Thursday, September 29, 2016

Sometimes Music Hurts

Last night when I got home from work, Alyssa was at the kitchen table, doing homework. She looked tired. I kissed her head and asked her how her day was.

She said, “Five hours of playing the flute is tiring.”

Yeah. I can imagine.

She’s taking part in an invitational concert band and she’s had to meet with her band director after school to practice, work with her classmates to practice and yesterday, the participants were bussed from our school to the neighboring school where the concert will take place so all the students from all the schools could practice and perform together before Sunday, which is when the concert is scheduled to take place.

She took a break from her homework to tell me about the horribly uncomfortable chairs that were provided for the day of practice. She said, “If we wanted to play well and sound good, we had to sit on the very edge of the chairs with our backs away from the back. Five hours of that was torture.”

Poor kid, having to suffer through good posture and all that.

Wait, that sounds sarcastic. I really do feel for her. I know that it’s hard to do something unfamiliar and then to go back to the school, pick up all the homework she missed while away and have to come home to do it. And, wait, she also had to study for a test! Eighth grade is off to a roaring, awesome (seriously, no sarcasm here) start. It’s just hitting her that each year gets a little harder, a little more intense. Add in the extras, like this invitational band thing, and well, it can be a little tiring.

But, I told her, sometimes we have to suffer for our art. Music is her art. And she’s very good it at. She works hard to be good at it and I’m very proud of her. She takes it seriously and wants to be the very best she can be. I wish I’d had half her work ethic when I was her age. (Hell, I wish I had half her work ethic now…)

Though to be frank, her work ethic applies to the things she enjoys, so…maybe I do have half her work ethic if I compare it to how hard I’m willing to work doing things I enjoy. I guess maybe she’s a lot like me after all.

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