by Dorothy Esvlin

Dorothy Esvlin is a resident of The Fountains at Millbrook retirement community. A published author and former teacher of English at Westchester Community College, she writes in this wonderful article a deeply personal account of the IMH’s Outreach Program at The Fountains and the effect it has had on her and her fellow residents (at the Fountains, the program is known as “Music with the Muirs” as it is run by our directors Peter and Judith Muir).

Every other Saturday “Music with the Muirs” is announced on the bulletin board of our assisted living facility. But the program should be called “Magic with the Muirs.” I’ll tell you why.

Saturdays the aides seat us in a circle in the living room and we assume our listening positions: some sleep in their chairs; some stared through a wall of deafness; some tapped their feet earnestly. Peter Muir (all I could see were his dark curls and tortoise shell rimmed glasses) sat on the piano stool and waited for us.

Suddenly he straightened up, lifted both hands and dived into the keyboard, raising geysers of storm. Thunder boomed in the bass, lightning flashed the treble. This was an impassioned duet of a man and an ancient spinet.

Peter Muir was playing Boogie Woogie, black music that was popular in New York in the forties. I was eighteen when I saw two black pianists dressed in fight black business suits with black shirts and black ties, racing each other as they played Boogie Woogie on two pianos. For all their speed, the music was cold. I wondered if their costumes were meant to indicate a scorn for the white collar-and-tie culture that was so often denied to blacks.

On the other hand, Peter wore a bright Hawaiian shirt with full sleeves like a smock. Did they just choose these clothes because they liked them or were they both a similar indictment of the establishment culture? The answers don’t matter. These musicians evoked wonder and wonder is a keystone of education.

The rhythms quieted, faded to neat little triplets:

Long/short-short … Long/short-short … waltzing us back to the safe and infinite possibilities, of our youth. “Tea for two.. .and two for tea…” Ruffled aprons and leisurely morning sunlight … “Can’t you see how happy we will be…?” Long ago . . .long ago… listening drove all pain and wrinkled time away.

But my nostalgia vanished when two women and a lad appeared, reaching out their hands to do “good”. I hate do–gooders. I shot them my coldest stare. I’m fine just fine, thank you. Nobody’s business that I can’t walk w/o a wheelchair or eat without making a mess.

I looked across the room to Rebecca Thorne. Wealth and wit had made the Thornes leaders here for twenty years. Becca continued the leadership after Dwight died until she lost her hearing. Then she locked herself in her cottage and wouldn’t let anybody in. Her family put her in Assisted Living to keep her alive. I didn’t see why they bothered. She was miserable, never spoke, never smiled, only pecked at her food and slept.

As Peter played “Why Do I Love You?” the lad approached Becca, extending his arms. She won’t respond, I thought.

You don’t need any helpers. You can stand on your own. But wait, what do I see?! Rebecca Thorne, who hadn’t uttered a sentence in years, was not only smiling, but was holding the lad’s proffered hands and SINGING!

Everyone was singing. “Why do I love you? Why do you love me?” Everyone remembered the words — even those who forgot where they lived or whether they had had their dinner. “Why should there be two… happy as we?” The lyrics floated over the singers’ heads like comic book dialogue balloons.

I don’t know what happened next. Now the lad was standing in front of me. “Lad” is an old fashioned word for that time when a boy prepares to become a man. Perhaps the trouble today is boys try to become men too quickly. This lad was not in a rush. He was waiting for me, quietly, hands extended. My hands, of their own accord, reached out to his. He was singing. Everybody was singing. “Why do I love you? Why do you love me?”

Something came over me. Was it the charm of those one syllable words? The simple, “happily ever after”? Peter’s light touch on the piano keys? The fact that the lyricist had written, “happy as we” instead of “happy as me and her” as too many say today? It was none of the above. Those are an English teacher’s reasons. I’ve retired from teaching. It was time to just be.

The lad was standing in front of me. I took his proffered hands, returned his smile, sang his song, and did not feel I had lost any dignity . . . may even have gained some. People sometimes need help. To change may be stronger than to resist. That was the end of my first meeting with the Muirs.

Next session belonged to Judy, Mrs. Peter Muir. It was obvious from their speech that both Muirs are British. But Peter sounds more like Crocodile Dundee than Tony Blair; Judy is 100% jolly Londoner. We listened to Peter; he was all audio. Judy was the video; the picture.

She prances around like the spirit of spring- blossom colored T-shirts and the cropped sunny hair of an Easter chick. She puts her face close to the singers, sharing songs like ice cream cones. She dances with both men and women, hugging her partners. We love it best when she dances with Louis, a 97 year old boy. He grins as we all applaud his shimmy. Then Louis dances with his wife, swinging her arms because she’s wheelchair bound. Thus the hour goes, syncopated by Judy’s hips and laughing eyes.

The following week they bring another attraction. A small girl who sings songs like “I’m gonna wash that man right outta my hair.” But she’s not an ordinary little girl. She’s eleven, small for her age, born with Cerebral Palsy. All of us doomed creatures had to re evaluate our personal plights considering the long dim trail that lay before this child. She

has become a regular guest at our music hours. She’s learned to stand without holding her walker. Maybe her sheer grit will defy the prognosis. It’s good for us to think of other people’s problems.

For Mother’s Day Peter sang “My Yiddisha Mamma” making it much more than a song. He sang it over and over again, slowly, tenderly, with all the love he must have had for his own mother. Then he said: “I called my Yiddisha Mamma in England today. This is her seventy-third birthday.” And he sang the song again, sharing his memory with us all.

I’m trying to explain what makes these hours with the Muirs so magical. I think it’s a complete blending of their love of music and their desire to heal other people with this love. They do it by their understanding our problems. They win our confidence by exposing their own passions: the swing of Judy’s hips and the invitation in her eyes. The pounding of Peter’s hands on the piano and his warm tenor.

Peter played and sang a song that none of us had ever heard:

“I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, Please come play with me And sing my song

Cause sometimes the smell is pretty strong.

He sang it over and over. Then he asked us to sing along with him. He always sings his songs over and over. He seems to think it takes three times to really hear a song. Maybe it does. “This is an old American folk song” he said.

“No, it’s not.” I said.

“It is,” he said. “Listen. Everybody’s singing it.”

“That’s because it’s everybody’s song, “I said.

Everybody laughed. It was true. We all marched out humming, proud as those lonely petunias stuck in their own private onion patches.