They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Kahil Gibran
The Sound of Music
Parenting is a dexterous tightrope walk; it is the precarious balancing of the assertion of authority to encourage the development of children’s life-skills and experiences, with allowing freedom and flexibility for them to experiment and blossom. As parents we have tentatively negotiated being resolute in the face of opposition while supporting our children’s exploration of themselves and what they truly love doing.
Over the course of the last decade, we’ve invested countless hours, energy and dollars trying to determine our children’s passions. At Lion’s Bay School Cameron was introduced to T-ball which morphed into Little League baseball. We’ve spent hundreds of hours watching ball games as our son, who demonstrated poor fine and gross motor skills as a young child, has developed in to a pretty talented baseball player. Prior to being firmly entrenched in his current baseball stage, Cameron has slipped through the train stage, the dog stage and the Mario stage. The Mario period was all-encompassing and in our countless travels, his ever-expanding Mario stuffy collection would accompany us – on planes, trains, boats and hiking up mountains. He could itemize every stuffy – where in the world it was acquired, its birthday and its significant relation in the Mario world. We allowed the full complement of 22 stuffies to accompany him when we travelled around South Africa 2 years ago – but the agreement was he had to carry and take full care of his precious cargo himself. Last summer when we visited Eastern Canada and the USA just a select few journeyed with us; Goomba was sadly left behind in New York as the phase was abating and he was less vigilant. (We’re now travelling to Namibia with 10 baseballs, a bat and helmet). Erin was more modest with her companions and when we travelled to Hong Kong just before Christmas last year Jasmine the bear was selected above Leafy, squeezed in to her own personally packed carry-on suitcase. Half of her luggage comprised a blanket for Jasmine – a wise choice for napping at airports! I never interfered with her packing – just as I never adjusted her clothing choices; it always amazed me how sensible she was in her selection of clothing and personal items. On looking back at our Hong Kong photos, every day yielded a new outfit with perfectly matching earrings – all planned in advance.
Together the children did taekwondo in the Lion’s Bay village hall and then at the Squamish martial arts centre. The activity was seen as essential as it offered physical and mental discipline, spiritual engagement and mindfulness, and importantly self-defense skills. Besides taekwondo, Erin explored dance at the age of 3; ballet with the prestigious Vancouver Goh Ballet company in pre-school; enjoyed gymnastics but was not sufficiently sylph-like for the competitive programme; sang her way through a summer camp of musical theatre; was an enthusiastic Brownie and most recently she arrived at would have become her true passion - soccer. Her best identical twin friends were on the ‘Yellow Star’ team the previous year and she proudly joined them in September, too. She entered the activity with confidence and enthusiasm; our girl was growing up. She would play-date with the twins on Tuesdays after school and I’d fetch the merry bunch for an hour of frenetic ball-chasing around a hall in the late drizzly Vancouver Fall afternoons. On Sunday mornings we’d head off to their soccer match - on a field that hadn’t been mown because the schools were on strike - and the girls would flatten the grass in the rush-and-tumble of 7-year-old glee.
But the activity that was non-negotiable was ‘Music’. (Cameron with deft negotiation skills pointed out that two non-negotiable activities in a week were a tall order and so reluctantly we let the children relinquish taekwondo). Three summers ago I purchased books and at bedtime I’d teach them notation and dynamics before trying to translate all of this into simple songs on the electronic keyboard in bed. The music books with iPad music apps accompanied us on holidays for the long airport waits. While Cameron was tolerantly compliant so long as I was teaching him Mario theme songs, it soon became clear that a dispassionate teacher was needed if my mother-daughter relationship with Erin was to flourish. She would not listen, concentrate or comply although by osmosis she taught herself to play ‘These are a few of my favourite things’ on the grand piano. On one critical day last Fall I abdicated responsibility to Mike proclaiming that it was his turn to entice her to practise. Confident of his persuasive capabilities, he patiently led her to the piano, set the timer for the obligatory 15 minutes and was commanded to ‘Go Away’. I5 minutes later the timer rang its sound of freedom and Erin defiantly stood up from the stool, the ivories untouched. We had reached an impasse! After complicated negotiations, we agreed that a switch to the violin would provide a suitable alternative and appropriate Christmas gift from her parents.
It was with some excitement then that 3 generations of girls – Mamgu, Mom and Erin - went on Sunday 21st December to her music school to purchase the tiny half-size violin and sign her up for violin lessons. Erin tucked it under her chin for sizing, and soon was proudly clutching the blue case housing our new instrument of torture. When she got home that last evening we were to spend with her, she took it out of the case, grandly drew the bow across the strings and promptly tore a string on the bow.
6 months on, at his music school’s concert, Cameron competently played Minuet in G by Bach. Backstage the soccer-playing best friend twins were preparing for their own piano debut. I imagined the excitement, banter and nerves of Erin as she chattered with her friends preparing for her own violin performance. Would we have battled? Indeed would she have played? Would she have prevailed? Or would I have? Would the violin have provided the necessary distance from her proficient brother to allow her to flourish in her own space – just as being in a French Immersion School had allowed her to stretch her academic wings?
And this is the profound sadness of our loss – we’ll never know. I have missed out on learning to play the violin for that too was to be a joint mother-daughter project just as learning French was. Instead we can only trust that she’s making idyllic music providing serenity and solace in a way we would never have known (no tightrope juggle needed) – in the rush of the rivers, in the breeze, in rustle of the leaves…or in whichever world she now resides.