Overcoming

I sang my first solo at church tonight with the choir. It went okay; I was generally on beat and on pitch, though there were a couple croaky notes and the musicality left a lot to be desired. There is definitely room for improvement, but it wasn't a disaster. Not as good as I hoped but better than I feared, so I suppose that's something.

I sang it for Caetlin, though she wasn't even there. Not because she particularly likes my singing (I suspect she does, but she's in a controlling phase right now and always orders me to stop singing unless she has specifically requested something). Not because it was a song I thought she might like, especially.

A recent Facebook status update of mine went like this: "Patricia is always sad and disappointed to see the things I like least about myself reflected in my children." My least favorite characteristic of mine, the part of myself that I most actively dislike and am dismayed by more or less on a daily basis, is my fear of not being perfect. I'm not talking about OCD-style perfectionism, but more like I'm afraid to screw up. I don't want to look stupid. It's maybe my biggest fear, and it is pathological. I don't want to appear lacking in any way, whether to friends, family or complete strangers.

Let me give you an example from when I was a kid. I started playing the trumpet when I was 12, in 6th grade. I had remembered my sister practicing her flute in her room when I was younger and she was in high school; I had this fantasy that I would do the same with my trumpet. Not long after I began learning, I was practicing one evening and hit a bum note, and my dad said something from the other room about me "hitting a raw one" or something equally innocuous about my wrong note. For the first time, it dawned on me- my family could hear me! In the small home in which I grew up, it would have been impossible not to, but for whatever reason, it had never crossed my mind to think they could. And they could hear me make mistakes!

I almost never practiced at home after that. For a long time I blamed my dad, for commenting about my screw-up, or for making me self-conscious. But the real problem was not his comment; it was me. My home was where the people who loved me best lived; if anyone was going to tolerate bum notes, it would be them. This went deeper than one offhand teasing comment by my dad.

If I could have ever found a place where no one could hear me, I would have practiced. I grew up in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of the back 40, and I couldn't get comfortable practicing even in the middle of the woods that surrounded my little neighborhood. Because someone might hear me make a mistake. I wish I could have gotten over it. It weakened me as a musician, this failure to practice at home. I look back now and realize that I squandered some real talent. I would never have been a professional; I never wanted to be. But I performed at a truly high level, particularly for a high school student, on the basis only of whatever class time and after school rehearsals I might have had. My band program was of high quality, so that meant probably 8 or 9 hours a week, but still. Nothing on weekends unless there was a performance. Nothing over the summer.

It haunts me. I could have been so much better even than I was. My senior year I lost my first chair (yes, I was first freaking chair and I never practiced) to a kid who wanted it so bad. He was so good, and he clearly put a lot of time into his music. Then I lost second chair to another kid, and then I lost third chair because I didn't care at all. I didn't practice my scales for the challenges, see, so it almost wasn't even worth showing up to them. In one case I didn't.

The main criticism of me was always, play out. More volume. I was afraid to let anyone hear me. I was afraid to fail, to sound anything less than perfect.

A more recent example is that I am afraid to live in country where I don't speak the language. I'm afraid to sound dumb. Not just by not knowing the vocabulary, but even by getting the accent wrong. I realize how ridiculous this is by seeing my own behavior with a non-native English speaker- do I laugh when they struggle for a word or don't get the grammar quite right? Nope, of course not. But the fear is petrifying. And I hate it in myself.

You can imagine how dismayed I was when I realized I was seeing some of the same things in Caetlin. She may not have that fear to the same degree I do, but I see it in her. She won't try to do things I know she can, preferring to say, "I can't do it." She won't guess at questions- if she doesn't absolutely know the answer, she'll say, "I don't know." Even when she does know, and I know she knows. She just doesn't want to be wrong, I think.

This makes me so incredibly sad. Of everything that is who I am, I wish I could have not passed that part on to her. I hope I didn't pass it on to Phoebe, and I pray I will not pass it to any future children I may be blessed with. Because if Caetlin is anything like me, she will live parts of her life in paralyzing fear. She will miss out on opportunities to have fun, to improve herself, and to experience wonderful things because of this trait, this issue, this shackle that weighs me down.

I can't let that happen to her, not if I can help it. I realized recently that I have the chance to try to combat it now, while she's young, and that I must do everything I can to counteract this in her. So I try to push her, gently, to try new things, or to answer questions of which she is unsure. I hope her teachers at school do the same. I try to make home a welcoming environment, making it explicit that she can screw up without fear of failure or judgment. She's too young to get all this, of course, but I hope it will sink in over repeated interactions.

But one other thing I must do is model for her the behavior I want to encourage. And that means facing my fears and doing things that scare the shit out of me. And making myself do them even when my whole being is screaming to stop, I'm going to look like a fool, everyone will laugh at me or worse they will just smile and say nice things to my face and then behind my back will talk about how terrible I was (something I'm working to convince myself my choir-mates aren't doing even as I type this...).

So, tonight I sang mediocrely in front of my church congregation. I could have asked the women to sing my part, or asked someone else to take the solo. The pianist could have sung it beautifully on no preparation whatsoever, and knowing that I have those kinds of alternatives makes it easy for me to consider running away again. But I did it. I did it for my daughter. In doing it for her, I ended up doing it for myself far more than I could have ever imagined. My choir-mates (whom I respect so tremendously and I'd hate for them to think I'm not a good musician, oh, God, they all think I suck now) all said nice things because they knew how ridiculously nervous I was. I pooh-poohed them a little, because it really objectively wasn't that awesome, but a part of me didn't want to soft pedal the praise at all, because it is such a HUGE deal that I did it at all. My choir-mates don't know me well enough to know that, so it would have come out wrong.

But I did it. Croaky, trembling, shaking almost uncontrollably. I sang into a microphone in front of a few hundred people, and if I looked stupid, or sounded terrible, well, that matters less than that I did it at all. I did it for Caetlin. Maybe, in trying to be a good role model for her, I can make the tiniest of starts on fixing the thing I like least about myself. Maybe we can help each other that way.