A night at the symphony.....

Monday evening Copper Beech put on their Spring Instrumental concert. I attended my twenty-somethingth concert as a parent. The children were nervous and excited at the same time. Excited to share with their parents all their hard work through the year and nervous that they may play a wrong note. We were treated to the old standards -- Lightly Row, Owed to Joy and Cannon in D as well as a medley of nursery rhyme songs -- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Mary Had a Little Lamb -- all apparently rights of passage for the beginner musician. Only a parent who has attended twenty-some concerts may remotely pick up a wrong note, and even then it is unlikely because we are all so filled with pride at seeing our children up on stage in their black and white attire that we overlook the occasional squeak of the bow or clarinet.
Next month I will attend the Junior High Orchestra concert where the songs will be different and more sophisticated and the sound will be more pleasing to the ear, but missing will be the innocence and stary eyes. We parents will still be filled with pride, but our teenage children will be more concerned with how they look, that they actually played all the correct notes and what their peers thought of their performance than with whether or not their parents could see them up on stage.