In Calvert Library-New Bay Books ongoing writing workshops, Dotty Holcomb Doherty's delight was experiencing sensory (and muscle) memory from auditory stimulus. Dotty is the author of New Bay Books-published Buoyant: What Held Us Up When Our Bodies Let Us Down — described by Tom Horton as “a quietly heroic tale of two women’s voyages through disease and dying, interwoven with voyages upon Chesapeake creeks.” Doherty, of Annapolis, is a former teacher and self-labeled "jock," in addition to being a “birder, wildlife photographer, writer, Quaker, poet, paddler, rower, gardener, knitter, Girl Scout leader and sunrise-watcher." Learn more at dottyholcombdoherty.com.
Her Delight, titled "My Violin," describes a rekindled relationship between a human and a musical instrument.
It’s been four decades, but I finally got my violin repaired. As I draw the rosined bow across the open strings to tune them, my ear remembers and can detect the variations in tone, my fingers recalling the delicacy needed in turning the pegs to make necessary adjustments. Flipping through old music, I search and find a piece easy enough to try. Ave Maria. My ear distinguishes out-of-tune from in-tune as I read the music and move my fingers up and down the strings, the bow pulling the music into the air. Vibrato. I remember! Scales. So familiar! I began playing in the third grade, and continued in orchestras and symphonies through high school, but in college, opted to concentrate on sports. Today, I feel I have opened a part of me that’s been closed. Laughing over my mistakes and lack of practice, I try and try again, playing stanzas until they feel natural and sound pure. The journey of memory and possibilities has begun.
This is beautiful, Dotty!