New Year, New Challenges

Towards the end of 2007, volunteering with MOC started to become routine. There was still joy in playing for patients, especially during Christmas season with the familiar carols. I still looked forward to playing each week and meeting each new face. But a part of me was starting to yawn, and more so with each coming week. I wanted to shake myself, step out of the comfort zone and reawaken the excitement I felt when I first started volunteering half a year ago. I wanted to breathe in all the tiny little things that were happening around me and learn something new each time.

God knows what I needed--after nearly a month of holiday festivities and inner yawning, He took me to new territory tonight.

I played for the first time at a children's residential home in downtown Manhattan. Unlike the teaching hospitals where I usually played, all the patients I met tonight have lived there for an extensive period of time, and for some, their whole lives. All night I did everything I've always done in a pediatric program, playing age-appropriate songs, tailoring volume and style to suit each room--but inside I was more frustrated than ever. All of the children I played for suffered from cerebral palsy, and none of them had normal speech capacity. Standing in the big rooms with two or three children propped up in heavy-duty wheelchairs who seemed to stare at more than one direction at a time, I felt like I have entered another world. An invisible wall existed between us, so thick and impenetrable that the melodies crowded about me, unable to spread their wings and fly to their intended recipients.

One particular boy was whimpering when we entered the room. His young roommates all sat in their wheelchairs, some sound asleep, others staring at a flickering TV screen that illuminated the spacious room they shared. He calmed down at some point when I played, fixing his eyes on the moving bow. But just as I gave myself a pat in the back for "comforting" him, he suddenly started wailing. The music stopped and the anguished crying filled the room. Tear drops rolled down his cheeks, some into his wide open mouth. Something in his crying grabbed me. The child cried not because he was denied what he wanted. No, the pain he suffered was much more profound than that. It was a mixture of loneliness and hopelessness, like a blind man who knows to expect the vastness of the world, but cannot see any of it.

At that moment I wanted to break down and cry with him. I wanted to hug him, squeeze him as hard as I possibly can. I wanted to strip away all the pain that is so evident but so intangible, weighing down on such a small body. I wanted to ask why, but I know I will not understand the answer, even if it was given to me.

I also wanted to throw away my violin and bow, which hung on either side of my body, powerless.

This is a new year, and with it comes new challenges. I pray for courage and strength to face them; but above all, I pray for love. Only love reaches the deepest pain and comforts it.