Bärli,
I turn 50 tomorrow. If “everyone has the face he deserves” at age 50, per Orwell, I deserve the “Sehnsucht Sunshine.” Befreckled by it (better or worse), marked with the lines of laughter and a forehead of staff lines, I have been criticized as “having a smile too big for her face” and someone who “looks better in color.” So, I suppose I’ll take it. All of it.
There are so many things that were b**s**t, in the first part of my life. Yesterday, for example, we were looking at the clouds and I remembered, very vaguely, having to learn the different types of clouds. I mean, come on now. I did not need to see (and smell) the inside of a frog or attempt to sing coloratura repertoire or clean up chunks of your puke in my car. Twice. I knew the horrors of the Holocaust before the visual trauma of Schindler’s List, I knew cancer was brutal before losing Katie at the ripe old age of couldn’t-even-get-a-grey-hair, I felt the terror of public school safety before Uvalde happened hours away from us.
I learned things that made me rough around the edges and I’m thrilled about them. I learned hard lessons about what love is not (it is not what I have had when a man told me he loved me). I learned hard lessons about what family means to me. I also learned hard lessons about what personal responsibility feels like (news flash: exhausting, humbling, and thankless).
Some of the most important things I’ve learned came from two conversations about my singing / who I would or could be. One came from The Grant. He spent an entire lesson with me discussing chiaroscuro, encouraging me to find my perfect balance. I remember, vividly, asking him what my “balance” needed to be and he shook his head. He told me that he’d help me find my way, but I had to commit to being myself. In one of my first lessons with her, Pat Misslin told me I didn’t need to be anything someone told me to be. She said I could sing what I wanted, the way I wanted to, and make my own path. She said the only way I’d fail is if I pretended to be someone in the chorus because that wasn’t my voice.
I suppose my face reflects these lessons and so many others. I rarely wear darkness (literally or figuratively) because the world is dark enough, without my help, and usually appears brighter when I bring my sunshine. So many allowed me the grace to find my real voice, but it wasn’t until you made me your mother that I really found it, my sweet love. I think The Grant and Pat are both thrilled. I get lost sometimes, but not often. I am myself when I remember what they taught me.
I think the next part of my life is learning even more about who I can be, in this crazy world, as a mother, a daughter, a LaLa, a friend, a data privacy geek, an AI Responsible Use drummer, a Sehnsucht feeler, a light bringer, and God knows what else is coming my way.
I’ve always felt I’d make an excellent recruit…https://youtu.be/cG2JDiZFG0o?si=NmgwLtLGJDRMNHF2
The World of Before You 