When I take the mask off each day my face feels heavy. My real face says, "I'm unhappy. I don't feel loved by anyone. I'm overworked and overwhelmed. How is it that I work so hard for nothing?" The real face doesn't smile. Hasn't smiled, in a long time. . .
Until this afternoon, that is. After feeling short of breath and dizzy for most of the day, I was happy to take a break from working with the day camp kids and teach a violin lesson with a 10 year old girl who I've worked with for a few years. To make playing her review songs more fun, I came up with a game to play them in a random order. She would roll the dice, and whatever number it landed on was the number song we would play. Our efforts at being random didn't work. Alexa rolled a 2 (we changed the number 1 to 7, so 2 was first), then a 3, then 4, and when she rolled a 5 next we couldn't believe it.
Song #5, called "Oh Come Little Children" is the first song Suzuki students learn that starts on an up bow, and usually they forget this. Sometimes I remind them ahead of time, other times I don't, to see if they remember on their own. After Alexa rolled her #5 she ran back over to the piano as I played the introduction, with no up bow warning. Alexa played the first note a down bow, realized it by the second note, just when I did, and screeched her bow to a halt. I stopped, at the same time, and in the same manner as she had, and we laughed.
I laughed because the situation was so predictable. I laughed because the screech had sounded so funny. I laughed because Alexa and I had stopped at the same moment, thinking the same thing. I laughed because Alexa was laughing and smiling. I laughed because I hadn't laughed in so long.
We started the song again, still giggling, and I sure had a big smile on my face. And for maybe 90 seconds today, in the real world, I had no mask on. I was me. I was real. I was happy. I was loved.
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