Now Distant Drums

Blame it on Buddy Rich. The Muppets, too. They’re responsible for this whole thing with Dad and the drums. Specifically, it was when the great jazz drummer Buddy Rich appeared on the Muppets show in 1981 and had a drumming duel with Animal. Spoiler alert! Buddy won.

Dad would have been around ten at the time, but supposedly he had some kind of Holy Roller moment when watching it. You know, like, this is my destiny kind of thing. Obviously, this is all way before I exist so I got this all second hand. I did watch the now famous clip on YouTube. I did not have a Holy Roller moment. I’m not even sure I count drumming as music, though you can’t say that in front of a guy who drums or he’ll do some drumming on you.

My thing is singing, which Mom taught me at an early age. She and I are both in the church choir, and Mom still sings with the local orchestra chorus on occasions where the performance demands one, like Handel’s Messiah or the Ode to Joy movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. After doing one of those, she is so serene and high, it’s like she is floating. An angel come to visit.

When I was younger, I dreamed of being an opera singer, but I’ve scaled that back. I have the talent and the dedication, but now, at seventeen, having all that Nature intends to give, I just don’t have the goods. Don’t have the pipes, as they used to say. Can’t ring the rafters. Sure, I can make everyone teary with my Silent Night at the Christmas Eve service, but I can never be a Carmen or Madama Butterfly. So, my dream now is to be music teacher and choir director for a high school or small college.

But, back to Dad and the drums. Even before that Muppets episode was over, he was demanding that his parents buy him some drums. But Grams and Gramps were sensible parents, and no sensible parent wanting to stay sane will buy a kid drums. But he somehow procured some drumsticks and, when no one was around, used them on anything that would make an unholy racket. Pots, pans, waste baskets, garbage cans, wash pails, the garage door, and so on.

They finally relented when he turned sixteen, but with strict limitations. He could only play the drums in the basement for a specified time within certain hours, rationing the drumming time the way other parents rationed TV time.

He moved out after finishing high school and then could play the drums whenever he wanted. He was in heaven. Then he got into a band. Then he was in heaven’s penthouse suite. But the stay there was short. The band went nowhere and he had to get a job like everybody else. But he still kept drumming in his spare time.

So how did Dad the wild drummer end up with Mom the gentle singer? That’s where it gets fuzzy. Mysterious even. It’s not like I never asked, I just never got a straight answer, and the answers I got came with a look, you know, that look that says Keep Out. But even after Dad married the gentle singer and fathered a child, he still played the drums faithfully, as if he were a reservist in some volunteer drum corps who might be called up for duty at any time.

My earliest memories as a child were the sound of those drums rattling the whole house. Windows humming. Cups clinking in the cupboard. Double bass drums creating our own private little earthquake.

When I was still little, I thought it very cool to have a wild guy Dad, beating his rebel drums instead of doing normal boring grownup stuff. I was so lucky. And I would do these crazy kid dances trying to keep up with the beat. He found those hilarious and so did I. We laughed a lot back then. It was a golden time.

The drumming became less cool when I got into middle school. That’s when the Great Punisher entered my life, the one known as Homework. The noise made it difficult to concentrate. But it was still manageable, as I was used to it and middle school homework was not overly taxing. But then came high school, and the Great Punisher became more demanding, almost to the point of cruelty, as I was in advanced placement. At that point, the drumming was no longer just distracting, it was downright annoying, upsetting. Dad the drummer was no longer my hero, but my nemesis.

I remember this one cold winter night. I was struggling with a trig assignment. The drums were pounding and so was my head. I walked over to the window and opened it for a breath of fresh, crisp air. I looked at the snow on the ground, glowing blue in the starlight. The sky was clear and full of stars. And I remember what I said while looking up at them. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, please take Dad’s drums away very far.

Once, at the dinner table, I mentioned how the noise was affecting my ability to properly do my homework, but I got no response. Not from either of them. I found that curious. Normally, parents are trying to steer kids away from distraction and encouraging them to focus on their homework. And there I was complaining about distraction so that I could focus on my homework and they said nothing. Weird. Very weird.

One day at school I saw one of the maintenance guys out with one of those weed-whacking things, trimming around the flagpole. And he wore hearing protectors, professional ones. They looked like big plastic ear muffs. I tracked him down at some point and asked him about it. He showed it to me, told me the decibel rating, and I wrote down the brand name. Later on, I got myself a set.

I was so stoked to find that they worked perfectly, drowning out the drumming while I did my homework. I was happy. But I couldn’t leave it there. One day, for reasons I don’t remember, I decided to make a statement. I put the hearing protectors around my neck before showing up at the dinner table. Of course, I was asked about it. I pretended to be absent-minded. I explained why I needed them to do homework and said I just forgot to take them off. I apologized.

They said nothing. Nothing! But I thought I saw just the barest, teensiest trace of a smile on Mom’s face, as if she approved of my little performance. I partly understood the silence. They were old school on one point—never in front the child. Never argue, never disagree. Never betray a hint of trouble. Always show a unified front. It’s for the good of the child.

Later that night I privately asked Mom about Dad’s drumming, what she thought. And as the words came out of my mouth, I realized how bizarre it was that I was asking her this for the very first time after all these years. Maybe I just assumed she approved. But that bare trace of a smile at my impudence, it made me have to ask. She gave a long sigh. It is what it is, she said, then turned away.

I was thunderstruck. All that time, all those years, we were partners in suffering, yet never spoke of it. So, I began an experiment. Started a journal. Every day I subtly noted their behavior toward each other. Their body language, their facial expressions, the tone in their voices. Then I rated perceived tension between them on a scale of one to five. Then later, after the drumming started, I rated the intensity and duration of his drumming on a scale of one to five.

After a couple of months, I took the data and turned it into a chart. Again, I was astonished. The correlation was nearly perfect. I had been living in a war zone and been utterly oblivious to it. After that, I listened to the drums with a new perspective, that of an analyst. And then I finally understood what I was hearing—an angry man screaming. Or maybe crying. Or maybe both. And then I was crying. How could I not have seen? Physically, I am a woman in full, but I am still a child in terms of life experience, and all children are nearsighted.

Sometime after this, I came to the dinner table and Dad wasn’t there. I asked if he was working overtime. Mom sighed. Dad is taking a break, she said. Taking a break? I didn’t understand. She found it difficult to explain. He is staying in a motel for a while, she said. For how long, I asked. I didn’t get a clear answer.

After that, every day I came home from school, the first thing I did was to look in the basement to see if the drum set was still there. Its presence told me that Dad’s absence was temporary, that he would return. Something needs to be worked out, I reasoned, and once that happens, things will return to normal. It’s just a break, like she said.

Then one day when I looked, the drums were gone. Dad had rented a small house, I was told. Mom still portrayed it as if it were a temporary thing, but with the drums gone, I knew better. There would be no return to normal. There would be no return.

The house is quiet in the evening now. Too quiet. I miss the noise. On a recent, cold winter night, I looked up at the clear sky and realized that my ill-phrased wish upon a star had been granted. I no longer hear those now distant drums, except in my dreams.