Indulging Myself

I love to play the piano, and I seldom take the time to do it. I am the pianist in Primary, but that doesn't really count. So tonight I sat down and played and played. Horribly, but I played. I used to be on the rather good side, but years of neglect have made my fingers quite uncooperative. I was getting a bit frustrated with myself tonight for butchering everything so badly, but I love a challenge. Even though my fingers were a bit sore, it still felt good to play again.

The picture above is of me and my grandmother, taken somewhere around 1978 when I was 15 or so. This is my favorite picture in the world. We were playing a duet called "Zenobia" which still kicks my butt to this day. The ultimate test of my musical worth was whether I could stick that piece out to the bitter end and finish at the same time she did. When my grandparents died, my mother shipped that piano out to me and that's the one I played tonight. It's out of tune, scratched, and not the best sounding instrument in the world. But it always reminds me of my grandparents.

I've even started teaching piano in the last few weeks, and it's really very fun. I only have one student so far, plus Tinkerbell, but they are my little guinea pigs while I work on my pedagogy (that's "instruction style"). I really need to take lessons myself, so I think I'll get my hands strong again and start looking for a teacher this fall. Classical or jazz? Oooo, so tempting!! I think I just might go for the jazz this time, even though it's much harder.

Years ago I stopped doing a lot of the things I really love because other things just got in the way. Taking time out for me felt selfish, in my incredibly naive "self-sacrificing Mom" way. Writing and music were the first casualties. I created this blog because I was teaching writing to three grades of gifted and talented students. It felt hypocritical to have them write every day and jump through my hoops when I wasn't doing it myself. So now this little thing has been in existence for a year. I even deleted it once and then begged and begged for two months for blogspot to find it for me and put it back up. I'm so glad they did!

Piano was another one that bit the dust. The only time I really had time to practice was when the kids went to bed, and I didn't want to disturb them. Turns out they like it when I play while they're falling asleep, as long as I don't do my scales then (can't blame them!). All those years that poor piano collected dust, and for nothing!

So the moral of this little story is: sacrifice is necessary sometimes, but when it's not needed it's not even sacrifice--just neglect. And the worst thing you can do for your kids is give them only a small part of yourself because you abandoned the good stuff. Thanks, my dear friend, for finally getting that through my thick skull!