Music: part 2

Long before Amy and Michael so violently entered our home, my mom fulfilled one of the many duties that she deemed all mom's must fulfill: enroll all children in piano lessons just to see if it sticks.

Mr. VanLeerop was a cute little man with a handlebar-mustache who would come to our home once and week and provide a half-hour lesson first to my brother and then to me. I enjoyed learning how to play the piano and to read the notes on the page. However, after two years, at the ripe old age of eight, I was simply done with it. There were bigger and better things.

I was now going to be a violinist.

As my mom's piano investment collected dust, I squeaked my way through a year's worth of violin lessons. Mom must have just finished the last payment on my rent-to-own violin when I declared that the violin just wasn't for me.

Entering fifth grade, I just knew that my calling was to be a flutist. Yes, that was it. For about 18 months.

Now, all along those various musical lessons, I vividly remember day-dreaming about what it would be like to sing like Evie or Sandi Patti. I remember lying in my bed at night belting out Evie tunes, imaging I was singing to crowds of people, just like she had done when I saw her in concert at the Tacoma Dome. Sometimes I would imagine this particular boy, whom I had a crush on, listening outside my door, utterly in awe of the sounds he heard coming from my bedroom. I would sing at the top of my lungs and make up new verses to the songs, knowing that I just might be discovered by someone listening in the hall.

Apparently my mom was the one listening in the hall, not John, because at the beginning of sixth grade, she approached me with a proposition: voice lessons. She had heard of a great voice teacher that had an opening for me if I was interested. I had no idea that there was such a thing, but before I knew it, I was in Fran's basement practicing for my public debut: "I'm only four-feet-eleven," by Evie. Being four-feet-eleven at the time, it was the perfect fit!

Fran was wonderful. She taught me so much, not only about singing, but about poise and grace and life. I loved being with her and I had finally found the musical niche for me. She had so many connections and resources, that it seemed I was singing everywhere all of a sudden. But I credit my mom in seeing the musical bent in my life and not giving up on finding how it should best be molded.

I was also, now, included in the "special music" list of our church, but only for the Sunday evening services. It was a large Baptist church and, you see, I needed to work my way up to "big" church on Sunday mornings. That was the ultimate goal. That's where all the glory was. In order to attain that goal, I began collecting every Sandi Patti soundtrack I could get my hands onto. The songs with the mega-high notes at the end: those were my tickets to fame, I just knew it.

Music dominated my life. Practicing, performing and listening.

But sixth grade was a rough year for me. I withdrew farther and farther from my mom and closer and closer to my friends. Knowing that my mom would never accept the musical influences of my friends, for they were far worse than Amy or Michael, I was forced to keep my new musical interests to myself. After witnessing my mom's reaction to the Michael W. Smith album, there was no way I was going to tell her how cool I thought Madonna and Huey Lewis were.

The double-standard was born. I strove for personal glory in the church-world through singing songs about God, regardless of whether or not I meant them, while happily hiding my other musical loves from my parents. I remember listening to the Top 40 with Casey Kasem every weekend. But in order to do this, I had to lock my door, turn the volume almost all the way down, rest my ear against the speaker of the radio, and keep my finger on the power switch, ready to flip it off at the faintest sounds of footsteps in the hall. I also knew to slide the dial off the "Satan-station" before leaving my room, lest my mom turn it on while I was gone.

Sandi by day, Bon Jovi by night. Not a fun way to live. Not an ideal mother-daughter relationship. It was, however, how I learned to live.....