Wunderkind

Went to my 20th high school reunion this past weekend.

Holy cow, am I old.  I was only 17 when I graduated from there, and it's 20 years later. 

And it really didn't seem to take that long to go from wunderkind to, you know, tribal elder. 

Really, it's happened even since the last reunion I went to, the 10th (I mean 11th, my school always has to do everything differently.  *rolls eyes*  ), which was 9 years ago.

I guess I should mention, for those who haven't stumbled across this fact in my previous ramblings, that I went to a private boarding school for the arts, for high school.  I was a music major; I played the euphonium.  We music majors rehearsed with an ensemble (band, for me) 2 hours a day, and took an hour-long private lesson every week, and were expected to practice a good 2 hours a day on our own -- in addition to whatever academics we managed to squeeze in.  But we had 9 class-hours per day, so even with 3 hours devoted to our art and 1 to lunch, we could still take up to 5 classes a semester in academic subjects like English Lit, Spanish, and Calculus.  I always ran out of schedule before I ran out of classes I wanted to take.

(Wunderkinder.)

(But, really, is it all that different from kids in public school who play on varsity sports teams?  Not really, no; only in what the effort is put toward, but not different in kind.  But for some reason kids who put that kind of effort toward the arts are seen as wunderkinder in our culture.) 

Anyway. 

9 years ago, at our 10th (I mean 11th) reunion, I and all my classmates were still wunderkinder:  Recently graduated from grad school of one sort or another, recently embarked on our chosen careers, which seemed to hold all sorts of promise just over the horizon; only a very few of us had recently become parents.  The world was our oyster, and we were going to crack it open and grab the pearl.

What a difference 9 years makes.

Now, we've embarked on all sorts of side trips we never envisioned.  Now, we've blundered into all kinds of limits we never would have suspected we had, back when we were 17, 18 years old and graduating from high school. 

And now, we've discovered depths and new skills within ourselves that we never dreamed we had, back when we were 17, 18 years old. 

Looking back, I can see now that even those who I felt at the time had more native talent than I did, who had a more real shot at making a living as a musician (or whatever) than I did -- even of THOSE people, only a teensy-tinesy fraction have actually gone on to do so, to make a living and even a name for themselves at the top of their artistic profession. 

The rest have gone on to live normal lives -- lives of a more quiet excellence, less often celebrated but just as real.  Regular jobs at companies, stay-at-home moms, and so on.  And many of them have abandoned the art that so consumed them in high school, just as I have with music -- but have cultivated new ones.  Just as I have with my writing.  So I don't feel so bad now, for not having known then what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Some days, I still don't.  But it's okay. 

You can reinvent yourself every 5 to 10 to 15 years; you don't have to stay what you were forever.  You don't have to pick one thing and be sure you've picked right when you're a silly 17-year-old who doesn't know anything -- no matter how smart you are, no matter how gifted.   

My friends:  A violinist is now an HR manager in Texas.  A dancer worked for 15 years as a stage lighting designer, and is now a paralegal... and has taken up ceramics.  A writer has just finished medical school -- 20 years later.  A percussionist is... still a percussionist, making a living teaching private lessons and taking auditions for nearby symphonies.  (She's the rare one.)  And me.  A euphonium player is now a university administrator, and mother of three, and a writer. 

It was a fabulous weekend, even though only a very few of my particular friends were there.  But I had a lot of really great talks with those few, and I made some richer connections with some people I had only known on a nodding sort of basis, back in the day.

There were two concerts, a band concert on Friday night, and a choir concert on Saturday night. 

Both were excellent.  (Of course.  <== or is it arrogant of me to say that?  -- Sorry.)

And I thought as I listened, none of these highly accomplished youngsters, not a single wunderkind among them, has the faintest clue what the next 20 years will hold for them, and none of them would believe me if I told them.  That one day, this art you have worked and fought and sweated to create will exist only in the past tense for most of you; that you will leave this place of having been a wunderkind and go on to be... normal.  And it will be okay.    

And I realized too, that the fact of their pursuit of excellence there, then, on that stage before me and the rest of the audience, their pursuit of excellence... is still deeply admirable, and deeply real, if also ephemeral.  That it will never cease to be true, that they worked and fought and sweated to create that excellence, and that they succeeded.  That they grasped it. 

That they can continue to grasp after excellence, and even continue to possess it, even if the form that excellence takes... isn't on stage, isn't in front of an audience...

Or only an audience of one. 

***

PS: 

Eldest Son is too big to hold my hand any more.  (He's 7-1/2.)  Noticed this last Wednesday, but didn't get a chance to comment on it until now. 

***

Littlest Brother has worked out a deal with me.  He'll let me go to work without a fuss, as long as I sit down and read him a book before I go. 

***

here's to the next 20 years! 

:-)