Good mothers LIKE aural torture

• By Alison
• 20 November, 2009
• 8 Comments

Because mothers are supposed to love everything their children do.

Because the child-filter that is pre-installed on every mother makes it impossible for parents to find fault with anything that their child does.

Because your own child’s drawings make it clear that they have artistic potential far outstripping any other pigtailed snot nosed prodigy.

Because your kids are better than anyone else’s, and you know it.

Which is why you smile angelically at your little darling as they lay the bow on the string, palm on the neck, fingers caressing the fingerboard, and then…

They drag it over that cat gut and let out the most GOD AWFUL screech that sends the cat running in terror, and has the neighbours two over banging on the walls.

And you have to grab that smile and hold it on your own face. You try and stretch it into place with your fingers, but your mouth doesn’t want to play ball. What it wants to do is form a perfect O. Your eyebrows are now fighting with your hairline, any further back and you can wear them as a stole.

Your whole body objects to this noise. It’s as if the bow is a sword that is being drawn over all your nerves. Each push, each pull elicits a new screech.

You’re not highly strung, but might as well be – you’re quivering with spasms of staccato. Every pause only makes the next sound worse, like a sharp blade cutting through the wound over and over and over. Until your whole soul is raw.

Then the silence. The blessed relief. Like a salve, rushing in – soothing – wonderful silence.

The little face turns towards you, beaming with pride. Eyes shining – twinkling, full of joy.

“Was that good?”

You lean down and gather in the limbs, smell the sweet hair, smiling, laughing together.

“It was WONDERFUL darling! It was the best thing I’ve ever heard.” You lie, thinking about your prodigy, and wondering if the violin teacher can provide ear plugs. You consider stepping to the side and knocking the violin off the music stand accidently, then standing on the bridge and jumping up and down a few times. But you don’t. Because maybe in about 10 years, it might sound good.

Because that’s what mothers do. If they can’t delude themselves into thinking that their child is the best of the best, they pretend that they are anyway. They lie to their offsprings face. And they love what their child loves. And they never criticise the child’s best efforts. They just suck it up. Well, GOOD mothers’s do, anyway.

Miss Trouble Pants loves playing the violin. And the preceding part of this post really does describe the exquisite agony with which I listened to her first attempt at bowing. (Before that it had been all about plucking. I can only think rude thoughts in relation to that word!)

But – I didn’t actually stand back and listen, then applaud.

Nope, I am not quite the adoring mummy I was pretending I to be. That part is a slight fabrication. After about six draws of the bow, I stepped in and stopped her. I could NOT listen anymore.

Now – I am a flute player. Wind. I wiggle my fingers and blow. So I have no notion of how a stringed instrument works, other than the obvious. How do you know where to put your fingers to start with? Guitars have frets. Violins are like NAKED. But at this stage we’ve not got any fingers anywhere yet anyway – just the bow going rockstar. The whole “bow” concept is alien to me. No bows on flutes.

But when Miss Trouble Pants started pulling that bow back and forth across the strings in tiny little motions, the resulting sound was so horrible, I just didn’t think it could be right. It felt like she needed at least a run up to the whole thing. So despite the fact that she’d had a lesson that day, and the teacher had obviously instructed her on what to do – and her teacher obviously knows best – I had to step in despite knowing nothing. 

I got her to try and draw the bow further back and forth, rather than the tiny inches she was doing. This produced a better tone, and was something I could live with. Something I could manage to listen to.

And she’s improved no end from there – now she has three finger positions marked on the neck with small sticky spots, and is onto the second book.

So the next thing to cringe about is why she can’t hear when a note she’s fingering and bowing isn’t “right”. I am probably trying to push concepts onto her that her teacher hasn’t touched on yet – like being sharp or flat – and maybe I am trying to rush things. 

But I’m the one who has to listen to this stuff, I think I should get a say here! Someone please tell me intonation is something that she’ll learn in time. Because if she’s tone deaf there is no point continuing to put ourselves through this? What sane person would themselves through this aural torture if it was never going to get better?

Or would a good mother do it anyway?