What Do You Have that You Did Not Receive?

I don't remember exactly when I fell in love with cellos. But it was a long time ago.

It was the sound. The lower register, the smoothness, the beautiful way they somehow seemed to sound more like a human voice than any other instrument,

as far as I could tell, anyway.

And the more I went to the symphony and saw them,

the more I began to notice how beautiful they were to look at,

as all the string instruments were.

But something about their size made them the "just right" place

for that beauty--not too big, not too small, but just right.

They are human sized, as well as human sounding.

And so, many years ago, my beloved and I decided that someday we would get a cello.

I would learn to play it first, with hopes that he would too one day.

(But first he would learn piano, and we would play duets together.)

Someday. Someday.

After this degree, when I'm not working so much, after this crisis, after that surgery.

After the other surgery, after the move, after we get settled.

Someday.

Well, today was that someday.

He did it for my birthday, a few days ago.

We went up there together, met with the man with the cellos,

had a little introduction, heard the lovely sounds, chose the darker colored one with the greater resonance, signed the papers, and walked out with a cello.

A cello which is purely a gift from a man who loves me.

There are a lot of things we don't have in common. We're pretty seriously different.

But we both love beautiful music, and he decided to make a dream come true.

The longer I live, the more often I think of the speech given when I graduated,

the counseling degree graduation, a seminary counseling degree,

so the speech wasn't "you are amazing and can do anything,"

but instead was "What do you have that you did not receive?"

It was about gratitude, about a realistic perspective that everything is a gift--

life itself, with everything it includes.

(As the billboards in Memphis remind us, No One Gets a Diploma Alone.)

Well, I sure didn't get this cello alone.

It's a birthday gift from my husband.

It's also, in a very real way, a birth-day gift from my mother.

My mother, who was born on this very day many years ago

and who gave birth to me

and who is not now here to see or hear this cello.

But she is surely the reason I love music.

She is the reason we grew up experiencing singing as a normal part of life.

The reason I knew the notes on the piano before ever taking a piano lesson.

The reason I "had an ear" for music.

Without all that, who knows if I would have played piano or loved the symphony?

Would I have spent money on my first record, Pachelbel and Fasch pieces?

Would I have sung in choruses that let me be on stage with the symphony,

adding to my love of those cellos that I saw up close and personal?

I never knew before today that a cello has a heart.

Maybe that's why it sounds so human.

I guess that the other string instruments also have this feature, so that's likely not accurate.

But it's still a lovely thing, to see this little heart shape carved into the wood of the bridge.

I've loved cellos for a long time.

And now it kind of feels like this cello is loving me.

It's going to be a challenge, learning to play it. Humbling, without doubt.

But I think it will help to look down the strings and see that little heart

and to think "this is about love," and remember the ones whose love

brought this all about,

and be grateful for what I've received.

And a really wonderful thing about a cello is that it can never, ever sound quite the way

that a violin can sound in the hands of a beginner!

I tried that over thirty years ago! Eeek!

But even if not every note this cello makes will sound wonderful,

I think in its own way it will be beautiful.