Music with Mom

She may not love walking ten minutes to see a wild swan, but she has the patience of a saint trying to teach her mother to play guitar.
When it started, I was the one teaching her. The little brat had the audacity to surpass me within a month, and now, I strum in her dust as she disappears down the road to musical prowess.

Some days, my fingers and brain momentarily unite, and I am able to do the arduous finger picking. I am usually pretty good at the chords, at least the ones I know. But we just reached the sixth string notes, with little black symbols denoting which note to play dancing two or three lines below the staff! How is anyone supposed to remember what those low liers are? I can name any note on the staff, but you start sending them over or under those five lines, and you have reached the limits of my memory. I am brought close to tears by my inability.

"You're doing good!" croons Asherel, when I have played one out of 20 correctly and all haltingly, painfully slow. I don't correct her and tell her it should be "well" not "good" because neither is true in this case.

Finally, I put the guitar down, and tell Asherel, "I just can't keep up. Honey, I am slowing you down. You really need to just practice on your own. I may get this....someday....but it will take me forever. You could be sailing by me, learning twice as much as you are when waiting for me."
"That's ok," she said, "It helps me to teach you."
"But Asherel, you are taking lessons so you will learn to play guitar. Why do you want to have to go so slowly when you are a natural talent, and can go so much guickly?"
"Because I like learning it with you. It's not as much  fun alone."

I have to say, this statement reverberated in my head all night. Here I am wishing my two grown kids would want to do something, really anything with me while this sweet girl actually wants to creep like molasses through her guitar lessons so that she can do them with me. I am scum.... a mindless blob of stupid, insensitive scum. Do you ever feel like that?

So I will practice on my own every day just a little so that those horrible low notes that for no good reason I can discern parade right off the staff. And I will thank God for a daughter who may not see the beauty of a 5 mile walk....yet..... but does see the beauty of making music with Mom.

Ephesians 6: 1-3

 ¹ Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ² “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— ³ “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”