A Classic

When I was 12 my mother took me every week to the therapist. At some point the therapist began interviewing her. He would bring her into his office while I waited in the waiting room. This always made her furious. Then on the way home she would drive like a maniac blaring WQXR, New York's classical music station, to drown me out every time I tried to speak. This went on for weeks.

Some years later my parents bought a weekend getaway. My mother would get up at 5 AM and blare the classical music from the kitchen to signal everyone to get up. Basically my mother used classical music as a weapon.

"It's amazing that you still like classical music," my husband says. It just proves how much I love it. But I never blare it. I play it so quietly you have to embrace silence to hear it.