May Malen´s Diary. Chapter 5

Iam in our garden with Mum, seven monts after my birth. I remember how sweet and lovelly she was, how quiet and serene and how firm, well organized and always pushing ahead the possible and the iposible. She made a folder for me to keep into it all the letters tat Abuelo used to write to me. Abuelo was crazy for music and often used to send to me the most beautiful sonata ever written, Claire the Lune: Beethoven “Moonlight“ Sonata op 27 # 2 Mov 1,2 Valentina Lisitsa. Other times, as he wanted me to be called Elisa, used to send the best adagio of Beethoven: Für Elisen, which I used to listen trough this link:  http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=beethoven+f%C3%BCr+Elisen&aq=f , played by Ivo Pogorelich. He had so much CD’s, that I learned music with him. Sat on her lap, in complete silence, we not only heard Pogorelich on the piano, but also read the partita or musical score. My parents also loved all sort of music, from baroque to

modern music and contemporaneous music. Most of all, as British people that they are, they heard Edward Elgar, the British composer: Sir Edward William Elgar, (2 de June, 1857 – 23rd February, 1934) was a Britannic composer, born at Broad heath, Worcestershire. The loved the traditional composition played every Saturday at the British Summer or Promenades concert, as we walked when the musician used to play:   http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Edward+Elgae+Pomp+and+circuntances&aq=  I learned music with him and, afterwards, at a school of music in Cambridge. I loved piano, as my cousin Tomas van Emden also does. He is 10 years older than me, and has become to be an excellent musician, a good piano player as well as a good analyst. All we three have organized a little trio to perform at home and in public, as my cousin Maira Rose has learned to play recorder. Her best music was and is Wolfang Amadeus Mozart’s Quartets for flute, violin and violoncello KV 285. A friend of her used to be the cords for the score and we played like this:  http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Wolfgang+Amadeus+Mozart+Quartett+D-dur+KV+285b and looked this way:  for the delight of our parents and grandparents, especially Abuelo.

I do not really know how I went into music. I know that Tomas was invited, invited not pushed to, to learn to play piano. It seems to me that it goes with the family! Aunt Paula was a skilled recorder playing ever since her seven years of age, same as Mum, until their lives changed into scientific studies. I know, as told by them, that every night they entertained Abuelo and Granny with concerts and theatrical plays. My grandparents from Mum´s side used to encouraged Mum and Aunt to perform both music and plays by Shakespeare. Even Mum has her name on a plaque at the Arts Theater of Cambridge, after having won a prize for her interpretation of the witches of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. Even Mum was every Xmas playing a role in the pantomime hat tem rehearsed two months in advanced to delight the audience, parents and family, with their performing of plays, every 23d of December in the morning. Mum used to play one of the seven dwarfs, Smiley, and used to have people on their feet acclaiming her. Even more in the Shakespeare competition that she won twice. The second time, she was acclaimed with no reward, as, according to rules, you cannot win two times as such behavior did not encourage  the abilities of other children, whom also deserved to win. We live in a way of competition and Mum understood it, learning as an adult, that her duty was to be friendly, to develop solidarity and love to everyone. That is why she is calm and serene, except when tantrums fell over her if something is not done as she thinks it should be. And tantrums, she used to have a lot, especially when she was five years of age. Later in life, Mum changed and became the sweeter person amongst all of her friend and family. She used to be an adventurer, especially when she spent a whole month in Cairu Island in San Salvador of Bahia, in Brazil, teaching people how to save species in extinction. She  organized plays so that adults and little ones, knew how to take care of the 100 newly trees, to make violins with the wood of those trees, Pau-Brazil.

Mum has been a determined person. When Abuelo was not in good health, she took care of him his affaires, money and investments. Same as she has done for me. And will carry on doing for others, always supported by Dad, who loves her up to the final hair of his body!

However, that is another story. She was lazy at five, afterwards the best student of her classes and in the three Universities where she had studied, supported in every sense by Abuelo.

Diary, I’ll carry one some other time…