The Work of Being Taught by Children

And feed them on your dreams

Another memoir piece from the school of being a parent.

Next Time Won’t You Sing For Me
January 1998

Dear Mr. Bellucci,

My name is Maureen Keefer, I am fourteen years old and I live in New Haven. I am organizing a benefit concert for breast cancer which will be performed on May 3 at 7:30 in the Little Theater on Lincoln St., New Haven. All of the proceeds from this concert will go to benefit breast cancer research and treatment, except the money that I need to rent the theater. This is a basically teen organized event. I have the space rented and have contacted many of the performers already.

I have seen the Notre Dame chorus in performance and I know a few of it's members. I am very impressed with the sound that they produce and the energy that goes into their performances. I would like to invite the entire group, but the Little Theater's stage is just that, little. Taking this into consideration, I would love to have a small group, ten to twenty singers, from the chorus come and perform.

I would suggest that, if you want to do the concert, you should pick about twenty minutes worth of material. You can select your own, but please learn the song 'Seasons of Love' from Rent, I can get you the music.

If you would like to discuss the actual logistics or to respond (hopefully positively!) you can call me at 562-1438 after 4:30 p.m. or, if no one answers after about six rings, you can call 562-8405 and leave a message on the machine for Maureen. It would be extremely helpful to the planning of the concert if you could respond before March 1.

Thank you, and I hope to speak with you soon.

Sincerely,

Maureen Keefer

On May 3, 1998, totally bald and weak, I found myself front row center in New Haven’s Little Theater. Twenty-five gorgeous sixteen, seventeen and eighteen year old boys from Notre Dame High School’s A capella Singers walked onstage in black pants, white shirts and black ties to open the show with the traditional spiritual, Oh Happy Day. Family, friends and neighbors filled the theater. Lois, Eileen, Janet and Judith—members of my cancer support group— sat towards the back.

Accompanied on piano by our Bosnian neighbor whose family of musicians were refugees from war-torn Sarajevo—Maureen gracefully and calmly walked on stage, and proceeded to belt out Stephan Schwartz’s Oh Bless The Lord My Soul and James Homer’s My Heart Will Go On. Sixteen other teenagers performed that evening in a program of ensembles and solos. At one point Maureen called me on stage—her mastered poise in sharp contrast to my tripping entrance up the stairs—and presented me with a bouquet of purple tulips. All forty-two teenagers gathered on stage for the finale, Jonathon Larson’s Seasons of Love.

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred journeys to plan...

Minutes in a year. Just fourteen, Maureen responded to my illness by conceiving, organizing, advertising, directing, troubleshooting and performing in this concert which raised over $1,000 for the American Cancer Society.

Whenever or however that line from health to illness is crossed, we enter this realm of soul. Illness is both soul-shaking and soul-evoking, for the patient and for all others for whom the patient matters.

—Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, Close to the Bone: Life-Threatening Illness and the Search for Meaning

We are at heart hunters, gatherers. As a species, as carnivores, we subconsciously make adjustments in our bodies to keep our two eyes level. As binocular hunters, as gatherers, we need straight-on vision in order to survive. A shift in the left hip here, head remains aloft. A shift in the right clavicle there, eyes stay focused ahead. My responses to the harder situations in my life have been, I think, this sort of innate adjusting. All the adjusting to life with John, all the adjusting necessary so as not to terrify the children—to assure family and friends (and myself!) that I’m alright, that I’m going to live after all—has left me off balance, a little lame.

I realize now that Maureen was doing for me some of what I was doing for everyone around me—acting strong to protect me. She was also taking action in an arena comfortable to her, and this was an opportunity for her to gather her creative forces together in a wonderfully positive show of yearning; in a show of love and of her fragile, beautiful heart. She was protecting her own heart too, keeping her two eyes evenly in line, using her good binocular vision.