My violin was stolen from my house just before Thanksgiving.
I can’t get through a day without thinking about it.
Like many people, I’ve lived through burglaries before and had many valuable and sentimental things taken.
But no theft has hit me harder than the loss of my violin.
Picture my daughter Emilie at the piano accompanying me playing Christmas carols. Or my son Jesse, a little boy then, playing a violin duet with his mama.
My violin was like any tool that helps define a person.
Maybe yours is the hammer you used to build your house. Or the iron skillet that fried up all those pancakes your children ate on Saturdays when they were growing up. Maybe it’s a wood-carving knife, a favorite paintbrush, a special pen.
The people who might best understand what I feel are fellow musicians who also hold their instruments. The ones who hug their cellos, kiss their clarinets and cradle their guitars.
In my mind, I can feel the smooth neck of my violin as my fingers slide across the strings and fingerboard. I hear the resonant tones from the D string. I see the beautiful one-piece maple back.
I hoped to use my violin to teach my granddaughters to play.
The folks at Seattle’s Rafael Carrabba, arguably the finest violin shop in the state, say they get wind of a violin theft only once or twice a year, if that often.
I wasn’t any different than any kid in the Edmonds School District when I started playing violin in fifth grade. There was a big push in the late 1960s to get children studying strings.
My folks got me a student instrument, a factory-made fiddle that I beat up as I squeaked and flailed, trying to learn this most complicated of instruments.
At some point, my parents realized I was serious. A woman in Edmonds was selling a German-made violin, a Heberlein, built around 1910. Encouraged by my teacher, they bought it.
In my senior year at Mountlake Terrace High School, our director Rick Asher kept the orchestra challenged. We worked with the composer Alan Hovhaness and our quartet was coached one-on-one by the Philadelphia String Quartet. It was thrilling.
Beginner violin students came to my house for lessons and I helped out in the school district’s summer music school.
I also played in the Cascade Symphony Orchestra that year and was chosen to play with the Seattle Symphony when it performed its (then annual) concert in what is now the Edmonds Center for the Arts.
Listen sometime to the first movement of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin, viola and orchestra.
My lifelong friend Lori Green and I finished off our senior year of high school with a performance of that amazing piece, coached by Asher and Roberta McBride, leader of Cascade Symphony’s viola section.
I can hear the cadenza as I write this.
At Western Washington University I joined the orchestra and kept playing even after declaring a journalism major.
As a young mom, I found a home with the Skagit Symphony. The famous pianist and comedian Victor Borge even performed with us one year.
I played my violin in church and in pit orchestras for community theater.
I played for weddings and funerals.
My music was my gift; my violin was my partner.
The final request from a friend’s dying husband was to hear me play some fiddle tunes in his hospital room.
I’ll never forget that.
And I hold dear the memory of playing my violin at my wedding while my new husband Jon sang.
I could not have touched lives, brought joy, helped open up the world of music to children or encouraged my own kids to love music without that violin.
It was not a possession; it was part of me.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.
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First Person welcomes commentaries about the lives of Snohomish and Island county residents. Submit columns for consideration to Jon Bauer, Herald editorial page editor at jbauer@heraldnet.com.
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