Perfection, Exhaustion, Parenthood
This entry is inspired by my son who just returned home from a local adjudicated (judged) music performance for middle schoolers. He plays the violin, and he played with my mind upon walking in the door. I was tired from teaching all morning. When asked how he did, he stormed to his room in sullen silence. "Oh no," I thought. "I need to go into mom-damage-control mode. It must have been a disaster."
Two years ago this June, my son performed at a school talent show. It was the end of fifth grade. He got rattled and his fingers somehow went wayward on the piano keyboard. (That is not hard for a typist like me to imagine.) I'll leave the description of his anguish to your imagination, but my son told me that he would never, ever play piano in public again. The next morning, he pleaded that he wanted a private violin teacher--an intuitive move toward healing, perhaps. Earlier that year, he had begun violin with the school orchestra, so it was not entirely unprecedented. I am not a stage mom, but I don't want my child traumatized for life at school events. My taxes are much too high for that.
I am not a "Type A" mom, and I surely never intended to create superbaby. But to make the time pass, I have explored the world with my son in many ways, including art, music, math, and language. We began exploring since he was tiny and long before he spoke. (He spoke late.) My son had many health problems in early childhood, and our home was our universe. We drew, played the piano, played with toys, collected animals and books, read, cut things out, talked, laughed, took walks. Before I knew it, he had developed a great love of learning as well as high standards for himself.
I wrapped my teaching hours around his waking hours as well as I could. As he got stronger, we could fold in outings to museums and short bursts away from home. But he was not the type of child who could tolerate a lot of time away. So wherever we were, that was our point at which to explore. Often, when attached to his nebulizer (for asthma), my son would draw and write and even play a tiny keyboard. I quickly learned when he was a premie that I did not have a "wash and go" baby. We adapted as new health problems surfaced. Creative life was particularly important for me and for him. In art, nature, music, writing, fantasy...we could transcend all we could not control.
And then comes the audience. Good grief, the outside world (whether it be preschool, daycare, middle school, a concert hall audience) can be so tough. And add to this, a pinch of that most-noxious ingredient: our own self-inditements if we have feel we have fallen short. The piano recital fiasco of 2004 was worsened by the crowd's laughter--the laughter of judgment, even ridicule. (A year later, at another school in our district, my son was greeted with: "You were the kid who screwed up at the talent show....") But before school adjourned for summer, a sensitive teacher alert to my son's temperament arranged to have a piano brought into her classroom to allow my son to play "Fur Elise" again for a smaller group. Bless her. My son played it through without incident.
As it turned out today: my son in fact had performed "successfully" in the strings' recital. No screw up, no laughter. He had chosen an ambitious piece of music and had practiced for weeks. When he got home, he was just pretending to have done poorly in the judges' eyes. I suppose this is progress--to be able to joke. But he remembers the heart-crushing agony of defeat and acts quite convincingly. My fear today was not that he had missed the mark...my fear was that the experience might again silence the music that has surged in his heart since before he was born. My prayer for him from a distance was: "Let his love of music and his sense of joy be preserved..."
When I was five months' pregnant, I had attended a wedding where, in utero, my son kicked to very loud music within seconds of our arriving at the reception. The ability to hear is a very old sense...
Whether my son's connection with music becomes a career, avocation, lifetime hobby, or pursuit-soon-abandoned is not my call. But it breaks my heart to know how quickly life can discourage risk and creativity. As a writing teacher, I witness every semester the joy of students rekindling a connection with writing or lighting a new fire when their hopes had been doused in the past. It takes guts to pick up bow, pen, or paintbrush and begin again.
In what seems like another life, long before my auto accident, I began taking modern dance classes on my lunch hour. I was in my late 20s. It was old to be pursuing something like that, but better late than never. I was driven by inner necessity. With demanding, long hours at a desk surrounded by text, my body wanted to dance. Looking back, I can barely believe I had the guts, considering the shapes of those around me. As my shoulders and neck are quite altered now, there is no danger of history repeating itself. In class, the real "artists" and hobbyists like me vied for mirror room. Often, I was elbowed out of the way. And though I love to sing, I have found that prima donnas abound in amateur choruses too; those with the most highly trained voices (egos?) will prevail. Do the rest of us have to just move our mouths? And writing? Well...
To dance, to sing, to write, to play an instrument...these are human. Yes, experts excel. But no art should be strictly the province of the well-oiled expert. There might be a bit of room at the inn, recital hall, reading, or art gallery for the rest of us.
Two years ago this June, my son performed at a school talent show. It was the end of fifth grade. He got rattled and his fingers somehow went wayward on the piano keyboard. (That is not hard for a typist like me to imagine.) I'll leave the description of his anguish to your imagination, but my son told me that he would never, ever play piano in public again. The next morning, he pleaded that he wanted a private violin teacher--an intuitive move toward healing, perhaps. Earlier that year, he had begun violin with the school orchestra, so it was not entirely unprecedented. I am not a stage mom, but I don't want my child traumatized for life at school events. My taxes are much too high for that.
I am not a "Type A" mom, and I surely never intended to create superbaby. But to make the time pass, I have explored the world with my son in many ways, including art, music, math, and language. We began exploring since he was tiny and long before he spoke. (He spoke late.) My son had many health problems in early childhood, and our home was our universe. We drew, played the piano, played with toys, collected animals and books, read, cut things out, talked, laughed, took walks. Before I knew it, he had developed a great love of learning as well as high standards for himself.
I wrapped my teaching hours around his waking hours as well as I could. As he got stronger, we could fold in outings to museums and short bursts away from home. But he was not the type of child who could tolerate a lot of time away. So wherever we were, that was our point at which to explore. Often, when attached to his nebulizer (for asthma), my son would draw and write and even play a tiny keyboard. I quickly learned when he was a premie that I did not have a "wash and go" baby. We adapted as new health problems surfaced. Creative life was particularly important for me and for him. In art, nature, music, writing, fantasy...we could transcend all we could not control.
And then comes the audience. Good grief, the outside world (whether it be preschool, daycare, middle school, a concert hall audience) can be so tough. And add to this, a pinch of that most-noxious ingredient: our own self-inditements if we have feel we have fallen short. The piano recital fiasco of 2004 was worsened by the crowd's laughter--the laughter of judgment, even ridicule. (A year later, at another school in our district, my son was greeted with: "You were the kid who screwed up at the talent show....") But before school adjourned for summer, a sensitive teacher alert to my son's temperament arranged to have a piano brought into her classroom to allow my son to play "Fur Elise" again for a smaller group. Bless her. My son played it through without incident.
As it turned out today: my son in fact had performed "successfully" in the strings' recital. No screw up, no laughter. He had chosen an ambitious piece of music and had practiced for weeks. When he got home, he was just pretending to have done poorly in the judges' eyes. I suppose this is progress--to be able to joke. But he remembers the heart-crushing agony of defeat and acts quite convincingly. My fear today was not that he had missed the mark...my fear was that the experience might again silence the music that has surged in his heart since before he was born. My prayer for him from a distance was: "Let his love of music and his sense of joy be preserved..."
When I was five months' pregnant, I had attended a wedding where, in utero, my son kicked to very loud music within seconds of our arriving at the reception. The ability to hear is a very old sense...
Whether my son's connection with music becomes a career, avocation, lifetime hobby, or pursuit-soon-abandoned is not my call. But it breaks my heart to know how quickly life can discourage risk and creativity. As a writing teacher, I witness every semester the joy of students rekindling a connection with writing or lighting a new fire when their hopes had been doused in the past. It takes guts to pick up bow, pen, or paintbrush and begin again.
In what seems like another life, long before my auto accident, I began taking modern dance classes on my lunch hour. I was in my late 20s. It was old to be pursuing something like that, but better late than never. I was driven by inner necessity. With demanding, long hours at a desk surrounded by text, my body wanted to dance. Looking back, I can barely believe I had the guts, considering the shapes of those around me. As my shoulders and neck are quite altered now, there is no danger of history repeating itself. In class, the real "artists" and hobbyists like me vied for mirror room. Often, I was elbowed out of the way. And though I love to sing, I have found that prima donnas abound in amateur choruses too; those with the most highly trained voices (egos?) will prevail. Do the rest of us have to just move our mouths? And writing? Well...
To dance, to sing, to write, to play an instrument...these are human. Yes, experts excel. But no art should be strictly the province of the well-oiled expert. There might be a bit of room at the inn, recital hall, reading, or art gallery for the rest of us.
posted by Wordsanctuary | 3:22 PM
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