Our Triangle Becomes a Line ~ Congrats to Calvin on Becoming a Hawkeye

No Grilling Today

The Naughtiness Continuers 

The Hunt

Oh deer.

This is what happens at 30 below

Post-audition I can slap this baby on my car. . . 

This is a very old joke. (The stud-finder beeping. . . )

Bathing Beauty 

Post recital ice cream

We can do a lot of repetitions with this gang

Organizing the practice tools

Off to Hogwarts with Erica and Matthew

Pre-audition warm fuzzies

Warming Up 

University of Iowa Music Music Building

Helping with the Laundry

Oliver in the piano, again. 

It looks like next Fall we will be wearing a path down to Iowa and back in the Yukon. The truck already knows the way, since my mom lives just half an hour past Iowa City. Bill wishes Calvin had chosen to go to college somewhere with a more interesting drive. What? Like North Dakota? Illinois?  God forbid Kansas.

Last weekend Calvin auditioned for the piano faculty at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. A few hours later his new professor let him know that he was accepted. Though she was very friendly to me, notice that she didn't let me know.

Dr. Wirth has been very open to letting me observe Calvin's lessons these last two and a half years. I've enjoyed watching the teacher student relationship. I've tried to keep my mouth shut and not embarrass myself. I've learned a lot.

That's a total blessing but obviously, it really wasn't ever about me. The triangle of student/teacher/parent was squashing down. Instead of a mountain it become a foothill. In the next step the Suzuki triangle officially becomes a line. Prairie. Like the drive south between Mason City and Waterloo. The line between only teacher and student. Two dimensional.

We've been in those foot hills for awhile--I've been chauffeur, snack chef, secretary of contest applications and registrations, chief calendar officer. And still, director of musical feedback--as in, Dr. Wirth wrote "in time" here in the music and you are slowing down. I have tried to provide a second set of ears to help the kid follow through on what the teacher taught. That's not always successful so I try to ask more questions and give fewer opinions. Wow, that sounds great is really the best choice of words lately. . . I guess it always was.

All of this is normal. This is what we wanted.
This makes my heart soar and my chest sob all at the same time.

The audition process was really a great story, but it's not my story to tell. Kids eventually have feelings and experiences that are their own and I guess I shouldn't write about them.

Sigh.

That's what we wanted. This is the mission we trained for. It's still surreal.
Calvin will be a Hawkeye.

In other news, yesterday he got the letter that he is a National Merit Scholarship Finalist. The last step of that journey. He's the only one from Eastview High this year.

And, in case you forgot, we have another child, Mary, and she found out Wednesday that she made the state middle school honor band. Of the 300 clarinets who auditioned, only 9 were chosen. And that's from the pool of 1,750,437 middle school clarinets in Minnesota. . . it's a very popular instrument. She's making her own path meandering in and out and around of the footsteps of her older brother. She's her own girl. She's letting her light shine at an age that isn't so easy. Congrats, Mary and thanks for being you, my spark of joy. Your day to pick your future will come all too soon.

I think I have to close with an Amen so I can shower and get over the Minnesota All-State orchestra concert at Orchestra Hall. Calvin has a few timpani notes to play. These are the days.

Amen.