Prelude

I was an opera singer for more than four decades and have been retired from the stage since 2016. In 1994, my partner Jacques and I moved into this apartment, built in the 1840s, because we loved the high ceilings, the Louis Philippe-style marble fireplace, and the central location in the City of Light. I’m pretty sure now that I’ll go on living here until, as my father used to say, they carry me out feet first.

This morning, after I had flung open the ceiling-high windows to permit the streaming sun to fill the room with its golden warmth and light, my glance was led across the street to one window in particular which I have admired for years. From spring to fall, it bursts continuously with all types of flowers, each plant potted and perched with aplomb on either side of the elegant Greek-style chambranle frame, some of the stems spreading upwards and others lending their blooms downwards with grace to catch the morning sun. I never knew who lived there, behind the window. And I still don’t know now, after all these years. 

But as I sat sipping a second cup of coffee, I imagined I saw what would seem to be a tiny, rather old lady, barely higher than the window’s cast-iron balustrade, carefully and lovingly raising a large watering can as she slowly nourished each of her plants. I wanted to reach for my camera, but by then it was too late. An ephemeral vision. 

Mind you, for my own floral achievements on this side of the street, I’ve received a compliment or two over the years. For example, from the butcher’s wife, who runs the cash register while Monsieur carves the meat. She has frequently commended me personally for the flowerpots poised outside my own windows, thriving and displaying very bushy pink geraniums. 

This kind of praise is to me the highest level of compliments, equal to any review I have received for singing Mozart or Rossini, for I have spent several years working out the right amount of sun exposure, selecting the right variety for this spot, the right amount of water, et cetera, to achieve my pleasing results. And one day last year, when I came to her glass-enclosed checkout cage, the butcher’s wife expressed to me her sorrow that I had lost a whole earthen flowerpot in a gusty windstorm. She must have seen how those thriving pink geraniums ended up in shambles on the sidewalk, several floors below. Her grief was comforting, in a small way. 

This thought brought me back to the view across the street, and then something hit me. Like the barely visible old lady with her watering can, I now see myself and my life as being a similar custodian to something precious, something that needs regular watering, something very perishable but bringing joy, something that must be given back some day, and yet something that is eternal. 

When my voice is silenced, Music itself will go on: in fact, it will surely continue to thrive. But my job here has been to learn to respect and to tend to the precious things around me, things I have acquired along the way by some sort of accident, or perhaps the gifts I have simply been given. They were entrusted to my care, so to speak, for the short span of a human lifetime. 

A custodian. My first job—salaried and declared job, that is—was working for my high school in Pavilion, New York, in the maintenance department, from late May to the end of August, between semesters at college. I was barely 18 when I started, and I worked there for two summers. It was hard work and I learned a lot, and about those lessons there’s a lot more to tell. 

To some, we were janitors, but the more polite term “custodian” was already coming into use in the late 1960s, and I guess it suited me to a T. 

When I returned to upstate New York a few years ago, to visit my aging mother in Batavia for a week, I booked a nice room at the Hampton Inn, mostly because the place had an indoor swimming pool. The night I arrived from Paris, disheveled as usual after two punishing flights, I decided to go down and try that pool. After a quick shower, I put on a swimsuit, mindlessly pulled on some old shorts, a tee shirt and some flip-flops, and ambled down, scruffy beard and all, to enter the pool area. I was alone there except for a young Black mother and her two children. The woman seemed glad to see me, and as I approached, she asked me politely if I was the maintenance man. 

I couldn’t help her, I said, as I was just a guest, too, and I went on with my business. 

But even today the idea sticks in my mind that I am indeed just passing through, sometimes enjoying a moment in the pool, but most definitely a Custodian, and with important maintenance work to do while I’m here. 

The geraniums thriving in my windows this year are red, and their glory in the sun today brings me joy as I recall my stories. How I got here—just a lucky kid from a small town—and the theme of custodianship: both subjects will surely intertwine in the following pages. 

 

Prelude

I was an opera singer for more than four decades and have been retired from the stage since 2016. In 1994, my partner Jacques and I moved into this apartment, built in the 1840s, because we loved the high ceilings, the Louis Philippe-style marble fireplace, and the central location in the City of Light. I’m pretty sure now that I’ll go on living here until, as my father used to say, they carry me out feet first.

This morning, after I had flung open the ceiling-high windows to permit the streaming sun to fill the room with its golden warmth and light, my glance was led across the street to one window in particular which I have admired for years. From spring to fall, it bursts continuously with all types of flowers, each plant potted and perched with aplomb on either side of the elegant Greek-style chambranle frame, some of the stems spreading upwards and others lending their blooms downwards with grace to catch the morning sun. I never knew who lived there, behind the window. And I still don’t know now, after all these years. 

But as I sat sipping a second cup of coffee, I imagined I saw what would seem to be a tiny, rather old lady, barely higher than the window’s cast-iron balustrade, carefully and lovingly raising a large watering can as she slowly nourished each of her plants. I wanted to reach for my camera, but by then it was too late. An ephemeral vision. 

Mind you, for my own floral achievements on this side of the street, I’ve received a compliment or two over the years. For example, from the butcher’s wife, who runs the cash register while Monsieur carves the meat. She has frequently commended me personally for the flowerpots poised outside my own windows, thriving and displaying very bushy pink geraniums. 

This kind of praise is to me the highest level of compliments, equal to any review I have received for singing Mozart or Rossini, for I have spent several years working out the right amount of sun exposure, selecting the right variety for this spot, the right amount of water, et cetera, to achieve my pleasing results. And one day last year, when I came to her glass-enclosed checkout cage, the butcher’s wife expressed to me her sorrow that I had lost a whole earthen flowerpot in a gusty windstorm. She must have seen how those thriving pink geraniums ended up in shambles on the sidewalk, several floors below. Her grief was comforting, in a small way. 

This thought brought me back to the view across the street, and then something hit me. Like the barely visible old lady with her watering can, I now see myself and my life as being a similar custodian to something precious, something that needs regular watering, something very perishable but bringing joy, something that must be given back some day, and yet something that is eternal. 

When my voice is silenced, Music itself will go on: in fact, it will surely continue to thrive. But my job here has been to learn to respect and to tend to the precious things around me, things I have acquired along the way by some sort of accident, or perhaps the gifts I have simply been given. They were entrusted to my care, so to speak, for the short span of a human lifetime. 

A custodian. My first job—salaried and declared job, that is—was working for my high school in Pavilion, New York, in the maintenance department, from late May to the end of August, between semesters at college. I was barely 18 when I started, and I worked there for two summers. It was hard work and I learned a lot, and about those lessons there’s a lot more to tell. 

To some, we were janitors, but the more polite term “custodian” was already coming into use in the late 1960s, and I guess it suited me to a T. 

When I returned to upstate New York a few years ago, to visit my aging mother in Batavia for a week, I booked a nice room at the Hampton Inn, mostly because the place had an indoor swimming pool. The night I arrived from Paris, disheveled as usual after two punishing flights, I decided to go down and try that pool. After a quick shower, I put on a swimsuit, mindlessly pulled on some old shorts, a tee shirt and some flip-flops, and ambled down, scruffy beard and all, to enter the pool area. I was alone there except for a young Black mother and her two children. The woman seemed glad to see me, and as I approached, she asked me politely if I was the maintenance man. 

I couldn’t help her, I said, as I was just a guest, too, and I went on with my business. 

But even today the idea sticks in my mind that I am indeed just passing through, sometimes enjoying a moment in the pool, but most definitely a Custodian, and with important maintenance work to do while I’m here. 

The geraniums thriving in my windows this year are red, and their glory in the sun today brings me joy as I recall my stories. How I got here—just a lucky kid from a small town—and the theme of custodianship: both subjects will surely intertwine in the following pages.