Whatisstrangelov

On Christmas Eve day, a storm was predicted by the Weather Channel, with rising winds toward evening. Elsa Anderson is sitting at the table, cupping her coffee mug, sipping slowly as she looks out the kitchen window. She’s wearing yoga pants and a light cotton hoodie. Her shimmery golden hair is tucked into a black ski cap.

After a few more sips of her extra-hot cup of cheer, caffeine buzzing through her body, Elsa picks up her mother’s old tuba and raises it to her lips. Filling the big brass horn with life-giving air, a Christmas carol toots out of the dinged-up bell. Her cheeks turn rosy with every puff of breath.

🎶Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn’t go?🎶

🎶Ho, ho, ho! Who wouldn’t go?🎶

🎵Up on the housetop—Oom-Pah-Pah!🎵

An old New Yorker

A group of young women playing brass instruments together

Includes the line of dialogue: “I didn’t mean to step on your toes, but…”

           Getting off his horse, hitching it to a Wichita Eagle machine, an old Hollywood cowboy walked into a Starbucks and ordered a tall black coffee. As he holds the coffee between his large, brown palms, a blonde mom with her kid in tow walk into the Starbucks next.

           “Is that your horse outside?” the kid asks the old cowboy. Turning around, the old cowboy is astonished at the sight to see the kid is dressed EXACTLY like Davy Crockett. Coonskin cap, brown leather tassled jacket, and cowboy boots.

           “Kristoff,” the blonde mom says, approaching the barista counter. “Don’t bother the cowboy.”

           “I was asking him a question, Mom. Is that his horse right outside? And are those real chaps?”

           The blonde mom gave her order to the barista who wrote it in shorthand. The industrial coffee grinders and percolaters fired up behind her. “I didn’t mean to step on your toes,” the blonde mom turns and chuckles to the old cowboy. “But Kristoff basically lives in his Davy Crockett getup. He loves the frontier, the Wild West, and the Technicolor train robbing, cowboy-and-Indian shoot-em-ups on TV.”

           “That’s okay, ma’am.” The old cowboy takes a sip of his coffee, which has now cooled, and tips his hat to her. Taking a $5 bill from his jacket pocket, he then asks the barista if he could have some scones for his horse outside, named Inferno. “He loves blueberry.”

A thin layer of flour dusted the small kitchen, Ken Cantwell fanned his hand in front of his face in an effort to clear the air. The scent of baking chocolate chip cookies drifted through the Fairfax, Virginia townhouse, smelling of chocolate and fun.

In the nearby sitting room, Ken Cantwell’s nineteen year-old daughter, Zoey, had set up her tuba and a web camera and was recording herself blowing  Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”.

Ken stuck his head into the sitting room, “Zoey! Come try out a cookie!”

Zoey paused the camera, took her lips off the tuba, and cupped her hand to her ear. “Eh, whadya say?” She giggled, placing the big brass instrument on its bell and joining her father in the kitchen.

Ken wiped his floury hands on his purple Mister Mom apron before getting a Dr. Pepper from the refrigerator. He propped his elbows on the kitchen counter.

Zoey snatched a cookie off the wire rack and took a bite. “Mmm,” she said, closing her eyes with delight. When she opened them again, she said, “Mom’s recipe said to use two eggs, and you used a whole egg.”

“It’s not Mom’s recipe. I found it on Pinterest.”

“Yeah,” Zoey sighed, shifting her gaze to the tuba all the way over in the sitting room. A double B-flat bass tuba – the one Mom played in her all-girls band in high school. “I miss Mom,” she said in a quiet voice.

“I do too, Zeeks,” Ken said to her. He took a chug of his soda, nibbled on the heel of a cooling cookie, then washing it down with more Dr. Pepper.

Zoey got herself a drink, too, and looked at Mom’s tuba in the sitting room. It looks lonely. “I think I’m done recording for the day.” She said.

One afternoon, after band practice, Elizabeth drove home in her mother’s black 1949 Chevrolet sedan. She went to the bank, used an ATM machine, and then drove to Save-Rite to buy milk and coffee. When she put the bags in the backseat, she checked to see if her tuba was safely there.

It was.

The previous day, after tooting a tune or two with her band friend Isabelle, she had forgotten it and left it in the car. It was an old King tuba with simple valves, painted the shade of pink-lemonade. It was a girlish makeover of a big brassy horn. The tuba was old, had valves that stuck, but still played good.

When Elizabeth got home, she brought in the groceries and put the bags on the kitchen table. Then, she went and brought in her tuba. She set it up in her bedroom, pulled over a chair, and sat down with the tuba on her knee. She raised her tuba to her lips, blowing a series of low notes towards the bear on her bed.

♪OOM-PAH♪ ♪OOM-PAH-PAH♪ ♪BWOOM-PAH-PAH! ♪ ♪OOM-PAH! ♪

She shifted her tuba sideways, pointing the bell point-blank right in the bear’s face. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and blew into the lowest note she could muster on the instrument. When she blew, however, the third valve was sticking, which enunciated the lowest note in her favor.

♪BWUUUUUUMP! ♪

After fifteen seconds, Elizabeth took her lips off the mouthpiece and looked at the bear, which lay on its side – non-verbally telling her: ‘HELP! I’M FALLEN AND I CAN’T GET UP!”

“Whoops!” Elizabeth said, quickly righting the bear, placed him comfortably back in his spot on the bed, and pulled her chair and instrument back a little. “How’s this?”

The pink-and-white bear did not respond, but seemed alright after its little tumble.

Elizabeth counted, “1…and-a 2…and-a 3,” before blowing out Dixieland with a transition into a polka tune, her cheeks puffing up with every rich, warm note. Her little song was interrupted, however, when her mother called her from downstairs.

“Elizabeth!”

♪BOOP? ♪ was the sound that croaked from her old tuba.

Elizabeth stopped playing and looked at the clock-radio by her bed. “A whole thirty minutes?” She couldn’t believe it.

‘Elizabeth!” her mother called again.

Quickly, Elizabeth set down her tuba by the bed and descended down to the kitchen. Her mother was at the kitchen sink rinsing out her coffee mug. “You left the milk out again,” she said without looking up.

Elizabeth saw the milk jug peeking out of a white plastic Save-Rite bag on the kitchen table. “Whoops,” she said, “sorry, Mom.” She brought down one of her mother’s old Disney coffee mugs and felt the milk jug with the back of her hand. Finding it a little bit chilled, she poured half-a-cup of milk into the mug and filled it to the brim with steaming hot coffee. She dutifully put the milk jug in the fridge, then sat at the table with her mug and sipped. It’s decaffeinated. Otherwise her mother would be bouncing around the house until Easter.”

Elizabeth’s bedroom was the smallest, most personal room in the house – girlish, and frothy as a ballerina’s tutu. Walls, ceiling and everything else except a bureau and a writing desk, were painted pink, blue, or white. The white-and-pink bed, piled with blue pillows, was dominated by a big pink-and-white Teddy bear – a shooting-gallery prize that Bobby had won at the state fair.            

Elizabeth came into her room wearing a B.U. sweatshirt and faded jeans, her long auburn hair gathered in a ponytail at the back of her neck. She sat down on the foot of the bed and hefted a big, school-rented Yamaha F tuba, giving a sideways look to the bear, who took up most of the bedspread. With a practiced breath, Elizabeth raised the tuba to her lips and blew.

♪BWUUURRRRMP! ♪

She held the note for as long as she could, closing her eyes while she played. After a half a minute, she switched tactics and began buzzing her lips against the mouthpiece while pushing on the valve keys.

♪BWAT♪ ♪BWOMP♪ BWOOT♪ ♪DOOT♪ TOOT♪ BWAT♪ BWARP! ♪

For a finisher, she took up one big breath, blowing as hard as she could, reaching a low bassy climax.

♪BWWOOOOOOMP!! ! ♪

Elizabeth took her lips off the mouthpiece and turned to the bear, sitting stock-still on her bed, and looked into its dark, beady eyes.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, “Don’t you like my tuba playing?”

The big pink-and-white bear’s expression was permanent. It couldn’t show any emotion but could take in the loud, honking sound waves through the little holes in its ears. He couldn’t see his reflection in Elizabeth’s tuba, but she could see a little pinhole silhouette of herself braced against the big brass instrument.  

“Every day I’m getting better at the tuba,” Elizabeth said, putting down the instrument for a moment, “but every day YOU stay the same.” She frowned.  “Like my music teacher told me, ‘tuba playing takes GUTS!’”

If the bear could listen and respond back, it would say that deep down in every cotton fiber of its being, told her that it didn’t have GUTS.

Just STUFFING.

“I look like an old woman,” Catherine mumbles, then she relaxed her shoulders and smiles at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was twisted into a soft bun, more white than gray, she noted.

“But then, I am an old woman,” she admitted softly.

Midmorning, over her second cup of coffee, Catherine saw a shiny brass trumpet hanging by a red cord in her living room. Setting her coffee down, Catherine picked up the trumped and holds it, looking into the mouthpiece as if something special had been left behind. When she did put her lips to the mouthpiece and blew, no sound came out. She blew harder and harder, puffing out her cheeks and getting al red into the face.

“This is going to be tough,” she thought.

But the sixty-three year-old grandmother kept at it. After a few more minutes, she got the trumpet to play a note – a clear one.

“Ppprraapt!” went the trumpet.

Catherine’s heart skipped a beat when she heard it. Excited and giddy like a schoolgirl, she played some more.

“Ppprrraaarrrpppt! PRARPT! PRARP!”

“It’ll take some time,” Catherine said, putting down her trumpet for a moment. “I’m not going to become a trumpeter in a day, that’s for sure. But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I’m going to learn how to blow this horn even if it takes me all my retirement years.”