The Journey

Tuesday night, Oldest Daughter plays violin on this stage. My mother and I are packing an entire box of tissues.

When Oldest Daughter was three, we were watching PBS (this was back when I had only ONE child and had the luxury of watching highbrow shows instead of these guys). She saw a woman playing violin at Lincoln Center and said, "That's what I'm going to do with my life." To which I looked at her and thought, "Eccentric for a three-year-old, but what are you going to do."

For a YEAR, she begged and pleaded for violin lessons. For a year, I put her off. I found her classical music appreciation classes with this woman. She learned about this composer. She also learned about all the notes--which she then pronounced with a Russian accent for a year because her teacher was from Moscow.

Finally, after a year . . . she started violin. She wasn't in kindergarten yet. Her violin was 1/32nd of the size of a usual violin. She learned to hold her hand a certain way on the neck of her instrument ("So a lizard could slide through" was how they taught the kids). And I became a Suzuki Mom. A Suzuki Mom is, for those who don't know, a mom who attends said violin lessons WITH her child so she can mirror what the little child is being taught. It meant an hour and a half of lessons a week--two different days. It meant me learning the notes and where her fingers went. It meant me going to lessons through pregnancies #2, and #3. By #4, she was just being DRIVEN to lessons and I didn't have to stay. It meant breastfeeding through lessons. Occasionally, when nine months pregnant, it meant sleeping through them, exhausted. It also meant financial sacrifices of monumental proportions, not just lessons but instruments and camps--eight hours away sometimes.

But on Tuesday, I will sit in my seat at the Kennedy Center with my box of tissues and for not the first . . . for not even the thousandth time, know it was all worth it that she could have the gift of music. The gift of following her three-year-old's heart.

The first time I ever got published it was here. Next year, I have a book coming out with them. I started out thinking, "If I ever just see my name in print somewhere . . . " to seeing my books on the front table at B&N.

It's a journey. Sometimes, you don't even realize you're making progress. All you hear is a squeaky violin, all you have in your mailbox is a pile of rejection letters.

But you keep going.

It's a holiday weekend in the U.S. Some people will travel literally. Some of us travel figuratively.. So . . . share . . . how's the journey going?