Cue the Violins

Why practice in the bathroom? Better acoustics.

A source of much angst these past few months has centered on Charlotte’s violin lessons. She was in the midst of a rough patch (yet still wanted to continue to play). To boot, her lessons occurred (note the past tense here) far away and it was taking me over an hour to drive home through traffic.

Lessons themselves were disorganized with the teacher lacking focus, talking to me instead of Charlotte, and so on. Oh, and they were EXPENSIVE.

I finally hit my limit. I couldn’t do it any longer. I couldn’t justify the time suck, expense, and mismanagement of lesson time. I tried to give the teacher and Suzuki method a fair shot. But Suzuki is SO hands-on (that is, by the parents) that students absolutely cannot practice by themselves. So, the relationship between Charlotte and me was stressed each time she (ahem, WE) practiced.

And yet, the child wanted to continue lessons. What to do?

Facebook, that’s what. I put a plea out there and got a recommendation for someone reasonably local from the incredible owner-slash-artistic director of the local ballet academy. That was a very valuable endorsement to me, so I contacted the other teacher. We met, Charlotte liked her, I liked her, and it was set.

Oh, except for having to break up with the previous teacher.

I nearly threw up on the morning I did the deed, but once it was done, I felt liberated. The violin thing had reeeaaally been weighing on me. (I know, first-world problems.) Perhaps now I could stop dreading Wednesdays!

Several lessons in, this time with a German method (eff you, Suzuki), I’m just so . . . relieved. Charlotte is FINALLY learning some music theory and sight reading (Suzuki banks on memory). The new teacher is WONDERFUL. I have to turn off my hands-on, Suzuki-trained violin mommy hovering, but I’m delighted to do so. The commute to and from has eliminated about an hour and twenty minutes total of car riding per lesson. Oh, and this teacher’s rates are literally HALF of the old teacher’s.

People, I screwed up. In launching Charlotte’s violin study more than a year ago, I wanted a “master teacher,” much like I received in piano. Someone with the conservatory degrees and performance experience and whatnot to set him or her apart from those who play as a hobby. The Best. Yes, only The Best for my little girl.

Well, she was 5 years old at the time. I possibly lost perspective.

There’s a time and place for that level of instruction, but what Charlotte needed at 5 or 6 years old was a good TEACHER. Now we have one.

I should’ve known better, frankly. I wanted to give Charlotte what I had received in piano, and I totally overlooked my own knowledge and experience. I taught piano under my master teacher’s credentials to beginners as a student teacher. I was never a great pianist. But I was a very good teacher. My students scored high in guild auditions and performed well at recitals. I loved teaching. Part of me wishes I had become a teacher, except for the fact that I have zero classroom management skills (I like one-on-one teaching). And parents would scare me.

The only reason my piano teacher took me on as a wee lass beginner several decades ago was because, every once in a while, she’d take on a beginner to keep her skills sharp teaching the young beginners. I got lucky.

Even armed with all this knowledge, I screwed it up in my effort to Not Screw Up. I’m grateful that Charlotte still wants to play violin, and I know she’s happier in the new set up. Three lessons in now, we're all ridiculously pleased. Actually, "relieved" might be the more appropriate word.

Now, books.

Charlotte and I have started Ramona and Her Father. There has been precious little time for reading, what with camp during the day and Vacation Bible School at night, but I'm not worried. So Charlotte's summer reading log for school will appear a tad sparse . . . well, whatever. She's MY child. She shall be adequately bookish, I assure you.

Nana and Lorelei have made some library trips. I have no idea what they're reading. And the VBS late nights are usurping Lorelei's reading time, too.

I finally finished Heaven's Face Thinly Veiled, which, like I said earlier, needed more context and clearer organization.

To continue not messing up Charlotte's violin experience, I'm still slowly plugging away at Edmund Sprunger's Helping Parents Practice, which is filled with golden nuggets of violin-parent advice.

I'm also reading Susan Cheever's American Bloomsbury, which has the insanely long subtitle of "Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work." As you can imagine, it focuses on the literary community in Concord, the transcendentalists, and this community's particular brand of American lit. I'm enjoying it immensely. Cheever covers a LOT of ground with all these lives, not doing linear biographies but rather weaving together lives, themes, politics, friendships, and philosophies.  I'm almost done and highly recommend it.

Finally, I'm reading Jincy Willett's latest, Amy Falls Down. It's a satire of the publishing world, bizarrely given to us through a cranky old washed-up writer who hits her head on a birdbath and suddenly gets a new shot at notoriety and writing. It's so dryly funny and sort of wonky and weird. I love it.