Around this time in February of 1995 I auditioned in Instrumental Music for the summer Governor’s School of North Carolina. On encouragement from my band director, I decided to try for this opportunity for a spot of one of 8 or 10 clarinets in the whole state and spent months practicing. All that previous fall, I had a weekly private lesson with a retired clarinetist band director to help me prepare for the audition where I had to play one piece from a small selection. I will always believe my band director pulled some strings with Mr. Stokes to supplement the fee and squeeze in an extra time slot to allow this poor 15 year old 10th grader the chance. There aren’t words to describe the soft spot in my heart for that white haired man who helped me every Tuesday afternoon in his home basement music studio. I didn’t know C.S. Lewis or Narnia at the time, but looking back, that’s what that room felt like. It had the feel of love and Narnia. He was SO SKILLED and I wanted to be just as good, too.
Auditioning for a place at Governor’s School involved arriving at your set time slot on audition day, performing your prepared piece solo, and then sight reading a piece. I believe we found out via letter whether we made it. Funnily enough, I don’t remember that part (probably because that set off a mental panic chain of now having to figure out how I was going to get there).
When I was growing up, I would dread the days we had to bring home things like field trip permission forms with cost involved, school picture forms, yearbook fees, or information about something we had to purchase related to school. Because it always caused conflict and anger. “There isn’t money for that” and all, even though the logical part of me was always aware there *was* money for the things that he wanted. And somehow it always felt like I was to blame, that he wouldn’t have to feel bad about this if it weren’t for ME having these things because of SCHOOL. I learned early on that it was best to just not ask for anything extra. And so I didn’t.
Governor’s School was a state wide thing and the auditions for wind instruments were held that year in Winston Salem. We lived in Hendersonville, 2.75 hours away from the downtown performing arts location. For most everything school related I had a carefully constructed order of operations for which friend to call to pick me up to get to where I needed to go. But no one else at school was auditioning for Governor’s School. I was alone in this and had nowhere else to turn. I’d have to ask my Dad to take me to the audition. So I did and he agreed.
If this were happening today and Nathan had an audition, he’d never question whether it was optional. It would be a given that one of his parents would get him there. He wouldn’t have to worry that the cost of gas for a 3 hour and back trip could make or break it. If it were happening today, I’d use Google Maps to navigate. I’d have looked online at the street view to familiarize myself with where we’d be going, what lanes I may need to be in, where I’d need to park. And most likely, we’d book a hotel room so we wouldn’t have to risk anything going wrong in travel or having to get up at some way too early hour. We’d know what door we needed to enter through. We’d know the names of who to expect there to greet us. We’d do everything in our power to make the parts of an audition that we could influence to go smoothly.
But this happened in 1995. And there were no google maps. In fact, this was before Dad bought himself a Gateway computer, so it was before we could even use Mapquest to print directions. And there was no money for a hotel room for the convenience of arriving the night before.
So very, very early on February 18th, 26 years ago today, we left the house to make my early audition time, traveling from Hendersonville to downtown Winston Salem. I can’t recall the details right now, but Dad got lost. I don’t remember how we managed to eventually find the place. What I know is that I was very, very late and that he dropped me off at a door, and made me walk in by myself.
I have faint memories of feeling panic at not knowing which door to enter the building, not knowing where I should go once I found a way in, not knowing how to explain what happened, and whether they’d even let me have a chance, having to talk to these adults once I found the right place and trying to speak without having tears stream down my face, and having to play my clarinet for my performance with the taste of those tears in the back of my throat.
They let me audition. I can still see the inside of that room, and the cold, stoic face of my evaluator. I played my heart out, Concertino by C.M. von Weber. I don’t remember the sight reading part at all.
If this were to happen today and Nathan were the one to have the audition, I can only imagine the things he would be saying in the car as we tried to find the place. Feeling stress and panic and out of control can make the ugliness of our hearts bubble up to the surface when our guard is let down. I don’t remember saying much of anything at all. To speak up in that way was not permitted in my family. There was no outburst. There wasn’t really words at all. Just a silent looking out the window, feeling like the one time I had to ask him for help, the one time I had to rely on him for something, he let me down. And I was powerless to do a thing about it.
The sense that I can remember accompanying me from my earliest of awareness is that even though I wasn’t physically alone, I *was* alone in every meaningful sense of the word. You can’t count on anybody but yourself. You can’t depend on anyone. This has manifested itself in a strong need to control all of the uncontrollables in my life. I spent my first 18 years forced into places where I couldn’t control things and have spent the last 23 making every effort to ward off any errors or discomforts. It feels like logic and reason to me — why not prepare for things you can anticipate? — but I believe the root of it goes back to all of those days I felt trapped in a place where I had no control.
In the 3rd grade, I asked my grandparents for an alarm clock for Christmas. And they got me one. It was brown, and it plugged in, and had red numbers. But the reason I asked for an alarm clock as an elementary student was so that I could have some control over what time I woke up so that I could get to the bus stop on time for school, because I couldn’t count on anyone else to do that for me. That alarm clock went with me to Governor’s School. The red numbers would manifest as the register checkout totals in my dreams when I worked at Ingles Grocery store after high school. It went with me to college, even after a clip on desk lamp got too close and melted the snooze button into a wave but it still worked, and it went with me to our first apartment after we got married.
I haven’t thought about how my dad didn’t get me to my audition for this once in a lifetime opportunity like he should have in a very long time. Recently as Shawn and I discussed parenting things about preparing our kids for life as adults, I was reminded of how differently I responded to that sense of being out of control than how either of my children do. I never said a word. And after you’ve read all of this, you’re probably thinking something along the lines that you’re sad I had to have a childhood where I didn’t feel safe nor felt I had anyone to count on.
But the thing I know now is that I have a resilience that has come hard earned. I know that if I get knocked down, I'm going to be okay and I can stand back up. Some life skills can be taught with words, as I have tried so incredibly hard to do with my own children. However some come on gradually as you experience them. I believe that resilience is one of those. I can’t talk my kids into resilience. They have to build that up, little bit by little bit, over time, on their own. Which means they need to face moments of uncertainty, experience feeling they aren’t in control. Resilience isn't a coat that you can put on but just as easily falls back off. Resilience is a callous worn by the slow and steady practice, placing finger on string day after day after day, through the period of raw pain, until a hardened rim of protection is formed. And cannot be removed.
I have worked so hard to curate an environment where things aren’t out of control, and that does feel quite lovely to me. I have systems and routines and processes and patterns that head off anything that can be head off. But in so doing, how much have I actually hindered my kids under the guise of love and protection?
I was accepted that year as one of the top clarinetists in the state and got to attend six weeks of Governor’s School that summer of 95 in Laurinburg, North Carolina at Saint Andrews College. My evaluator ended up being our clarinet instructor for the summer and that cold stoic demeanor he showed on audition day was in complete contrast to who he really was. That six week experience, away from my family and home life, broadened my world and changed me in ways I cannot ever expect to articulate to you. It exposed me to so much, so much more than the music I was there to learn. I am so profoundly grateful I had that. It was a glimmer of hope that I needed, the moment I finally saw light at the end of that childhood tunnel, and motivated me to keep going to get to the end when I could be an adult on my own.
But who is to say? Would I have been one of the chosen few that day had I not had an extra bit of memorable added to me? Was there something about me that stood out a little differently because they all had compassion for this shy, young girl auditioning alone, holding it together by a thread, playing through tears? Or perhaps did I channel all that despair and angst into my performance because music was where I could be free to feel the emotion I so carefully kept myself from experiencing otherwise? Was it the very emotion caused by his mistake that made me play more beautifully and made me be one of the selected? We will never know.