Moaning Pianist

I'm still pushing Zoe with her piano lessons.

She fights me sometimes.

There are moans.

Long sighs.

I find her falling off of the piano bench with her arms stretching to the keys.

She's eating goldfish crackers while trying to play.

She has shed tears.

She gets up and pets a cat, sits back down, gets up to pet another cat, sits back down, plays a ditty that's not on the paper in front of her, pets the first cat again.

Suddenly, she's dying of thirst...

JUST PRACTICE ALREADY KID!

I tell her that we are making her do this for her own good.

The line all moms throw out there..."for your own good."

She does enjoy it.

She gets a huge smile when it all comes together and it sounds great.

But the practicing, not her favorite part.

Really, who likes to practice anything?

Wouldn't we all like to just automatically know how to do something such as play the piano?

I know I would.

But it doesn't happen that way.

Practice, Practice, Practice.

I am determined that learning to play is going to help her brain counteract the effects of the radiation and chemo that's been shot right up into her gray matter.

It's going to strengthen the synapses between A and B.

It has to.

So, when she starts to cry I don't give in.

When she gets ants in her pants, I tell her to shape up.

Because I need her to thrive.

To defeat the odds that the papers say.

Her future will tell us if everything we are doing now has worked.

I'm confidant she will come out on top.

All because she's pushed and we don't coddle her.

And because one day she will play beautifully and thank her overly zealous mother.

Serval mother strikes again...