Who Says You Can Never Go Home?

It's happened to all of us. We visit the house or neighborhood where we grew up. The trees are different. The street has been repaved. There are more houses on the street and strangers living "next door." We drive past what was, in our youth, a farm. Now? A bustling strip mall. People dragging toddlers in and out of Staples, Target, and the like. No one seems to care that it was once a farm and that part of your childhood is gone. In fact, it seems almost taken without your permission. Stolen. It's true. You can never go home.


I started playing the oboe in 4th grade. I wanted to play the bassoon, but it was a bit large for me. So, my mother, a band teacher, suggested that I take up the oboe and later switch to bassoon. I never made the switch. I was especially happy playing oboe. Here's a picture of me at my 7th grade Christmas concert. I was 12. My two closest friends from junior high and high school are beside and behind me: Traci Lamarre Lenzi on flute and Kathy Leavitt on French horn. 

As the child of two instrumental music educators, my early life was filled with music: my parents' band concerts, private music lessons on piano, oboe and voice, school band and music concerts, Solo & Ensemble Music Festival, Large Group Music Festival, the Bath Municipal Band (in which my mother, father, step-father, and closest friends, Kathy and Traci all played at one time or another), Portland youth music ensembles (now Portland Youth Wind Ensemble/Symphony Orchestra), Brunswick Regional Youth Orchestra (as a 5th or 6th grader I was so nervous to play in this group that I got sick before most rehearsals each week), District Ensemble Festival, and All State Festival -- not to even mention my singing activities. The music room in high school was my salvation. I was not an unhappy teenager, but the music room was still a place of refuge. My closest friends where there, teachers who knew us over the course of our junior and high school years, and the boundaries and expectations were always clear. Here is a picture of me in the Portland Youth Wind Ensemble, in what was probably 1990. (Notice that Traci is above and to my left. You can't see Kathy in this picture, but she was there!)

I stopped playing the oboe in 1991. I even sold my oboe in 1992. In 2000 or 2001, I started making noise about wanting to play the oboe and Neil had one of his old horns refurbished for me. In 2001 when I was writing my dissertation, I joined one of Neil's student double-reed groups that needed another oboist. I played for 5 months. It was hell. I hated practicing. I could never build up enough endurance to play for more than 10 minutes. Neil and I agreed that I should go back into retirement. 


Then in 2010 I was awarded a fellowship, which gave me a year's release from teaching and campus activities to focus on my scholarship. Without my usual commute and teaching/committee demands, I had  more time on my hands and decided to join a local community band, the Seacoast Wind Ensemble. I started practicing and strangely enough, it wasn't hell. It was fun and Neil was very encouraging.  So essentially, after a 19-year hiatus, I found myself driving to a community band rehearsal. I remembered the double reed ensemble from 2001 and I was suddenly filled with dread. What if it was boring again? What if I hated practicing again? I wonder if anyone will play well? I wonder if I will have to stay with it if I don't like it? What have I gotten myself into? I had many concerns on that trip to my first rehearsal.


I walked in, talked to the volunteer music librarian, helped to set up chairs and stands, and basically stuck to myself. I warmed up when the others did. I waited for rehearsal to begin. Nervous. Not sure what to expect. The conductor asked us to pull out a basic band warm up. All I remember from that rehearsal is what came next: the sound that came with the downbeat. A chord. What chord, I couldn't tell you and it doesn't matter because I wasn't even fully present to assess it. You see, I was in high school band. I was in Portland Youth Wind Ensemble. I was in the Bath Municipal Band. I was at All State. I was in all those places, because I was home.


At that same moment, I had a flash that I was not only reliving my youth and a former life, I was among old friends. As someone put it to me, "Same people. Different faces." It couldn't be more true. I was also keenly aware that I was partaking in a longstanding and important American tradition - the community band. All over America, on that Tuesday night at 7:00pm, people were sitting down with members of their community to play a basic band warm-up. Welcome home, Emily. Pull up a chair and stay for a while.

It is true that I was on fellowship that year and even serving as my institution's "Presidential Fellow," but I was also on my own personal fellowship in a way. Neil and I have dubbed that year "The Year of the Oboe" - YOTO, for short. I had to stop playing come September, because I teach on the same night as rehearsal. But, as of today, my classes are over and I'm looking forward to going home again this coming Tuesday night.