The Inheritance of Violin

When we lived in Montclair, our older daughter first played flute—able, in seventh grade, to take part in the Mount Hebron Middle School production of West Side Story. Our younger daughter played violin—traveling with the Longmeadow School Orchestra to perform on the Lincoln Center plaza in Manhattan.

Listening to flute and violin for years, I enjoyed the practice hours—the starting and stopping, the working through a piece until it transformed from a collection of notes to fully-expressed music.

Each daughter chose to stop lessons by the end of high school, although, as they were seven years apart, I had the bonus of a continuing violin.

Thirty years after our younger daughter began Suzuki violin lessons, there’s an inheritance I’m still enjoying. Her children take piano lessons, and, different from my piano lessons as a girl, my daughter sits with her children during some of their practices to help them with keys and timing. A little jealousy’s been released in me in the form of a present wish that my mother had sat with me—I never played with the concentration my grandchildren have.

In my email, I find videos of them at their recitals that I enjoy for hearing them play and seeing how they’ve grown. My granddaughter, in fourth grade, wears a dress, hair decoration, and low, black boots with square heels—her song reminds me of a merry-go-round. My grandson, in first grade, has on his customary, heavier-textured pullover with a collar, and sneakers with black stripes—playing a first song that sounds like running horses.

My realization is, “We may observe how our parenting becomes part of the family inheritance by measuring our childhood against our grandchildren’s and, releasing the past, winnow pleasure from their accomplishments.