A couple of weeks ago, I played the piano for the kids to sing at Vacation Bible School at my church.
Of course it’s not “my church.” Still–“church”–it’s not something I merely “attend.” Like a play, a concert or a sporting event. I’m not even a “church member,” at least in the way I might be a “member” of a recreational, a civic or social club, or a professional association.
For me, “church” is more like “a family” into which I’ve been adopted. Or as my friend, Doug Farmer, says it: “As Christians, we don’t go to church; we are the church.”
I only play the piano once a year–at Vacation Bible School.
When I was eight-years-old, my mother “made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” No, she didn’t hold a gun to my head–but she might as well have. Her “offer” was: no piano lessons, no baseball.
During the school year, she made me get up and practice the piano before school, a ritual she closely supervised. Since after-school was when I had football or basketball or track practice, and then homework to do after supper. It was, after all, sports that would get me a scholarship to college.
Except in the summer, I didn’t have to take piano lessons. That was part of the trade-off. I got to devote the summer to baseball.
Plus my piano teacher, Mrs. Steinheimer, she also took the summers off and would take the kind of fabulous trips I, in my provinciality, couldn’t even imagine. She traveled with other music teachers, trips sponsored by the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. One year, when she returned, she told me of traveling to Africa, where she met Albert Schweitzer.
I’d heard of him, but would only realize and appreciate more fully, years later, who he was. As cultured and sophisticated and accomplished a musician as was Mrs. Steinheimer, her best gift was her ability to relate to a boy like me who would rather be practicing baseball than the piano.
Come to think of it–my mother’s parenting style–in manner and approach, it was lot like that of a Mafia Don. She was not one to leave much “negotiating room.” And where the “no piano lessons, no sports” deal was on the table, she and my dad were on the same page.
Over the years of my adulthood, countless people have said to me, “I wish I could play the piano. I took lessons when I was a kid, but I quit. I didn’t like to practice.” For good or for ill–such folk–they obviously didn’t have a mother like mine. Where not practicing the piano–much less, quitting–anything: that would have been like being charged and convicted for a serious crime.
My mom would accompany me each week to my piano lesson and carefully observe. My mother didn’t get the chance to take piano lessons when she was a youngster. In so closely monitoring my musical education, she was not only getting her money’s worth (I think she paid $2 a week for my piano lessons in the 1950’s), she was also living through her children, experiencing vicariously something she had missed in the poverty of her childhood.
I took piano lessons for ten years, until I graduated from high school. Once I got my driver’s license, my mom let me drive myself to the lessons, but still closely supervised my piano practicing. Frankly, I think I could practice playing the piano eight hours a day for a lifetime and still not be very good.
But once a year I’m at least good enough to play the piano for the kids to sing at Vacation Bible School. And I’m sure my mother–who would be 107-years-old were she living–she’s in heaven, somewhere, struttin’ around, her buttons bustin’ in pride at her son being able to do something she would have given her good arm to have been able to do. However “well” or otherwise.
My non-negotiable relationship with my mother and the piano lessons I was “made” to take–it raises some important questions concerning effective parenting.
The delicate balance, somewhere, between “over-and-under-parenting”; when parents expect “too much”–or conversely, “not enough”–of their children. When parenting is too “strict and structured,” versus not being “disciplined and organized” enough.
As in, for example, Amy Chua’s controversial, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Penguin Group, 2011), or Jeannette Walls’ inspiring The Glass Castle: A Memoir (Scribner, 2006).
Much of what I have learned, believe and have practiced as a parent I’ve written in my book, Balanced Living: Don’t Let Your Strength Become Your Weakness (Wipf and Stock, 2009). I won’t rehearse such observations here, but you can read them on pages 73-80, the section on “Parenting” in the chapter, “Balanced Families.”
