"Your children are not your children," I said to myself very firmly a week ago. Stella and I were talking about whether she wanted to continue piano, and she was not sure that she did. I have tried a bunch of different approaches across the years that Stella has taken piano: I have encouraged and offered space and coaxed and helped with technical details and stepped back to let her figure stuff out. I have done what I could do to support her in learning piano, but this is a true fact: in the end she has to decide if she wants to do the learning.
"I don't understand why Stella doesn't play the piano for fun," I said to Elwood. "You mean like everyone else in this house except for you?" he replied, to which I said "...oh." I have furnished a music room full of instruments and books, a room I would have loved to have access to when I was a kid, but that doesn't mean any of my own kids will want to linger there.
One night I said, "Hey, Stella, you know there are only like 4 chords in most Taylor Swift songs, right? Want to try to figure out some Taylor Swift?" She sat down and sang All Too Well with me, but her heart wasn't really in it.
This was the point at which I got stern with myself: she is under no obligation to play the piano for fun. She is not responsible for my lingering issues about what teenagers should or shouldn't do with their musical abilities. She can quit piano lessons if she chooses to do so.
But maybe she won't quit quite yet. Because yesterday I said, "You know, I was thinking that All Too Well would work better for us if we played it in E instead of C -- want to try it?" And vocally E is probably a better key, but I was fumbling around trying to hit all four sharps. "Maybe D," I said, and moved it down a step.
"Mom," said Stella, watching my hands, "can you show me how to do chords?"
This baffled me, because her piano teacher pushes her students to learn a ton of technique. Stella has learned the I-IV-V chord sequences for every single key. But here's what I didn't understand until yesterday: she never really knew why she was learning them.
Yesterday her inner lightbulb blinked on with spotlight brilliance. If you want to play All Too Well, all you need is four chords: I - V - VI - IV. The original version is C-G-Am-F, but we like it better as D-A-Bm-G. If you want to play it in G-flat, more power to you. But the sequence is the same the whole way through, so once you've got it in your head you can sail through the whole 10-minute version if you're so inclined.
We sat together on the piano bench for a little while, but it wasn't long before she was playing it all on her own. "Wait," she said, "Clean uses the same chords in the same sequence?"
We sang in unison; we sang in harmony. I flung my arms around her and said, "I've been waiting my whole life for this!" I can buy myself instruments and books, and I can find a lot of joy in solitary practice. But there's no joy quite like the joy of making music together, and I can't sing harmony with myself.
She spent a long time at that piano yesterday, much to my delight. I don't know if this newfound interest will last; I'm not going to pressure her, obviously. But I do love to watch a lightbulb flicker on, and I will hold on tightly to the memory of our voices blending together as she learned how to do something new and satisfying.
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