My father’s birthday. He would almost be 100 years old. He was the only one in the family of six who did not play an instrument but he had an ace up his sleeve, his mother claimed Jascha Heifetz was our cousin. It was more exciting to know prior to the Youtube world showing Jascha’s impatience and coldness teaching nervous Americans. My father’s father played the balalaika. I have it hanging on the wall by the piano in case he ever returns, ready to jam. My cousin in Oregon, the son of my father’s sister, supplied me with a recording of my parents and grandparents made in 1950 or 1949. It was unreal to hear the loving voices of people you only knew pictures of but most sensational of all my grandfather starts to play the balalaika. A simple melody. Someday I must transfer it into Logic and embellish it for all the voodoo of this possibility between the ghosts and the soon to join them.