Madeline, my mercurial four-year-old seemed to take to the violin naturally, but her behavior was unpredictable. She liked to perform, but she didn’t enjoy practicing-she’d rather be in her treehouse reading a book-and she didn’t enjoy feeling like the dunce of her group class where most of the kids, who’d started younger, were half a head shorter.
At seven, my oldest daughter Lauren had many interests stronger than music.
Maybe somehow, weirdly, violin had become more important to me than it was to them. While they practiced, I often played the melody along with them on the piano with my right hand while supporting a nursing infant in my left. I wrote catchy lyrics for all the Book 1 tunes. I invented little games and OCD-affirming practice charts to keep things going. When they weren’t practicing, I found my mind wandering back to the details of practicing. I oversaw practices before and after school. I sat in on my daughters' lessons with notebook and pen, ever the diligent secretary. I’d been a miserable, undisciplined music student as a child, and I wanted to do a better job this time around. Secretly, I’ll confess I found the structure comforting. Somehow, without my quite realizing it, in the space of two short years, Suzuki violin had taken over our household. We used to listen to Mahler, to Muddy Waters, to Mozart, and the Talking Heads. From an objective standpoint, playing Suzuki violin CDs during most of our waking hours was pretty demented behavior. Why, it’s David Cerone playing “The Happy Farmer”, of course. “What is this demented music that is the soundtrack of your lives?” asked my neighbor one summer afternoon.
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