LifePundit

The Piano Recital

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To whom much is given, much is expected. 

It's easy to pick on Lily, because she deserves it. She is gifted musically. A few years ago she began to compose her own music. It was good enough to get her some invitations to perform, including in church and as part of a Women Composers Program sponsored by the local piano teachers guild. I don't know how this could be my child but there she is. And she's won scholarships for piano lessons the last two years.

She plays violin in the school orchestra because the alternative is to take gym. When she first started she was a second violin and when one of the first violinists (who took private lessons) would choke and stop playing, Lily would switch parts and play the first violin part to help carry the music. She's not a star -- the first chairs are filled with dedicated violin students (mostly Asians) but she doesn't work at it either.

She has long wanted to quit music. We told her what my parents told me. You can quit music anytime. And that same day you quit riding. 

At the piano recital last night there was a little boy who wanted to take piano so badly that he's doing yard work for the teacher in exchange for lessons. Another teenaged girl has decided she wants to be a piano teacher and had three beginner students playing in the recital. Music is a gift to us all.

Lily's piano teacher is a very stern but sweet elderly woman whose back hurts so much she can hardly sit in the chair while she gives lessons. But she has a job to do, and she's going to teach these children music. No fudging, either. It has to be right. She's an old-fashioned kind of piano teacher. Everybody needs one of those. Lily says Mrs. S is the nicest person in the world until you get on the piano bench. We're all afraid of her. 

When I need to tell her something I know she won't like, I call and leave a message on Tuesdays when she's teaching in another county. I will never feel like a grown up with this woman. I turn into a seven-year-old who didn't practice my music. "Yes m'am" is all I know how to say.

At the end of the piano recital, the teacher gave out awards for the most improved, best student, etc. At the end she had a special award. She described a student who didn't practice and in fact, practiced the least. She said that this student was gifted. Lily immediately knew it was her. The teacher went on to say that she hoped this award, the Most Creative, would encourage this student to use her gifts. 

I hope so, too.

In the car on the way home I tried to talk with Lily about it. (Paul is absent this weekend -- he's part of a Kairos Prison Ministry weekend in Broad River Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison.) 

How do you get a person (a teenaged person) to recognize her gifts and to want to use them? I could use force (take away her cell phone until she practiced) and might end up doing that. But there's something more fundamental here: the squandering of gifts.

She says she doesn't care about piano, though she likes to compose and play her own pieces (yet she's quit doing that). I asked her why when she has been told repeatedly that she's gifted that she doesn't use her gifts. "Because I'm lazy," is her honest and heartbreaking answer.

We will talk about this further. This talk should be called "The Day I Beat My Head Against the Wall Again." 

To whom much is given, much is expected. How about we drop the "much" and say "a little"?

I am out of ideas. 

Her piano teacher says that she has been told a million times by adults that they wished their parents had never let them drop music. And she says that she has never been told by adults that they were sorry their parents made them continue to play.

Choices: punishment, bribery, logic, cajoling. Something creative, like an hour of practice for every hour of riding. Except then I think she'd just not ride, since that passion is wavering with her growing awareness of boys. (Wonder if the boys are aware of her? They're all 14.)

To whom much is given, much is expected. It was given to her, not to me. But she was given to me. 

Need to figure out something. 

Sandwich generation and the Alzheimer's unit

You don't get many beautiful moments in the Alzheimer's unit, but when you do, they are full of enormous grace and beauty. We were fortunate that Mama was in a good place, but it was still an Alzheimer's unit. My mother was always glad to see us and still knew us consistently then, even if she was sure that we were there to pick her up and take her home (though she couldn't exactly say which home, as she didn't even recognize it). Lily, who was around 10, would go with me and was a good sport, though I know it was hard to have different residents think she had come to see them, etc.

One day Lily got bored while we were visiting. Well, truthfully, Lily always got bored when we were visiting. That's what it means to be a sandwicher, trying to juggle the needs of your child while helping your parents. The Alzheimer's unit had a piano, and one day Lily wandered over to it. Since nobody intervened, she slipped onto the bench and started playing softly. Now, her repertoire was pretty limited, especially without her music books. But she knew a few hymns, patriotic songs and Maryanne, whatever that song is, by heart. And the residents started to perk up and gather around. The staff suggested that Lily play louder, so she did.

A wondrous thing happened. The residents began to sing! Some had beautiful voices. And even though they might not know the names of their children, they remembered the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "America the Beautiful," and a couple of hymns. They sang and sang. The room became alive. It didn't matter that Lily didn't know many songs. The Alzheimer's patients didn't care or notice how many times she played the same things over and over again. They kept singing.

The staff was smiling. The residents were clapping and laughing. One lady kept walking up to Lily and patting her on the back and asking, "How old are you?" Moments later she would return and repeat.

My mother turned to the people around her and said, "That's my granddaughter. That's my granddaughter." And she was beaming.

Lily kept looking at me in amazement, and shrugging as if to say, "What now?"

I said, "Keep playing." She started playing a song I don't know: Maryanne. But the residents knew it. Lily didn't even know that it had words, but at one part, this elderly man would boom, "Maryanne." Lily jumped the first time, then quietly giggled to herself.

Lily got tired of it all before they did, and it was time to leave. But that day had started something. Every time we went from then on, Lily brought her music. There's nothing like an appreciative audience to inspire you to practice and play.

Now that Mama is in the nursing center, Lily keeps asking, "Can we go over to the Alzheimer's unit so I can play for those people?" We spend so little time with my parents as it is that we haven't done this yet. But maybe one day.

One more thing. The staff told me that there's another thing the residents haven't forgotten. When they have Sunday services (it is a Lutheran nursing home), the residents say the scripture along with the minister.

That's not going to happen when we Boomers get to the old age home. Though some of us are excellent bible students, a great many of us (me) don't have a thing memorized. We'll be singing the theme to "Gilligan's Island" instead. Just hope somebody will think to play it on the piano for us.