Parenting

Had one of those moments this last five day period. The kind that make the world stop spinning.

Thursday was the last day the kids were spending the night with me before Claire, my oldest, had her solo-ensemble competition. She plays flute. She had a solo and a duet with one of her best friends, a trumpet player. So she brings home her duet music and asks me to practice the duet with her.

Back in the day I was better than average playing trumpet, but that day was 20 years ago. She's insistant and hopeful and stressed about the upcoming competition so I open the case and play the music.

I'm rusty, she's a seventh grader, so this is by no means an RCA recording moment, but after the third time she loosens up and starts to PLAY... And her father got goose bumps the size of grapefruit. She nails this phrase she was having problems with, then nails it again and again... And after about forty minutes tells me thank you. I tell her THANK YOU because it was the first time I'd played the damned horn in a year and the first time I'd looked at sheet music in two decades.

Fast forward two days and I'm sound asleep at noon, having worked the night before, when the cell phone rings Claire's ringtone. I pick up out of instinct and have a five minute conversation I still can't remember. So when I'm aware of my surroundings I call her back and replay the converation and her excitement is such that it doesn't seem to matter that she just TOLD me about getting two gold medals, one for each of her performances. She gladly retold all the nervous details, the cold stomach, the shakes, the dry mouth, and the euphoria of knowing that not only was it OVER but it was TRIUMPHANT. It was one of those things that I thought no one else understood, just how I dealt with performing and competition, and here was my oldest doing the same thing in the same way with no coaching from dad.

Fast forward to today and Claire is digging through my junk drawer, looking for something. She yells "Woohoo!" when she finds my medals, my solo-ensemble medals from 20+ years ago I keep in a zip lock bag. She looks at me as she lays them out on the couch cushion and says, "I get this now, Dad." Her band teacher had asked them to wear their medals to school today so they could be recognized, so she asked me, "How did you wear all these things?" So I showed her one of a handful of surviving high school pics I have, of me playing my horn in concert in full uniform with my medals on. She laughed and repeated herself. "I totally get this now, Dad."

I'm telling you. Thought I was going to fall over when this whole planet stopped spinning there.