Music and memory

I said yesterday that we are an opera family, but beyond that we are really a music family. We are not performers - just appreciators - but we are good at that.

One of the more precious documents from childhood is little book that one of my sisters made for Mother's Day where she thanks Mom for liking our music. She did. When her memory was more intact she could identify Simon Le Bon (Duran Duran), Morten Harket (a-ha) and James Hetfield (Metallica) by voice instantly. She still knows that she knows the others, but she can only name Simon.

I have found a new way of connecting with her through music, and it ties in with my longstanding love of libraries.

The Aloha Community Library has been able to expand their space, and therefore their offerings. In September I noticed that they were going to have a presentation of Andean music. I really wanted to go. I thought taking Mom would be fine; it ended up being wonderful.

She liked it a lot. She was engaged with it. She wanted to tell them how good they were. She wanted to make sure they were getting paid for this because they deserved it. I don't know how compensation works with library performances, but they did have CDs for sale, and I bought one.

Mom had a good time during that performance, and to have her pleasantly engaged is often I all ask for. Often it is the best that can be done. This ended up being better than that, because she remembered the CD.

It's not that she remembered exactly, but when I put the CD in, she knew it was familiar. She thought maybe it was from a movie we saw, but I reminded her of the performance, and that we went there. I don't know that I can say that she truly remembered then, because I had to tell her again, but it at least registered as something that sounded right. You have no idea how little there is that is recent and registers as familiar.

It also gave me more to work with. I have played that CD more, but also seeing that she enjoyed the Latin-flavored beats so much inspired me to dig out any possibly similar music. She has since also enjoyed tango, merengue, and Gipsy Kings.

It also means that sometimes playing music is enough. Morten (and Mags and Paul - who changed his spelling, I know how it used to be) and James (and Lars and Kurt and Cliff/Jason/Bobby) are still in there, even if she doesn't remember the names.

And the library has more performances coming.

https://www.andeanmusic.org/

https://www.wccls.org/libraries/aloha