10,000 times and counting
October 6, 2010 at 10:10 pm | Posted in Short Blogs | 4 CommentsTags: daughter, Dr. Suzuki, excellence, family, Malcolm Gladwell, memory, motherhood, music, musings, parenthood, piano, practicing, reflections, teaching, violin
I was working with a piano student this afternoon, going over a passage that challenged her fingers a little. “Just practice this section about a million times!” was my prescription. We laughed. And suddenly I remembered how, years ago, our family explored what it is to do something a million times.
We were driving in the car and someone must have said something about a million – maybe it was Chloe wondering what it was like to have a million of something she wanted, or perhaps a character from one of our books-on-tape said something about a million. I will have to ask Chloe, because she may remember. (Rachel was too young at the time.) Anyway, we set about figuring out how long it would take to count to a million. I have to admit that the math was way beyond our two daughters at the time, but it was a fun exercise nevertheless. I have no memory of even a wild estimate. But I do remember that we had to time ourselves counting pretty far in order to come up with a guess. And of course it is way faster to say “one” and “fourteen” and even “seven hundred twenty-three” than it is to say “eight hundred seventy-six thousand five hundred eighty-one,” and there are definitely more of the latter than of the former. So we had to take that into account, and somehow we arrived at our version of an answer.
Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, who developed the Suzuki pedagogy for violin, said that knowledge alone does not equal ability. “Knowledge plus 10,000 times,” he claimed, is what produces ability. Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Outliers says that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to develop extraordinary ability. So though my recommendation to my student is obviously an exaggeration (and goodness knows how long it would have taken her to follow it to the letter – but I’m not going to go there!) it is more on track than off.
It makes me wonder how many hours I have actually put into violin or piano over the course of my lifetime. And what else have I repeated enough times to be able to put it in the category of expertise? What internal tapes have I replayed that many times? What knee-jerk reactions? And what have I cultivated, as opposed to enacting by default?
I will have to get back to you on this one.
Dance: a family history
October 3, 2010 at 9:52 am | Posted in Long Blogs | 2 CommentsTags: camp, chronicle, college, contra dance, dance, daughter, family, folk dance, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, grandparents, guitar, High Peak, Irish step dance, journal, life, Mayim, memory, motherhood, music, Oaxaca, parenthood, Pete Seeger, play party games, reflections, square dance, top hat
I have not sat in this room for years. Rachel is in her Irish stepdancing class and has to leave early today, so rather than just dropping her off I am sitting in the waiting area for an hour until we have to go. It brings back such memories. Chloe started taking classes here ten years ago, and for the next several years I spent every Tuesday afternoon from around 4:30 to 6:00 in this room. Eventually Chloe and Rachel became such advanced dancers that they were in class for three hours at a time so I could go home during class. In recent years I began using that time to teach lessons. And for the last two years Chloe drove the two of them there and back. So I have not had occasion to sit on this couch (yes, it actually is the same couch) until today’s exception to the norm.
Dancing goes way back in my family. As a teenager, my mother was a contra dancer in New York City in the 1940s. As a matter of fact, she can be seen in a segment of the movie “To Hear Your Banjo Play” with Pete Seeger, filmed in 1947. (See the YouTube video posted below. The dancers come on around 12:30, and my mother can be seen close up at 14:16-17 on the right side of the frame.) A few years later, as a classroom teacher my mother taught her students “play party games” – songs with dances to go with them – and years later, once I had joined the family fold and we had moved out west, my mother occasionally taught those dance-songs to my girl scout troop and at birthday parties. And, once we settled in our new home, my parents signed up for a square dance class (contra dance was hard to find in our community at that time), and met many people who became lifelong family friends.
In my teens I spent two summers in Oaxaca, Mexico. My grandparents on my father’s side had run a summer camp called High Peak in the Catskill Mountains of New York. When my grandfather’s health was beginning to decline, around the time I was coming into the world, they decided to retire to a warmer clime and chose Oaxaca because it reminded my grandfather of his birthplace in Salonica, Turkey (now Thessaloniki, Greece.) Finding almost immediately that they missed running a summer program, they started a smaller version, a kind of culture camp, the year I was born, with a group of fifteen girls in their early teens. There they lived for eight weeks at my grandparents’ place, which held several small buildings inside their gates, amid gardens and courtyards. It was a success and they continued every summer. My grandfather died just before my fifth birthday, and then my great-aunt (my grandfather’s sister) joined my grandmother as she continued to steward a small group of American teenage girls. I am so blessed to have shared those two summers with my grandmother, my great-aunt and fifteen other girls from all over the United States.
One of the very first days I was there, someone put on some music one afternoon and everyone began to dance. It was an Israeli dance, Mayim. I had never heard it before, but I was charmed by both the dancing and the fact that everyone seemed to know how it went! (It being decades before I “came out” as a Jew, it had not yet dawned on me that almost all of the girls who attended my grandmother’s camp were Jewish.) I followed along until I learned it. It was fun! And not so unfamiliar, having learned my mother’s play party games. Over the next several weeks, we learned several regional Oaxacan dances and attended a centuries old annual dance festival where we watched those dances, and many more, performed by native dancers in their traditional costumes. We rounded out our repertoire with some more Israeli dances, and a couple of evening parties where we danced to rock and roll hits.
It was also in Oaxaca that I first learned to play the guitar. My grandmother bought me a classical guitar in Mexico City, made in a local factory. It cost $24 and I fell in love with it almost instantly. Several of my campmates in Oaxaca already played, and they taught me what they knew. I figured out more songs on my own and in turn taught those to my friends. Throughout the summer we performed together at schools in the city of Oaxaca and in neighboring villages, both Oaxacan and American songs. That $24 guitar planted a seed for a very tall and strong tree, as it eventually led to my decades-long career in folk music, beginning with my homeboys band in the early 1970s.
One pivotal Sunday night in July, 1972, my band was playing, as usual, at our regular home gig. We had built over the year prior a huge local following, and I often saw familiar faces in the crowd. During a break that night I recognized an old high school friend and went to greet him. He had never been able to come to our show, he told me, because he usually spent Sunday evenings doing Israeli folk dancing. And on Friday nights (when we had a regular gig in another town) he always went to international folk dancing. But two nights earlier, at a party after folk dancing, he had accidentally walked into a plate glass door and sliced open his chin. Because of the stitches he had to take a few days off from dancing, so he came to see me sing. As annoying as I had found this friend during our high school years together, he now seemed, mysteriously, infinitely more interesting. Coincidentally, so did the idea of folk dancing. And it turned out there were Monday night sessions in town.
You might not be too surprised to hear that I went the very next week. A little bit into the evening my old friend Mayim was played on the record player, and that pretty much clinched my desire to become a regular at the Monday night dance. My high school friend and I did do the dance of romance for awhile, and then he went off to college. I stayed in town and became an avid (Dan and I now use the word “rabid”) folk dancer. I spent the next twelve years participating in many different recreational and performance groups, even including a five-month gig as a musician for a folk dance ensemble performing at the Epcot Center at Disneyworld.
In the meantime, a glimpse into Dan’s childhood. He was lucky enough to take a social dance class when he was in 6th and 7th grade, and it stuck. As a young adult he developed a love for Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly movies, bought himself a set of tails at a thrift store, and dreamed of sweeping some girl off her feet, just like Fred did with Ginger Rogers and Gene did with Leslie Caron. After grad school, when he moved east (close to my neck of the woods) for his first grown-up job, an acquaintance mentioned a local folk dancing group to him. After another invitation or two, he tried it out. Within a year he was attending workshops, teaching dances to recreational groups, and even co-directing a new performance ensemble. His name began to be mentioned among my friends, a few towns south. It took about two more years before we met at the Friday night international folk dancing that I now attended regularly, since my band had long since split up.
We still don’t agree on which dance we first did together. It was either a waltz or a Swedish hambo. But we do remember our first conversation, which went as follows:
Me: “I heard you moved away.”
Dan: “I did. But I came back.”
Me: “Oh.”
Romantic, huh?
Okay, it took a few months, but we did eventually get together (obviously). He took me to many Fred Astaire movies, where he half-thrilled, half-(well more than half) embarrassed me by waltzing me up the aisle after the movie on more than one occasion. I bought him a collapsible antique top hat for his birthday, the kind that opens by itself with a snap of the wrist. We developed lifelong (so far!) friendships with many fellow dance fiends, including some of the people my parents met at their square dance class in the 1960s. Small world, good people.
So it isn’t hard to make the leap to when Chloe was three and we took her to a festival where she first beheld an Irish stepdance performance. She turned to Dan and proclaimed, “I want to do that!!” Being on the shy side, she was seven before she had the courage to sign up for a class (which meant attending without a mom or dad to hold her hand). She took to it easily. After her first year we moved her to a different dance school led by a teacher who has since become a life mentor for her. Which is what first brought us into this very room. Sometime in the following months Rachel began to imitate Chloe’s practiced steps and we enrolled her in class at age five. The two of them have performed and competed for all these years.
Until now. The way the Irish stepdance world works, you join a school and learn their own choreographed steps. If you move away, to college, for example, you would have to leave your own school to join another, and begin the arduous process of learning all new steps, and then you would “belong” to that school instead. Chloe saw it coming, even two or three years ago. During her senior year she enjoyed participating in class and at a few competitions, but felt violin moving into first place, especially in terms of focus and time commitment. Her last hurrah was dancing the lead part in a dance drama, which competed at the western regional and the national competition, where they placed, respectively, first and third, much to everyone’s delight. Over the summer she helped teach classes and worked part-time in the office at her dance school, cherishing the time she got to spend with her beloved teacher. She is friends on Facebook with her dance chums, wants to hear the results of each competition, and hopes to perform in some St. Patrick’s Day shows when she comes home for spring break in March. But that chapter in her life is coming to a close, at least in the foreseeable future.
And for Rachel? I know things have to feel different for her with Chloe gone. This Saturday morning she is scheduled to go to her first local competition after taking a year off from solo events. She enjoys performing more than competing but feels some peer pressure to remain in the swing of things. It evolved over time for Chloe, and I’m sure it will unfold for Rachel as she moves forward. I feel confident that they both will stay connected with their dance friends just as their parents and grandparents have before them. The world of folk dance is full of very good people. And who knows? Maybe Dan and I will start contra dancing some day.
Naming my blog: a (slight) retrospective
August 12, 2010 at 11:47 am | Posted in Long Blogs | 4 CommentsTags: blogging, chronicle, composing, daughter, family, getting to know me, habits, journal, life, motherhood, music, musings, names, parenthood, reflections, writing
I admit it, I do become obsessed when I’m searching for the perfect whatever. Decades ago, when Dan and I were planning our wedding I got so wrapped up in the quest for the right dress, I still found myself gazing at silks and pale colors two and three years after the gown had been properly stored away. Embarrassing, but true (and somehow freeing to say it out loud in public, after all these years – thanks for listening!) So when I was trying to come up with a name for my blog, it was torture. Here’s what I wrote while still in the throes of the final decision-making agony:
So now it’s a name. No, no more babies, no more dogs, unless you call this blog my newest child or pet. But perhaps it would be helpful to review the last few name-selecting processes I have been through and survived to tell the tale.
- Chloe’s name. When I was pregnant with Chloe, we chose no boy-names. Holding on to the old fashioned mysteries, Dan and I had decided that even though the doctors and nurses and staff people could be informed of our baby’s gender through the miracles of science (I was 38, so they required amniocentesis) we wanted to wait until the moment all of our ancestors had had to wait for. I’m not saying there were no male names that we liked. There was Ian, Ewan, Matthew, Martin (except for what “Martin” means), and more that have been long forgotten, but none of them made it to the “possibles” list. So we arrived at the hospital (with less than two hours to spare, but that’s another story) with four girl-names: Emma, Laurel, Maureen, and Chloe.
- Rachel’s name. Another story, first of all because we knew she was a girl. As it was our second time around, we decided we were no longer in need of a mystery and allowed the clinic to give us the complete report from the amnio. Actually, she was so different in the womb, I had thought that perhaps she was a boy, and shared my thoughts with Dan and Chloe. So we spent a few weeks of early pregnancy picturing the little quintessential family with one girl and one boy, and then got the news that our imagined portrait had a major flaw. That was amazingly shocking! We found ourselves reeling for awhile over that piece of news.
- The Folkaltones. I think I still have all the sheets of scrap paper on which we brainstormed for just the right way to capture the essence of our trio. We loved Tribe of Three, until we Googled it and found it was already taken. It went from there, and every time we ran a search engine we found we were not as clever and unique as we had believed. It was ego crushing, not to mention frustrating, and it was getting annoying that we had no name. I honestly have no memory of how it happened, but we finally settled on the Trifolkals. We liked the implication of 3-ness, the obvious folk reference, and we decided to capitalize on the “focal” aspect by giving our music the subtitle “visionary folk”. Egos back, intact.
- Naming my song Adjustment, and then changing the name to Bouncing Back. I wrote this song in 1979. Dan and I had split up in September of that year, after two years of dating, and two months later the song pretty much wrote itself, the result of a wrenching time. “Can I help it if I’m not bouncing back…” is how the song starts, and the refrain echoes it at the end of each verse. So when it came time to give it a title, a poet friend of mine suggested I call it what it is. To me it was about adjusting to being alone, separate from Dan, when I wanted to be with him. Once I had performed it a few times, audience members started to request the song about bouncing back. It isn’t about bouncing back, I would respond. It’s about not bouncing back. Aren’t you listening carefully to my lyrics? (I didn’t say that last part out loud, it not being a good idea to criticize fans.) It went on my first solo album as Adjustment and retained that title.
- Naming this blog. I keep going back to the advice of my poet friend, call it what it is. What is this blog about? Based on past experience, I may not really know the answer to that question until around the year 2040, but in the meantime, I think it is about two main things. One is walking through the process of letting go of my older daughter as she leaves for college. The other is figuring out what on earth I am going to do with my own life now that most of it has revolved around being the mother of two daughters and I will only have one living here. Those don’t sound like they are related, except that both of them involve me, and I do happen to be the one writing this blog. And one is catapulting the necessity of figuring out the other (you can work out which is which for yourself.)
There was no question in my mind. Chloe was my favorite, hands down, and I couldn’t understand why we would consider any other choice, but since I thought Dan wasn’t sure, it seemed the right thing to do. And to clinch the list idea, we reached a milestone decision: How could we really know who the baby was until he/she was born, and therefore, how could we pick a name ahead of time? Even with my bias, it seemed obvious to us that you have to wait and see who you get.
So after she was cleaned off and we got to look at her, we had to walk through the process of ruling out three names. One look told us she was not an Emma, and probably not a Maureen either. (I had gone to nursery school with a Maureen, and it forever holds meaning for me as a sweet and adorable bright-eyed toddler.) That left Laurel and Chloe. The latter had come from the movie “The Big Chill”. Chloe’s character is somewhat enigmatic, of a younger, seemingly more flakey and carefree generation from the rest of the cast, but in the end she turns the most troubled individual around and offers him a new chance for happiness and serenity. I saw her as a caring and wise soul peppered with a sprightly cheer.
Was Dan really strongly considering “Laurel”? I’ll never really know, but I do remember that I breathed a sigh of relief when he came around. And our Chloe has turned out to be a caring and wise soul, without a doubt, with more than a touch of her own brand of chirpiness. The irony is that years later Dan discovered that he has been saying his L-sound in the wrong part of his mouth all of his speaking life. Instead of using the tip of his tongue he has always pulled the back of said tongue up toward his hard palate – a very difficult thing to do, but it’s how he interpreted it way back when. So, poor thing, either of our top two would have proved a mouthful for him! It’s okay, she’s worth it.
Soon Dan and I went to work collecting names again, and this time nothing took. We spent months combing through name books from the library, my parents’ house, and our friends. Nothing. Or rather, each time something sounded good, there was a compelling argument against it. We liked Gretchen, but as we watched Chloe learning how to write her name, we decided it was too many letters. I liked Ruby, but Dan felt it was too old-fashioned. Emma, Laurel and Maureen were not even considered.
A few months later, on the way to the hospital in the back of an ambulance after Rachel had been born on the living room floor (I’ll cover that one some other time) I suddenly remembered that we had no list of names, or perhaps more accurately, no names on our list. Once Chloe was handed off to my parents and Dan caught up with me in the hospital room, we discussed the issue at hand. Finally we came up with the name Margot. My parents had been brought together by a folksinging Margot Mayo in New York, which added a nice dimension, and we liked the sound of the name. During the night, as I lay there too overwhelmed to sleep, the name Rachel came to me. We decided in the morning to give Chloe the choice.
Unbeknownst to us, Chloe had gone through her own process during the months prior, and had decided the best name for the new baby would be Diamond (taking off from Ruby – another gem? I’ll never know.) I can easily imagine the kind of appeal that name would hold for a four-year-old who is becoming a big sister. What I cannot imagine is what went through her mind when Dan called her at my parents’ house and offered her our two options, which had to seem unquestionably inferior to her. Luckily she was by nature quite agreeable, and since there was in her mind no contest between Margot (ugh) and Rachel (yay!) she came through. Definitely a family process.
Until we had printed out business cards and had the graphics all ready for our debut CD and a friend of mine from Chicago mentioned that there was already a trio by that name. I had even already even made the acquaintance of their songwriter/leader, Greg Trafidlo, at a conference. That was close! So we had to return to the drawing board. We played around with all the ideas again and, happily, stumbled fairly quickly upon Folkaltones, which took. We like it, but most people think we are the Folka (like polka) tones and that continues to drive us mildly nuts. It’s better than a lawsuit (though Greg is way too nice to think of it.)
Until three years ago, when I decided to re-release a compilation CD of songs from my first three records. This was my chance to make any changes. The pain having been eased during the past thirty years, it dawned on me that perhaps the song was about bouncing back after all. Maybe I wrote it during the early phase, when progress on that front was slowest. Maybe my fans had been right all that time. So for the first time ever, I re-titled a song.
The challenge is that it is difficult to encapsulate both of those in a four-word title, give or take a word. I had first come up with “Notes from the nest” but it’s taken. I contemplated how this nest is going to be half empty – “Half-empty nest”. Already taken, but also it is seen as leaning toward the negative, which is not my desire. So I brilliantly and optimistically went for “Half full nest” but it’s taken. And I decided also that it kind of sounds more like the earlier years of child-raising (especially when you read the blogs at those sites.)
So I have been brainstorming for days. Partial list: Face the Music, Cries at Weddings, So Far from the Nest, Musings from the Nest, Mom in Search of, Tune-up in the Nest, Mamatone, Take Your Vitamins, Whose Life Is It Anyway, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Love in the Translation, Tune-up for Mom, Losing my Marbles, Recomposing (maybe a little too close to “decomposing”), Lullabies for Mom, Apron strings and A-strings…
Finally I stumbled upon Roots and Chords, which everyone in my house (at the time) liked. I liked it too, but there was no sign from the universe to go ahead and grab it, except that it wasn’t already taken. Up stepped my Great Doubting Mind: If it isn’t already taken, maybe it’s not so good! However, that kind of logic has a fatal flaw, which is that I will never ever get to post my site if I am seeking approval from an already existing title, SINCE I CAN’T HAVE THAT ONE. Okay, breathe in, breathe out. I finally just went to bed after that episode. And this morning I jumped onto a new and different track: Apron strings and metronomes. Or Bach, Baez, and Bombeck. I’m kind of liking that approach and have two hours in the car this afternoon to come up with more tries.
Obviously, by the time you read this, the decision will have already been reached, since I will have chosen a title and posted my blog site. OR you and I will be dead because waaaaaay too much time will be taken in making the decision. As it is painful for me to imagine this being read at my funeral – or worse, used as my epitaph, I choose the first option. I promise you will hear from me soon.
Back to August 12, 2010. You can see where I ended up. I think it turned out to be the best choice, just like all the others.
Homeschool for mom: an update
August 9, 2010 at 10:32 pm | Posted in Long Blogs | 4 CommentsTags: blogging, chronicle, college, composing, homeschool, journal, music, music lessons, practicing, reflections, sleep, update, violin, writing
In my first blog entry, I told how my family had come up with the idea of creating my own “university curriculum” since I was flirting with going back to school. Since three weeks have passed since that post, I figured it was time for a progress report.
- Violin lessons. First and most importantly, I have found my violin teacher! I had my first lesson last week. I am happy to say that as much as I enjoyed getting acquainted with her over the phone, working with her in her studio was all the more wonderful. I have been dutifully, and for the most part, eagerly, practicing all week on etudes (Kreutzer), scales (Flesch and just plain), exercises (double-stops), and one piece (Meditation from Thais). It feels to me to be the perfect balance of challenge and manageability. I am starting off with one lesson every other week, which seems to work well for my teacher as well. And the bargain I have made with myself is my old standby – I will keep to my practice and lesson protocol imperfectly. When I miss a day, fine, back to it tomorrow. If we have to go an extra week or two between lessons, which will undoubtedly happen, I will have no trouble finding more to work on.
- Composition lessons. Not. The husband of my teacher is a composer. The night before my lesson I had listened to two of his compositions and liked them very much. When my lesson was over, my teacher introduced me to her husband, and I asked him if he taught lessons in composing. No, he doesn’t. However, he went on, why don’t I just begin composing a piece on piano and violin and see how it goes? Yikes! This was a dive-right-in approach I had not expected! And he was so pleasant and relaxed, almost innocent, about it, I found myself agreeing to try. So…
- Composing. A few days ago I sat down and began to write. It morphed instantly into a trio for two violins and cello. I am very happy with the theme and the harmonies of the first section, of which I have written eight bars. Well, seven and two-thirds. It took me hours! And I have no idea where to go from here, but then, I had had no notion of how to start until I did it. It appears this will be a long-term project, and I promise to keep you posted.
- Music theory school. In the meantime, I have been tutoring a student in music theory to get her a little better prepared for her theory placement test when she arrives at her college, and Chloe has been going along for the ride. It has been a great opportunity for me to review what I know and start to learn some more around the edges. I have to say, it is quite dry to learn music theory from a book! This is one discipline that is truly alive when using it, but utterly dead when on a printed page. So I hope to find someone to work with this fall. I know I will enjoy it far more in the company of another human being.
- Writing my blog. I am very excited to see that my list of subscribers and my readership in general are both on the increase! Thank you all for sampling something along the way in the past three weeks, and for coming back for more! Here’s the conundrum: the more active in my home-university I become, the harder it is to keep up with the chronicles! This is especially frustrating to me because I have been finding the writing to be a gratifying experience. I’m pretty sure that once Dan and I return from getting Chloe settled at her college, and Rachel has settled back into her school rhythm, I will have a little more time to follow my own pursuits. I look forward to that!
- Sleeping. Here on the home front we will be a little sleep deprived once school begins. It is so very hard to get up over an hour earlier than we have been through the summer, and somehow so very easy to stay up just as late. Darn. Why is that? Chloe, on the other hand, will have a class that starts at 8:00 only one day a week, and all the rest of the days she won’t start until 10:00 or later! Hey! I want to go to college! Okay, that was kind of an in-house joke, just in case you didn’t pick up on it.
Insurance cards, faulty memories, and the muse
August 3, 2010 at 4:56 pm | Posted in Long Blogs | 3 CommentsTags: daughter, family, journal, life, memory, motherhood, music, music lessons, musings, parenthood, practicing, reflections, the mind, violin
The mystery arose late last week. We were approaching the deadline to submit health forms to the medical clinic at Chloe’s college. In addition, we were asked to photocopy her insurance card and then fax all three pages to them. When I was Chloe’s age I used to love to fill out forms, but let us just say that she does not take after me in that respect. Simply put, there was procrastination – and not just on her part. I have to admit to having evolved to the point where I do not relish them anymore either. And Dan was busy with other things. Finally, two days before the deadline and hours before Chloe was to leave for the weekend, we hunkered down and with my guidance, she completed the task. I went to my wallet to pull out her insurance card, and discovered it was not in its designated slot.
Surprisingly, and with startling synchronicity, I had just gone through the same kind of sequence with Rachel earlier that same day, and with the same results. Rachel had been invited to join a school friend and her family on a road trip to the west coast, and we thought it would make sense to send her with at least a photocopy of her insurance card. As you have now guessed, when I went to my wallet said card was not there.
Hmmm.
So we backtracked. When was the last time I had seen either card? It was the week prior, when Rachel had gone with a different friend for a three-day outing (she has been quite the social butterfly and traveler this summer) and the friend’s mother had suggested she take the card with her, just in case. So I emailed said mother (I’ll call her Ursula) and asked her if she could return the card.
Ursula’s response appeared a little later: “I never had her insurance card.” What? Dan and I remembered the conversation clearly. I emailed back, telling her as much. (Nicely.) Later she emailed back, admitting that maybe she needed to check her purse again, and promised to get back to us afterward.
In the meantime, I was tracing our steps through recent weeks to remember when we had last used Chloe’s card. That was also no problem to recall. Two days before she and Rachel flew to Florida for a dance competition, I finally took her to the doctor to check out the two-plus-year-old pain in the ball of her foot, which turned out to be a stress fracture. (Another story, perhaps a future post.) She was new to that doctor’s clinic, so we had had to give her card at the front desk to allow the receptionist to photocopy it for their files. Had it been returned to me? I was pretty sure I remembered putting it back in my wallet.
As I reviewed the sequence of those days, I asked Chloe, “We didn’t send the insurance cards to Orlando with you and Rachel, did we?” She was sure we had not bothered, and I agreed. I had no memory whatsoever of handing them to anyone – either Chloe or their friends’ parents – as we met up with their fellow travelers at the airport. The trip was only for two days, and she hadn’t wanted to be responsible for carrying them. Dan concurred.
Another email from Ursula appeared: “I was thinking. Maybe the card looks like my insurance card and I missed seeing it. I’ll get back to you after I check again.”
A little perplexed, I called the clinic where Chloe’s foot was examined and explained the nature of my plight to the woman at the front desk. She was exceedingly sweet and very helpful. We spent ten minutes on the phone while she checked through the pile of abandoned insurance cards tucked away in a special corner of her drawer. Apparently this is not an unusual occurrence. Not finding it there, she continued to chat pleasantly with me as she combed every possible nook and cranny that might hold an unclaimed card. And when she failed to uncover it she was truly apologetic. I left my phone number with her just in case and said good-by to my new friend.
Ursula’s update appeared on the screen: “I searched my purse and didn’t find it. Sorry.”
Okay.
Dan ordered a new set of cards from our insurance company and we decided to wait another two days to fax Chloe’s health forms, just in case the old card turned up. By this time, my mind resembled the ball on the green and white table.
On one side of the net: Ping! “Am I going nuts?…”
Other side: Pong! “What a weird coincidence that both cards are missing at the same time…”
Ping! “I could swear I remember giving the card to Ursula…”
Pong! “I can’t believe we lost two cards in two different places in the same week…”
Chloe left for the weekend. Dan and I joined my mother for dinner in a noisy restaurant on the edge of town. We were waiting for Rachel’s call from some hotel in Las Vegas. Yes, my 13-year-old was spending the night in a resort casino hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Dan’s phone was on digital roam and Rachel was taking forever to call. By my admittedly long-distance reckoning, they should have arrived at the hotel hours ago. As we ordered and then dined, the image of the crash on I-15 was beginning to sketch itself in my mind. And of course, they don’t have Rachel’s health insurance card so they won’t know who they are treating in the emergency room. Assuming they are willing to treat her seeing as she has no card. I kept all this to myself so as not to worry Dan and my mother. Finally Dan’s phone rang.
Dan cupped his hands over his cell phone and his other ear. It was clearly not Rachel on the other end. At the end of a short conversation he chuckled lightly. “Okay, thanks for letting us know!” Probably not the ER.
It turns out Chloe’s cousin was aimlessly sifting through the contents of Chloe’s wallet sometime between dinner and the Shakespeare play. Hidden way in the back, stuffed safely in the midst of various gift cards from graduation two months ago, were the wayward health insurance cards.
(Rachel finally called us at home much later. They had indeed arrived hours before, but went swimming in the hotel pool before calling.)
What I find the most fascinating about this story is how none of us could piece together a complete memory of actually taking the insurance cards out of my wallet and handing them to Chloe who then stuffed them into hers. Dan and I remembered the conversation with Ursula, but not the upshot. And Ursula in turn began to doubt not only her memory but even the tangible hands-on search through her purse. Chloe and Dan and I could remember discussing whether to send the cards with Chloe, but not one of us had even a vague recall of the actual decision. And the receptionist at the medical center, who had no reason to remember the details of Chloe’s card – for all I know she wasn’t even working the day we came in – was totally open to the possibility that it was floating around there somewhere. It happens.
Dan is currently reading Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph T. Hallinan. From the little he has told me about it, it is the perfect companion to this episode, examining what we do and do not remember, and how we tweak our actual memories to fit our view of the present. I plan to read it when he is done, as I find the implications staggering. What does this tell us about eyewitnesses in a court case? Just a few weeks ago Chloe’s senior class did a production of “Twelve Angry Men” (it included women, of course, but I just don’t like the ring of “Twelve Angry Jurors” so I’m holding to the old, though gender-biased, title) and I wondered all the way through it, Would I be able to remember anything clearly enough to testify under oath? I don’t think so. Even as I am telling all of this to you I am very likely committing errors in the sequence, timing, and what people said, felt, and did. The gist is only as true as I can make it.*
And in the context of music, how well do I remember what my teachers told me to practice? How accurate is my understanding of their appraisals of my musicianship and skills? How well do I hear myself play? One of my teachers demonstrated for me that, while playing out of tune with terrible tone sounds – not surprisingly – terrible, playing out of tune with gorgeous tone sounds amazingly tolerable, even passing for, well, playing in tune. I’m obviously not campaigning for inaccurate pitch, but there is a kernel here that is immensely helpful to my paralyzingly perfectionistic self, and it goes something like the following.
Can I make a bargain with myself to practice all the ingredients – fingerings, shifting, articulation, phrasing, vibrato, dynamics, expression, etc. – and then let go of the belief that I need to micro-manage the performance? Can I apply the perfectionism selectively and use it “mostly/only” during practice sessions? In other words, if I do my homework long, hard, and well enough during the practicing and rehearsing, can’t I trust the muse to sprinkle a little magic on the stage the night of the concert? Assuming one is a good musician, how much of the performance is “fact” and how much is “illusion”? Is it really all about a million tiny details, or is the music greater than the sum of all its parts? I really do know the answer to that question.
I can now see that I always relied on the magic of the muse throughout the decades of my folk career, and she always proved herself to be reliable. So apparently I have piled all the perfectionism into the arena of classical music. Perhaps the learning curve that lies before me (or am I already ascending?) is to tear down the wall between those two worlds. I wonder who built the wall in the first place.
*With two disclaimers. Number one is that Chloe claims she did not procrastinate. She needed my help and I was busy, which is totally true. Number two is that after Dan read the above, he reminded me that we actually photocopied his insurance card and Rachel took that with her to the west coast. Here’s what’s perfect about this one: I have no memory of it!
Violin lessons: a retrospective
July 30, 2010 at 11:59 am | Posted in Long Blogs | 2 CommentsTags: college, daughter, getting to know me, motherhood, music, music lessons, orchestra, piano, practicing, violin
Yesterday I called a local violinist to see about taking a trial lesson from her. As I wait for her to return my call, I will share some of my violin-lesson memories through the years.
- I was lucky enough to be raised in a school district where music was valued, at least back in the 60s. Every summer, for the first few weeks after school ended, instrumental music classes were offered through the public school system, for a very reasonable fee. It was there that I began, in a class of what seemed like a hundred freshly-graduated third graders, squeaking and grinding on half- and three-quarter instruments. Toward the end of the (three- or five-week – it’s a little vague in my mind) session, I came home and triumphantly announced to my mother, “Mommy! Mr. Seguine said I’m the BEST ONE!” Years later, my mother shared with me her actual reaction to this happy report. She closed her eyes and said silently, “Then God help the other mothers.”
- Because I was the BEST ONE, and given that my parents were already stretched by paying for my piano lessons, my instrumental music teacher at school told my parents she would teach me privately for no charge. So every week I spent a half-hour with Charlotte Hilligoss, may she rest in peace. I adored her, but unfortunately did not feel the same about scales and etudes. I didn’t have the words to tell her that I didn’t like the pieces she assigned me, and having no idea there was repertoire I would have enjoyed, I never asked for anything different. As much as I liked Charlotte, (and my god — she was so generous to give me lessons on her own time!) I was not inspired to work and I was certainly having no fun. So after a year or two of dragging myself there, feeling guiltier and guiltier about how little I practiced, that chapter came to a close.
- Charlotte handed me over to a grad student at the university whose name was Henry Kolar. I have no memory of Henry-the-person. What I do remember is that he made me practice with my left thumb flying in mid-air, away from the neck of the violin. I had developed a tight hand vibrato (which I’m confident was my own fault and not Charlotte’s) and had a habit of squeezing my thumb very hard against the side of the neck, resulting in a collapsed base knuckle. Henry saw his mission: SAVE THAT GIRL FROM A TIGHT LEFT THUMB! He took it seriously, and I whole-heartedly resented him, every lesson I had with him, and each and every practice session at home. Poor guy – I pity him for having had to work with me! He must have been either very persuasive or incredibly intimidating because I actually did do what he told me to do. In truth, I now bless him and the ground he walks on. Having watched people play violin with a tight left thumb, I am happy to have escaped that fate. Henry Kolar’s mission was accomplished!
- I stayed in school orchestra, but had no further private instruction. My junior high and high school orchestras each won best in the state, and the former even made a record album, which was pretty big stuff for the 60s. (Our conductor chose what I thought was a lame photo for the cover, however. Just saying.) While still in high school, I played in the local community orchestra, which I continued to do for two or three non-consecutive years through the 70s.
- Violin confusion ruled through my twenties. I was by then studying fiddle music from the traditions of Sweden, Norway, Romania, Greece and the Greek Islands, Hungary, and a little conjunto music, all with native teachers. I took lessons briefly from a classical teacher, but here’s where I got stuck: the more ethnic folk music I was exposed to, the less “pretty” I wanted to sound. It seemed to me that classical playing sounded smooth and lovely, and to my ear that didn’t mesh with the repertoire I was exploring. After one or two lessons I quit, feeling somehow misled and lost, but I placed the blame on myself.
- Fast forward to summer of 2003. Chloe was 11, and I took her on a three-day trip to experience the Aspen Music Festival. This, after two decades of enjoying a full folk music career, followed by a very clean and complete break, and then eight years devoted entirely to being a full-time mom and having a mid-life identity crisis. (Life would be too mundane doing one at a time.) What made me suddenly choose Aspen? I have no idea. But while there we attended a master class in piano, taught by Misha Dichter. I found myself welling up throughout the class. Why had I left this world of classical music? I could no longer remember what had possessed me back in the 70s, but I was now determined to re-join it.
- Immediately upon my return home I decided to work toward an audition to music school on piano and violin. Okay, I can now see this was not only over-ambitious but also a bit hasty. But at the time I was the most euphoric I had been in decades, which must count for something! I practiced on both instruments every minute I could find. On piano: Bach’s English Suite V in E minor, Mozart’s Sonata in C Major, K. 330, and a Chopin Nocturne, Opus posth. 72 nr. 1. On violin: Mendelssohn Concerto and the Allemanda from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor.
- So what happened? Opening that door seemed to welcome in the music universe. Suddenly all sorts of opportunities began to avail themselves to me, at my synagogue, in the folk music community, my teaching studio began to attract more students, and it began to dawn on me that hunkering down as a full-time student would narrow my world more than it would expand it. Plus Chloe made a little comment about all the books she had read in which some character’s mom went back to school and became mostly unavailable to her kids, not to mention irritable, sleep deprived, and stressed out. “Please don’t do it, Mom,” she pleaded. Okay, slow down and rethink my whole life plan. That put the cap on the school idea. I continued to study piano with my teacher, and just practiced violin on my own.
- Two years later I was having dinner and catching up with an old musician friend. It’s amazing to me how it can happen that just as some idea is coming together enough to put it into words, there sitting in front of you is the perfect witness for that very thought. I found myself telling her that what I really love the most is early music, and that playing in an orchestra that emphasizes that repertoire would be like a dream come true. Immediately following my words came her timely announcement that a mutual friend was forming just such a group. The universe lined it right up for me. Within 24 hours, I ran into the mutual friend. I told him I was interested, and within two months I was having my first lesson on baroque violin with the concertmaster of said new orchestra. Eight months later I joined the group for the final concert of the first season.
As I was writing this, the prospective violin teacher called me on the phone. All I can say is that so far I LOVE HER. Okay, I know it was only a ten-minute phone conversation, but after all, first impressions do count heavily, don’t they? I go for my trial lesson next Tuesday. I am excited and nervous. I am fairly certain there will be more about this soon. And hopefully also later.
More on tension
July 28, 2010 at 6:36 pm | Posted in Short Blogs | 2 CommentsTags: Alexander Technique, getting to know me, habits, inventory, life, music, piano, practicing
After posting yesterday’s blog, questions came to me.
- How much tension is “necessary” for what I am trying to accomplish? More to the point, am I adding tension? If I have habitual tension in my shoulders, and I place my hands on the piano keys, it is likely I am holding myself differently than I would if I tended to move more freely. When I was working with an Alexander Technique teacher, we spent one session exploring my piano playing. It took many tries to play one phrase without engaging my neck, back, and jaw, and when I finally accomplished it, there was so much emotion released in that act of free movement, I almost started sobbing!
- Do I hold any attitudes or beliefs that contribute to my tension? Can I explore these?
- How can I “work on” not being tense? What an ironic question! It will not help me to approach this with my usual drive and determination, because that will add unnecessary tightness. In the aforementioned AT session, I did not sit down to the piano until we had spent a good half hour getting into a lighter and more effortless place with my posture and breath. I cannot will myself to relax – I have to walk down a patient and conscious path in that direction, every time. And it is a different path each time, otherwise I am approaching it in a rote way, which I have found to be almost useless.
- How can I approach this with my mantra of doing it imperfectly? There are so many days that I have only a limited time to practice. Is it more important to work on technique as often as possible, or to work on “practice readiness” by walking down my AT path first, which might cost me my practice time? I don’t have an answer to this right now.
- I understand that if I practice a piece with tension, I am practicing playing it tense, which is the result I will get. I also know myself well enough to say that one of the most important things I am learning these days is how to say “This is good enough for now.”
For the present I am going to do my best to dwell in the paradox this last piece contains. A friend once asked me if I could expand myself enough to hold two (or more) conflicting feelings at the same time. I have just been given another opportunity to explore that frontier.
On tension
July 27, 2010 at 1:47 pm | Posted in Long Blogs | 3 CommentsTags: habits, life, music, practicing, thanks, violin
I figured something out. It took awhile, but they say it takes whatever it takes. Last year I was taking a violin lesson from a very wonderful and insightful teacher while studying at a workshop at Oberlin Conservatory. He was helping me with a section of a piece that put my hand into an uncomfortable stretch, and I commented that I couldn’t find a way to play that combination of notes without my hand being tense.
He looked at me – he has a way of really looking at you – and said, somewhat off-handedly, “Tension is okay.” I was dumbfounded. We had just spent several days in technique class working on how to hold the baroque violin and baroque bow, exploring our breath as we made big counter-clockwise circles in the air with our right arms, allowing gravity to assist us with an organically heavier beat on the down-bows and the resulting inhale and lighter touch to our up-bow and pick-up notes. The object, I had been led to believe, was to learn to use the structure of the bow and the inherent qualities of the gut strings to our advantage so that our playing would be graceful and flowing, free of the bad and undesirable T-word. Tension is our enemy, isn’t it?
I have spent a lifetime trying to let go of the tension in my body. I wake up every morning with my jaw and tongue – not my teeth – clenched. Since my childhood I have walked through my days bracing myself, my gut held tight as if I am about to be punched, bearing down from my head into my throat into my neck and shoulders and from there into my middle. I was utterly unconscious of all of this until it began to cause pain in my early adult years and then gradually I woke up to these patterns. The more aware I became, the more I worked to rid myself of them. And with the help of several therapies and practices, I have released many layers of them over three decades.
As I tended to these habits, I held highest the goal of being entirely free of them. Drawing from another habit, I saw the picture as black and white, categorizing as follows: being tense (read “the way I do it”) is bad and wrong, and being relaxed (read “the opposite of how I do it”) is perfect and right. Corollary: I should be doing it the right way.
As I sit here writing this, I am almost laughing, but not quite. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that what I said in the previous paragraph is sadly laughable, but I’m not much beyond a wry smile yet. I still fall into that way of thinking countless times a day without noticing I have returned to familiar territory in the blink of an eye. Here’s the paradox: I am still trying to be perfect, even though I have identified perfectionism as one of my greatest faults. I am even trying to be perfect at not being perfect. I just slip right back into the echoes of the very thing I think I am overcoming! At that I can laugh whole-guttedly. It reminds me of a woman (someone I don’t know) I once heard talking about how very hard she was on herself. “I need to be MUCH MORE GENTLE ON MYSELF!” she hammered out fiercely. Those of us listening to her were torn between the humor and the pathos.
That moment from my violin lesson stayed with me, perplexing me for months. Then recently one day I was explaining a fine point to one of my students. “There is a difference,” I pointed out patiently (I have patience with my students, just not much with myself), “between tension and rigidity. It’s not that we want to be limp! A musician needs to play with strength and firmness, and that’s not about being relaxed, it’s about…” And then I realized I was on the edge of the issue myself. What is it about?
Some moments in our lives simply call for us to rise to something. We work hard to climb a mountain, to learn something difficult, to execute an excruciatingly fine act with grace, precision, care, etc. It’s just important that we do not stay there! Nobody can live every moment to the intensity that those moments demand of us. We all need to breathe out after we achieve them. Astoundingly, we even need to breathe out while we are working the hardest, right in the thick of the act itself. The challenge is to continue to focus while we are in motion and then let go of the physical tension and keep breathing and moving.
So I tried it the next time I was practicing violin. Could I climb the peak of even the most dramatic and gripping phrases with strength and vitality – even with tension – and then release it and let myself back down? It did not come easily, but it was thrilling to experience it to even a small degree. I did my best to stay with it all the way through the phrase, ascending the notes as I breathed in and out, moving forward, not grabbing onto anything along the way, so that the momentum could lead all the way to the climax. Then I experimented with the sensation of letting go – to some degree – of what it took to get there, while still maintaining the musicality of the diminishing line. Wow! I could only begin to integrate it all, and no doubt a bunch of other fine points went out the window in the process, but it was exhilarating!
It provided a new touchpoint for me. In recent days, without consciously thinking about it, it suddenly dawns on me to seize the opportunity to release the effort that I habitually exert throughout my day. For a few seconds, I am free from that pattern of bearing down. I experience a lightness and sense of flow almost instantly. It allows me to breathe more deeply, and then the breathing out brings an even greater release. I am instantly more gentle with myself (I hope somewhere, somehow, that nameless woman can read this!) and even the black and white thinking vanishes. I do not expect it to make a permanent departure, but for those moments it is inconsequential. It misses the point. This moment, whenever it happens, is utterly filled with life. And with practice, I am hopeful that it will become easier to integrate it into my violin playing as well.
Thank you, Teacher. And thank you to the Muse for helping me to understand a little more along the way.
Recital and post-recital mood
July 23, 2010 at 1:03 pm | Posted in Long Blogs | 7 CommentsTags: college, daughter, event, family, inventory, motherhood, music
I wrote this about two weeks ago:
Last night was Chloe’s senior recital. The final senior event! It went stunningly well, but right now I’m so tired and low, all I can think of are the negative things. This happens to me only occasionally these days, fortunately. Rather than really bringing myself (and you) down, I am going to list the positive things, and see how I feel after that.
- She played very well. In fact the last piece was incredibly challenging and she really nailed it! It was exciting and expressive, even dramatic, and a wonderful end to the performance. And this is not to say that her other pieces were any less stunning. She has been practicing very hard and often, and it paid off (a lesson her father and I are happy she is learning!)
- People from all different parts of her life were there: her grandmother and uncle (my mother and brother), several Irish stepdancing friends, friends from her Costa Rica tour and their parents, her present violin teacher and her family AND her past violin teacher and even her classroom teacher from grades 1 through 8, a handful of her classmates from school as well as several others from her school community, many friends from our synagogue, old family friends who knew us before Chloe was even a distant twinkle, and even a couple of friends who knew me when I was young. It was a thrill to have them all there to honor her.
- She shared the evening with her sister, which made it even more special. They opened the performance together with a duet, a flashy quintessential violin piece, and later Rachel played all three movements of a concerto. The latter was to mark her graduation from the Suzuki books, which is really quite an accomplishment, especially for a 13-year-old. And she played elegantly. It was a beautiful addition to the program.
- I baked enough cookies. More than enough. So people were apparently satisfied.
- The weather was cool. This was significant because with a July recital date in a church that has no air conditioning, I had been quite concerned that we would have a heat wave and someone would faint during that hour in the sanctuary. Instead, it was actually cold when we first arrived! After I warned everyone to dress lightly. And though the room warmed up somewhat with all the bodies there, it was entirely comfortable. Only a few programs were employed as fans. And there were no emergency room visits (that I know of.)
- The sanctuary was actually a lovely setting for the recital. Over the past few years, my chamber orchestra has performed almost exclusively in church sanctuaries, and I have come to appreciate what they have to offer. This one was fairly simple, yet there was a feeling of quiet reverence. (Or was I reading that into it because it was such a special night for us?) And the lobby worked well as a reception hall afterward. AND it was not too costly to rent.
So why am I down? Is it letdown? I don’t think so, though perhaps it is impossible to recognize it when you are in the thick of it. I feel mostly relieved that it’s over. I’m exhausted, fried, used up. This is partly from not feeling well all week and consequently not eating enough, so I had no reserve on top of little fuel to begin with. I was supposed to go to a concert with Chloe tonight, but I decided I just couldn’t push it one more night, and offered my ticket to my easygoing husband, who accepted. They should be calling any minute to announce that they are on their way home.
I know that since the recital is behind us, it means there is that much less standing between the here and now and the big C. (Okay, I’ll spell it out: C-O-L-L-E-G-E. Just in case you hadn’t figured it out yet.) We leave in six and one-half weeks. Seven weeks from today, Dan and I will say good-by to her and begin the drive back home across several states with an empty back seat. (Rachel is staying with a school friend and will have to say good-by three days earlier, here at home.) No, I don’t relish the thought. But I don’t even think that is what is bothering me.
I have this sensation of having been thrown into the washing machine and the dryer multiple times over the last year. Tossed and cycled and rinsed and wrung out and then bounced around and around, banging in the tumbler like a lone sneaker. I rose to it every time. Took her on every college visit, every lesson, every audition, sat through the writing of every essay, helped edit every application and email, sent out announcements of this recital as well as every other culminating event before this, helped her pack for her Costa Rica tour and her senior trip to Germany, nursed her when she got sick, before and after both trips. All in the line of duty. All out of the biggest, deepest kind of love there is.
AND NOW I HAVE TO HELP HER GET READY TO LEAVE ME? What do I get out of that? The answer to that question feels far from simple. Right now all I see is that she will be gone, that I will not get to reap the pleasure and satisfaction of being with her, sharing those simple daily moments with her, hearing her laugh, watching her tackle some challenge, marveling at how she makes lemonade out of life’s lemons, etc., because she will not be here. I will have to learn to trust that she will be okay out there in the world, even if every fiber of me is afraid she won’t be, because only I know how to take care of her. (I do know that isn’t really true, it just feels entirely true to my hard-drive mom cells.) I will have to learn to offer support and encouragement when she calls us, homesick or discouraged, or suffering from some miserable virus or roommate woe, even as I will be battling my own screamingly adamant desire to fly out on the next plane to be there with her. I will have to pretend to be excited to hear about all her performances and even all her hours of practice when truthfully I will feel jealous of all the people who get to hear her. Because I won’t get to.
If someone had told me about this part when Dan and I were trying to get pregnant, it wouldn’t have sounded very bad to me. And I’m sure it doesn’t sound like the loving and selfless mom I think I am supposed to be. It is amazing to me how being a mother is so often all one thing and not a bit of the other. When my two were very young it was just plain hard to get anything done because they were so high-maintenance. There were diapers and nursing, snacks, toys, meals, and the constant distractions that are the very nature of young children. They needed attention almost every minute, and they demanded it in unbearably noisy, invasive ways that were impossible to ignore. They especially wanted to be held when there was something I had to do on a deadline or in a hurry. They needed me to mirror and guide and model for them every nuance of daily life. It was non-stop and immense for a long time. And then suddenly, around age 11, I fell from grace and they didn’t want kisses and hugs anymore, except on their own terms, which meant only very occasionally, and then they asked in indirect and hard-to-interpret ways. They were distant and fresh (not it a good way) when they were around their friends. I got the distinct feeling I was doing a lot of things wrong, but couldn’t figure out what to do differently. It was like all the rules had changed, but I hadn’t received the memo. A fellow mom told me, “It’s like a bank account – you have to save it all up when they are young and they worship and adore you. When they reject you years later, you have to draw on your savings, because there’s nothing being deposited for awhile.” It seemed funny at the time that she told it to me, but it wasn’t funny when it happened to me.
So now that we have the most deep and meaningful bond, now that we have amazing heart-to-heart talks, now that she can tell me in plain English when she wants a hug, now that she actually sometimes offers the hugs to me for my benefit, now that she is expressing gratitude for what she has been given – now that we could really cruise on the present status quo – we are instead speeding toward the edge of a cliff and there is no stopping the car. She is going to fly.
I am going to let her go because that is my job. I know without question that it is the right thing to do. And those who have gone before me tell me that there is life after the departure. I will pretend to believe them, because it is the best option I have.
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