mind

Flute for Thought

This is humiliating.

I started playing the flute in the first grade, when I was about 6 or so, and I actually picked it up pretty quickly.

So much so that I just as quickly became the first person in my entire (albeit, small,) family to ever learn an instrument, at least ever since I’d been born, which sounds pretty cool, but I was a shy kid, so I didn’t play in front of my family members for a while. They were so supportive of me, but the thought of disappointing just one of them scared me more than anything else, even if that was pretty hard to do, in retrospect.

Mom would try to overhear me play sometimes through our shared wall (her bedroom was right next to mine), but I didn’t really like that. And Lily would pretend like she wasn’t sitting right outside of my bedroom door as I opened it up after a long, couple hours practice, so I formed the habit of not playing at home at all unless I knew that I was absolutely, completely by myself.

But that was still pretty often; Mom worked both days and nights ever since Dad fell out of the picture (I don’t remember him), and Lily’s older than me and did lots of afterschool activities, like track and volleyball and cheer and basketball, so she would often just catch a ride with one of her friends and come home much later than everyone else. And Paul’s way older than me, so by the time I even started playing the flute, he had already moved out of the house and attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, leaving his room behind for us to use as yet another storage space for more junk (Mom was a hoarder in denial), and it became the True Gal Pal Nation: Mom, me, and Lily.

So, to my family, the flute really just became a thing that I did at school, and I’d probably quit it in a few years anyway, and I’d get busy with different things as I got older that I’d show off more often (sports, academics, friends).

But I knew that Mr. Kibble, the lead band director for my elementary school, saw something special in me, and after a year or two, I must’ve started seeing what he and all of his assistant directors saw too, because I never really did get busy with different things as I got older (sports, academics, friends).

All through elementary school I played the flute; Mr. Kibble put me in the honors band (finally), and I took lessons as part of the curriculum at my school. I practiced everyday during school for an hour, along with practicing even more at home, regardless of if I was alone in the house or not. I enjoyed it so much that I could finally show it off, and I felt like I was the best flute player in my school, by far.

And, maybe for a little, I was right.

The living room (or what we could see of it, anyway) became my stage, and all kinds of different people (Mom, her friends, Lily, and her friends, and sometimes even Paul, too, if he was around) became my audience. I was the star, and everyone loved it (they thought it was cute). This made me like playing the flute even more, naturally.

Early baroque music, specifically Monteverdi, is what I felt most drawn to when I played alone or during school practices, but when I played in the living room, I tended to keep it lighter with well-known, easier songs that, when a child played them, got everyone going, like Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” “Take On Me” by A-ha, and the spiciest rendition of “Hot Cross Buns” that you’d probably ever heard.

The crowd always went wild for it.

Eventually, in turn, I tried this newfound trick on my two newest (and only) friends, Anita and Mary, at the beginning of the fourth grade, on the playground during recess. We all became friends because our moms were PTA members. I played songs everyday that I thought were funny, like Offenbach’s “Can Can,” and the Star Wars Theme (I’ll admit, there wasn’t much variety,) to try and make them both laugh.

I thought it was fun for them at first, but they must’ve started getting bored, because they threatened to leave one day to go play foursquare instead.

In bed that night, I thought about what I could do to solve the problem.

The following day, I tried playing them the family approved classics (Beethoven, A-ha, spicy buns, the ones that were supposed to keep the crowd rolling!) but it didn’t work. Anita yawned once or twice, and Mary was nice enough to fake her laughter, but it wasn’t that convincing, not even to a fellow fourth grader.

It was official, they had gotten bored. And they both left soon after to go play foursquare instead. Mom didn’t sacrifice much time to being a PTA member and just sort of abandoned it for paid work, so we all fell out of touch.

Our moms stayed friends on Facebook, though.

The flute never stopped being fun for me.

Middle school I played the flute, high school I played the flute, flute, flute, flute….

I had band classes everyday. I was in the marching band, the concert band, the jazz band (and flutes are, like, never really in jazz bands, so they made a part just for me because I was so determined, and also still the director’s pet, too, thanks to all the good things Mr. Kibble had told the high school ones about me), basically, if it involved playing the flute, I was probably there. And we had a pretty decent music program, so I was especially able to become one with my instrument.

I truly grew to love it, and I didn’t want it any other way. I didn’t have many friends, but I didn’t really care. I just loved what I did, just as it was, and it was all whatever, right? Well.

Mom thought my hobby was cute as a kid, but she quickly turned me away from the idea of implementing the flute into my future. At least once she realized that I had gotten to the age where that’s what I thought about the most (What the hell am I going to do with my life?).

“There’s no money there, darlin’, unless you really strike it big somehow,” Mom said to me once in my junior year.

She’s from a small town on the border of Oklahoma and Texas, so she tends to speak like she still lives there.

“Like, lucky lucky, like some talent agent was out at one of your concerts, lookin’ for a hot young flutist or somethin’, but no talent agent out here lookin’ for a hot young flutist or nothin’, ‘cuz that just don’t happen.”

I looked at her, a little puzzled, then chuckled, “Oh, so you don’t think I’m hot enough Ma?”

“You know that ain’t what I’m sayin’,” Mom didn’t think this was funny.

“I know,” I said, confused. “Where’s this ‘money,’ then, to you?”

“I dunno, like, business,” Mom had her own little Eureka moment. “You should major in business!”

Mom and I got along on most occasions, but we had very different ideas of what ‘money’ meant.

To me, the flute was the money, even if that meant I’d actually never make that much. Not physically, anyway. It’s what I enjoyed, and if that’s what it took to make me happy, then that’s what I felt like made the most sense for me to pursue as a career. Afterall, everyone’s always told me while growing up that it’s the things that make you happy in life that really matter the most.

So why not make a little money from it too, right?

Mom didn’t think like that. She did what she could to make ends meet, but she loved her material possessions. So much so that she stopped caring about how it affected the entire family’s environment and just kept buying. Buying, buying.

To her, it’s her possessions that matter the most in life, and what better way to get more possessions than to save and earn as much money as possible? That’s why she always worked both days and nights.

And somebody still had to fuel that desire to buy every single little tangible thing in the world when she was no longer able to work both days and nights. All so she could continue filling to the brim our already very average-sized house with it all; Like she’d done the whole time, which was why we needed to be concerned about money in the first place!

I ended up thinking about what Mom said, and absorbing it, and I found myself in my senior year taking more business classes instead of music classes: calculus instead of jazz, statistics instead of concert, marketing instead of marching, the like. I tried to rack up my AP credits. I applied to colleges that were further away than what I had initially anticipated wanting to do.

I had less time for the flute.

One day, right after I had finally turned 18, I got my acceptance letter from Rutgers, and with all of the credits I had planned to transfer in, it was actually affordable enough! I celebrated all my hard work paying off with Mom and even Lily (who had already moved out and attended Creighton University at that point, partly on a basketball scholarship) and Paul too, because they were all so excited to see me move somewhere bigger than Nebraska, since none of them ever did it, and I actually began preparing for my future. I’d gotten quite business savvy, told myself and others that it felt like a new beginning, but Mom still didn’t seem all that impressed.

“Look at what Anita and Mary’s moms are postin’ on Facebook, oh, they look like they got some shiny sports scholarships or somethin’,” Mom said once. “That’s how you make the real dough! Do you still talk to ‘em anymore?”

“It’s been years, Ma.”

“Why ain’t you get any scholarships?”

(Maybe because I quit what I was best at to try and support you, and you still don’t act like it’s enough) I never told her how I really felt, at least not effectively, anyway.

I finally graduated high school, spent my summer days saying goodbye to Mom, whose hoarding problem had already started spilling into my emptying room, and Lily and Paul, and I began thinking about where the flute would fall into it all, if at all.

But it wouldn’t (and it didn’t).

And the worst part of it all? I never once stopped thinking about the flute even though I’ve been tricking myself into thinking I had all these years.

I graduated from Rutgers last spring with a business degree, and I’m currently planted in the East Coast, alone.

It’s humiliating.

I listen to early baroque music through my bulky headphones.