Daughters

Daughters

Brianna is the fourth of my daughters with Cheryl. I have one natural daughter who is older and two stepdaughters also older.  Brianna was exceptionally difficult as a child and very smart; a chip off the old block you might say.  There is much I could say about raising this child, but I won’t.  This story is about shifting gears.

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I was driving home a few days ago in Cheryl’s car listening to a CD. The CD featured piano numbers by Shubert, the classical composer. Shubert was a Vienna resident and is buried there.  We have visited his tombstone.  My memories of Vienna are wonderful, but the beautiful music did not take me there.  It took me back to my daughters’ piano years.

My wife is a firm believer in a proper refined education for the girls.  This includes, of course, classical ballet and piano, starting at age five.  I will leave the ballet out of this story.  I am required to watch the granddaughters do it now and it is just as painful.  The piano was also painful.  The girls practiced every day for half an hour. Day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year.

After many, many, hours, all of them developed the mechanical skills necessary for playing piano.  They learned how to read music and find the appropriate keys.  The pieces they played became recognizable, if not particularly good.  I attended so many recitals they just become a blur.  You understand, I do not play any musical instrument, so listening to it was somewhat painful.

Brianna was good in a workman-like manner.  She got all the notes but could not find the rhythm. Her keystrokes were hard and unvaried. This went on into high school when rebellion set in.  It was hard to get her to practice.  She did not like her private piano teacher.  I think Cheryl was ready to give up.  Brianna was the end of the line anyway.

One evening I was listening to the piano echoing through our old house.  It was Brianna practicing Shubert or perhaps Chopin in her usual painful mechanical way. And then she shifted gears.  The playing abruptly became lyrical and soulful.  It was professional and beautiful.  The change was so dramatic I crept into the music room to listen.

Brianna was leaning over the keyboard, long hair hiding her face, swaying back and forth as her fingers danced.  I could hardly believe it and slipped away to get Cheryl. Had all the hard years suddenly paid off?  We were stunned.

Now, we had our own concert pianist playing away in the house for hours at a time. The following year, her junior year in high school, she competed in the State musical trials.  She won locally and was sent on to the university in Columbia to continue the competition.  She won First Place in the State of Missouri.  The next year she repeated the performance and won First Place again.

That was all well and good, but next was the university.  Should she continue in music, majoring in Piano.  It would be a snap now, but there is no future in it. Instead we interviewed the Business School with her.  She was accepted by the Dean’s Committee and elected to try International Business.  She was fluent in French and had even spent a summer vacation with her French AFS friend Soline who had lived with us for a year. We had taken her on a European Tour of Germany, Austria, and Italy. She was well versed with the continent and the international aspect of business.

So off she went to Columbia amid some misgivings from her mother and me. I must tell you that I had  problems with the university.  I was accustomed to school subjects just coming to me with no study required.  My first three semesters in engineering school were a nightmare.  It was a miracle I made it, but during finals week of the third semester I abruptly woke up.  I prayed for this to happen for Brianna, but it was not to be.

After four semesters, Brianna gave up and came home.  No more international business for her.  She hung around for half a year thinking about life, the universe and everything, and decided what she really wanted to be was a dentist.  A dentist! What ever drove that decision?

Off we went to interview the Dean of Dentistry at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.  She talked her way in despite rather bad grades from Columbia.  We tried to talk her out of it. So she plowed through two preliminary years taking increasingly difficult courses in chemistry and the like, and loving it.  She aced everything.  It was another great awakening, another shifting of gears, just like the piano.

As of this writing she has applied to the elite dentistry school in Kansas City.  Out of sixty undergrads, only six we are assured will make it in.  We will know next Christmas when the decisions are made.  She will make it, although I still don’t know why she wants to be a dentist.

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I need to pen a little followup for all this.  As is customary in our church, I baptized Brianna when she turned eight.  After baptism, I gave her the customary blessing for her future.  I kind of lost it with this.  As I spoke, I clearly saw Brianna in a white lab coat doing lab stuff.  I spoke of this, and Cheryl recorded it.  I had quite forgotten this prophetic incident until one day when Brianna showed me a photo of her and friends in the chem lab …..wearing a white lab coat.

So, medical it is through all the twists and turns and uncertainties of raising this difficult and talented child. I am so blessed.

And just a short note to my other daughters; you will have your turn.

Post Script:  Brianna was accepted to dental college but then changed her mind again.  She was recruited by some firm that needed a chemist and took the job.  Now she really does have a white lab coat.