and, since they needed to leave, invited Amelia and me for brunch on Sunday.
It was a beautiful day for Carolyn’s brunch on her outdoor patio. Our three-way conversation was wonderful, as it followed many interweaving strands. When I asked Amelia about her musical background, she said that she had studied piano for a few years, but that her major influence was her father, a great classical music and opera lover, who had been a law professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Every weekend they had listened to Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and to treasured “classic” recorded performances. Amelia’s father had come from a family of doctors, and felt that music could be an important ingredient in a balanced life. He had taught Amelia and her younger brother some classical Greek and Latin when they were children, and it had seemed a natural extension of that study when they later pored over texts of arias in Italian, French, or German. Although her father had died when Amelia was only fifteen, he had clearly contributed significantly to her interests and her outlook on life.
I felt immediately comfortable around Amelia, who was in her early forties but seemed to have a generous amount of wisdom and life experience. She had an open and welcoming gaze, enhanced by her large, soft-green eyes. Her way of speaking sounded especially friendly, and was softened by what a musician thinks of as legato—a flow brought about by a slight elongation of vowels. When Amelia wanted to know about my musical background, I was more open than usual about my illness, rather than glossing over things I usually tried to hide. I also felt com
fortable about discussing my polio experience once she mentioned working for the Veterans Administration as a bedside psychologist in a spinal-injury ward. It was the first time I had heard someone pinpoint the more elusive aspects of what a sudden loss of function means to a young person.
At one point in our leisurely afternoon, Carolyn went to her study to write some letters, and Amelia and I just kept talking. Much to my surprise, I found myself going right to the heart of something I was wrestling with: that I had become a different person since my illness. It was a subject I had occasionally touched on with a very few others during the six-plus years since the polio attack, but there had never been a response like Amelia’s.
“You’re still the same person, Carol,” she said gently, “but most likely a depressed version of your former self.” That seemed hopeful, but was also somewhat confusing.
“But I don’t feel sad,” I told her. She smiled encouragingly.
“In clinical psychology,” she explained, “depression means depressed function. And as a depressed version of yourself, you probably haven’t been allowed—or allowed yourself—to grieve for your lost magic.” That made enormous sense.
As we talked about experiencing various kinds of loss at a young age, I learned that the year after her father’s death, Amelia had gone to France with family friends—Douglas Haygood, his wife, Margaret, and their four sons. Amelia had graduated early from high school, and her mother felt that a change of scene would be beneficial. In France, sixteen-year-old Amelia met Ricky, a young British journalist who had been covering the Spanish Civil War for a British newspaper, and who shared many of Amelia’s interests and ideals. Since Amelia was interested in international relations, she had begun writing articles for her hometown newspaper, encouraging her fellow citizens to look beyond their then-isolationist point of view. She and Ricky had fallen in love, become engaged, and planned to marry once Amelia finished college back in the United States. But when war broke out in Europe in 1939, Ricky enlisted in the Royal Air Force. His plane was one of the first to be shot down, and the whole crew was killed.
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