So this week Monica went to Las Vegas to take her last lab class for her degree from UNLV. She and Quinn will be gone for a total of six weeks. For a week, I have the kids before they go off to Arizona to see my Mom and sister.
So I’ve been working basically a half day so that I can keep up with all of the other parenting responsibilities that Monica usually fulfills. One of the many was helping Conrad to practice his piano. He had a fun song from Star Wars (the kind that I never got when I was taking piano lessons), and he started to play. The notes were right, but he was not counting (he wasn’t holding the notes out as long as the music instructed). With the simple instruction, “Conrad, you have to count” began a battle of wills.
I was amazed at the depth of conflict that this caused in Conrad. To have to sit at the piano and count out each beat, repeating areas that he couldn’t at first get, seemed to be psychological torture. He writhed, yelled, and moaned as if this was a challenge on Fear Factor. I would have believed that it actually hurt him if I had not passed through the same feeling of facing an obstacle that I didn’t know how to overcome and knowing that the obstacle could be avoided, or at least avoided temporarily.
I have to credit Conrad in his dramatic struggle against self-mastery; he came up with quite a few tactics to test my resolve and argue away the simple act of playing a song correctly. If there had been a video camera, I think we could have successfully auditioned for a new reality TV show.
“Why do I need to count? It doesn’t matter!”
“Why are you so mean?”
“I’m not perfect!”
“Mom doesn’t make me do this!”
“Stop criticizing me!”
Conrad even left the house. I have recognized my need for better and more patience, and through it all, I was quite patient. I had work to do, but I didn’t want this teaching opportunity to pass away. He reminded me so much of myself. I too did not like to practice. I too feel that uncomfortable, bubbling under my skin when I confront something that I am not sure if I will be able to accomplish. It was the same feeling that I felt when I hid as a kid when I was supposed to practice piano. It’s the same feeling that I feel as I approach the messy process of piecing together ill-formed ideas in a dissertation. It makes me want to run away as well, or at least to do something else that sounds like it’s responsible, respectable, and a good excuse. It still tests me, and I still fail in many ways.
For these reasons, I didn’t let Conrad flee at the sound of mental and emotional distress calls from within. Instead, when he came back inside, I invited him again, and when he wanted to leave again, I sat at his side and started to play and count out loud. Together, we fought through the difficult urge to avoid the problem areas. Together we started again when Conrad forgot some of what he learned. And together, we made it.