By Eleanor Kazdan, December 10, 2020 — Starting in my thirties I had two distant dreams; one was to learn to play the cello. I had briefly played the cello in junior high in a classroom situation but never had private lessons nor advanced beyond a very basic level. When I started high school, I had to choose between continuing music and learning German. I chose the latter and sadly gave up the cello. I always regretted it, but I continued private piano and singing lessons.
The other dream was to learn Spanish. I was talented at foreign languages and excelled at French and German in school in Canada. When I moved to the USA in the ’80s I realized that Spanish was really the second language and it was an exciting thought to learn another one.
First — my cello journey. In my fifties when my children were grown and I scaled down my work to part-time, my old dream of learning the cello popped up. One day on a whim, I stopped into a tin music school in our town and asked if they had a cello teacher. They did indeed, I was told. So, I started lessons with a retired high school music teacher.
It turned out he was a violinist, not a cellist, and I think that he saw me as an older person that wanted to dabble in a new hobby. I, on the other hand, was taking it very seriously. In a way, I wanted to recreate my childhood when I practiced the piano every day, so I whizzed through the beginning Suzuki cello books. I think he was astounded. I realized that I should get another teacher who was actually a cellist but before I had a chance to act on this, my teacher called me one day. “You have to get another teacher,” he said, “I can’t do you justice.” He realized that I was really going to learn to play at my advanced age and he was not up to the task, being a violinist. So, I started my real cello career. I moved to Center City and studied with a local professional cellist. (It sounds like the reason I moved was for the cello, but it wasn’t. I just happened to move to Center City). And I devoted myself to practicing about an hour a day. I became proficient enough to play in an amateur orchestra as well as in various chamber music groups. The cello became a big part of my life and identity.
Now, for Spanish. I took several beginner classes over the years but really didn’t learn much. After we began to go to Mexico every year, I studied for a few weeks at a school in Oaxaca, but you can’t learn a lot in a few weeks. I hired a succession of private teachers. The first one, Carmen, seemed to know nothing about teaching although she was a Latina from Peru. In the first lesson, she taught me the names of exotic Peruvian birds and told me it wasn’t necessary to learn grammar; one just had to speak. I told her I needed to learn the words for table and chair. She didn’t last long. The second one was a retired high school Spanish teacher. He was more promising but after a few lessons he went to the Dominican Republic and I never heard from him again. In Mexico, I used what Iittle Spanish I knew, sprinkling it with made-up words from French. One year after returning from Mexico I was fed up with my lack of proficiency.
I enrolled at the Spanish Language School in Philadelphia for private lessons. My teacher Elizabeth taught me all the basics of grammar for 3 months and for that I am grateful. However, when I wanted to do more conversation, she didn’t seem to know how. “What do you want to talk about?” she would ask me. I finally was able to break through my impasse when I started taking Spanish Grammar and Conversation at Ollie which is the Seniors program at Temple University. The teachers were all native speakers from Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina. The classes were once a week. We spoke only Spanish and after class, I would speak Spanish to my newly made friends over coffee. We texted only in Spanish. I became fluent enough to have real conversations with people.
So, although I’m not perfect in either cello or Spanish, I have really surprised myself with how far I’ve come in both. I have achieved my goals now perhaps I need a new dream.