I can only post sporadically until the summer.
Once a week I touch this beautiful Steinway Grand. I have to wax. Like a race car of a piano, it's sensitive and responsive. It carries a melting sound, and reaches softs as soft as you dare. It takes all the muscle you have and doesn't break into the hard scraping stridency of cheaper pianos. I can whisper, tell secrets, and bring in some rain. I want it.
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An EVENING IN THE LIFE OF (and why I don't write anymore)
When you have a child who shows an aptitude for music, and you're a musician and your parents are musicians and your friends are mostly musicians, you have to be very careful about when to encourage or when put on the brakes. At three, Lita identified major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords. She was taught more or less by hearing me practice, and then I gave her the words to describe them. Now that she knows the names of the keys, she is also showing perfect pitch. She doesn't like "fast songs" or rock-n-roll. When asked what she wants to listen to, she prefers slow melodies in minor keys. Is this genetic?
On Sunday, she had her first piano lesson with my friend. Four and a half is a bit young, unless you are a crazed parent with ambitions of hammering your child into a wunderkind, but then also, if your child is able to learn, you are stunting her by not providing the opportunity. It can be frustrating to go through a day with no challenges when you have the capacity to face them, like with German shepherds who turn unhappy and vicious when they have no opportunity to use their intelligence and be stimulated.
The lesson went very well. It was supposed to last thirty minutes and went on for an hour, and she was enjoying it. I interrupted to ask Lita if she needed to use the restroom, but she refused. This happens a lot with her; when she is involved, she will not listen to her body. She ended up peeing a bit in her pants on the way home.
I was sick yesterday, so I didn't have a chance to practice with her, but we sat at the piano for about fifteen minutes today to review the lesson material, which consists mainly of finger games. Fine, easy. There was one more three minute exercise to cover, which I planned to get to after coming home from work and waiting for the asparagus to cook.
It was a rhythmic exercise that you first clap, and then play on the piano. She didn't like it, but she did it, and then after leaving the piano, she began to cry. I assumed she was just tired and hungry until she started hitting herself with her hand to her forehead and saying "I don't like myself, I don't like myself, I don't like myself." Why sweetheart? I love you. What's wrong? "My body is bad."
Wow, it hurt to hear her say that.
So this is all because of three minutes of piano tonight, and it's my fault that she dislikes herself. The guilt. I start to understand through her sobs that she had to fight and overpower her feelings to play a short piece that she doesn't like. Freddy and I both held her until she calmed down and we sat down to eat.
After a few bites, she stood up in her chair like she was giving us a speech and told Freddy to be quiet and listen. She was talking about water. First she wanted to tell us how beautiful rain drops look on the surface of the car door today. Then she wanted to know if people make the water that comes out of the faucet. Then Freddy interrupted to tell her about plumbing and she told him to shut-up. (Which is rude, and I should have stopped her, but I was too interested in hearing out her train of thought.) She said "Dad, I know about pipes. When we flush the toilet the water goes down. The water in the sink goes down too. It goes down the pipe. But where does the clean water come from?"
Then we got to talking about water towers and gravity and clouds and weather systems, and she jumped to the rainforest. "We have to stop the people cutting down the trees in the Brazilian rainforest. People cut down the trees, and there are no homes for the butterflies and animals."
How are you going to stop them?, I asked. What if the people need wood to build their homes?
"Oh, I have a idea. This is a great idea. You come at night and take their big machines. Then you crumple them up and put them in the recycling bin."
We pointed out all the things in our house made out of wood. We pointed out books and furniture. "Oh, I know what to do. We have to plant seeds. Then there will be more and more trees."
(She tries to figure out things this way, constantly chattering. When she was two and saw an airplane in the sky with Freddy...I was visiting my mother and had taken a plane, and she assumed that I was on the plane that she saw. "Look, a plane. Mommy is on the plane. It is faraway. I can't reach it. I need a ladder.")
Somehow we jumped again to talking about cancer. She thought cancer was a plant that grew inside of you from a seed. I told her that my father died of cancer, and she wanted to know why the doctors couldn't fix him. I explained that doctors all around the world were looking for ways to fix cancer. Then she teared up. "Mommy are you going to get cancer? Am I going to die from cancer?" No, you won't get cancer. Grandpa John smoked cigars, and cigars are bad for you and cause cancer. "But Mommy, Daddy might get cancer because he has dip."
Here I have to insert a side note--yes, despite his metropolitan ways, Freddy sucks on pouches of nicotine all day.
"I know Mommy!" She crawls from her dining chair into my lap and whispers. "We can wait for Daddy to sleep and take his dip and throw it away!" I tell her that he would just buy more. "Then we have to write a letter to the store and tell them to stop making it." I tell her it's a very good idea, but other people have tried that and the company keeps making the dip. "Then we have to sneak at night and take all the dip, and then throw it all away." Great, we are raising a political activist criminal.
"Why do we have to die?" is the question she most often asks, at least once a day. Sometimes it's the first thing out of her mouth. "Dying is part of life" is the lame answer I give her. "We have to ask God why he makes us die" she says. I ask her where she learns this stuff, and who is telling her about God. "I learned it by myself, Mommy. God is inside of us. We have to call him to come out so that we can ask him not to make us die."
It is 9 p.m. and she shows no sign of slowing down. She has her pajamas on and her teeth are brushed, and she bargains with me to do two connect-the-dot pictures before going sleep. The first connect-the-dots picture is detailed and goes up to the count of one hundred, and turns out to be a flounder. She wants to know all about flounders, so she types in "flounder" in Google search. She is weirded out by the two eyes being on one side. She wants to look at all 235,248 images of flounders.
In my lap she sucks her thumb and twiddles with my ear. "Why were you so upset with the piano tonight?", I ask.
"I don't like that song. It's fast and ugly."
"Okay, you're right. It's not a great song. But if you play it, then your fingers will be ready so that you can play a beautiful song next. Is that a good idea?" She is totally fine with it. I am fine with it too because I just told her the plain truth.
I start to carry her upstairs to tuck her in, but she wants to go to bed by herself. I know it's because she is going to practice reading books for another hour. I can hear her singing in bed--she is singing something like this: "Boing, boing, boing, if you get tired of boinging all day, that's okay, you can boing again tomorrow. Frogs boing and balls boing and even people boing. I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop. I can't stop talking, I can't stop growing. Mommy loves me even when I'm mad. Boing boing boing, when you get tired, it's okay. Calm down Myself, calm down."
Once a week I touch this beautiful Steinway Grand. I have to wax. Like a race car of a piano, it's sensitive and responsive. It carries a melting sound, and reaches softs as soft as you dare. It takes all the muscle you have and doesn't break into the hard scraping stridency of cheaper pianos. I can whisper, tell secrets, and bring in some rain. I want it.
************
An EVENING IN THE LIFE OF (and why I don't write anymore)
When you have a child who shows an aptitude for music, and you're a musician and your parents are musicians and your friends are mostly musicians, you have to be very careful about when to encourage or when put on the brakes. At three, Lita identified major, minor, diminished, and augmented chords. She was taught more or less by hearing me practice, and then I gave her the words to describe them. Now that she knows the names of the keys, she is also showing perfect pitch. She doesn't like "fast songs" or rock-n-roll. When asked what she wants to listen to, she prefers slow melodies in minor keys. Is this genetic?
On Sunday, she had her first piano lesson with my friend. Four and a half is a bit young, unless you are a crazed parent with ambitions of hammering your child into a wunderkind, but then also, if your child is able to learn, you are stunting her by not providing the opportunity. It can be frustrating to go through a day with no challenges when you have the capacity to face them, like with German shepherds who turn unhappy and vicious when they have no opportunity to use their intelligence and be stimulated.
The lesson went very well. It was supposed to last thirty minutes and went on for an hour, and she was enjoying it. I interrupted to ask Lita if she needed to use the restroom, but she refused. This happens a lot with her; when she is involved, she will not listen to her body. She ended up peeing a bit in her pants on the way home.
I was sick yesterday, so I didn't have a chance to practice with her, but we sat at the piano for about fifteen minutes today to review the lesson material, which consists mainly of finger games. Fine, easy. There was one more three minute exercise to cover, which I planned to get to after coming home from work and waiting for the asparagus to cook.
It was a rhythmic exercise that you first clap, and then play on the piano. She didn't like it, but she did it, and then after leaving the piano, she began to cry. I assumed she was just tired and hungry until she started hitting herself with her hand to her forehead and saying "I don't like myself, I don't like myself, I don't like myself." Why sweetheart? I love you. What's wrong? "My body is bad."
Wow, it hurt to hear her say that.
So this is all because of three minutes of piano tonight, and it's my fault that she dislikes herself. The guilt. I start to understand through her sobs that she had to fight and overpower her feelings to play a short piece that she doesn't like. Freddy and I both held her until she calmed down and we sat down to eat.
After a few bites, she stood up in her chair like she was giving us a speech and told Freddy to be quiet and listen. She was talking about water. First she wanted to tell us how beautiful rain drops look on the surface of the car door today. Then she wanted to know if people make the water that comes out of the faucet. Then Freddy interrupted to tell her about plumbing and she told him to shut-up. (Which is rude, and I should have stopped her, but I was too interested in hearing out her train of thought.) She said "Dad, I know about pipes. When we flush the toilet the water goes down. The water in the sink goes down too. It goes down the pipe. But where does the clean water come from?"
Then we got to talking about water towers and gravity and clouds and weather systems, and she jumped to the rainforest. "We have to stop the people cutting down the trees in the Brazilian rainforest. People cut down the trees, and there are no homes for the butterflies and animals."
How are you going to stop them?, I asked. What if the people need wood to build their homes?
"Oh, I have a idea. This is a great idea. You come at night and take their big machines. Then you crumple them up and put them in the recycling bin."
We pointed out all the things in our house made out of wood. We pointed out books and furniture. "Oh, I know what to do. We have to plant seeds. Then there will be more and more trees."
(She tries to figure out things this way, constantly chattering. When she was two and saw an airplane in the sky with Freddy...I was visiting my mother and had taken a plane, and she assumed that I was on the plane that she saw. "Look, a plane. Mommy is on the plane. It is faraway. I can't reach it. I need a ladder.")
Somehow we jumped again to talking about cancer. She thought cancer was a plant that grew inside of you from a seed. I told her that my father died of cancer, and she wanted to know why the doctors couldn't fix him. I explained that doctors all around the world were looking for ways to fix cancer. Then she teared up. "Mommy are you going to get cancer? Am I going to die from cancer?" No, you won't get cancer. Grandpa John smoked cigars, and cigars are bad for you and cause cancer. "But Mommy, Daddy might get cancer because he has dip."
Here I have to insert a side note--yes, despite his metropolitan ways, Freddy sucks on pouches of nicotine all day.
"I know Mommy!" She crawls from her dining chair into my lap and whispers. "We can wait for Daddy to sleep and take his dip and throw it away!" I tell her that he would just buy more. "Then we have to write a letter to the store and tell them to stop making it." I tell her it's a very good idea, but other people have tried that and the company keeps making the dip. "Then we have to sneak at night and take all the dip, and then throw it all away." Great, we are raising a political activist criminal.
"Why do we have to die?" is the question she most often asks, at least once a day. Sometimes it's the first thing out of her mouth. "Dying is part of life" is the lame answer I give her. "We have to ask God why he makes us die" she says. I ask her where she learns this stuff, and who is telling her about God. "I learned it by myself, Mommy. God is inside of us. We have to call him to come out so that we can ask him not to make us die."
It is 9 p.m. and she shows no sign of slowing down. She has her pajamas on and her teeth are brushed, and she bargains with me to do two connect-the-dot pictures before going sleep. The first connect-the-dots picture is detailed and goes up to the count of one hundred, and turns out to be a flounder. She wants to know all about flounders, so she types in "flounder" in Google search. She is weirded out by the two eyes being on one side. She wants to look at all 235,248 images of flounders.
In my lap she sucks her thumb and twiddles with my ear. "Why were you so upset with the piano tonight?", I ask.
"I don't like that song. It's fast and ugly."
"Okay, you're right. It's not a great song. But if you play it, then your fingers will be ready so that you can play a beautiful song next. Is that a good idea?" She is totally fine with it. I am fine with it too because I just told her the plain truth.
I start to carry her upstairs to tuck her in, but she wants to go to bed by herself. I know it's because she is going to practice reading books for another hour. I can hear her singing in bed--she is singing something like this: "Boing, boing, boing, if you get tired of boinging all day, that's okay, you can boing again tomorrow. Frogs boing and balls boing and even people boing. I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop. I can't stop talking, I can't stop growing. Mommy loves me even when I'm mad. Boing boing boing, when you get tired, it's okay. Calm down Myself, calm down."
