There was a time when stepping into the Powers household meant stepping into the universe of music. Something was always playing: Brahms, Brubeck, Miles, Clapton, Phish, Jimmi, Coltrane, Haydn, Beethoven, Pat Metheny, Mozart, Lady Day. If the CD player was off, it usually was because Dean and Kevin were jamming on guitar together, or one of them, or the other.
Our CD collection grew to massive proportions along with the boys' developing sophistication and skills. Kevin's letter of application to the Berklee College of Music, which he wrote in 2002 at age 17, is a verbal tone-poem of his passion and his deep connection: "As a musician, one of the most profound events I experienced was getting my first Pat Metheny CD . . . From the first chord of the first song, something unexplainable made me listen more intently than I ever dreamed I would to a jazz recording . . . His solo was begun in a manner that made him sound like he was in my room talking to me, telling me all the great things the guitar could offer . . . "
Kevin's guitar playing swelled and deepened after that moment. His blossoming performances continued on for three years, on college stages, at music clubs, and in noisy beer joints where he and his combos played their hearts out to men sitting on barstools, their backs turned, drinking beer and watching the game on TV, their butt-cleavage on display.
And then, in our house, on July 15, 2005, the music died.
The CD player went off after that day and stayed off. As did the car radio. The CD collection disappeared into cardboard boxes and storage. We stopped going to concerts. For months, Honoree and I would not remain in a restaurant we had entered if a live band was performing. Dean put aside his guitar. In a constantly recurring dream I had, and have, Kevin is still with us, his age frozen at around 12; but he has stopped playing his guitar and refuses to touch it again.
Fifteen years passed. Dean reconnected with music, though not with playing. Honoree and I reached the stage of being able to tolerate music in the background.
Three days ago, two packages awaited us at the post office: Two Alexa consoles. Dean had bought them--one for himself in his lower-floor digs, the other for us upstairs.
We watched him as he placed ours near my favorite easy chair and connected the wires.
He nodded at me.
From someplace inside myself that I didn't know still existed, I commanded: "Alexa! Mozart!"
And the Twenty-third Piano Concerto in A major, Koechel 488, came swirling out of 1786 and into our lives again.
There are no words available to describe the transport of listening to a sublime musical composition that you have not heard in fifteen years. I was hypnotized. My right hand decided, on its own, to trace the patterns of the notes as they cascaded into the room — notes that had enchanted me decades ago; then grown a little stale with repetition; then vanished; and now had returned, fresh and wondrous and delicious as a new world rising.
This is the second time that Dean has reconnected us with luminous, discarded artifacts of our old life. The first happened three years ago, when Honoree and I returned home from the Albany airport at night, the end of a brief speaking tour in Texas and South Carolina, and saw from the road winding up to our house the simple blue lights of a Christmas tree.
Dean, you have brought light and music back into our lives. These are precious gifts. Thank you for them. And though you will never betray a brotherly secret, please thank Kevin for us. I have the sneaking suspicion that he was in on this.
Note: Ron Powers is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and the author of No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America. Both of Ron’s sons, Kevin and Dean, have struggled with schizophrenia. Kevin died as a result of his illness.
Kevin soloing at a Berklee College (Boston) concert.