I think I should come back as a musician in my next life–that’s how interesting I’m finding my piano lessons. I’m still a beginner. I’m taking baby steps. But I’m enjoying this experience more than I’ve enjoyed anything in a long time.

I took the girls to see my parents last week for Spring Break. When I told my mom I’d started taking piano lessons again, she nearly fell on the floor. All week, she begged me to play something for her. “Just one song. Anything.  Please.”  I suspect she was privately thinking she’d believe I was playing the piano when she heard something with her own ears.  On the last morning, just before we left, I played “Pirate’s Song,” the jaunty little tune fit for a third grader. I may as well have played a Beethoven concerto the way my mom reacted.  But as I write this, it occurs to me her reaction may have been inspired by something else: a sense of relief that as a parent she hadn’t failed, the thought that even though I bombed at that recital thirty years ago, she’d planted the seed.  She’d done her job as a parent.  

I understand the reaction.  I want so much for my girls.  I want them to love music and books the way I love music and books.  I want them to understand why art is important. Not just understand, I want them to BELIEVE it the way I believe it–with my whole self.  And so, just like my mom did thirty years ago, I find myself dragging them to museums and concerts when they’d rather watch Nickelodeon. I hear myself insisting they push to the front of the tour so they can hear everything the docent has to say when they’d rather hang back.  Just last Sunday, I heard myself declaring that I was buying tickets for the Egypt exhibit at the De Young, and “they were going whether they liked it or not!” 

The weekend before spring break, I dragged them to a classical music concert at Berkeley.  The American String Quartet was performing pieces by Hayden and two other composers whose names escape me at the moment.  We were the only African-American family in the concert hall. H and C were the only kids.  No joke–the average age of the audience members was probably sixty-eight.  At the end of the concert, the man seated next to C tapped her arm and said, “come back again, and bring your friends.”

C is still taking piano lessons too, and sometimes it’s a challenge to find a balance between being a hard-ass and being sympathetic to the other demands on her time. I told her when I sighed her up I was going to ride her pretty hard about practicing and quitting wasn’t an option. At first, she was at the keyboard all the time.  But then the novelty wore off as she realized she wouldn’t be a virtuoso overnight. Now, most days, I have to remind her to practice and she usually has a dozen reasons why she can’t get to it.  I didn’t ride her about practicing while we were visiting my parents,  but when we got home from I insisted she put in some time.  She grumbled and sighed and moped and finally dragged herself to the keyboard. But I think my hard-as-nails-approach paid off.  Monday, after her lesson she turned to me and said, “that was fun.  It makes a big difference when I’ve practiced.”

I resisted the urge to launch into one of my parenting speech.  I just squeezed her hand. “Exactly.”

I don’t care if my kids grow up to be concert musicians.  In fact, I seriously doubt that will happen. But if, thirty years from now, they can sit at a piano or pick up a violin or saxaphone and play something that brings them joy, I’ll have done my job.  I won’t even bother denying it–  I’ll breathe a sigh of relief and give then a standing ovation, exactly like my mother.