I have been a baseball lover since I was a small child. Each year, my dad arranged for my brother and me to go on bus trips with him to at least three different ballgames. We would board a tour bus with other baseball aficionados and visit Shea Stadium, the Vet or Yankees Stadium. The bus ride was as entertaining as the ballgame because doughnuts would be passed around to each person, attendees would sing songs from song sheets and bets would be placed on the game from some of the older men on the trip. In my memories, I can still hear their bellowing voices belting out the words to the classic songs, as my brother and I tried to suppress our giggles. The baseball bug bit us when I was about six years old, and my brother was four. Although these stadium visits really rocked, what we both enjoyed most was actually playing the game. Luckily, I grew up in a neighborhood of boys, and we lived next door to a church, which had a parking lot large enough to support an imaginary baseball diamond. I was the only female member of our baseball “league,” but I developed skills that could match most of the boys that we played with every day. We played wiffle ball and tennis ball in the church lot, but we actually had to go to the park for a game of hardball. We adapted well to the size of our teams on a daily basis because not every kid had the time to play regularly from late afternoon until dark. We only needed two kids to play a game of “fence” ball, which required no pitcher because the batter threw the ball up in the air and then attempted to nail it out of the parking lot. Oftentimes, a homerun ball would get caught in the church rain gutters, and one of the boys would have to crawl up onto the roof to retrieve it.

I was reminded of those days one week ago when my husband and I decided to play a game of “catch” on Easter Sunday afternoon. I had forgotten how much a hardball stings when it smacks the palm of the baseball glove! Jay threw a couple of ground balls, a few curve balls and some fly balls, so I got a fairly good workout while attempting to catch each one. After roughly 70 minutes had passed, we decided to see how long we could keep our game alive without dropping the ball. We quit after we reached 100, so our skills haven’t deteriorated too much over the last 45 years! If only those guys could see me now!

I have found my thoughts returning to those days of hitting the baseball over the church roof because they represented the last times my brother and I could play with childlike, carefree attitudes before beginning a regimen of social distancing, which lasted several years. I have mentioned in past blogs that my sister is a childhood leukemia survivor, who completely recovered following a combination of allopathic medicine and “hands-on healing,” but I never really discussed how her diagnosis affected my brother and me from emotional or sociological standpoints. Before my sister got sick, our house was the neighborhood hangout for every kid on the block because of its location and because we had the best toys. If the parking lot was filled with too many cars, which made playing baseball prohibitive, we had hula-hoops, jump ropes and lemon twisters to burn off our over-the-top energy. We spent hours outside with our friends before watching our favorite television sitcoms on the boob tube. All of that changed when Christa got sick.

Christa was diagnosed in October of 1979 – a mere two weeks after my maternal grandfather had surgery for lymphoma, which would later metastasize to his lungs and spinal cord. While my sister was beginning her treatment at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, my brother, Joe, and I stayed with our maternal grandparents until Christa was well enough to return home. Joe and I had no idea that leukemia was cancer, or that my sister was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation just like our grandfather, even though their appointments overlapped at the same hospital. Our parents tried to allow us to feel a sense of normalcy amidst the paralyzing fear they were experiencing. We included my sister in our playtime as much as we could, with her being five years younger than Joe and seven years younger than I. Although life within the walls of our home was pretty much status quo, with a heap of added doctor visits, we had to stop seeing our friends indefinitely. My baby sister’s immune system was compromised, and she couldn’t come into contact with anyone who was sick. With the exception of the boys that played in our baseball “league,” my brother and I did not have really close friends, so the distancing wasn’t so awful. The neighborhood boys who had been our playmates were several years older than we were, so they involved themselves in other school activities anyway.

My siblings and I were never part of the “in-crowd.” My dad was always the one to attend parent-teacher conferences because my mom was always nursing my sister at home. The reports from our teachers were always the same: we were good students and the quietest kids in the classroom. My brother and I were very shy in general, so I suppose it is ironic that we both ended up majoring in music and consistently performing in front of live audiences. We developed our creative skills because we were confined to our house for so many years. On occasion, we did get to see our friends, but they weren’t allowed inside our house, and we always had to ask if they were sick before we could go anywhere with them. My parents hosted parties for my dad’s office staff in the summer as well, but all of that stopped after Christa’s diagnosis, too. In addition to undergoing chemotherapy and radiation, Christa had to go for weekly blood tests and monthly spinal taps and bone marrow checks. Joe and I tagged along for all of these doctor visits, so we heard all the crying, screaming and gnashing of teeth. To this day, I am absolutely terrified of needles and all invasive procedures. One of the reasons I studied energy healing was because it can be done remotely.

One of the bonuses of staying at home was that we allowed our imaginations to soar. Initially, we were so young that we only had interest in toys. My brother and I played with our Fisher-Price people and playsets, his Star Wars figures and Atari 2600. We created entire life stories for these imaginary people and excelled at Pac-man and Challenge Baseball. My sister and I had a set of Barbie dolls, and she had Strawberry Shortcake dolls and Cabbage Patch Kids. Again, we lived our lives through our imaginations by creating reality for these dolls. I was so immersed in the doll world that I wanted to make clothes for them, so I learned how to use my mom’s sewing machine as well. Once I could sew for dolls, I branched out into other crafts, too. I loved ceramics and drawing, especially cartoon characters. I could sketch and paint Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, the Muppets, Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes characters and the Sesame Street monsters. I made birthday cards and posters for people, which I gave as gifts. When my grandmother died last year, I discovered that she had saved most of my creations!

Christa went into remission relatively quickly, although there were setbacks, the most memorable being a bout with chicken pox. To this day, we have no idea how she contracted the pox because my brother and I had had them when my sister was only a year old – long before she got sick. When Christa did not come down with them then, my mom thought she had a natural immunity to them. Her case was far more severe than ours, and she nearly died from the pox. Her doctors suspended all cancer treatment so that she would have a better chance of beating the pox. It was at this time that fear was palpable for the first time ever in our household. I remember my mom cradling my sister on her lap and watching her breathing. Her breath was so shallow that I thought she was dying. Since allopathic medicine could no longer offer any answers, my parents put all of their faith in God, who healed my sister. Once she recovered from the pox, she was able to resume chemotherapy. By the time Christa turned five years old, she was well enough to enter kindergarten. At the end of the school year, Christa invited her entire kindergarten class to her Memorial Day birthday party, and I actually sewed and stuffed a Care Bear for each kid as a party favor. I was laser-focused on creativity.

Once my sister was in remission for five years, she was considered “cured.” Most of my parents’ fears subsided, but there was always lingering anxiety. By this time, my brother and I were fully immersed in music lessons and practicing regularly. We were allowed to hang out with friends, but I had become so much of a loner that I now chose to focus on my music and my studies. I had a kick ass piano teacher who taught me how to read fake books and create instant accompaniments for pop music from every era. I also began dabbling in classical piano music. My uncle gave me his old flute when he decided to upgrade to a more advanced model, so I was learning something new and could finally play in the school band. It was in the junior high school band that I met my best friend who ended up being one of my matrons-of-honor in my wedding in 2017. I knew when I was a freshman in high school that I wanted to play the flute for a living, so I practiced and was consumed with PMEA band festivals throughout my high school years. I can trace my laser-focused drive to be the best to my years of having to creatively amuse myself at home. I have no regrets about developing this type of discipline. Those habits I developed provided the fuel I needed to accomplish everything I set out to do, and every area of my life became a product of my endless quest for excellence for several decades.

In the years before I met my husband, I devoted all of my time to practicing for the next gig and developing lectures for pop-culture obsessed students. For many years, I attended Philadelphia Orchestra concerts every Saturday night to hear my teacher play and to listen to how he matched the other members of the wind section. I was mesmerized by his artistry and tried my hardest to imitate his elegance. When I was hired at the Art Institute, I spent all of my nights and weekends watching television shows and films that I could reference in my lectures. I read hundreds of music history books to supplement the material I used in the classroom as well. My social life was non-existent. For years the buzz words at our faculty meetings were “faculty development,” and it seemed as if everyone was writing a text book, so I wished to jump on that bandwagon. I spent all of 2014 writing my book, which was extensively researched according to the guidelines I acquired in graduate school at the University of the Arts. After completing Mirror of the Soul: A Flutist’s Reflections, I was running out of things I wanted to accomplish and was aching for someone with whom I could share my life. I met him within four months of completing my manuscript, which affirmed for me that everything happens in Divine-right timing.

For the past five weeks, my husband and I have been quarantined together. I feel closer to him now than I ever have and am thoroughly enjoying our time together. He works from home in our downstairs office space, and I have been working upstairs in my music room. In my spare time, I do some writing and practicing and a bit of cleaning. We have organized our basement into a man-cave for Jay, which is the coolest space in the house. It is Godzilla and Avengers-themed and houses a total gym, pool table and Atari 2600. We have been improving our skills on Challenge Baseball and Space Invaders. We planted some flowers in our front yard and arranged a new stone walkway from our front porch to our back deck, and we have been walking a few miles a day to burn calories. In addition, I have redesigned my personal website and have added videos, which I have posted on Facebook to alleviate some of my anxiety. I recorded my silver flute, Native American flute and piano practice sessions, so there is an interesting variety of music. You can check it out here: https://tdevizia.wixsite.com/website.

I’m trying to use this time in isolation to create something beautiful and dwell on infinite possibilities rather than focusing on what is lost. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It might be easier for me to do because I have never really had an active social life, but that doesn’t mean that I am not a social person. I like to connect with people as much as anybody, but I prefer my connections to be meaningful connections. I have discovered that the easiest way for me to create greater meaning is to go within and tap into my inner-artist so I can communicate with God who inspires me. Delving into my inner world makes my outer world more beautiful and makes me a more interesting person for everyone who comes in contact with me. It is a joy to share my discoveries with others – my music, my art and my written word. Sometimes, in order for me to be inspired, I need to engage in activities completely unrelated to my art. Playing catch is one such activity, and it is one I can share with my husband. Throwing that ball back and forth can be hypnotic, and any hypnotic activity can facilitate one’s entry into the zone where miracles are born. Any baseball player or musician might just refer to that as perfect pitch!