The recent college admissions scandal that rocked the news cycle is a pretty sad indictment of our culture’s epidemic neurotic parent syndrome.
I have to say, as much as it disgusted me in the beginning, I remember my own maternal anxiety over my children’s performance more times than I would like to admit.
I can laugh about some of that today. Age does have a way of adjusting our perspective on a lot of things. This is another oldie that just seemed especially apropos this week!
My musical children aren’t – or weren’t or didn’t - not certain which it is. Having a mother who practiced Mozart, Chopin, and “Holy, Holy, Holy” through their every nap time insured, I thought, that one of them would play a minuet at age three and compose a symphony at six.
My son came home enthralled after his first piano lesson – ready to make his Carnegie Hall debut before the year was out. Somewhere between soccer and solitary confinement at practice time, he lost his passion for this particular cultural commitment.
I moved on to living my life through my daughter’s talent.
However, she came into the world with the “Reach Out and Touch” gene dominating every cell in her body.
Bear in mind she was born when everyone had a land line, and that ancient company, BellSouth, published an annual telephone book. It was like the Bible to Betsy.
If it didn’t involve the telephone, she was not committed. In kindergarten, she did master reading in record time – but her whole phonetic incentive was based on her fascination with the Yellow Pages and the wonder of punching numbers into the telephone. She never had the slightest interest in a long term love affair with the piano.
Being a driven and determined mother, I persevered through countless hours of badgering, pleading, and threatening. I sweated like a pig on a rotisserie through every recital they played.
I knew every note of every piece and winced over every dissonance of their halfhearted efforts. They, on the other hand, were always completely at ease on stage.
Why have a breakdown when your mother will have it for you?
Why was I the one throwing up out of sheer nervous prostration an hour before the program while they were still out in the neighborhood soaking up the last seconds of social hour?
Where did “have nervous breakdown for children” fall in my job description?
I finally recognized that my obsession was completely unhealthy for all concerned.
What is it about some of us who are supposed to be mature adults? We’ve mastered the skills of acceptable civilized human behavior and a few social graces besides – but we become total lunatics where our children are concerned.
We approach every molehill prepared to turn it into Mt. Everest. How come here at my advanced age I’m thinking how much better my mommy skills would be at this point in life? It is too late. After all, my major challenge now, would be remembering that I actually have children.
To tell you the truth — and you aren’t surprised, I was never the star room mother. I was probably too busy biting my nails, badgering my children and absorbing all stress so that they did not have to stress about anything. I was the mother the others always assigned such tasks as “Why don’t you bring the cokes,” or “You get to drive the car.” I am a total klutz at planning fabulous creative events for children.
The good news is that my adult children seem to have suffered no irreparable damage over my neuroses and failures. With 20-20 hindsight, I laugh at my foolish behavior.
I should have recognized early on that for us, piano lessons were going to be a means to some end other than mastering the instrument. How about developing self-discipline, sticking to a commitment till its conclusion (Oh, Happy Day), or even appreciating the dedication of others whose scale passages in a Clementi sonatina really were flawless?
Time has a way of sailing by – and a bittersweet fact of life is that we can never call back a single day. A part of me is sad realizing my tunnel vision kept me from seeing the true value in a very ordinary situation. I probably missed some very teachable moments as well as a few good laughs with two of my favorite people on earth – my children.
I’m sure God tried to get my attention early on – and I am just as sure I was too busy praying they’d play the right notes to hear His voice. After all, their perfect performance might make me look good. So, here I sit a hundred years after the fact thanking the Lord that it’s never too late to learn a lesson. And with an extra measure of gratitude that His self-esteem and looking good are not dependent on my performance!
Oh, and I might mention my granddaughter, Marilyn Wilton Bailey has a piano recital on May 4. Just in case you think about it…you could pray she plays all the right notes. Just kidding!
