We Get By With a Little Help from Our Friends

Being still relatively new to this whole blogging thing, I find myself wishing I could jump to light-speed lots of times (now I'm hearing the Power Rangers Light Speed Rescue song in my head - groan). I just discovered something called Blog Indiana. It is a conference scheduled to be held right here in Indianapolis in the middle of August for two days and the price is only $49. My mind immediately tries to wrangle how in the world I could make this opportunity a reality. So many obstacles: CHILD CARE! Actually, though, it is on a Saturday & Sunday, so it would only mean child care for Saturday morning while my husband works.

I know that I could use a little help with my blog. I have so many questions: Do I want to blog just for myself (which has been my primary motivation so far) or to increase readership and possibly make money? Do I want to join other circles, like the Mommy blogs and such? Do I want to know how many people are visiting my site? Or will that information merely send me into spasms of self-doubt?

I'm really grateful to Renee, at Mom to My Special Ks, because she plans to mention my contest on her blog. So far I only have three participants. When I only had two, I thought, "Well, that will really be a bummer for the one who loses. --> sorry to tell you, you are the only one who lost the contest."

Truth is, sometimes I feel like I don't have very many friends these days. I know that is the isolation of motherhood talking (plus moving to this isolated house just as I entered the stage of having two small children at home). I have memories of some truly great friendships, but lots of those friendships are gone and I doubt those people even consider me a friend anymore. My husband could write a whole blog post himself on my difficulty with letting go of friendships. Long after a friendship has died, I am still pining away. He tells me to just let it go, but I never seem to be able to.

Thankfully, my ES has so many friends that he seldom experiences a dull moment. In fact, my husband recently changed his cell phone plan because all his friends were taking up his minutes by sending him so many text messages. We really only bought the phone so that he could contact us when he is needing to be picked up from school or from a friend's house. We had lengthy conversations about why it is just WRONG to sit in someone's driveway and call them on your cell phone to tell them that you are there.

Still, I am grateful for his experiences with friends. He went to a friend's house on Tuesday afternoon with plans to spend the night. By Wednesday afternoon, I finally tried to call his cell phone to see if he ever planned to return to live with us. I heard it ringing in his room. Drats! But, a short while later he strolled in with a big grin on his face and an old guitar in his hands. His friend had purchased a new guitar that day and decided to just give his old one to my son!



Now, I had asked ES if he would like a guitar for his birthday. NO. I had asked if he would be interested in taking guitar lessons. NO. I had suggested that guitar or piano might be a good thing to pair with his percussion study. NO THANKS.

But, within an hour of being home with his new/old guitar, he had already tuned the four strings (it is missing two, he informed me) to the appropriate pitches so that he could play snippets from one of the songs from his Guitar Hero game. I think we should get these strings replaced and get the boy some lessons. Lessons? I guess that sounds too much like school or work.

Both my husband and I took music lessons while growing up. My husband has a master's degree in trumpet performance from Indiana University. You can tell his lessons really paid off. My lessons, on the other hand, were always free - the help from friends.

When I was in elementary school, an elderly man and a friend of my parents (or perhaps he was just a Salvation Army board member with a good heart - no, wait a minute, I take the good heart part back) gave me and my older brothers piano lessons. Unfortunately, we only lasted three lessons. (Here's why I took the good heart part back!) The gentleman died of a heart attack three weeks in. We tried hard not to consider it a reflection on the challenge of training us.

When I was in high school, I became obsessed with my instrument. I played an E-flat Alto horn in several Salvation Army bands, including my beloved Northern Illinois Youth Band. I also attended an annual music camp called Central Music Institute and I was determined to make it into the top band - the Wonderland Band. So, I began practicing five and six hours a day. My brothers called me "Metallic Lips."

My devotion caught the eye of the principal cornetist with The Salvation Army's Chicago Staff Band, Peggy Paton Thomas. She offered to give me private lessons for free. She was a fabulous instructor and I worked very hard for her. Boy, if I could bring back those days and relive them again. I deeply miss being involved in the banding and playing my instrument. I often pop onto e-bay to see if there are any E-flat Altos listed which I could afford (I really can't afford any since I have no time to play one and no band in which to perform). I certainly hope that my son is able to grasp a tenth of the opportunities I had in the realm of music.

I feel sad and a bit guilty that I didn't go on to make something of all those lessons. Does Peggy regret investing her time in me? When I married and left The Salvation Army, an officer raked me over the coals for all of the investments the Army had made in me. I found this offensive. My question to him was, "Did the Army invest merely for the Army or for God?" My opinion, then and now, is that if it was an investment for God, then God will certainly see that those investments produce the desired return!

To all those friends who helped me to get by, in various ways, musically and otherwise, I just want to repeat something my MS said to me at the dinner table tonight (get ready, he's such a card!) when I informed him that he could have dessert:

He looked at me and said, "I don't know what to say. Thanks!"