My children will never be professional musicians.

They all started playing violin at age four.  Except Brian, who was three.  We just didn’t have the heart to make him wait, when at least six days a week he would ask if he was four yet so he could have his first lesson…

George turns four this month, and is years, I think, from being ready to start lessons, but the other 80 % of my children play enough to make up for the delay…  plus, this year, Emily, Sam and Brian are studying with a small chamber music group.  Their director decided at the last minute that she wanted their quintet to play at a Community School of the Arts piano and guitar recital… and her boss even offered to iron my boys’ shirts if they could go. 

My children will never be professional musicians.  They practice well, study hard, and have amazing teachers.  They take advantage of opportunitues for master classes, honors orchestras and special performances.  Emily makes her conducting debut on December 13, and we are ever so proud of her.  But they all have other interests, career-wise.  So when they got the chance to be in this chamber music group, despite our vow to add NOTHING to already over-full schedules, we said yes.  Even though they’re not going to be symphony members when they grow up, if they can find a small group to study and play with, their minds and souls can continue to reap the benefits of so many years of work.  Learning this skill was worth it, we decided.

And it brings me such joy to hear them play together.  They tease me sometimes when their music moves me to tears… “was it that awful, mom?”  But they know that there are few things as important to me as their relationships with each other.  So when three or four of them practice, play, perform together, it just makes me happy. 

So today I ironed Brian’s shirt (Sam claimed that he had a freshly pressed one and I didn’t learn better until it was too late ) and we went to the recital.  Because it was last-minute, they only played one simple tune, and from where I was sitting I couldn’t even see Brian.  It made me cry anyway.  Dixon couldn’t be there, he’s right in the middle of his work week.  After plenty of coaching from Emily, I brought the video camera along, because Dixon’s like me… it really makes him happy that our kids love each other, and that they enjoy working and playing as a group.  I figured even a disaster of a video would make him smile.   Perhaps you remember my last violin video disaster?  With poor Sam and his recital a while back?  The time when I honestly thought that green meant the camera was GOING and red meant stop? 

So let me be honest with you.  The only reason I’m really putting in this video is to prove to you that I have now learned to use my video camera.  AND I have even learned to cut and paste video parts.  It’s just an easy little song.  The kids obviously played for longer than thirty seconds, but even if I thought it was beautiful and all, you’d probably get sort of bored with the whole thing.  But watch:  when the little light on the camera is RED, you can capture THIS:

 

Music for a lifetime, relationships for a lifetime.   I think it’s a valuable investment. 

 

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