My mother thinks of herself as a modest hippie. After years of being a single parent in a very traditional town, she feels “out of the rat race” and free from the country-club concerns of our neighbors. She lives relatively uninhibitedly, even while affectionately inhibiting my brother’s and my lives. So I was only mildly surprised when I learned that she had decided to pick the drums.
We knew that my mother had a peculiar passion for music. She claims that when a song strikes her, she has a physical reaction that would compels her into motion. From what we were told by her father, this syndrome began when she started cheerleading in high school. Her first routine was to the Jackson 5’s “ABC,” which apparently provided a euphoria which became an addiction. After she finished her education, she was relegated to dancing with my father and suffering through his lack of coordination and vacant sense of rhythm. Still, she never lost her passion, and was always looking for a new way to satisfy her urge to commune with the music.
The idea occurred to her while she was in the car with my brother, listening to a Nelly Furtado song. She was dancing intensely from the shoulders up while driving the car, which was nothing unusual. My brother, exasperated, turned to her and said, “You know, Mom, you just like the rhythm.” She does have a compulsive reaction to songs with strong beats. So she ignored the frustration in my brother’s comment and took it as a suggestion to find a way to focus on the rhythms she loved.
Soon after, a full drum set appeared in the guestroom of our house. After a week I became accustomed to hearing the bass drum vibrating throughout the house. Occasionally, the musician would receive a phone call and I would have to interrupt her little rehearsal. Entering the room, I would see her totally engulfed in her performance, eyes closed and iPod on full volume. After recognizing my presence, she sardonically asked if she was disturbing us, clearly relishing annoying the children who had kept her awake with their noise so many nights.
While my mother has an innate sense of rhythm, she couldn’t do it all on her own. She found an older, psychedelic-looking instructor who was excited to work with a “mature’”student. He told her that so many children have fantasies about drumming that last three weeks and then dissolve. He said that he hoped she would stay the course. Flattered by his hopes for her, she took her lessons and homework seriously and quickly improved. As she expected, her years of dancing helped her drumming abilities. Her instructor was impressed as well and told her that she was the most fun teaching experience he had ever had.
Once when I drove her to the music studio the waiting room was filled with mothers taking their children to their lessons, and I was a child taking my mother to hers. Enjoying the role reversal, I remarked that I should be the one taking lessons. She smiled and reminded me that I had the coordination and rhythm of my father.
Her friends, interested in her new education asked how the idea occurred to her. They had been taking golf lessons, bridge lessons and even hunting lessons, but this hobby seemed unusual. When they asked her if she planned on learning other instruments or if she hoped to join a band, she simply shrugged with a small, proud grin and explained that she just wanted to play along to her copy of The Temptations’ “Greatest Hits.” My brother and I then glancedat each other with mock irritation, glad that our mother is the kind of hippie she is.
