chess

So it's a rainy Tuesday. My life is a bit of a mess right now, though I thought the mess was maybe starting to clear up. I was wrong. But given that it's a rainy Tuesday, it all sorta makes sense and I'm ok with it for the moment. I'm sitting here on campus, sipping coffee with lots of cream and sweetener and wondering how it's all gonna come together.

This last week, my dad's younger sister passed away. It was so hard... mostly because her death breaks the ice for his generation. One down for the count, you know. She had been through her first round of breast cancer about 10 yrs ago and had been declared free of it. Then recently a different form of cancer had come back again and she just absolutely refused to go through that process again. So it was expected, and yet not. I figured I would be going to a funeral over spring break perhaps, definitely not a mere week after visiting her. And I can definitely say that I am soooo freaking glad we went to see her last Sunday before she went home to be with the Lord, which my cousin tells us she prayed for Wednesday evening before she went to sleep. That part is so crazy to me. She asked to be taken home and God just went ahead and did that for her... such an act of mercy. It's a little overwhelming to me when he does stuff like that for people.

And despite finding out this tragic news about half an hour before my lesson last Thursday (and my pieces sounding like the attempts of a 5-yr-old throughout the duration of that lesson), all my music is now memorized. It's definitely not perfect, but I can get through everything and I've still got 6 weeks til my recital. I am just thanking the good Lord above for giving me a teacher who pushes me hard and then lets things ferment. She understands me in a way I could never have imagined... on that note, I think she just has an unparallelled sense of human nature. It is fantastic. But it's come with a price: I'm so behind in my writing for Budds. I got a bunch of work done on my Holst project this weekend only to find out I'm going to have to edit out at least 2 of the 7 and 1/2 pages I got written. And then there's all the writing for his writing intensive class on the history of opera. The list goes on and on. Sigh. Sometimes I feel like Cinderella, wondering if all my work's gonna get done in time for me to go to the graduation ball.

I'm also realizing via my students that I still have much to learn as a teacher. Yesterday I was given a check for which I didn't feel competent to receive. And that's not a good feeling. Not that I don't have anything to contribute to this student... on the contrary, I feel certain I've left a lasting impression on her musical development. And yet I know that by the end of this year, she will have outgrown me as a teacher and will need to move on. Hard stuff to face. Not to mention where that leaves me with my decision about grad school...

Edwina and I had a really good conversation about this last night, though... perhaps the best conversation I've had with anybody about this particular crossroad in the last 6 months: there's absolutely no way I can make a decision right now. Edwina tells me her dad says life is like a game of chess. It creates complicated situations and then systematically sorts them out through various circumstances. So even though I've been standing at this crossroads for over 6 months now, really there's no other choice right now than to just keep standing there and wait for the right path to systematically reveal itself. So when I asked her the question, "If you were me, what would you do with the next year of my life," her answer was the most profound I've been given thus far: "I would make the right choice and not second-guess myself." And I just have to say that is one of the many reasons we are friends... because she recognizes when I need to be given back my dignity and freedom of choice when I would otherwise willingly abdicate that to someone else in exchange for concrete direction. So my dear friend, if you are reading this, thank you for that.