Pathways - Jeri Taylor [43]
“Where did I come from?” Harry asked, and was curious about the small ripple of laughter that trickled around the room.
“From here,” his mother said without embarrassment, patting her stomach. “I carried you inside me, safe and protected for nine months.”
“I remember that,” the boy said, and was surprised by an even greater swell of laughter.
But his mother seemed to take him seriously. “What do you remember?” she asked evenly.
“Warm . . . and dark . . . floating . . . it felt good. But coming out was hard.”
His mother and father exchanged a bemused glance, but made no utterance of contradiction. If Harry said he remembered being in the womb, they accepted it.
They accepted everything about him, always. Harry, who could remember all of his childhood as clearly as he remembered the last hour, had no recollection of ever being censured, admonished, or denied. His childhood was a womb of another kind, sheltering him from sorrow and affliction, from obstacles and misfortunes. He was loved, cosseted, rewarded, supported, and approved, and though some under such tolerant handling might have become self-indulgent monsters, he grew instead into a child known for his sweetness and patience.
He would sit for hours with his father, watching as John Kim painted elaborate, delicate designs on porcelain with a tiny brush, colorful flowers with trailing vines that wound around and around until the plate or vase was completely filled with color. It was one of several ancient arts that John practiced, and their home was filled with beautiful artifacts—intricate carvings in jade, lustrous sculptures in bronze, exquisite painted porcelain. Each piece was produced slowly, with infinite patience, with thorough appreciation of the process involved in creating a work of art. It was work not to be rushed, and Harry, sitting quietly hour after hour, watching, seemed to have inherited his father’s quiet forbearance.
His mother started to teach him the fingerings of the P’i P’a when he was three and was amazed that he already knew them. He had watched her play, studying her fingers as she moved them over the strings and learning the correct positions without even realizing it. He played it as easily as he breathed. His mother, astonished, immediately envisioned him as a concert artist on the ancient instrument, which had enjoyed a resurgence in popularity during the twenty-fourth century.
As it turned out, it would not be a stringed instrument that captured Harry’s imagination, but a reed, which he had first encountered in the form of a clarinet when he was seven. He had eyed the slender tubelike apparatus in the music school to which his mother took him and, with his teacher’s permission, had picked it up and attempted to produce a sound.
Nothing came out. Surprised, for he had never picked up a musical instrument he couldn’t play almost immediately, he tried again. This time there was a rush of air and an ungainly squeak that didn’t sound musical at all, but more like the squeal Mousie had made once when he had inadvertently stepped on her tail.
Harry was intrigued. This simple-looking device was a challenge, something he didn’t often encounter, and he determined to master it. He announced this to his mother in a firm voice, and though she was disappointed in his choice, she didn’t question him. If Harry wanted to play the clarinet, he had her support.
And so his parents endured months of squawking, squeaking efforts to produce a mellifluous sound. Mousie had no tolerance for the learning period; whenever Harry withdrew his clarinet and began to puff into it, Mousie would scurry to the opposite end of the house and hide, all but clamping her paws over her ears to keep out the strident sound.
But gradually, the persistence paid off, and within a year Harry was playing a repertory that included Mozart and Weber. By the time he was ten, he was transporting regularly to New York, where he played in the Juilliard youth symphony, while studying music theory, composition, and orchestration. He was considered a prodigy,