Slowly · The Long Way Down to Morning · Pulse Beat
The doctors in Kochi were kind and, to her surprise, hopeful. A neurologist at a hospital by the sea explained, drawing her hand on a prescription pad, that the brain could be taught to separate the…
The doctors in Kochi were kind and, to her surprise, hopeful.
A neurologist at a hospital by the sea explained, drawing her hand on a prescription pad, that the brain could be taught to separate the fingers again. It required patience of an almost unreasonable kind: playing a single note, with attention, for minutes at a time; exercises with the fingers held in odd combinations; days of rest between days of work. Some musicians changed their fingering altogether, using the hand in a way that avoided the stubborn finger.
"Is that cheating?" she asked.
"Is it cheating when a person with a bad knee takes the stairs differently?" He smiled. "You don't have to play the way you played. You have to play."
She began again with ten minutes a day. Ten. She timed it on her mother's kitchen clock. Some days the finger obeyed and some days it curled like a leaf. On bad days she put the violin down and washed the dishes. On good days she wrote the date on the calendar with a small blue dot, and by the end of the year the calendar looked like a night sky.