Why Choir and parts of soul

Yeah Ok so first I looked at this blog (because I googled myself and it came up--yikes!) and thought how awful that I hadn't written anything but then I opened it and found three unfinished posts so maybe I'll work on that.

But meanwhile I just dropped the girl at choir camp and as usual she extracted a ragged hunk of my soul for leaving here there, worse this leaving than many before because she (chose to?) bring back all the anxiety of the last time, the first time, the pre-actual-choir time when we were stuck in traffic for 5 hours (yes) and so the whole sensation of the place made her fall apart. And cry and grip me and beg me not to make her. So fresh on the other side of that, it seems important to talk a little about choir, and why it's important and what makes it good, to remind myself why I forced her in and that she'll actually be fine on Friday. I mean, she spent 3.5 weeks in England with the people last summer, she can't withstand 5 days in the woods??

This is her gift. She's had it forever. It's hard wired, and I think because of that she dismisses it as nothing. Everything else is hard and so she thinks the one thing that's easy is nothing. But it's not nothing. It wasn't nothing when we determined that she probably had perfect pitch at 3, or more or less confirmed that with her first piano teacher at 5. It wasn't nothing after her first solo with the chorus in Weston, in 2nd grade, when Joanne Hammill came over to me with tears in her eyes, babbling about breath control and vocal reach and how hard that was. Or when Mr Webster started recruiting her when she was 8 and she wouldn't go because she had to get up too early. (And I loved Joanne, she learned so much there and it was super fun.)

And Treble Chorus, and Boston Children's Chorus, and Select (where they didn't read music and the girl drama of middle school almost destroyed her). And clarinet and more piano and omg who LOVES music theory? I mean... but she does. And Andy Icocheca from Vienna Boys who begged her to join the Pops/Tanglewood Feeder chorus, but it's so good she didn't because he left and the musical theater lady came in, and my sweet, humble, talented and shy girl is so not musical theater and we know because we tried over and over. She's not brash enough.

And now Richard and Colin and Trinity.

The caliber of this training, the resources and opportunities that it offers (sonja tengblad! sophie michaux! jeremy harman the cello teacher!) would never have been there without it. Learning to deal with be with connect with the ever so very wealthy. It's *free*. But that doesn't matter, because I'd pay thousands to keep it going and make it available to her.

And the new cello thing. What kid decides to spend the summer taking up cello?

I guess it's worth the hunk of my soul. Even though I still feel it gone. And she WILL be ok, despite the presence of her acrimonious "ex" and I have to believe that.