According to my Mom, my Grandma’s favorite waltz was the ‘Blue Danube’. That makes sense, as she was always one to be thrilled by what thrilled others. For me, though, my grandmother’s waltz will always be the lesser-known and lesser-celebrated ‘Viennese Blood Waltz’, also by Johann Strauss, but not nearly as played as much as its blue cousin.
This was the song that sounded on my Grandmother’s music box clock; as a child I never realized how lovely it would have been to be awakened by a music box. I don’t know if Gram ever used it to wake up – she was always simply up in the morning, and when we were growing up I never, ever saw her sleep. She stayed up reading well beyond our bedtime, and was up early to say her prayers in the morning, often worrying her rosary beads before there was light in the sky, and always before me and my brother were awake.
In this waltz, I hear my grandmother, and am reminded of the happiest moments of my childhood ~ nights spent playing cards in her little room when she would visit our house, and weekends spent in Hoosick Falls when Mom would bring us for a visit.
In this waltz, I hear something else now that I am almost into my fifties, now that I understand a bit more of the world and the way time has its way with all of us. These days, this waltz reminds me that the grandmother I knew and adored was but a small part of the woman who raised my Mom, lost her husband to a heart attack, and then settled into a quiet life that led into the section that I inhabited with her. This waltz goes back years, long before I was born, long before my mother was born, to a time when Gram was a young woman, one of five children, and making her way into the world.
My Mom would often say that Gram always seemed old to her, even when she was young, but I had glimpses and hints of the life that Gram had, and I remember seeing a picture of her and her husband out on the town – Gram glammed up and smiling broadly at a cocktail table, sitting across from my Grandfather whom I would never meet, looking like some starlet that she used to describe to me and my brother as we drifted off to sleep in her care.
We know so little of each other, I think, even of those who matter the most to us. Every human carries such infinite mystery, such unknowable history. It’s a wonder we ever get over ourselves long enough to love someone else – and a marvelous and happy wonder at that.
