Carnegie Hall

Strapped to my back, gleaming like a shiny blue car, is the hard-shell case for my cello and I am lugging it up the steep hill in Lubec, Maine, the Eastern most town in the United States and just across the bay I can see Campobello Island but instead of thinking of Roosevelt, I chat with David who is falling a bit behind me because, though he is carrying nothing, he is tired and I’m concerned because his normal pace is faster than mine and we need to stop to rest because he is weary and yet I must push on and we keep going together ‘til we reach a tranquil resting place overlooking a cove and I am near “Carnegie Hall,” the garage that is a practice place for the concert tonight which I’m thinking about with both pleasure and anxiety and the rehearsal of our Beethoven trio goes well so I am ready and David comes to the concert but is still not himself and when we pack our car to drive back to Boston the next day I know that the first stop will be Mass General Hospital’s cardiology department. ❏

Eleanor Rubin is an artist and author of Eleanor Rubin: Dreams of Repair,with foreword by Howard Zinn.