The Broken Cello Story

How my mother showed her love

My mother wanted her kids to succeed. That was constant. She wanted us moving forward, and she wanted to make things alright, even when she didn’t quite know how.

She was often anxious, but she was also a pusher and a doer. She wanted things a certain way and wasn’t afraid of it. If she wanted eggs with toast at a restaurant instead of an English muffin, she asked. If she wanted a different dressing, she asked. Calmly. Persistently. From her, I learned to be both an organizer and, at times, an instigator. She knew how to start some shit. She pushed until things moved.

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That was how she loved.

In fourth grade, I moved up from a half-size cello to a three-quarter. I was proud of it. The problem was that it was enormous. It came in a soft case, floppy and unforgiving. I was clumsy. One of my legs was shorter than the other. Carrying that cello felt like wrestling something bigger than I was.

When I got off the bus that afternoon, I came in through the back porch. There was a canvas rug. I tripped on it and fell—hard—sort of on top of the cello.

I remember thinking it wouldn’t matter. I didn’t hear anything snap. The case looked fine. I got up and went inside.

We had pepper steak for lunch. It was amazing. I remember telling my mom how good it was.

Afterward, she asked to see the new cello.

She unzipped the case.

“Oy yoy yoy.”

The cello didn’t look damaged. It came apart.

The neck was snapped clean off.
The body was broken into four or five big pieces.
There were dozens of smaller ones—splinters and fragments everywhere.

It wasn’t cracked.
It wasn’t repairable.
It was destroyed.

She moved immediately.

She went to the kitchen, picked up the yellow rotary phone, dialed the school, and demanded to speak to the orchestra director. It was an emergency.

When she got him, he told her to get down there right now. He said it would be terrible if I lost interest in music, and that how this was handled mattered. She agreed.

She hung up and yelled at me to get in the car before I lost interest.

She took a large yellow trash bag, put every piece of the cello into it—the neck, the chunks of the body, all the little pieces—and drove me to the junior high where the older kids orchestra was rehearsing.

We walked into the room and stopped the music.

She lifted the yellow bag and announced it at full volume, a full-throated bird call that cut through everything:

“Mitchell broke his cello!”

The kids laughed. I stood there, frozen.

For her, this was love in motion. Don’t quit. Keep going.

For me, it was humiliation.

What that moment taught me is that it’s possible to smother someone in love and humiliation at the same time—and still be acting out of love.

I was a terrible teenager. I said terrible things to my parents. I pushed back hard. And still, they showed up. They were steady. They were generous. They were there.

As an adult, I’ve had a beautiful, real relationship with my parents. They have always been amazing to me. They are amazing people.

They wanted me to love music.
They wanted me to keep going.

They told me I had to play the cello because I was too uncoordinated for the violin like my sister. They weren’t wrong.

When we go out to eat now, my mom still asks the server for special treatment. She lists her requests. She asks follow-up questions. She’ll have the waiter check with the manager to see if the lime dressing has salt in it. She does it calmly, confidently, without embarrassment.

And I’m still embarrassed.

Not because she’s wrong.
Not because she’s unkind.

But because I learned early what it feels like to be loved that hard.

She made me who I am. And so did my dad.

That’s the cello story.

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