Today, I am grateful for the recorder. Nope, that’s not a typo, I swear! Yes, the recorder. You know, that simple carved flute which, through the ages, has made parents cringe and dogs howl as children endlessly torture the eardrums of everyone in a ten-mile radius attempt to make something resembling music. (See yesterday’s post for a visual.)
Now, in all fairness (and in my defense), I am slightly biased; my parents played in a baroque recorder ensemble when I was a young girl. I’ve always loved baroque-era music so I enjoyed it. Once a month, the group would meet at our home to rehearse — for what exactly I’m not certain; I don’t think they actually ever performed except for each other. But I loved those nights; mom would make coffee and serve some sort of snack and I’d sit in Daddy’s avocado green corduroy chair in the corner of the room and listen, maybe even do some homework.
Inevitably, as the group was about to call it a night, someone would decide it was a good idea to play a solo on the sopranino recorder. (Think piccolo-like but not as pretty, and far more shrill when played off-pitch.) We all would laugh with great amusement as our poor dog, Baroness, would sit and “sing.” Of course, knowing what I now do about sensory processing and hyperacusis, I feel badly that my poor pup was probably in pain.
I also have many, many fond childhood memories of listening to my Nana playing violin and recorder duets with my parents when she and Granddaddy would come to visit. Nana was a remarkably talented violinist who played with an all-female group called Polly and her Pals way back in the 1920’s or 30’s and who also once played as regular member of the chamber ensemble at Music Mountain in Connecticut. Call me weird, but I’ve always associated baroque recorder music with warm and happy memories. I had always hoped to share that love of music with my children.
A few decades later –the recorders have long since been given away and my beloved Nana and Granddaddy many years passed. Somehow, I ended up with a child’s music set which included a wooden recorder. It was given to us by well-intentioned friend of the family who knew Nik loves music. What she didn’t know at the time was that Nik doesn’t have the manual dexterity or control –or the oral motor skill—necessary to play any of the instruments she gave us. With more than a touch of sadness, I put them away in a drawer –along with sharing my love of music with my son– and forgot about them.
Nik is nonverbal. We don’t know if he will ever talk –and frankly, I don’t care as long as he can learn to communicate his wants and needs. He can make some vocal sounds including several letters of the alphabet. The letters he struggles with are the ones requiring shaping of his lips or the voluntary movement of air forward. He says the letter F by sniffling through his nose. Pretty smart, actually, since that’s pretty much the way he hears it. He can make the PUH sound for the letter P, but cannot blow air out as if he were blowing out a candle or pushing a cotton ball along a table top. Years and years of speech/communication therapy and it’s all been tried over and over to no avail.
Ironically, Nik is all about music and sounds and making the sounds have meaning. In his own way, he is a supreme linguist of a language so unique that almost no one but he and I understand it. Truly, he associates meaning with certain songs that even I can’t figure it out for a while. He also adores his once a week music class at school. So, when he started digging through a drawer the other day, looking for “triangle block” (don’t ask—I have NO.IDEA!), he pulled out the recorder and refused to put it away. Not wanting to make that my “hill to die on,” I let him have it.
Nik immediately brought the recorder to his mouth; I can only assume he’s seen this in his music class. God knows I haven’t shown him! Then, a light bulb went off in my mind. Or is it that it went on? Either way, I had a Eureka! moment.
“What if I could use Nik’s ability to say the letter P sound and his love of music and sound to help him learn how to blow out of his mouth? I mean, it’s been tried a million times before, but, well…what if?”
It’s a work in progress, and I’m sure the day will come when I will regret it. However, for now? All I know is my son is, little by little and with growing confidence and consistency, learning to make that god-awful shrill TOOT! from that recorder. The combination of that sound and the laughter which echoes after are the finest music I’ve ever heard.
Someone remind me of this later, okay?
