Songs From A Tuesday at Six O’Clock

“I’m glad I am who I’m supposed to be!  I’m glad I am who I’m supposed to be!”  Jean’s hair is wet.  She is naked on the sofa in my bedroom after a bath, singing to herself.  It sounds like a Fred Astaire sort of dance number, syncopated.  “I’m GLAD I AM who-I’m-who-I’m-supposed-to-be!”  Some version of the Old Grey Mare.

Me, I am cacophony.  Throwing dinner in the oven, salt falling all over the floor, none over my shoulder.  A panic of things to do for the next week is rising in my throat; the washing machine misbehaving.  Illegible sticky notes line my desk.  I can’t text you back.  “Put your PJs on, Jean!  Don’t catch a cold!.”

“I’m GLAD MOM is-who-she’s-supposed-to-be!”

She dances down the hall.  “Yabbering and tabering, who are you?  Yabbering and tabbering, yabbering and tabbering why do you even do that? I’m GLAD I am who I’m supposed to be ! I AM who I’m supposed to be!”  

She enters the doorframe of my office so I will hear the next part clearly.  “I’m GLAD I’m NOT a rotten little fruit!  I’m glad I am NOT a juicy little toot!”  

In the office, I’m navigating a calendar like a math equation, thinking about what has to happen over the next six weeks. She puts her face in front of me, her hands on the keyboard to see if I’ve heard the lyric. Our eyes meet and me pretending it isn’t funny cracks her up.  She marches back down the hallway. “Every day is.. Every day is…every day is not your birthday!  Everyday is a holiday!  Someone was born everyday!”

“JEAN!  PRACTICE VIOLIN!”  

She has disappeared into her bunk bed fort, knocks on the wall in reply. 

I find the bathtub full of cold water and something called ORBIES.  They look like multi-color miniature bath beads from the 80s, Calgon or something like it, only they don’t dissolve and go away.  Jean promises to fetch them out of the tub with glee, requesting her snorkeling gear.  Soon, she is naked with a colander and spoon in hand, wearing a yellow diving mask singing, “Don’t you want to take a bath with me!”  Panning ORBIES from the tub has somehow managed to get her out of cleaning her room.  But not violin practice. 

“Mom, I PROMISE,” she speaks with the yellow snorkel in her mouth.

She shows up back in my office in her Ziggy Stardust Mermaid onesie PJs, with a violin case and a notebook.  At this point in my life, I should probably have more true insight on whether I have a routine or not; if Jean and I do have a routine, and mostly we don’t, it revolves around the Ziggy Stardust PJs.  A half-hearted, mostly minor version of Go Tell Aunt Rhody squeaks out.  It isn’t so bad that it hurts the listener but this performance is all about getting it over with and is approximately fifteen seconds in length.

“There,” she grumbles. “Is that enough?”

“What about the second part, the new part?”

“W H A T !!!??” Speaking of rotten fruit. “What Are You Talking About, MOM?”

“I’ve got it recorded!”  I recorded it at the lesson!  I’m not a terrible mom!

“I can only do it when it is written down,”  she insists darkly. Her teacher wants her to do it by ear but I don’t mention this.

“Let’s write it down!”  I shrug, copying the fingering from the book onto a legal pad of chords and long bow symbols.  I point to it, “Part B.  You just have to do part B.”  

Her curls frame her face turning scarlet. “ I KNOW.  I GOT IT.”  If you couldn’t tell already, she wants me to stop telling her what to do.  It is this way every time we circle violin practice.  I hate telling her to practice, she hates practice, a battle ensues.  

“Jean, I’m going to get dinner.  I am not going to help if you yell at me.”

At this tired point on this particularly tired evening, I hate the violin.  Money I don’t have, my absolute ineffectiveness at getting it to mean anything to my daughter at 6pm every weekday, which is the hour when I’d most like to poke my eye out anyway.  She’s learning to read, she’s learning to swim but what gets her frustrated everyday is violin practice.  Just when there’s not enough left of me to know how to save her from herself at this moment. 

Helping up peas, I hear a sob.  She turns the corner to the kitchen.

“It’s all my fault.”  she says looking at her feet.  

“What is?”

“I broke my violin.”  I brush past her – a tuning peg has come off, the music book is folded oddly – 

“Did you break this on purpose?” I demand. 

“No, I just set it down wrong.”  The scene reads frustration rather than pure destruction, but I’m about done.

“I don’t think you should take violin lessons anymore, Jean.  This isn’t working.”

I leave her alone with the instrument to sort it out for a good ten minutes.  I hear wails and a few more more it’s all my fault’s.  When things quiet down, I approach.  She’s under my desk. 

“What’s happening under there?”  I offer her a plate of food. She lets out a quarter of a stray sob, manages to stop it.  

“I just want everyone to be happy,” she tells me. “I just want everything to be alright.”

“I don’t think you like practicing violin.” I move underneath the desk with her.  “I think the violin is making you like music less.”

“It’s all my fault.  I just want everything to be ok.”

At this point, the lessons of consequences, money, meaning, intention are behind us.  I take her hand.  “It’s my job to make everything ok, Jean.  That’s not what a little kid can do.  That’s a parent’s job.”  Tears are on her cheeks; she is still crying.  “I have to teach you how to make good decisions.  I don’t think the violin is making you happy.  I don’t think it's making your heart sing.  Do you think playing the violin is what you are supposed to be doing?”

She weeps.  “I didn’t really want to keep doing it.”

“You need to do what really really makes you happy.  And that is what a good decision is.”  I hand her the plate, she eats in silence. 

“I like having dinner under my desk,” I tell her. “Do you want to come out and play cards?” 

“I don’t want to play anything.”   We sit in silence under the shadow of the lists of all the ways I have over extended myself.  For money, for heart, for chance, for dreams, for purpose, in friendship.  Under the desk, I dream about cutting out all that doesn’t serve us and make us sing.  I picture all the ways I was a lousy example of a singing heart in the day preceding us.   I don’t want to hurt anybody, either.  I’ll take anything on.  But the violin is too much pressure on my little perfectionist who is learning to read.   She isn’t even seven. 

I stroke her hair. “You have to do what makes your heart sing.  What about the ORBIES? You always want to practice them.” 

She nods, scoops up a mouthful of peas, teary again.  “I don’t feel good Mama.  I don’t know why.”  

“Trying to make good decisions is hard.”  I hold her and when she is finished crying, I tuck her in, let her watch a show about dogs at the pound.   The violin with the broken tuning peg is still on the floor of my office, the yellow snorkeling gear in the hall. When she is sleeping, I put my face onto her warm, tender cheek. It’s a pristine kind of soft, blooming with dreams.

“I’m glad you’re who you’re supposed to be,”  I sing into it.