Tuning the Wrong String
By Lorren Lemmons
@lorrenlemmons
I sit at the piano with my student, coaching her note-by-note through a short song. Her eyes are darting everywhere but the page in front of her when a yell from upstairs captures her already divided attention, followed by a mournful wail. “What are your kids doing?” she asks.
“Fighting,” I say. I start teaching fifteen minutes after my kids get home from school, and lately it seems like they are at each other’s throats as soon as I’m out of commission. One child in particular has been more and more prickly lately, prone to picking fights over petty crimes like touching his belongings without asking or making noise when he’s trying to read.
“Come downstairs!” I bellow, and a few moments later, my son stands at the stairwell, face reddened and mouth twisted in a familiar grimace that means he is trying to hold back his anger. “What. Happened?” I ask through gritted teeth.
He launches into a litany of grievances against his siblings, interrupted as his brother comes sobbing into my sight. “He—” Heave. “Won’t—” Shudder. “Let me in my room!” my other son laments.
I can feel the anger coiled in my chest, tensing my muscles. I almost forget my student sitting on the bench next to me, her mom scrolling her phone on the couch in the next room. “Be nice to each other!” I whisper-hiss. “Or you’re grounded from screens!”
“How long?” the offender asks, gauging whether the punishment is enough to deter him from doing what he wants.
“For the REST OF YOUR LIFE,” I say, my voice scraping raw against my anger. He rolls his eyes, and I sink back onto the bench, my face hot. “Sorry,” I mumble to my student, pointing at her music with my pencil. “Let’s start back on this note here.”
***
I’ve come to dread teaching piano. I started taking students as a favor to a friend who heard me playing at church, and soon I had more hopeful budding musicians than half-hour slots available. Now my afternoon minutes are a dance of teaching notes to students, disciplining my own from the bench, and racing to my stove to make dinner after my last student leaves.
This year, I have two children in full-day school. I miss their presence in the house during the day, but once they walk through the door I can feel my heart rate rising as I prepare for the bickering to start ... I’m trapped by the grueling teaching schedule I’ve assembled, which feels like a net of obligations to the people texting me, asking if I have a spot for their child. Tension populates my moments with my own children as I shepherd them to school or extracurriculars, usually running seven minutes late. In the mornings, I lose my patience when I have to reorient a kid back to their responsibility of packing a lunch or putting on shoes or finding a mask (the joy of having yet another thing to remember, am I right?). After school, I try to get them to do their homework and practice the piano and for the love of all that is holy, to stop fighting while I give my time and attention to someone else’s kid.
I tell my husband about my worries. “I am so stressed out by teaching,” I say. “I feel like I never see the kids anymore, and they just fight the whole time.”
He has solutions. “Maybe you should raise your prices,” he says. “I’ll bet if you go up, some people will quit, and then you won’t be as busy.” Still, it doesn’t sit right. Most of my students are my friends’ children, and I don’t feel great about raising prices on them. I hesitate to let anybody down, and I want to be dependable. I just need more time.
***
I am the type of person who gets asked, “How do you do it all?” I usually throw off a pithy excuse. I don’t watch TV! I wake up early! Trust me, you don’t want to see the state of my bathroom! My offhand excuses hide the darker truths: I don’t spend much time connecting with loved ones. I am chronically tired. My body clings to weight because I fuel it incessantly to keep it going. I don’t believe I can be loved unless I prove my worth by saying yes to every request. I cling to those validating comments. I think I need them to be worthy.
***
I’ve been a pianist for twenty-five years, but recently my attention has wandered. Not long ago, I noticed a woman at church wheeling her harp into the chapel. I wish I played the harp, I found myself thinking. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that as an adult woman who earns money and has solid musical ability, I didn’t need to wish. After saving and planning for a couple of years and the unexpected bonus of a few stimulus checks, I rented a harp and began learning how to play.
One of the first skills I needed to master was tuning. Pianos are typically tuned yearly by a professional, but to get a beautiful, consistent sound on a harp, a musician should tune each string every time they play, or at a minimum once a week.
The shortest strings on the harp are the highest pitched, and they are less forgiving with tuning changes. While a long, low string takes a bit of turning the tuning key to get it to the right pitch, a high string is sensitive to even the slightest twitch of movement. One day I was tuning the third highest string on my harp, and no matter how much I turned the peg, the string remained off-pitch. Suddenly, the string snapped with a loud twang that nearly surprised me into dropping my harp onto the hardwood floor. The tuning key had been on the wrong peg, so I had been winding the string tighter and tighter until it ultimately snapped. I was listening to the wrong note. I was tuning the wrong string.
***
For the last two years, my son has played a song at the piano recital I put on for my students, even though he takes lessons from a different teacher, but this year I forgot to ask him until the morning of the performance. I know he’s been practicing, but when I ask him if he wants to be on the program, he shakes his head. “I don’t really want to,” he says.
I leave early for the recital that evening, a peppermint Bundt cake and a sheaf of sheet music under my arm. My students walk up to the stage solemnly and plink their simple tunes out on the baby grand’s keys before taking shy bows to the applause of their parents. My family arrives fifteen minutes late, my oldest disgruntled in pajama pants, although he perks up when I start slicing the cake. I’m nagged by the thought that I was so distracted by my stress about my students that I didn’t include my son or coach him so he felt ready to play. In years past, I would have made sure he knew he would be performing and sat with him while he practiced, but this year, having him play was an afterthought. In his position, I wouldn’t want to play either.
***
The dissonance in our home feels jarring, and I finally admit to myself that we won’t be able to find harmony unless I find a way to be more present. While part of me bristles at the thought of giving up my little piano studio, the greater part feels relieved, like a chord finally moving to resolution at the end of a piece. Most of the parents are supportive when I tell them they’ll need to find a new piano teacher for their child. ”We’ll miss you, but we understand!” One woman says, “Good job for setting boundaries for you and your family.” Others don’t answer at all. I wonder if they’re mad at me, although common sense says they’re probably distracted by the same things that prevent me from answering texts—mountains of dishes and laundry and little voices clamoring for help.
One Tuesday, before the final week of lessons, all my students cancel. My afternoon unexpectedly empty, I find myself with an unplanned hour before dinner. My kids and I play a board game, and then I quiz my kindergartener on sight words. Nobody fights, although my oldest still rolls his eyes when I ask him to do his homework. That night, as I tuck his sister into bed, he waits by the door. “Will you come read with me?” he asks.
My planner tugs at my attention. I thought I’d cross two or three things off my list before heading to bed myself. Then I remember: after these months of discordance, connection, not productivity, has put me in tune again. “I’d love to read with you,” I say, and head downstairs.
Guest essay written by Lorren Lemmons. Lorren lives in Georgia with her Army dentist husband and three children. She is a pediatric oncology nurse turned freelance writer and editor. She is working on a book about faith and mental health. When she isn't writing, she can be found hiking, playing the harp and the piano, and wrangling children.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.