Something happened today. It was one of those surreal, serendipitous moments that so rarely cross my path. Coincidence or spiritual – I don’t know. Whatever it is, it caught my attention.
I was in my room, leisurely reading tweets on Twitter, in my “get going and get motivated to go get my Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks” Saturday morning routine. During my tweet time, my 21 year old daughter (Ashley) —————–> started playing the piano in another room. Home for a few weeks in between Washington, D.C. (where she just graduated from college) and Tampa, FL (where she is moving in a week), she’s been playing the piano almost daily, exploring all of the sheet music we have in the house. On this particular Saturday morning, for reasons neither she nor I can explain, she found and decided to play “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin (from The Sting).In the middle of reading Seth Godin’s latest blog post, I heard my daughter start to play this song. I was stopped in my tracks. Quite literally, I froze – physically and emotionally.
It’s times like this that I really appreciate Twitter. When I didn’t know what to do, who to call, if I should call, what I would say, how I should feel…I turned to Twitter. Tweeting the experience was the perfect outlet for me in this situation.
You see, this song that my daughter just randomly found and played on the piano for the first time on Saturday, September 5, 2009, is the one song that I remember my mom playing on the piano more than any other song. It’s one of those songs that when you hear it, your mind instantly catapults you into a memory - one thing and one thing only. In my case, I was thrown into the memory of my mother. It hit me all at once that on this day, 23 years ago, my mother died; now, her first born grandchild is playing her favorite song on her piano that was passed down to her first born child (me). (And for the record, when I die, I WILL pass this piano down to my first born child – the beautiful and amazing young woman who sat at the piano today paying homage to my mother without even knowing it. {Ashley, keep a copy of this post in case I neglect to mention this in my will.})
Thank you Deborah Staples Cain for the life you lived, the love you gave and the legacy you left. Your spirit lives on in your children and grandchildren. I miss you as much today as I did 23 years ago. But today I was reminded of how you are still with me.
U3N9Q62JV236
PMHDNX5WWGG8
