LJ Idol, Season 9 - Week 21
Title: A Gift of Opera
Topic: The music made me do it
We have many anniversaries to mark, Oskar and I - the day he received his medical degree, the day we arrived in Milwaukee, the day we became American citizens. We have celebrated the day we bought the house and my very first day teaching and of course our birthdays. On his parents' wedding anniversary Oskar goes to the synagogue to say a prayer for them, because he does not know the exact dates on which they died. And every year at the end of November, perhaps the most important anniversary of all, commemorating the day Oskar came to the door of my parents' house in Munich, months after the war had ended, to find me and to show me that he was still alive.
This year we have tickets to the symphony, because while I will never be able to convince Oskar of the pleasures of the opera, he has developed a fondness for orchestral music. We will go to dinner and then to the symphony, and then perhaps a late dessert and after-dinner drinks, and we will celebrate that we have had another year together and that we are happy.
The symphony tickets are my gift to him and the dinner is his gift to me, and yet when I come home one day I find a flat square box on the dining room table, wrapped in festive paper and tied with an orange ribbon. There is a small card taped to the top, with "Conrad" written on it in black pen, and next to the card is a sheet of notepaper on which Oskar has scribbled "Open this when you see it. You do not have to wait for me to come home."
(The jokes that people make about doctors' handwriting are true. I can read Oskar's scrawl only because I have been doing so my whole life.)
I am pleased that he has bought me something, because who would not be, but I am surprised. Today is a day of no consequence. Our celebratory evening is not for another week. The anniversary itself is several days off. And my Oskar is not a demonstrative man. He has made one grand gesture in the course of his life, and it is as if that one instance is enough for the rest of his years. He does not leave gifts for me to discover when he is not home.
But while I do not need public gestures of affection or gifts from him to know that he loves me, that does not mean I do not enjoy receiving them.
I open the card, a simple white gift card that says "Play this and know that I love you, even if I do not always love your taste in music" on the inside, and then I tear off the paper like a little boy and discover a set of record albums, a live recording of Verdi's La traviata with the great Maria Callas.
It is one of the minor disappointments of my life that I will never see her perform. I have recordings of her in Carmen, one of my favorite operas, and La bohème, but I do not have any albums of her singing live. I pull the records out of their paper sleeves one by one, blowing imaginary dust out of the grooves and stroking the vinyl with my fingers. For once I am glad I am home alone, so that I will have no distractions while I listen.
But dinner must be made, and by the time Oskar comes home I have played both sides of the first record and am listening to the second while I peel carrots.
"I see you found my present," he says, appearing beside me in the kitchen.
"You said I could open it without you," I remind him. "Thank you." I pause in my peeling long enough to turn my head and kiss his cheek.
"I could only remember one of the singers you like, so I asked the young woman in the record store if she could recommend a particular recording, and she played an aria from this one for me. I enjoyed it more than I expected."
"That is because you did not expect to enjoy it at all," I say, teasing him a little. "Why did you even think to buy it for me?"
"I wanted to do something unexpected and surprise you."
"Well, I was certainly surprised." I pull out a knife to cut up the carrots. "It's the closest I will ever come to seeing Maria Callas on stage." I look sideways at him. He is watching the peeled carrots, so closely that any second I expect him to grab one and eat it. "Does this mean you will go to the opera with me some time?"
He picks up a carrot and crunches into it, just as I thought he would. "No," he says, smiling. "But we can listen to this one during dinner."
I shoo him out of the kitchen, but he comes back to set the table, and we listen to the rest of Callas' La traviata while we eat. I will have to do something for Oskar in return for his gift, something equally unexpected and surprising. I know I do not need to prove my love for him, as he has never needed to prove his for me, but it makes me happy to make him happy, and sometimes that happiness comes from a tangible gift or a specific action.
I am not yet sure what to do, but I know I will deliver it on a day with no particular meaning, for no particular reason other than I want to surprise him and I want him to know that I am thinking about him and that I love him.
(note: i wrote about the anniversary that they're celebrating here, but you don't have to read it to understand this.)
Topic: The music made me do it
We have many anniversaries to mark, Oskar and I - the day he received his medical degree, the day we arrived in Milwaukee, the day we became American citizens. We have celebrated the day we bought the house and my very first day teaching and of course our birthdays. On his parents' wedding anniversary Oskar goes to the synagogue to say a prayer for them, because he does not know the exact dates on which they died. And every year at the end of November, perhaps the most important anniversary of all, commemorating the day Oskar came to the door of my parents' house in Munich, months after the war had ended, to find me and to show me that he was still alive.
This year we have tickets to the symphony, because while I will never be able to convince Oskar of the pleasures of the opera, he has developed a fondness for orchestral music. We will go to dinner and then to the symphony, and then perhaps a late dessert and after-dinner drinks, and we will celebrate that we have had another year together and that we are happy.
The symphony tickets are my gift to him and the dinner is his gift to me, and yet when I come home one day I find a flat square box on the dining room table, wrapped in festive paper and tied with an orange ribbon. There is a small card taped to the top, with "Conrad" written on it in black pen, and next to the card is a sheet of notepaper on which Oskar has scribbled "Open this when you see it. You do not have to wait for me to come home."
(The jokes that people make about doctors' handwriting are true. I can read Oskar's scrawl only because I have been doing so my whole life.)
I am pleased that he has bought me something, because who would not be, but I am surprised. Today is a day of no consequence. Our celebratory evening is not for another week. The anniversary itself is several days off. And my Oskar is not a demonstrative man. He has made one grand gesture in the course of his life, and it is as if that one instance is enough for the rest of his years. He does not leave gifts for me to discover when he is not home.
But while I do not need public gestures of affection or gifts from him to know that he loves me, that does not mean I do not enjoy receiving them.
I open the card, a simple white gift card that says "Play this and know that I love you, even if I do not always love your taste in music" on the inside, and then I tear off the paper like a little boy and discover a set of record albums, a live recording of Verdi's La traviata with the great Maria Callas.
It is one of the minor disappointments of my life that I will never see her perform. I have recordings of her in Carmen, one of my favorite operas, and La bohème, but I do not have any albums of her singing live. I pull the records out of their paper sleeves one by one, blowing imaginary dust out of the grooves and stroking the vinyl with my fingers. For once I am glad I am home alone, so that I will have no distractions while I listen.
But dinner must be made, and by the time Oskar comes home I have played both sides of the first record and am listening to the second while I peel carrots.
"I see you found my present," he says, appearing beside me in the kitchen.
"You said I could open it without you," I remind him. "Thank you." I pause in my peeling long enough to turn my head and kiss his cheek.
"I could only remember one of the singers you like, so I asked the young woman in the record store if she could recommend a particular recording, and she played an aria from this one for me. I enjoyed it more than I expected."
"That is because you did not expect to enjoy it at all," I say, teasing him a little. "Why did you even think to buy it for me?"
"I wanted to do something unexpected and surprise you."
"Well, I was certainly surprised." I pull out a knife to cut up the carrots. "It's the closest I will ever come to seeing Maria Callas on stage." I look sideways at him. He is watching the peeled carrots, so closely that any second I expect him to grab one and eat it. "Does this mean you will go to the opera with me some time?"
He picks up a carrot and crunches into it, just as I thought he would. "No," he says, smiling. "But we can listen to this one during dinner."
I shoo him out of the kitchen, but he comes back to set the table, and we listen to the rest of Callas' La traviata while we eat. I will have to do something for Oskar in return for his gift, something equally unexpected and surprising. I know I do not need to prove my love for him, as he has never needed to prove his for me, but it makes me happy to make him happy, and sometimes that happiness comes from a tangible gift or a specific action.
I am not yet sure what to do, but I know I will deliver it on a day with no particular meaning, for no particular reason other than I want to surprise him and I want him to know that I am thinking about him and that I love him.
(note: i wrote about the anniversary that they're celebrating here, but you don't have to read it to understand this.)