Me and Beethoven.

When I was 7 years old I heard Beethoven for the first time. I must have really liked it because my mother had bought me a marble bust of Beethoven and some wall hangings of him.

I spent a good part of my life not remembering what initially made me interested in Beethoven. When I was 35 years old every time I sat at my desk I would see the beautiful Beethoven bust my mother gave me, but I didn't know how I felt about Beethoven because there was this inner confusion surrounding why I liked Beethoven in the first place at the tender age of 7 years old.

Another odd thing is, I read the poem "Life" by Anna Lætitia Barbauld when I was 7. She wrote about how life and she must part.

"Life! we’ve been long together, through pleasant and through cloudy weather and when, or how, or where we met, I own to me a secret yet."

When I was 50 years old I asked myself what was it that made me fully understand every line, scene and nuance of Barbra Streisand's performance in "The Way We Were" at 7 years old?

Now today at 63 years old I understand the trauma and the angst that made me listen to Beethoven and read poetry about separating oneself from life.

Trauma can change a child's life:

Turn Barbies, Baby dolls, and a purple banana seat bikes into Shakespeare, Turn a ball & jacks into hours playing the 5th symphony over and over, or Turn Saturday morning's cartoons into The Way We Were as Hubble said:

"Do you think if I come back its going to be okay by magic? What's going to change? What's going to be different? We'll both be wrong, we'll both lose."

Trauma made me who I am today.