Sacrifices

My dad stayed in a terrible job situation several years longer than he would have chosen, so that I could graduate from the high school I grew up next to, and keep my same music teachers and friends. My folks moved the Fall I left for college. My mom paid for and drove my sister and I to a total of five music lessons a week for years. We both had piano and I had french horn and jazz piano and Susan had voice lessons. We lived in a small town so that meant driving 30-45 minutes each way to get to the big cities of Davenport and Moline. Yikes. Even at the 1986 rate of $10 for a half hour lesson and gas at a buck a gallon it all added up.

Sometimes I feel like my greatest sacrifice in parenting so far is that I always let my six year old daughter go first in the public restroom stall. Over time even that can wear you down. I realize though, that in about one more year she will probably want her own stall, and then I will have to go all by myself at the airport. . . I should treasure those shared moments.

The truth is I have made greater sacrifices than holding it while I wait for a little person to redress herself. Getting up at 6:00 am and practicing piano with my son is the greatest act of self discipline I have ever shown. I can't maintain an exercise program or eat healthy for more than a week, but every week day for four years, since Calvin started first grade, I have gotten up with him at the crack of dawn and before (we have long dark nights here in Minnesota) to practice piano. I am proud of that. Of course I have a little help from a very warm robe, fuzzy slippers and a programmable coffee pot. Why does he wake up so early? I don't know, but it works for now. Even though I am not a morning person. At all. Getting out of bed to practice with him is a decision I recommit to every morning when the alarm goes off, I won't send him the message that sometimes we practice and sometimes we don't.

When I start to feel sorry for myself, (yawn) I have the benefit of having graduated a few seniors in my studio. I watched them grow up. I watched their Suzuki mom's silently and sometimes tearfully let them work out their own finger numbers and tempos as they became more and more independent. I know that in a few years he will need (or want or accept) less and less guidance from me on a daily basis.

So I buy really good coffee. I can sleep in later.