The Dark Side
Free toddlers activity & Parent Child Development guide parenting article

Author Andi Buchanan (Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It) loves being a mom -- but she knows that it's not always a walk in the park with your kids (besides, she confesses to sometimes being bored at the park -- imagine that!)


Andi freely admits to having occasional negative feelings about motherhood and the way society treats moms in general... and she writes about it, sensitively -- and hilariously.

Last December, my family and I were in the car listening to a program on public radio. A violin concerto was playing, and when it was done, the host of the show revealed that the girl who had performed it was just 14 years old.

In a short interview, the young violinist told the host that she practiced as much as ten hours a day. Her parents, who were also on the show, said they couldn't stop her from practicing, and that to discipline her, if there ever was a problem, they'd take away her violin instead of taking away her phone privileges the way they might if she were a "normal" teenager.

My internal red flag is always raised hearing stories like this because I trained as a classical pianist as a young child, too. I know what it means to practice that long and hard, to mystify your parents, to walk the line between being self-directed and obsessed.

We listened to the girl perform again, and she was excellent. My five-year-old daughter, Emi, waited until the performance was done -- something remarkable in itself since she usually demands that our car rides be radio-free -- and then said, "Mommy? I want to play the violin."

"That's a good idea," I said, thinking that, sure, one day, violin lessons might indeed be a good thing.

"Right now," she said.

She was serious. All through the rest of the weekend, she persisted: "I want a violin! I want a violin!" It was a haunting, nasal refrain that eerily mimicked the sound one of my violinist chamber music partners used to make when she played. My husband and I told Emi we'd think about it, that it wasn't as simple as going to Target and picking up a violin, and that I'd need to do some research on teachers. Her unwavering response: "But I want a violin! I want to play the violin!"

My mother tells me that when I was two, I saw my first grand piano. I was awed by it, and I told her in a whisper, "I have to play it!" I didn't say that I liked it, or that I wanted to try it, or that I needed to play it -- I had to play it. It was a compulsion, a desire so strong my two-year-old self could barely be restrained from touching the keys without permission. It was six long years before I was allowed to take piano lessons, and about seven years before I actually had a piano to practice on in our house.

I understood Emi's desire.

I did some nosing around online and in brick-and-mortar music stores, learning about the sizing and quality of student violins. I held back from purchasing the first thing I found that seemed to work, partly out of financial concern and partly to see if her violin-lust would outlast the birthday party gift bags, Hanukkah gifts, and Christmas presents that were given to her over the holidays. It did.

"I hope Santa brings me a violin next year," said the kid who last year didn't even know who Santa was, let alone believe he was a deliverer of things people desperately wanted.

Eventually, I found a violin online that seemed to fit our qualifications -- it came with everything she'd need, and it was inexpensive. I bid for it on Christmas Day, and it turned out I was the only one who did. I won the violin, I paid my $60, and it arrived a week later.

When the package came, Emi was curious. "What is it?" she asked, eyeing the trapezoidal box. "Is it a bunch of flowers? Is it a big doll? Is it for you or for me?" We opened it up on the table in our living room, and there it was, a black nylon case. She guessed what might be inside immediately.

"Mommy, is this my violin?" She could hardly contain her joy when I told her it was. She shrieked and jumped up and down and started dancing around the apartment. "My violin! My violin! My whole life, all I ever wanted was a violin, and it's here!"

I cautioned her that playing the violin is really tricky, and that it was a very special instrument, made out of wood by someone's hands. She nodded her head, but she was too excited to take in what I said. She was too busy unzipping the case, feeling the instrument's smooth wood finish, fingering the hairs on the bow.

I tuned it, rosined up the bow, and figured out how to attach the shoulder rest, and then she tried to play a note. Nothing came out but a hoarse whisper, a ghost of open fifths across the strings. She started to stamp her feet and cry. "It's too hard! I can't do it!"

I put a little more rosin on the bow, reminded her that playing the violin isn't something anyone knows how to do without a teacher, and made a deal with her that in order to play the violin, she had to approach it calmly and with respect, and let me help her if she needed help. She took a deep breath and tried again. A few tears later, she managed to coax a sound out of it.

She brought the violin with her when we went to pick up her little brother from school and played the open E string for all the teachers. She sat with the violin next to her on the couch while she colored. She took it out of its case every hour or so and "practiced" playing whatever sound she could make. And she waited up for her dad to come home from work so she could play that one note for him. I still remember being so elated after my first piano lesson, showing my dad the little song I'd learned, playing it for him on the piano at my mother's school. Emi was having that kind of moment herself, and it was sweet, watching it happen.

I don't know where this will lead, whether her need for a violin will turn into the kind of need I had for serious music in my life, whether by studying it she will learn that she is talented or whether she will learn that she is not talented enough. I don't know whether the beginner's joy she has at merely owning the instrument will endure when real study begins, whether she will thrill to discover her own mastery or be daunted by the frustrations of her undertaking.

But I'm glad to see her so delighted, standing before an audience of her father and me with her tiny instrument tucked under her chin, her knees bending and her body swaying like a concert violinist as she applies the bow, her favorite blue dress -- the velvet worn from playground clambering and near-daily use -- the perfect attire for a living room recital.

At the end of her first day with her violin, she asked me if she could sleep with it next to her all night. When I said no, she asked if I could stay with her in her bed, at least until she fell asleep. I agreed, and we lay there together in the dark for a while. "I'm so happy," she told me, "because my violin is here, and you and Daddy found it for me." She fell asleep only after placing my hand across her chest, her arm across mine like a bow, my fingers skimming the tender spot beneath her jaw where the violin goes.

Andrea J. Buchanan is a writer living in Philadelphia. Her book of essays on motherhood, Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It (Seal Press 2003), is available wherever books are sold. Her work has been featured in Parents and Nick Jr. magazines, the collection Breeder: Real Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers, and in on-line parenting magazines such as PregnancyandBaby.com and hipMama.com. She is the editor of three forthcoming anthologies, It's A Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons (Seal Press, 2005), It's A Girl: Women Writers on Raising Daughters (Seal Press, 2006), and Literary Mama: The Best Writing from LiteraryMama.com (Seal Press, 2006), and has work forthcoming in The Imperfect Parent (Broadway, 2006) and About What Was Lost: 20 Writers on Miscarriage (Penguin, 2006).

Her syndicated column runs on various websites, including the site she created for Philadelphia mothers, PhillyMama. Before becoming a mother, Andrea was a classical pianist. Her last recital was at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, back before she knew how to play the Teletubbies theme song. You can read more about her adventures in motherland in her blog. For more information about the book, visit mothershock.com.

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