Reflections: A Memoir

From Mary Lou Chayes' peripatetic depression era childhood, moving from dwelling to dwelling as her family's fortunes diminished, her journey is propelled by her discovering, at age eight, her passion for music. Too poor to afford piano lessons, her father performs odd jobs for her piano teacher in lieu of payment. The tragic fate of her brother, who lost his life after years as a Japanese prisoner of war, marks her adolescence. A cruel irony: the government reparation money for his death, allows her to pursue piano studies in New York City. Her lessons with Karl Ulrich Schnabel are transformative and become a lodestar for the remainder of her life. When the money is gone, she returns to her hometown, forever changed by her musical experience and by exposure to the wider world. She enrolls in the Chamber Music department of the Berkshire Music Festival at Tangle wood, where for the first, she assesses her limits as a pianist, and soon after, as a way out of her childhood restraints, she chooses marriage. Throughout the twenty-year marriage, raising three children, she pursues musical activity, teaching and playing chamber music. Powerfully attracted to a charismatic widower, father of six children, she divorces; they marry; With a chaotic blended family of children, theirs is a life of adventure, financial risks and the endless lure of possibility. Along with her parents, they live for three years in South Africa, experiencing a fascist regime and the horrors of apartheid. Within a few years of their return to California, he dies suddenly at age sixty. Bereft, without financial security, she finds a home with a beneficent friend and is able to return to UCLA design school, finally launching her own business. In the midst of her struggles, she reconnects with a love from their teen years. Their relationship deepens. They meet only infrequently when he comes to Los Angeles for business. Unexpectedly, through a musical friend, she meets her third husband, charmi

• | Author: Mary Lou Chayes
• | Publisher: Outskirts Press
• | Publication Date: Jun 30, 2022
• | Number of Pages: 460 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1977247644
• | ISBN-13: 9781977247643