Genious

I’m in Blue Hill, Maine, living with a family of musicians, taking care of a precocious 4-year old who speaks with a vestigial German accent (“Becca, can I have a wrrrrrradish?) and a 7-year old violin prodigy. The 7-year old, Sabrina, bested me in an impromptu living room performance of the Bach Double. Which is humiliating. I remember a woman -- she must have been at least eighty, varicose veins mapping her legs -- flying past me in a Central Park 10K. She wasn’t at all winded. I tried to convince myself that she’d stumbled onto the circular path from a service road, that she was part of a Senior Citizens bus tour where everyone was forced to safety pin a number to their chest just in case they wandered off. I expected to see her collapsed at a water station asking why the Empire State Building had vanished. But no -- I was the one cramping at mile four, bent over and regretting my choice of race music (The Very Best of Hal and Oates).

I studied violin for twelve years, and at no point did I come close to experiencing music the way Sabrina does. The first time she heard the Mendelssohn Concerto, she jotted down each key change in her program. At age 4, she was playing Haydn (I spent a solid six months perfecting “Hot Cross Buns,” and before that, bowing a tissue box). I sit beside Sabrina at dinner -- her hazel eyes wide-set, her skin the color of moonlight, her long hair single-plaited straight as a fret board -- and cajole her into eating. She has no appetite for food. Her belly is full of notes. She’s an ethereal fairy we speak to in numbers -- take 3 bites, now take 4 -- and appease with stories of Issac Stern. She hungers for bits and pieces of her lineage. Her great grandfather was a world renowned violinist who studied with Franz Kneisel, who in turn studied with a master who studied with a master who studied with a master. This trail of masters leads to Vivaldi. If you drew a performance tree, the trunk would rise from the ground of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony orchestra. Last night at dinner, while I was fighting a losing battle with Sabrina’s meatloaf, she dropped her fork, shot up and shouted, “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Vivaldi!” Her grandmother corrected her, slightly: “Musically. Musically you wouldn’t be here.”

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a genius. Being a genius translated into being famous. I sought various outlets to get there (including a guest spot on the locally produced Uncle Paul Show, where I paraded with other children in a wobbly line behind our blind public television host, Uncle Paul). Once, in third grade, the same week as the Challenger explosion, an unidentified man with a raspy voice called our house and asked if I’d ever considered acting -- in a panic I hung up the phone. For months I lamented my lost chance. Why had no one taught me *69?

As I creep into my mid-thirties, I'm coming to terms with the likelihood of a humbler fate. My blood is not the blood of a prodigy. I frequently misspell genius. But I’m a good writer, a decent singer. Perhaps my greatest talent is my patience. Yesterday, I waited for an hour with Hannah, the 4-year, for her poopie to come. This poopie was not the first to come -- the first she was mostly wearing. I cleaned her up (after dissuading her from grabbing a toothbrush to “scrrrrrrrub die gerrrrrms!”), and then we sat together in the neighbor's bathroom, weighing the pros and cons of princesses and candy, coaxing the poopie with soprano songs. Ultimately, it was this little ditty that did the trick:

“Snow White, Snow White, she cast her magic spell,
And woodland creatures cried with joy, Look! Her poopie fell!”

Quite a virtuoso move, if I do say so myself.