Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Abbey Hallberg Siegfried
Gifts and Gratitude: the story of a clock
When my grandparents retired, they sold their 1950’s suburban home and all of their possessions to purchase a mobile home in the hopes of spending their “golden years” travelling the U.S. As they sold off everything they owned, they decided to gift each of their children one item from their childhood home. My grandparents really didn’t have much to speak of in terms of possessions, save one heirloom. My grandfather had worked for years as a draftsman at the Commonwealth Edison Factory in Chicago and was allowed to take home the antique wall clock that graced the entrance lobby for many years when it stopped working. He brought it home and painstakingly restored the entire clock until it worked again. The clock was, of course, given to their first-born son, my Mom’s older brother, my Uncle. For my mother, my grandparents didn’t have much. My grandfather had another dream for his retirement that was in direct conflict with driving around the U.S. in a mobile home - he wanted to learn to play the organ. Not the church organ, mind you, but the late 70s/early 80s American “pop organ” - playing versions of “Beautiful Brown Eyes,” “Beautiful Dreamer” and various Elvis hits. My grandparents were huge bargain hunters and “garage sale-ers” and my grandfather found a used electronic organ at a garage sale! THIS was the “gift” he bestowed to my mother - a little Lowrey pop organ that sat in the corner of our house, gathering dust until the two-week period each summer my grandparents pulled their massive mobile home in front of our house to visit. He played the organ every day during their visits. Two dreams achieved - check! A happy daughter who felt like she had something to remember her childhood and home by? Not so much.
When I was seven years old, I am told, I started sitting down at that organ - picking out notes and attempting to teach myself to read music (with the Lowrey color-coded music left in the organ’s bench). I quickly found myself taking organ lessons with a graduate student in the University of Iowa’s Organ Department. By the time I was 10, I was winning competitions and playing at churches and short concerts. By the time I was 12, I was studying with one of the Professors in the organ department, playing for graduate seminars, sitting in when guest artists came from Italy and Germany, playing full concerts, church services, weddings, funerals. And so it all began. Way too young to even understand what I could do - or what it really even meant to make music, everyone around me saw me as gifted and as on a path. Don’t get me wrong - I loved the path and was happy (well, not always...) to practice and perform, and certainly was excited to be amongst people so much older than me doing such exciting things. As I got older, my path in music took me to different parts of Europe and the U.S., introduced me to people from all over the world, it also brought me to look deeper at the role music plays in communities. I started conducting choirs, directing youth musicals, teaching, and the organ became a vehicle for so much more. My path has taken me to such amazing communities - St. John’s, and now as a teacher/conductor/director to young people from every corner of the world at Phillips Academy.
Every time someone asks me how I came to be a musician and teacher, how I started playing the organ, I go back to the story of my Mom, her brother, her parents, and the clock. What I always think about is that the gift she didn’t want - that didn’t even feel like a gift - was the single most important object in my life. The gift her Dad gave to her became the catalyst for my life’s journey - a journey that has blessed me with so many people and places - St. John’s included! Is it sometimes the gifts we DON’T want - the times that are the HARDEST - that we need to be grateful for? Because ultimately, more than any achievement, more than any possession, more than any goal reached, it is the people we meet along the way, the experiences we gain as part of the journey, it is what we choose to do with those unlikely “gifts” and how we respond to those challenging times, that make us who we are.
My Uncle passed away many years ago and my Aunt decided this past year to sell their home. As she began selling various things, thinking about downsizing, what to give away, what to shed, she called my Mom. “I have your Dad’s clock,” she said. My Aunt and Mom decided that the clock should make a complete journey - and tomorrow, the Tuesday of Thanksgiving Week, the clock will arrive at our home in Andover. It will now be in our home - lovingly restored over half a century ago by my Grandfather - lovingly hung and admired in my Uncle’s home for decades. And when I look at it, I will be grateful. I will be grateful for those who came before me and who will come after. I will be grateful for gifts received and gifts not received. I will be grateful for the complexity of life and I will be forever grateful for the hundreds of people and experiences I have been blessed with because the clock didn’t come to me until now.