Warning: Therapeutic blog written on scrap paper and typed up later. Helped me emotionally, but may not be interesting.

We’ve all read about deathbed repentance. Some of you might feel a certain degree of distance from this concept, but I am intimately acquainted with the whole thing.

I take my kids to MusicFest Northwest.

The longing to go back in time: Picturing actually pacing my physical self in the rocker next to the piano instead of yelling pithy pointers as I change a diaper, or tossing tips towards the living room while getting Jacob to sit back down while I tie his shoes.

The sorrow: knowing that if I just had a gram of the intensity of that mother over there, my child wouldn’t be struggling through their piece right now. I wouldn’t be up here, every muscle tensed, mentally playing a few notes ahead, cringing as we barrel towards the inevitable mess-up place, praying that we avoid the total train wreck. (A kid just played a piece one of my kids must have played last year, and I found myself cringing as we approached last years’ bad measures.)

As far as I can tell, the same mother comes to my classes every year, AND her kid’s always the same age: about 2 years younger than the lower class limit. We first saw "him" in Seth's first year in 2001. This year "he" was in Miri's 1-3 grade class, still 6 years old. It's always the same. The music is amazing: fingers fly. All the fabulous support people are in attendance, hanging onto the kid’s every breath. . . and all frantically recording the event with digital and video cameras, to be shown in the montage of his life when he’s famous in a couple of years. I am not making any of this up. THEY took the time to sit with their darling child at least 2 times per day. HE will grow up with a real talent he can use. HE never has to strain to hear a floating voice from afar. HE is progressing quickly and carefully through all the Suzuki Piano books.

Every year, magically, I am granted a one year death-bed reprieve: another chance to be the good piano mother. I resolve to be. I picture myself in that rocker, possibly fixing girl hair while I gently and lovingly offer encouragement and direction to the pianist, the notes from the piano never contending with howls of pain, or me running off to halt another tragedy elsewhere in the house. I will MAKE TIME! This is the hill I have chosen to DIE ON! . . I know that. But I surrender it every time.

I would make those resolutions again this year. . . but this is our SIXTH Musicfest, and although I may be overly optimistic and a bit slow on the uptake, I can finally see the truth.