18 Plough Quarterly • Winter 2018 Fa m i ly C or n e r Awake the Harp M A U R E E N S W I N G E R to an impromptu outdoor concert. We were ten feet from the sound box, and as the ­ haunting melody rippled out into the evening air, a certain daydreamer beside me woke up – and stayed awake. When the music ended, she walked through several people, never taking her eyes off those strings. The harpist was cross-examined, though she didn’t seem to mind. We walked home rather dazed, and daughter informed father that she was going to play harp. He snorted in disbelief. The man can play seven instruments, but harp was not on his radar. L ast year, my daughter disappeared often. She’d flit through the wardrobe door to discover Mr. Tumnus, or fall down a rabbit hole to have tea with the Hatter. And she was just as unhappy at my calling her back home to help wash dishes as I had been when my own mother attempted to relocate me from Middle Earth to Later Earth because the table needed setting. Kids need a foot in both the real and the storybook worlds. But how do you strike a balance? Balance struck all by itself last summer, when a professional harpist treated us Maureen Swinger is an editor at Plough. She lives at a Bruderhof in Walden, NY. Photographs by Clare Stober