Rhodie

One of the earliest memories I have of my grandmother's house is of the far corner of her living room. It was the only part of the room where sunshine from the skylight hit (and then only in the morning). The room was naturally dark because of a large Rhodie right smack in front of the only window in the room. G-Lara (my grandmother) refused to cut the bush back, even though it had slowly overshadowed and thus mostly killed the bulb garden along the front walk. That Rhodie was one of the most important things in my grandmother's life; her husband had planted it in celebration of their first and only child, my mother, before he'd died two weeks later, after falling off the roof. My family has a penchant for falling off of roofs, it seems; as my aunt did so, dying a year later, and two years ago, my cousin fell through a rusty tin roof, crippling himself for life. Anyway, the Rhodie blocked all light from the window except for a faint green glow in the afternoon so morning under the skylight was a daily pleasure.1

Another reason that particular corner was special was that it happened to be the music corner. It held my late grandfather's banjo uke, his bouzouki, his mountain dulcimer and his Uileann pipes. He liked to collect interesting instruments. He hadn't played any of them except the dulcimer, so they were all still in their cases. As I grew and visited, I would take them out of their respective cases to dust and polish them. When I was seven, G-Lara let me play the uke. Understand that I have always detested ukeleles, and would rather fall off a roof than play one. But I loved this instrument, because it held memories and had belonged to the grandfather I never knew. 2

So I asked somebody in town how to tune it, and decided that I would give it a try. The old man at the music shop said to tune it 'my dog has fleas;' he even wrote it down for me. I scurried home and got out the instrument, replaced the old heavy-duty fishing line with which it had originally been strung with uke strings, and settled down to tune it.3

At this point, I'd been taking piano lessons for a year or two, so I felt very knowledgeable and confident in my musical skills. But what was 'my dog has fleas?' Did that mean you were supposed to tune it M-D-H-F? It made no sense. So instead, I tuned it in fifths ,like a violin or a tenor banjo. 4

G-Lara gave me the bouzouki when I was twelve. It had the Irish flat back instead of the Greek ribbed lute back, and a mother-o-pearl dragon was inlaid on the neck between the frets. I set aside the banjo uke to play it instead, and got lessons. The pipes appeared on my doorstep on my fifteenth birthday, after we'd moved to Quebec and I hardly ever visited my grandmother anymore. They're much harder to play, and even harder to find a teacher for. A year later, I've barely begun to learn their intricicies. Smaller than a bagpipe, the Uileann pipe is far quieter and more tolerable; better for a beginner. 5

Every summer, I take the instruments home and play them for G-Lara in the corner of the living room for two hourse every morning, when the sunlight 6

through the skylight and disperses the green glow from the Rhodie outside the window, which has been growing bigger and bigger as the years unfold. Someday, on my eighteenth brithday, perhaps, will the mountain dulcimer my grandfather played arrive on my doorstep to join its fellows, or will G-Lara keep that, like the Rhodie, as a living memory of my 7

grandfather?