Yes, I Can!

By Kiki Swanson

Phoebes life story develops in the early 1900s
like a song, with some repeated melodies, a few
complex passages and then lyrical measures for
good listening. As a piano teacher, she hears some
beautiful variations, with occasional sour notes,
but gradually works toward a solid, harmonic
chord. Her faith keeps her in a major key, complete
with grace notes. Her minister father would claim credit for her faith
journey, but readers will find that her dear friends guided her and stood
with her from her girlhood on, in spite of her fathers harsh judgment.
She followed her God-given talents with patience and faith through
threatening times.
She shares her happy story in hopes of leading others to accept and
trust the promise of Gods love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493168965

Kiki Swanson

Kiki grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, close to her piano, books and church. She graduated from Smith College, married and taught high school English. In 1969, the family relocated in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her love of writing continued through a seminary Master’s degree and leadership in Presbyterian Women and now in senior adult ministry. Family genealogy led to insights into earlier generations. At the Risk of Sounding like Your Mother was a gift to her family. The novel My Will Be Done is based on her grandmother’s motto as it controlled her Scot family in Illinois.

Book preview

Chapter One

S ee? There’s music in her! At three and a half, I heard my father name my gift, my identity and my future. I knew it must be true, because no one ever challenged my father’s declarations. My older brother was sometimes scolded harshly for arguing or questioning my father. I saw that silence was the right road for me to take!

Soon I learned that I was the daughter of Pastor Paul Edward Hansen of the Lake View Baptist Church. His word was final, at home and at church. Inside my head I could hear melodies, notes that fell into patterns. I could remember the notes from yesterday and repeat them today. When no one was close by, I could hum the tunes. They were all mine.

One day when I was tall enough to see the piano keyboard, I hummed a note and found it on a white key. By raising my voice a little higher, it became a black note. This was my very own discovery! The keys made sounds that were like steps, and they could be loud or soft according to how I touched them. I tried using two fingers on two keys and some combinations sounded better than others. My best insight was that while I was exploring the keyboard, no one was scolding me, slapping my hands away from something breakable, or re-tying my sash. Mother was not wiping jam off my face or asking where I’d been. Just let her be was the message I got from my mother, my brother Edward and my father.

Another one of my young observations was about my mother. I wanted to be near her all the time, but she kept telling me how busy she was. Mother just busied herself quietly, usually in the kitchen. She didn’t hum or whistle or read a recipe aloud. If I chattered about seeing the neighbor’s dog on the porch, or if I asked what we would have for lunch, she shooed me away and often said, Curiosity killed the cat. Now hush! We had no cat, but I understood.

Edward spent a lot of time with the boy next door or in his room. Father was always at the church or at his huge desk in one corner of their bedroom.

So, I learned to sit on the piano bench and trace the notes up and down, somewhat in time with my inner voice. I made up little words to sound like the Sunday School songs. Once in a while, when Edward came through the parlor, he heard me saying some made-up word. That’s not the way it goes, Sister. It’s RE-joice, not Be Joyce. He laughed all the way out the side door. My world of make-believe kept me out of trouble and in tune with my favorite piece of furniture.

My whole world was inside our house and inside the church next door. If I asked a question about anyone I saw at church or in the church school rooms, I was told a name and then signaled to be quiet. Further questions that started with why were ignored.

By the time I went to James Russell Lowell elementary school, I was so full of unanswered questions that I nearly exploded. I never wanted to leave the teacher to go out for recess. I clung to her as my talking encyclopedia. She smiled at me, and seemed to encourage my curiosity. When I confided in her that I loved our piano at home, she led me into another classroom. Next semester, the first graders will have a music class in here, she told me. I asked her would she promise to take us there; she agreed right away. Then I had something positive to look forward to at school, although I was uncertain what that word semester meant!

I met my best friend at school. Her name is Emily Campbell, and to this day, there is nothing I would not share with her. She had a big sister named Elizabeth, and if we couldn’t figure out some problem, Elizabeth made time to help us. She never hushed us or laughed at us. She laughed with us, and that was a whole new feeling for me. She had wavy, light brown hair and sparkling blue eyes. I noticed she had long, slender fingers, and I asked if she played the piano. She shook her head no and asked if I knew how to play. I probably should have told her I did not, but I suddenly felt as if there was something I almost knew how to do that someone else did not know about. That was a new sensation!

Mr. Campbell was a carpenter, and he was always busy, humming strange notes as he worked. He smelled of sawdust and house paint. He wore loose white overalls with lots of pockets. He could fix broken dolls and bicycles and sharpen ice skates. He smiled at us. I think he was glad to have us around the house.

Emily’s mother was totally different from mine. She sewed their dresses and made soup in the winter. Their kitchen always smelled of coffee. She said the word good as if it had ten o’s in the middle. There was a lilt to her talk that made her sound happy. I can still remember it. If she was going to an afternoon meeting at the church, Emily was allowed to come to our house after school until five o’clock. After she went home, my mother often asked if Emily liked our house. I had never thought about liking or disliking someone’s home. I simply accepted Emily’s home as she accepted mine. We had no choice in where we lived.

My world from age five to twelve revolved completely around the neighborhood and the church. The piano became my voice, my spirit and my vocabulary. Mother knew enough about music to start me out with middle C and the sound of a chord. She took me with her to choir practice. In exchange for watching her little girl, the Director Maizie Evans agreed to give me two lessons a week. At last I was really learning how to play.

One Saturday afternoon, when I was fourteen and all alone in the parlor, I turned over a song sheet from the choir, and found a pencil on the music rack. I wrote my thoughts.

I dream, I long to know

How God will light my way;

If only I could see

The score for my next day,

Aglow with sacred notes,

His hand beside my own

Assuring me of love

And harmony unknown.

I dream, I long to hear

A song to lift my heart.

Today, O God, I pray.

Let me your peace impart.

Remove mistakes I make,

The melody keep true;

Show me the chords of love

And how to live anew.

I folded the page and tucked it in a book in the piano bench where only I would see it.

On Sundays, I helped care for the toddlers in the church basement room. My father’s booming voice penetrated the wooden floor upstairs and filtered right through the ceiling. Once in a while he was especially loud, even stamping his foot once or twice.

When I asked at dinner about the sound, he explained, There was a great need for exhortation again today. I could feel it.

My brother Edward asked how Father knew what to say. The answer was, They are sinners, sinners through and through. They must repent, and they have come to me to learn how to mend their ways. I kept my thoughts to myself, but I began to wonder what a sinner looked like. Were the parents of my toddlers class some of the sinners? Surely not.

In the winter, Emily and I spent hours ice skating on the Lincoln Park Lagoon. Two strong, old men cleared the snow with a wide wooden scraper. They chipped away any icy bumps and appeared to welcome all the children after school. As the days grew shorter in the Chicago winters, we had to hurry home from school, deposit our books and get our blades and scarves to enjoy the last hour of daylight. After the holidays, the days began to lengthen, and we hoped the winter would last until Easter.

My mother spent many hours in the church building, dusting and polishing the ends of the pews. The pulpit had to be gleaming when my father inspected it on Saturday afternoon. His tall chair was ornately carved and required careful dusting. The baptistry needed special cleaning to keep the water clear and holy. Mother washed those towels and used bluing to keep them looking pure white. I had only witnessed one baptism, of an older man who did not seem very happy about the procedure. I remember he coughed and raised his head before Father had finished saying the proper words. It was a cold day in the church, and I thought to myself that I would wait until summer for this ceremony. Emily agreed that we would do it together.

In fact, Emily and I had lots of doubts about church matters. In sixth grade, we had to attend some special classes. My father conducted the class every Saturday morning. We were told to bring a Bible and five pieces of cardboard cut in strips one inch by six inches. These were going to be our bookmarks for the most important words in the Bible. When we had learned these verses, we assumed we would be baptized in front of the whole congregation. I remember Father’s fury when one of the boys asked when we would be dunked. Father later told my mother that Richard came from a very sacrilegious home. Edward and I were not to associate with him or his older sister.

Emily and I worked hard to be the model candidates for baptism that summer. I hoped the baptismal water would be warm enough that we wouldn’t shiver and disgrace ourselves. Edward told us that girls always giggled and looked foolish when they were soaking wet. Secretly we remembered that all the boys in his class looked exactly the same when they were wet, skinny and white with red noses. Of course it had been winter. We survived Baptism Sunday and prayed that our souls would be saved forever.

In 1890 we turned twelve in seventh grade. It was an unhealthy year in Chicago. Of the twenty-eight children who had started school together, five died of typhus and ten of them lost a sibling or a parent to the epidemic. Emily lost her beautiful sister Elizabeth who was fifteen. I think I grieved almost as much as she did, because it was my first brush with the death of someone I knew and loved. Fear clouded the city’s spirit all year, until the mayor declared the worst was over. I asked Mother about what caused the disease, but she shrugged off my question by saying, There’s a time for everything, Phoebe. It’s not up to us to question why or when. After a pause, she suggested I ask my father. I knew that would not help.

My brother had started high school that year, and Father was extremely proud of him for growing three inches during the preceding summer. Edward enjoyed looking down at me, but he forgot that I too might gain height at his age. He had a habit of agreeing with everything our father said. I wondered if he was doing it intentionally or did he really think the same way as Father. I never saw him reading the Bible, but when Father began to pontificate on some Scripture lesson, Edward nodded and said Amen as if he understood every word.

I secretly read some verses of the Bible everyday, buried in my bed, behind a pile of quilts. Emily said her mama told her every day would be better if she did that before she got out of bed. I had no trouble finding a Bible in our house, so I chose a small one and found the Psalms, especially number thirty-three, because it spoke of music. I hoped my piano had ten strings so I could play skilfully with a loud noise. Our Sunday School teacher liked the Psalms and told us that many of the words from our hymnal originated there. They did appeal to me with a certain poetic use of words and a rhythmic feel. I knew there must be a Heaven where God lived, and in number 27 I felt good about the words: The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?" I knew not to tell Father or Edward of my new habit, because I would be referred to some heavy, ponderous passage about sin, repentance and salvation. That could wait, in my mind.

Chapter Two

I n the fall of 1892, we went on to North Lake High School and loved it. Emily was a straight A student. I was much less motivated and spent too much time at the piano. The choir director had cut me down to one lesson a week, and I had to buy my own sheet music. She suggested I offer to teach a little boy she knew, Paul Clinton, in exchange for some music in his father’s book store. The proposal was accepted, and I now owned three thick books of the collected etudes of Chopin, Bach’s two-part inventions and sonatas by Beethoven. I struggled to learn the first pieces, but gradually my fingers grew more nimble. Little Paul became seriously interested in music, but he wanted to play a horn, any horn. So, I lost my first student and had to concentrate all my time on my three books. This was probably a blessing to my future!

The piano was my refuge from competition at school and from my brother’s teasing. He was a very strong student, with Father’s constant encouragement. Early in our freshman year, Emily’s father became ill, and in January, he died. She cried and mourned night after night. I asked Father why one family had to suffer such losses, but his response was not comforting. He also referred me to Ecclesiastes and the times for verses. Emily’s mother bravely moved them to a smaller apartment in the same building on Otto Street. Then she took a job in the neighborhood bakery. By the time they settled into their new routine, the ice was melted. We put away our blades and hoped for an early freeze at the next Thanksgiving.

I felt myself changing in subtle ways. It was Emily who observed, Your hair is getting thicker and darker. It’s so glossy. Mine just stays pale and limp, like Mama’s.

I tried to cheer her up. Nobody notices your hair, Emily; your smile just captures people. Your complexion is always so clear. Mine’s getting better, but I hated all those little bumps. Ed had them too, but he’s getting over it now. Did you notice he has the same haircut as Father’s? Mother said I’d probably get taller and thinner, and I am. I guess that’s good.

Mama’s getting thicker around the middle. I hope I never lose my waistline! And so we talked endlessly about our futures and what our families would be doing. She had two older brothers who had left home young. My brother graduated when I was fifteen, and he rode the streetcar to the University, so I no longer had to suffer his insults every day after school. He still dreamed of Emily, hoping she would fall for his charms. Well, I told him not to hold his breath. I had tried to help him one time when the girls at school had a girl-ask-boy dance. I bribed Emily into asking Ed, and he was thrilled to go with her. She was not enchanted.

The city of Chicago was chosen as the site of the Columbian Exposition to mark 400 years since Columbus had discovered and named America. Since the Chicago Fire in 1871, the motto of the city had been Chicago Will Rise Again. Parts of the city were indeed rising, according to the reports we heard at school. 1892 had been announced as an exciting year for the whole world to come and see where we lived. Emily and I speculated on our participation in all the festivities, but we were pretty certain we would not be allowed near the Midway with its inventions and temptations.

When it was announced that the actual opening of the Exposition would be delayed into 1893, Father declared to the church and all within earshot that no self-respecting citizen would expose himself or his children to the evils available on every street in the area called White City. The Devil himself was lurking there amid all the bright lights and on the Ferris Wheel. Em and I were right that we’d never get to see history in the making. We grabbed at every detail we heard at school, and Mama picked up a lot of news at the bakery. We read old newspapers that people left outside the meat market on the news stand. It sounded exciting, but at fifteen, we were still obedient to our parents.

Our lives went on with our simple pleasures. We were sorry that the Exposition grounds burned up, and we never got to see them. But the Lincoln Park Lagoon provided a wonderful season for skating. Only one afternoon in February the wind grew so strong that we had to sit in the shelter of a huge tree and some shrubs to take off our blades and then figure out how we could safely walk home. Years later we read about the Biggest Blast of wind in Chicago and the blizzard that came with it in 1894. We were sturdy girls and made it home just fine.

In my senior year, Father promised to pay for a year of piano lessons from the professor of music at McCormick Seminary, if I graduated with perfect scores in all my classes and if he could make sure the teacher was qualified to teach me. I learned later that there was also the caveat if Father could afford the cost. This promised gift was true motivation! Emily became my coach and tutor.

That was the winter when Emily met Henry, a student at the Seminary. He was the funniest-looking little man, but I have to admit he had charm. When he talked with me, he looked right into my eyes, as if he was fascinated with what I was thinking. Emily was the same height as Henry, but that never seemed to bother him. He said his whole family was short. I towered over both of them by three inches, especially with my skate blades over my shoes.

Henry had that rare ability to laugh at himself, like that first afternoon at the Lagoon when he fell flat on his back right near the shore. By spring, Emily was smitten with Henry and could talk of nothing else, but she never gave up on helping me. I graduated close to Emily’s standing in the class of 1896 from North Lake High School. I surprised everyone, and Father stuck to his promise. It was the first time in my life I heard him praise my efforts. Mother had that proud I told you so look on her face after my graduation. From then on, I felt as if Mother and I were on the same team; I saw her in a new light, a woman’s loyal friend.

Chapter Three

E mily was such a good typist that she immediately was granted a scholarship to the Chicago Business College. I had five piano students from Lowell School and felt as if I had found my true calling. Two of the boys had trouble practicing enough to play well at their lessons, but they had more time in the summer and improved in spite of themselves. I learned a lot about teaching that summer too. Both Mother and Father adjusted to hearing the doorbell ring and children’s voices in the living room. In fact, they began to call that room the studio.

My own lessons began on my eighteenth birthday, Thursday, July 2, at the Seminary across from the Lagoon. I loved the twenty-minute walk over there and felt so professional with my leather folder of music under my arm. Dr. Butler smiled as he opened the door and said he would enjoy having a female student once a week. I rarely saw his other students, since late afternoons were generally the study hours for seminarians.

Dr. B. stood very straight as if he had been lecturing all day. He spoke clearly, smiled a lot and looked directly at me. I understand you’ve been playing the piano all your life. Have you taken lessons before this?

I told him about the choir director’s lessons in exchange for my baby-sitting, and he seemed amused by that arrangement. I want to be a teacher myself, so I need to learn to play much better, I explained.

He indicated we should go to the nearest piano. His studio held two grand pianos plus cabinets of sheet music and shelves of books about composers. Each piano had a straight chair to the left of the keyboard and a bench for the student, with a floor lamp at the right end of the keyboard. A metronome rested beside the music rack, ready to make a student nervous. The building was half a story below the street level, so the windows were high, with his desk under them.

Lessons began with scales and at least two exercises, played in different speeds. Dr. B. was strict in his approach, writing comments on a small tablet which I soon learned was mine to take home, review and bring back. I was convinced I was making progress! Once he believed I was a serious student, he really encouraged me. He began to praise my efforts, marking an A+ in my assignment notebook. Approval like this was new to me.

Word had spread in the church that the pastor’s daughter was teaching all levels of piano students, and I suddenly had twelve youngsters. I scheduled them carefully around my own Thursday lessons. Saturday morning was reserved for three of the children whose mothers taught school and could only bring them to my house on Saturday. I doubt anyone else in the family appreciated my new career, but I was thrilled to be earning money. I might not have to wear clothing from the mission barrels at the back of the church. My goal was to be able to move out on my own, in a studio that was also my own little home.

Mother asked me one day, Where did you get such an idea?

I had to admit I knew no other woman who lived alone and worked in her own space. But I bravely answered her, It sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? You and Father deserve your own home. You never can have guests in this room with my children coming in and out all afternoon.

Her answer was to assure me that the music was the happiest sound this house had ever made. I saw the sadness in her eyes and fought off the urge to hug her. I won’t move out if you don’t want me to, I said. I always think Father looks irritated by my schedule. I guess I’ve always irritated him, haven’t I?

Child, everything beyond his control irritates him. That’s why he loves the pulpit. It is his! He is so proud of his position here. It took me years to figure this out. With that, she turned and left me to my own thoughts. I planned to stay at home for another year of lessons, both the ones I taught and the ones I received. I began to pray for Mother to find new happiness. I believed she had earned it and deserved it.

Chapter Four

C hristmas of 1896 was focused on the church and simple gifts. The mayor of Chicago had promised people that times would soon be better, but the grain market was still down and skies stayed gray for weeks at a time. The favorite gift book that year was The Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum. Along with the popular Utopian stories, it provided escape and dreams of worlds beyond the workaday mood of the city stuck in a long winter. The longer the furnaces belched out black smoke, the darker the buildings became. In twenty-five years the new structures matched the old buildings that had survived the fire of 1871. One improvement we appreciated was the use of concrete for sidewalks instead of the boardwalks.

My friend Emily was lonesome as Henry spent the holidays with his parents in Indiana. She was working as an assistant to the research librarian in the city library. My brother was mad at the world, because he had received a C grade in his favorite college philosophy class. He was certain that the professor simply had a closed mind. I sympathized with Emily’s mood, but Edward’s attitude puzzled me. If ever I had seen someone with a closed mind, it was he! Unless our father had declared some idea as Truth with a capital T, he could not accept new thought. Fortunately, I was lost in a beautiful world of progress in my music, good health and happy students. Spring of ‘97 was beautiful!

Summer passed with the usual assortment of hot days and thunderstorms followed by cool days with Lake Michigan breezes. The Cook County Fair had never been bigger or better. Schools were ready to open with the normal excitement of new teachers. I practiced two or three hours every morning as Dr. B. had promised I could start a new Concerto in the fall.

On September 23, Dr. B.’s door was locked. A handwritten notice said, Dr. Butler is ill. He will no longer be teaching music at McCormick Seminary. It was signed by the Dean of the school. I was stunned. In those fourteen words, my life threatened to collapse. No one was in the hallway, so I just stood there and read and re-read the words until my tears subsided. I leaned against the wall and looked up. I still remember saying aloud, Oh, God, help me.

Somehow, I managed to climb the six steps and open the street door. I walked home on the familiar path around the Lagoon. I wished Emily could be there skating, but of course it was still warm outside, and I was alone in my misery. By the time I reached home, I knew there was nothing to do but accept