"Andante con Amore" by Rhoda Cerny

 – We gave each other time.

Might this be my life if my mother had lived?

Rhoda Cerny lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her two cats. When she is not writing or dreaming of travel, you will find her singing, dancing, practicing Italian, and gardening. A member of the Orange County chapter of the NC Writer’s Network and writing groups in the Triangle, she has published poetry and is currently working on a novel and a memoir. She wrote “Andante Con Amore” while a Writer-in-Residence at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines.

Author’s Talk

Rhoda Cerny

“Andante con Amore” is about time lost and time gained, absence and imagination and my search to discover who my mother was on my journey to know myself. I rely upon objects, music, and stories from those who knew her to reveal facets of her personality and the events of her life and to understand what I missed in not knowing her. 

When I was a child, I was given her jewelry, most of which was way too big for me, and much too grown up to wear to school, but I did it anyway. Every day was Show and Tell. I brought my famous mother to school to share with my classmates and she stayed with me long after the other mothers had gone.  

While writing “Andante con Amore,” I polished several heavily tarnished silver bracelets stamped from Taxco, Mexico, possibly acquired by my mother in the sixties. One, in particular, with a wave-like motif, inspired me to research its origins. What I unearthed was a Mexican Modernist work of art in the style of designer Hector Aguilar. It reminds me of my years in the nineties as a design student when I discovered the undulating shapes of roofs of Mexican Modernist architecture and was inspired by them to build sculptures and models of walls with wavelike repetition. Wearing the bracelet as an adult feels just right. 

The author as an infant with her mother, Rhoda Lee.

The waves of music carry my mother to me. In a childhood filled with dark and quiet evenings, music was her light in the room. I heard her in the melodies that lulled me to sleep at night and greeted me in the morning. I have always felt happiest when singing and dancing; this is where I find hope, beauty, connection, and access to something beyond everyday life. I still hear my mother in the sound of the viola, and in the music of rain falling on rhododendrons on Blue Ridge Mountain trails. This inspired the title for my story. Through music she walks with me, with love, across decades.—Rhoda Cerny

“I am that last-minute child: a product of love, a burst of life, a last chance gift.”