Because I feel left out...

I would just like to say, as the third and final daughter, and the third and final blog post, thank you, Al Gore. Because the only reason I started this blog was to be cool like my sisters. This means I have to write about the same things they do, so I'm cool, too. So, to be cool like my sisters, which I have repeated several times already to exaggerate their coolness, I have to thank Al Gore for creating the internet. You are the one and only reason I communicate with my sisters.

Spring Cleaning on 26 December

The day after Christmas is probably one of the worst days of the year. That's the day the house goes from the messiest all year to the cleanest all year, all in a day. In the morning, all the Christmas presents are spread throughout the house, after one day's use, and cookie crumbs flood the kitchen. Scads of wrapping paper that escaped the first and only trash run Christmas morning full in the corners surrounding the artificial tree whose fake snowflakes that survived the first several years still fall timidly to the ground. A quick vacuum will not clean this mess up.

Everyone wakes up early the day after Christmas. The excitement of Christmas puts us to bed late on the 24th, up early on the 25th, and by the end of the day, we are all tired enough to go to bed early. In the morning, we get to work. All the Christmas presents have to be delivered to their respective rooms (which, consequently, get more untidy, as the household junk migrates to these rooms unseen by guests), and shoes, boots, and coats are hidden in the closet without their owners' consent. Music that has accumulated on top of the piano and on and under the bench is moved to random drawers and folders, hidden from views of both the guest and the musician.

Why do we clean so much? Well, first, because the house is a mess, and because we all know that at some point in the week to come, we will have any number of guests. Those coming over to celebrate Christmas after Christmas, those invited for a New Year's Party, or those friends who are busy on New Year's Eve but feel the need to stop in at some point during for a Merry Christmas and a quick game of euchre.

So the house is clean, and the parents feel better (after everything is done and they finally sit down.) We can relax and enjoy the rest of the holiday season.

Left

A wise person once told me it's easier to leave than to be left. I didn't need a wise person to tell me that.

Since I'm the youngest of five children, I've watched my four older siblings move out in various ways. The first seemed to be the hardest. I was only 8, and was still playing with dolls. I have no memories of her living at home before the day she moved out. I was crying. I had no idea what was going on, or why my oldest sister was crying. All I remember was her repeating I have to do this, I have to do this. But what was she doing?

The next two were much less emotional. I wasn't as close to my brothers. They were big, strong, masculine men who had done wrestling and cross country, and I was just a weak little girl who had yet to reach high school. Sure, we had our ways of showing affection for each other. It mostly consisted of wrestling each other in the family room, but it was still there. I thought I'd die when my other sister left. But by then, I was so used to abandonment that it was the easiest release.

In the three years that my sister and I lived as the only children in the house, we grew very close. I still played the role of the annoying little sister, but she accepted that. As soon as I realized she didn't find me annoying anymore, I stopped being so annoying. She didn't mind me hanging out with her friends, and she became a friend of mine. I didn't know how I was going to live without her. The summer she spent working at camp didn't hurt. She was gone for two months, then back for two weeks. I learned how to get through the day without her random facts and infinite logic of why men are infinitely better than women. When she went off to college, I was able to keep myself busy with schoolwork, and never felt the pang of loneliness.

Now, it's a rarity that all seven of us end up in the same place at the same time. This is when it hurts the most. We're all together, and I get to sit back and watch them fly off one at a time, sometimes two a day, to their various destinations. And I am stuck at home for two more years, not knowing what it's like to do the leaving. But I will learn. I will most definitely learn.

Resolved

I began playing piano when I was just about four years old. I was still in preschool, my mother was my teacher, and I did everything in my power to avoid practicing. When I did, it consisted of playing through the pieces I was learning once, maybe twice. It was wasted time disguised as practice, but for some unknown reason, I got better. I never actually practiced until about 5th grade, and never understood the concept of practicing until I had reached high school. Why bother, if simply playing through the pieces had worked for so many years?

My first year of Junior Festival was in kindergarten. To take part in it, I had to be a member of Jr. St. Cecilia, a music club for students up to the 8th grade. At festival that year, I received a superior rating, the highest possible. I was ecstatic. Joy overwhelmed and permeated through me as water through a sponge. I was soaked, and enjoyed every minute of it. For a moment, I was wonderful, and a moment was all I needed.

From then on, I jumped at every chance to show off. I was good, and wanted everyone to know it. Every school talent show, every stage, I couldn't get enough. Yet my longing remained. See me. Look at me. Enjoy me. Love me. Delight in me. But the more I tried to show off, the less people enjoyed it. Sure, no one was going to tell me that I'm a show off. You just don't do that to 6th graders. They're new to the fact that other people have opinions about them; you don't want to tell them those opinions are bad. I was a show off and didn't know it.

By the time I got to middle school, I realized that none of my classmates liked listening to me play. They didn't care that I was the best piano player in the class. They cared that they stayed popular, and that essentially meant avoiding me. I thought there was something wrong with me. This just made me want to show off more. I practiced. I practiced like any young teenager would try to avoid. I had to get better so people would like me. This lasted through 7th grade, before I realized it had the reverse effect. But by that time I liked it, and wasn't going to give up my passion.

At the beginning of 8th grade, I got a new piano teacher. This proved to change my life completely. For the first time in years, I was delighted in. Someone finally loved to hear me play, instead of either ignoring me or nagging me to practice. And I loved it. I thought that maybe I had skill enough to be any good. I had begun my life thinking I was amazing, but as years passed, my self-image had declined. but I was released. Someone thought I was wonderful, and I was free.

I took the idea from my sister that I shouldn't care what people thought about me, so I entered high school hiding behind that thought. I wore hoodies, loose fitting hand-me-downs, and tennis shoes. That gave me the idea that I was ugly, and who likes an ugly girl? So I threw on another mask. If I couldn't be pretty, at least I could be talented. More piano. I continued to practice (and recently compose, too), and consequently got better. I realized I was a show off, at some point during 9th grade, and tried to be a hidden show off. I almost didn't enter the talent show that year (which I won 1st place in, as a freshman, playing Bach's Minuet in G behind my back and an original composition I had written at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp.). It was my sister, the one who most often yells at me for showing off, but loves to show me off, that finally convinced me to enter. I was scared when I won, because I had no idea what to do. I could perform, but doing anything else on stage terrified me.

Over the next two years, I accepted it as a fact of life that I was a show off. I even joked about it with my friends. Arrogance permeated my very essence and hid my fear of failure. I thought it was okay to be that way, because no one had ever told me without it first coming up in a joking conversation that I was arrogant and needed to stop. Then it did.

I was so caught off guard that I didn't believe him at first. I told him he himself was arrogant (which is still true, but he is not as bad as me), and that I was smarter than him, and what did he know? But I'm just an idiot as you say, so what do I know, right? he told me. It wasn't until the swear words were brought out that I really started to believe him. He threatened my future, saying that I can't always assume that I'm right. I asked a few of my close friends how much of what he said was true. Two didn't speak. The third, at first, denied it. After convincing her, though, that she was my friend and not my motivator, she came through. Sometimes I talk as if I am above everyone. It's true. It came from someone I know well enough to trust.

So I have resolved to slow down. I can't simply stop cold turkey. As an addiction, a part of my life, it will be very hard to humble myself. But I will try. Every time I feel the urge to show off, I will find someone else to show off for me, in the same area. I can delight in someone else's skills, even if I think I am better. I will be humble.