WHEN MY FATHER WAS OUT OF TOWN, running pipe and putting in gas lines for weeks, months, in Helper, Utah, or Baggs, Wyoming, my mother was at her most calm. For us, it constituted a holiday. Dinners were relaxed, and the household had an air of vacation, free from his intensity.
Our father was our action figure: playing catch, hiking mountains, and hunting deer. If there was a robbery in the neighborhood, he formed a posse to solve it. If there was a river to run, he ran it, be it the Green River or the Colorado or the Snake. Those waterways coursed off maps and into our veins, tattooing our father’s love of wilderness into our love for him. If there was a mountain to hike or a trail to walk, I was right behind him as his daughter. The Tetons, the Wasatch, the Rocky Mountains were our collective backbone as a family.
At home each night, we ended the day with adventure stories. Our favorite was “Scarface: The Story of a Grizzly” by Dorr G. Yeager. Sitting on his knees, listening to the beautiful language about grizzlies moving among the timber, what they saw, how they smelled, the power behind one swat of their paw, we were caught not only in the emotional drama of the story but also in our father’s passion in conveying such a magnificent beast. My brothers and I were rapt. First and foremost, John Tempest is a storyteller. But we always knew the clarity of one fact: he was most fulfilled when he was outside with his boots on, walking the trench line, bidding jobs of high-pressure gas lines cutting across the American West.
Mother held her own intensity, but it was contained, especially when we were alone with her. It was during these days on Moor Mont Drive in Salt Lake City that Mother introduced my brother Steve and me to Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. Whole afternoons were absorbed sitting cross-legged on the floor before our phonograph, listening to this musical tale. The minute the record ended, we would lift the needle back to the beginning and listen all over again.
I have no idea what Mother did during those hours when we were under the spell of Prokofiev, but I’m sure that was the point. Our time with Peter was her time with herself.
Through the authority of Richard Hale’s British narration, Steve and I were introduced to the distinctive voices of each character: the bird was the flute; the duck was the oboe; the cat, the clarinet; the grandfather, the bassoon; and the wolf was recognized by three French horns. Peter’s presence became the melody played by the strings of the orchestra. Rifle shots were rendered by the kettledrum.
“Early one morning, Peter opened the gate and went into the big green meadow. On a branch of a big tree sat a little bird, Peter’s friend. ‘All is quiet,’ chirped the bird gaily…”
And the orchestral adventure began.
What I realize now is this: within those thirty minutes that took Prokofiev only four days to compose, I received my first tutorial on voice. Each of us has one. Each voice is distinct and has something to say. Each voice deserves to be heard. But it requires the act of listening.
Peter and the Wolf was also an early lesson on how the balance of nature could be articulated through story. Niche was the specificity of voice.
“Seeing the duck, the little bird flew down upon the grass, settled next to her, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘What kind of a bird are you, if you can’t fly?’ said he. To this the duck replied, ‘What kind of a bird are you if you can’t swim?’ And dived in the pond.”
For my brother and me, the cycle of nature consciously or unconsciously was performed through the various voices of a symphony. “And if one would listen very carefully, he could hear the duck quacking inside the wolf; because the wolf in his hurry had swallowed her alive.”
Listening over and over to the voices through a family of instruments allowed us to recognize and appreciate the dignity and uniqueness of each living thing in the meadow and forest.
Peter showed us what Mother wanted us to know but didn’t have to say. She may have been pretending to close the door and disappear, but she knew the lessons: Here is the world. It is not a safe place, but however frightening and bewildering life may become, we can survive our fears, grab them by the wolf ’s tail as Peter did, and make peace with the world.
Each voice belongs to a place. Solitude is a place. Mother left us alone to enjoy our own company while she enjoyed hers and reclaimed precious time for herself. When she wasn’t living her solitude, she was contemplating it.