Here comes the Sun!

I will never forget when my daughter was a crazy teenager how she was such a perfectionist.  Every thing had to be a certain way.  She had to have all her home work perfect and she took life so very serious. 

One of her curricular activities was playing the clarinet in her high school band .  She loved band and loved the clarinet.  It was one of her joys in life at the time. 

On one occasion that will always be stamped on my brain forever was an assignment / homework she was given from her music class. Now remember I mentioned she always took everything so…….so serious.   Well the assignment was to compose a musical score entirely original all to be turned into her teacher and played by her in front of the entire class. 

I will never forget she was hard at work on this project in her room . It was getting late and she was having a hard time with the project.  I would hear her play a few notes , then she would write them down on her musical score and then I would hear a moan and a slight “oh no” . Strange noises coming from her room . Then it started, the yelling, crying and absolute hysterics. She came out of her room , and she said “mom. I can’t do this, “. I would send her back with a “yes you can , just think a little harder. ”  I would hear yelling and slamming. I realized she was slamming her clarinet against the floor.  ” I can’t do this “she cried, “it doesn’t sound right.”And with that all hell broke loose. She had reached her limit. She began to throw herself down on the carpet , slam her instrument down sobbing and sobbing. It was killing her that the notes were not coming.  

I had come to the conclusion that I had to help her but how? I had no musical ability to write music or I would have done it for her.  My daughter was in great pain. Teenage girls have hormones that bounce all over the walls and sometimes you just need to get out of the way.  I just wanted to run.  She was lying on the floor in the living room in utter tortuous pain, she couldn’t’ get it together perfect the way she wanted the music to flow  .   She was actually throwing a tantrum of the worst form and making herself sick in the process. And it didn’t seem to have an end.  Mercy what was I do to? It was like her life was over that she could not write this musical score.  

I walked away from her and I prayed a quick prayer that God would show me how to help her.  No parent wants to see their child in such pain. 

I turned around, walked back into the room and laid down beside, stretched out even with her on the carpet and I quietly said. “Jennifer, I don’t care if you write that piece, in fact you don’t have to go to  school tomorrow . We can go to bed tonight and in the morning the sun will still come up. And we will all still be here and your Dad and I will still love you. And nothing will have changed . In fact you can fail the class, and the sun will still come up the next day and all will be well.  We don’t care. You don’t have to write another note or play your clarinet , the sun will still come up the morning and it will be a new day.  Life will not end. and you know it is okay not to write that piece. It is not the end of the world the sun will still come up in the morning.  The sun is always going to come up in the morning and you will go to college and graduate and the sun will come up in the morning. ” As the words rolled out of my mouth a calm came over Jennifer, she quietly picked up her clarinet that she so lovingly had been slamming on the floor, walked back in her room and the notes flowed out of her clarinet and on to her musical score, like the delicate wings of a butterfly fluttering from flower to flower.   

She made a A+ on that assignment and went to college, graduated with a degree in music.  Moved to NYC where she received a Masters degree from Fordham and was hired by Christie’s auction house as a Global corporate executive and had the privilege of seeing the sun come up in Beijing ,Paris , London, HongKong , MaCau and  New York City.