(mar 4) Phenomenal First Concert

Mick has been practicing for this night since beginning band last November. And her group - Beginning Band - did quite well for being so new to this arena of their lives. They played "We Will Rock You," x, an x. (I'll get her to tell me what those pieces were called.)

During her fifth grade year, we asked Mick/begged her over and over again to consider playing in the band - it provided travel opportunities (without Mom or Dad), it was an opportunity to associate with different people, and if she practiced and did well, it was a means of paying for college - hopefully! She was not interested at all. At all.

Then we moved across town. And the girl who normally makes friends so very easily was struggling to make friends/meld into the groups of friends that had previously formed. Many days, she came home teary ... because although she does well in school, academics are not her focus while there. Her friends are. And she couldn't seem to make any friends. Day after day, she came home asking, "Why won't so&so be my friend?" "Can I go back to my old school?" "Why don't people like me?" We (her parents) were heartsick for her and we just didn't know what to do.

And then came Mrs. Johnson on a recruiting tour to all the grade schools in the district with the middle school band. Her expecations were high, i.e., "don't join if you're not willing to practice 20 minutes per night," but the possible benefits were wonderful, i.e. "You could get your college paid for or partly-paid for (like she did) by playing an instrument," and "You could travel to somewhere like Greece as the BYU band members did this past summer," etc. etc. Mick was so excited. I was too. In fact, I had read the night before on someone else's blog on how to help teenage girls make friends and one of the key points was "make sure she joins different clubs and tries different things so she makes a variety of friends, and then no matter where she goes, there will always be Someone there from one of the groups for her to sit by." Anyway, I was excited about the band option for that reason, but I also wanted a 3-year committment from her (the time it took to pay for the instrument and because she had quit piano lessons after 6 months because practicing 20 minutes a day became tedious to her). Mick was willing to keep the 3-year committment - well, the night before The Big First Day of Band, she came to me, again teary, concerned that she couldn't keep the committment but we talked about how you eat an elephant. And she walked away semi-motivated to take a bite at a time.

I'm sooooooooooooooooooo happy she's in band. It was difficult for her at first: she's always learned things easily but not this time. For the first time in her life, something was difficult for her: the notes were difficult to manuever (getting her fingers in the right places and then jumping them quickly to the next note), she felt constantly "lost" and it seemed to her that it came easily for everyone else around her but her. One day, her second week of band, she came out to the van and slumped into her chair, "Everyone else is playing symphonies, and I can't even play a note." Later that night, we realized the symphony was "Twinkle, twinkle little star." (It cracked us up, but she didn't need to know we were laughing behind her frustrated back.) It was good for her to struggle and to learn how to work for success. And we didn't enable her at all: we required too, that she practiced 20 minutes a day, even Sundays. And when she was frustrated by our "hounding," her father would ask her, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice." But now she's fairly good. She still struggles with new notes but she knows how to work to get it.

And it's been worth it. After the band concert, she came leaping and bounding out of the auditorium asking if we could go out for ice cream to celebrate or "do something." She was on a high and had so much adenalin flowing through her. It was good to see that she had worked hard, had made some new friends in the middle of her struggles, had ultimately done well, and was excited to hear not only Inter-mediate Band's pieces but the higher band's pieces, and knew she would one day be able to play those. A (piece of buttered and jammed) toast: may this only be the beginning of her musical success!