Sunday, June 27, 1999

Home for the summer. I work the register now, right-handed, with the splint in my bag for night. Danny does the stocking, under protest. Umma watches my hands all day without looking like she's watching. When a customer drops change on the counter she picks it up before I can, every time.

This afternoon, in the slow hour, I went back to Practice Room B and sat on the stool under the light bulb and opened the case. Just opened it. The violin was lying there in the blue velvet the way it does, and the rosin, and the extra strings, and the little cloth. I didn't take it out. I looked at it the way you look at someone sleeping in a hospital. Then I closed it and latched both latches and went back to the register.

Practiced: 0. Allowed: 0.

Monday, June 14, 1999

Day five with no violin. My left hand keeps doing things on its own. On the subway it fingers the Allemanda on my knee. In my sleep, Meredith says, it moves on the blanket. I sit on it.

Wednesday, June 9, 1999

Mr. Aronov made the appointment himself, with a hand doctor on the East Side who sees a lot of musicians. There are photographs in his waiting room of cellists and pianists, signed. I went alone. I didn't tell my parents until after, which I'm not proud of.

Tendinitis. The tendons that pull my fingers down, on the inside of my left forearm near the wrist, are inflamed. From overuse, the doctor said. From six hours a day, and no breaks, and, he said, watching me hold an imaginary violin in his office, from squeezing the neck with my thumb like I'm afraid someone is going to take it away from me.

The orders:

• No violin. None. At least four weeks.
• A splint at night, to keep the wrist straight.
• Ice, three times a day.
• Anti-inflammatory pills, on a schedule, with food.
• Physical therapy, twice a week, with a woman named Pat who has very strong thumbs.
• Then, if it's better, a little at a time. He'll tell me how little.

I asked him the only question. Will I be able to play? He said most people get completely better, if they actually rest. "The ones who don't get better," he said, "are the ones who don't rest." He looked at me for a long time when he said it. I think he has met me before, in other people.

When I got home Appa was there, because Mr. Aronov had called the apartment, which I didn't know he'd do. Appa asked what the doctor cost. I told him. Two hundred fifty dollars, and the physical therapy is eighty-five a visit, and our insurance, the kind small stores buy, pays for almost none of it. He took his wallet out of his back pocket and counted out the money for the doctor in twenties onto the kitchen table and slid it over to me, and didn't say anything. Then he went down to the store.

Practiced: 0. Allowed: 0.

Friday, May 14, 1999

Jury.

I played the Allemanda and the Sarabanda from the D minor Partita, and the first movement of the Mendelssohn, and a Rode caprice. The Bach was the best I've ever played it. In the Mendelssohn, going into the cadenza, the burning came, all at once, up my arm, and my fourth finger went slow, like it was half a second behind the rest of me. I didn't stop. You don't stop at a jury. I finished. I bowed. I walked out and went into the bathroom and ran cold water over my wrist for ten minutes.

The comment sheet: "Beautiful Sarabanda, very mature. Noticeable tension in the left hand, especially in the upper positions. Please address this with your teacher."

Mr. Aronov read it in his studio, and then he looked at me, and said, "How long?" And I told him. Since February. He wasn't angry at me. That was the worst part. He was angry at himself. He said, "Why didn't you tell me?" and I said, "Because then it's real." He said, "It is real already, Esther." He picked up the phone while I was still sitting there.

Practiced: 45 min warm-up + the jury. And then I put it away.

Thursday, April 15, 1999

It's worse. I'm writing it down because I'm not saying it out loud to anyone.

The ache used to come after five hours. Now it comes after one. A warm thread from my wrist up the inside of my forearm, and then a heaviness, like my hand is full of sand. I take Advil before I practice now, and ice after, with the peas, and I do the stretches Meredith showed me, and I practice anyway, because the jury is in four weeks, and because my parents are paying for this, and because every other person on this floor is practicing six hours today.

Meredith says go to the health center. I said I will. I didn't.

If I'm broken, what did they pay for?

Practiced: 5 hrs. It shouldn't have been. I know.

Friday, March 12, 1999

Nineteen.

Umma and Halmoni came in on the 7 train, which Halmoni hasn't done in years, with a strawberry cake from the Korean bakery on Union Street, and a thermos of miyeokguk, seaweed soup, which is what you eat on your birthday because it's what your mother ate after she had you. Halmoni made it at five this morning. We ate it in the dorm lounge out of paper cups. Meredith had two cups. (It's week twenty-eight, by the way, and she eats the kimchi now. She puts it on grilled cheese.)

After they left I iced my arm and didn't tell anyone why. It's been aching more. It's fine. It's the Mendelssohn. Everyone's arm hurts in March.

Practiced: 4 hrs 30 min

Tuesday, February 16, 1999

Seollal again. The store was closed, the one day. I took the 7 home after my afternoon class, still in time for the bowing, and did sebae to Halmoni and Appa and Umma, and ate my tteokguk, and became a year older, officially, in Korean.

Something I'm writing down so I remember the date: this morning, in the Allemanda, about an hour in, there was a hot little thread along the inside of my left wrist. Like a guitar string being tightened inside my arm. I stopped, and shook my hand out, and it went away, and I kept going.

Tonight at dinner I was rubbing my wrist without noticing, and Halmoni noticed. She took my hand and pressed her thumb into the middle of my forearm, hard, the way she does for Appa's back, and said, "Too much." I said I'm fine. She didn't let go of my hand for a long time.

Practiced: 3 hrs (half day, holiday)

Tuesday, January 19, 1999

Second semester. Mr. Aronov has given me the D minor Partita. Bach's second partita for solo violin: Allemanda, Corrente, Sarabanda, Giga, and then, at the end, the Ciaccona, the Chaconne, which is about fifteen minutes long and is the whole world and which every violinist who has ever lived has been afraid of. He says I'm not ready for the Chaconne. He says I will be next year. For now, the first four.

The Allemanda is like water. The Sarabanda is slow and in three and full of chords, and the chords are like leaning on someone. I love it already. I've been living in it.

He also made me promise to take a break every fifty minutes. I promised.

Practiced: 6 hrs (breaks: 1)

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