NUCLEAR FICTION NEWSLETTER, ISSUE 3

My Mother's Music

                As I began to write my novel Fission: A Novel of Atomic Heartbreak, based in part on my parents’ stories of Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project, I got down a large, plastic bin of photographs and other mementos that I had filled after my father’s traumatic illness and death in 2007. I had heaved the bin onto a high shelf in my walk-in closet, although I had sorted through its contents when deciding what to keep.

One of the many treasures I rediscovered was this program from a youth concert in Chicago in 1939. Almost as pristine as the day it was printed, it lists my mother’s performance as a piano soloist with the American Concert Orchestra. My mother, Janet Moss, was 16 at the time but she recalled the concert many times to me as one of the high points of her life. Her story was that she won a piano contest at age twelve, but because of the Depression, did not have her prize of a performance until she was sixteen. She told me she played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In this program, however, the orchestra is a 40-member ensemble funded by the Federal Music Project. I am not sure if this is the concert of her story or another one in which she participated the same year. I was very happy to see it, however, because I never knew what pieces she played and wanted to use that information in Fission for the fictional heroine, Doris. My mother said that she was filled with joy, as she played in harmony with the orchestra and conductor. She never recaptured that feeling in any other endeavor.

            Unfortunately, my mother’s aspirations to be a concert pianist were destroyed by the anatomy of her hands. My hands are shaped like hers, except all her life, she had muscular wrists that reflected her intense piano training in her youth. As you can see from the picture of my hand below, her thumbs were unusually short, making it difficult to play pieces with ninths and tenths. She tried so hard, however, that she developed carpal tunnel syndrome before it was recognized as such. I tried to incorporate the intensity of my mother’s longing and ambition into the character of Doris.

Leslie's Hand

My mother did have a tendency to exaggerate to dramatize her stories, as I know from times when she described occasions when I had also been present. Did she actually play with the actual Chicago Symphony Orchestra? Eighty-six years later, that matters very little. What does matter is honoring her love for her art and understanding her sorrow that she had to give up her dream of perfection. In Fission, Doris plays with the Chicago Symphony.

Janet Moss, maybe 1941