Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Two Nov-Dec 2026.
Laura, story by Fred Everett Maus.
You live in a small city near Salt Lake City, Utah. You live alone in your small apartment, a short drive from your daughter’s home. Your daughter no longer allows you to drive. You love to walk and when you want, you can walk to nearby businesses. You have had two bad falls in the last year. You know that you will not always be able to live in your own apartment. You have a small garden in front of your house. You tend it carefully. For some reason it is not doing well this summer. You fret over this, mentioning it often. You are in your eighties. Your family has told you that you are in early stages of dementia.
Your daughter Sheila visits you every day and drives you wherever you need to go. You know that you owe her everything at this time in your life. Sometimes you argue with her. You are both stubborn. You raised her carefully in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She has not gone to church for years. When you are in her home, she and Pete, her husband, sometimes drink in your presence. Your church forbids drinking, but you know better than to say anything. You know, also, that they drink coffee every morning. You don’t mention it. But sometimes, when you are in their home, you sit quietly, frowning. You know that Our Heavenly Father does not want people to harm their bodies with hot drinks or alcohol. Sometimes Pete seems drunk and talks loudly. You look away and frown a little more. On Mother’s Day this year, sitting across from you, Pete talked loudly about how people do not need religion. You heard him say: “We live only a short time. We need to enjoy our lives, help others, and love our families. That’s all we need.” You know that when Pete is like that, he does not want a conversation. He wants to express his ideas. You just looked away.
Your brother Frank, thirteen years younger, visited for three days starting with Mother’s Day. He brought his partner Héctor, a younger Mexican man. You did not criticize this relationship in conversation. As you saw, everyone else made the gay couple feel welcome. Frank had not seen you, nor others in your part of the family, for years. The gathering was warm and lively. You watched quietly and often seemed to be enjoying everyone’s presence. Your granddaughter Katie was there every day with her toddler Drew. The family members you see often are Sheila and Katie. Katie, after an unexpected pregnancy, and subsequent marriage, became a stay-at-home mom, with mixed feelings about it. You think staying at home with a toddler is the best way. So does Héctor. Katie and Drew visit Sheila almost every day. Sheila visits you every day and drives you wherever you need to go. Often you are in Sheila’s home during the day.
On Monday evening after Mother’s Day, Pete got drunk and talked loudly about his views on religion. You sat quietly at a corner of the table. But near the end of the evening, you started to speak. You spoke about the importance to you of your visits to the Temple in Salt Lake City. The Temple is a sacred building that is open only to certain Mormons. You mentioned the Temple Conversations you have every two years and how beautiful they are. Frank asked what these are. They are meetings that you have with a Bishop or other leader of the church. In these meetings, you talk about your spiritual life and your obedience to church rules. A Temple is an especially sacred place, and no one can enter the Temple without a recommendation given after a Temple Conversation. Héctor is Catholic. Frank explained to him that entry to the Temple resembles the requirement of Confession before taking part in the sacrament of Communion. You agreed.
You said that obedience to church rules is important for entry to the Temple. Some rules are more important than others. You said that after your husband died many years ago, you have been celibate. It was sometimes difficult, but you have been strict. Sheila began to frown, irritated by what you were saying. You ignored it or didn’t see it. After talking about sexual behavior and church rules, you added that both Frank and Héctor are wonderful people. You also talked about your habit of drinking Diet Pepsi. You find that it clarifies your mind. The Church regulates some drinks, but Diet Pepsi is not considered a serious issue, nothing like the strictly forbidden coffee or caffeinated tea. You always talk about your Diet Pepsi use in your Temple Conversations. You want to hear again that it is all right.
You know that Héctor is a committed Catholic. At one time, you and Frank were on the deck and Héctor was inside talking with Pete. You told Frank that you loved the depth of Héctor’s religious feelings, but that Héctor could do much better if he knew and followed your church’s rules. Frank, an atheist, just nodded.
Sometimes your garden has been wonderful in the spring and summer. But this year it is not doing well. Everyone tells you that it is because there is a drought now in Utah. But you are not sure. You think something else is going on, but you don’t know what it is.
On Tuesday night, the last night of the visit, Héctor was on the deck talking with Pete. They have enjoyed getting to know each other. Along with much else, they talk about sports, something Frank cares nothing about. You were inside, sitting at the dining table with Frank. The two of you started talking about music. As he grew up Frank was a serious piano student. You were a serious violin student and almost majored in violin in college. Now, years later, the two of you talked about your experiences as music students. You told Frank about your violin teacher in college. She was impressed with your talent. She said things were easier for you as a violinist than for any other student she knew. She wanted you to be a concert violinist. You told her that you did not enjoy performing for other people, although you enjoyed playing violin. All you wanted was a music education degree, not a degree as a concert performer, and certainly not a final recital. This made your teacher angry, and your relationship ended badly. She felt you were wasting a rare talent. Now you told this to Frank. He was interested, because this was different from what he believed before about why you did not complete your music degree. And he said that he also studied piano seriously, but did not become a professional pianist because, again, he did not love performing for other people. The two of you did not know this about each other before this conversation. In the end, you completed your commercial art degree but not a music degree.
Frank had his laptop at the table. The two of you began to listen to music together, finding videos on YouTube. You listened to music that each of you studied as a music student in your teens and twenties. Often you could not remember the name of a piece that one of you had studied, but Frank could identify the piece. You listened together to music by Bach, Lalo, and Chopin that you studied, and music by Bach, Chopin, and Prokofiev that Frank studied. You remembered every note of all this music and had detailed thoughts about the specific performances. With the violin performances, you remembered your own performance decisions and compared them with the recordings. You listened with Frank to performances by Zino Francescatti, your mother’s favorite violinist and also yours. Frank also admires his performances deeply. You noted his energetic, fast playing, and commented on the advantages of his style for the music as well as missed opportunities in his performances.
The conversation and listening went on for two hours. No one interrupted the two of you; everyone saw what the two of you were doing.
Finally, Katie was ready to leave with Drew and offered you a ride home. You didn’t want to stop the conversation with Frank, but you agreed to leave; it was what everyone else seemed to want. After the music conversation ended you seemed, once again, unfocused and disoriented, as you often do. But just before leaving you gave Frank a big hug and said how good it was to see him. And you gave Héctor a big hug as well, saying goodbye and calling him by his name. He had not been sure you would remember his name.
There is much that you do not know about what other people were saying during this visit. That evening, after you left, during a long, relaxed conversation with drinks, Sheila told Frank that in recent years, she had never seen you give such full attention over a long time. Nor had she seen you so happy. You had been like another person, everyone said. This was emotional for Frank. He could bring out something in you that no one else could. No one else knew the music, or how to talk about it, or how to connect it with personal memories in the ways that you and Frank knew. With his work schedule, Frank would not be able to return to Utah for many months after this visit.
© Fred Everett Maus
Fred Everett Maus is a musician, writer, and teacher. They teach music classes on a range of topics, for example a recent course on “Music in Relation to Sexuality and Disability” and a recurring contemplative course “Deep Listening.” They are a trained teacher of mindfulness meditation and Deep Listening, and a student of music therapy and object relations psychoanalysis. They have published prose memoir, poetry, and fiction, for instance in Citron Review, Palette Poetry, Roanoke Review, Vox Populi, and Live Encounters Poetry & Writing. They live in a house in the woods north of Charlottesville, Virginia, and in Roma Norte, Mexico City. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness, which they co-edited with the late Sheila Whiteley, was published in 2022. The Handbook received the 2023 Philip Brett Award for “exceptional musicological work in the field of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender/transsexual studies.”