Chapter 1
Culture for Little People
The beginning of third grade was just around the corner after a summer spent with friends, big and little ones, and learning ahead some of the school material. As in the year before, there were things we were looking forward to and things we were not looking forward to. That year Judo claimed our attention. Raffaella-Bianca looked lovely in her Judo outfit and enjoyed her class immensely. The trainer was a young man who knew how to teach his subject with a lot of playfulness. Week after week we went together and I watched her training. Very few other parents joined the class and who did, did it sporadically. I felt very luck in my capacity as a parent to be able to be present. As always, we took it for granted that our togetherness was once again part of her learning process. I liked accompanying Raffaella-Bianca who was eager to learn. At home whenever we had our friends over, she changed into her Judo outfit and performed some of the moves (is that the right word – moves? Or is the term throws a better one?) she had learned in class.
Another novelty that year was the introduction of the Women’s Circle. A friend of mine had invited us in the summer to spend some time with her and her family in the country. We met all of her siblings and more of the family’s friends. My friend wondered if we could have an informal meeting for the various women because they were all interested in energetics. Why not? We usually met once a week, learning completely informally about this fabulous subject while drinking tea and laughing and sometimes even crying. After the first meeting of the Women’s Circle, Raffaella-Bianca approached me with a lot of sadness in her voice, “Mommy, do you think I could also join the Women’s Circle?”
“If you are interested, of course you can! Just remember we will talk about women’s stuff! Do you think you would really like that? I can tell you this much: Some of it will be really funny and some of it will be really sad!”
“I want to! I really want to!” Then she stopped. In a quieter voice she continued, “Mommy, last night I asked you if I could join the group, but you didn’t answer and I thought you didn’t want me!”
That was all new to me!
“Sunshine, when did you ask Mommy? I didn’t hear a thing!”
“Just before you were ready to start!”
“I am so sorry, my Darling! I really didn’t hear you! Maybe we were all noisy!”
“Yes, everybody was talking at the same time!”
“I’m so sorry!”
“I went away so sad! And then I cried! I thought you didn’t want me there!”
“Kissy-kissy to my Angel!”
She let me kiss her forever!
“I tell you what: Next time you make sure Mommy hears you! I am not sure you will like the topics, but please feel free to join us!”
“We will be all women!”
“We will be all female! You will be a woman later! You can get ready for womanhood with the Women’s Circle!”
She was so excited. I found it great that she clarified her wish which had remained completely unfulfilled the night before. I’m not sure if I would have made an offer for her to join us based on my own initiative. That first night it didn’t even cross my mind that she could be interested! She knew some of the women in the group, a few very well, some only superficially and some were new to her. At the second meeting I officially introduced her to the group as our latest participant. Everybody cheered! She was so proud.
I have no idea what she got out of this group, but I know what I got out of it due to her presence. One of our meetings was about parents, how to communicate to parents things that were important, but had remained unarticulated. We put an empty chair in our middle representing the place where one parent after the other would be invited to sit down. All symbolically, of course! For some reason that night her turn came towards the end. I guess it just happened that way, I can’t imagine she planned to be among the last ones – but I could be wrong! In any case, the women in front of her had very complicated relationships with their parents. For the most part the messages were either sad or heavy or painful. The majority of the communications moved between almost neutral to almost catastrophic. I wondered about the impact of such dense energies on her.
When her turn came, she posted herself in front of the empty chair, held her head up and her back straight and in her most ceremonious voice said, “This is a message to my Mommy: ‘Mommy, I love you very much!’” She symbolically gave her Mommy a huge hug and a huge kiss! “This is a message to my Daddy: ‘Daddy, I love you very much!’” She symbolically gave her Daddy a huge hug and a huge kiss.
We were all speechless, no one more than me! Among many muddy rivers of complex grown-up relationships, Raffaella-Bianca brought her light and her truth to the intervention and touched all of us by her natural approach to things. Her message to the point confirmed not only her cognitive capacity, but also her healthy emotionality. If I was surprised by her messages, I cannot even come close to describing adequately the other women’s reactions. In comparison to the child’s freshness, we all felt so bitter or on our fastest personal road to bitterness. What is normal to a child versus what is normal to a grown-up! What an incredible realization for all of us, big and little people.
After having integrated the experience (and I refer to my integration), I discussed with Raffaella-Bianca how wonderful I had found her messages to Daddy and me!
“I love you both!” She sounded apologetic. I suppose she feared I didn’t like her love for Daddy!
“This is absolutely great! It is ideal!”
She looked a bit surprised.
“It shows how special your Daddy is!”
She looked very surprised now.
“You know, he might not be a traditional Daddy, but he is a good human being who makes you very happy when he has time for you!”
“Yes!” She giggled the way only a happy Daddy’s girl can! Good for her! Her confirmation that Daddy did everything right in her eyes helped me relax when the Possible One’s ways differed significantly from mine. His ways were just different, not better, not worse.
My insecurities and my concerns regarding Daddy only showed me what a strong hold the conventional brainwashing of parenting had on me causing me to turn into a narrow-minded moron. Brainwashed narrow-mindedness was never something I wanted to have in my life. I held on to the very good energies between Raffaella-Bianca and her Daddy and I let go of everything else. It was very liberating! I tried my best to disspell Raffaella-Bianca’s fears that there was any competition between Daddy and me when it came to her love.
“Mommy’s Darling, please, please always feel free to love whomever you want!”
“OK!”
“Do you remember our discussion when you wanted a sibling from Mommy?”
“Yes?” She could remember it, but didn’t know what I was after.
“Do you remember your fear about whom Mommy would love more?”
“Yes!!” No doubt about that!
“And do you remember what Mommy said?”
“Yes!” Well done!
“If I had one hundred children from ten different men, my love for you would be the same as always because it is unique, just like my love for every one of my children would be unique! I would love you all in a unique way! There is enough love in the world, there is enough love in the world for everybody to feel loved!”
“I remember!” What a determined young voice!
“The same is true for you! Your love for each one of us is unique! No one loses anything because you love us all!”
She nodded peacefully full of relief and awareness.
Now we need to remember that first and foremost Raffaella-Bianca was a child, not a little Buddha. When my GRE and LSAT materials arrived, she started becoming more and more skeptical of the idea that we both would study. Why? If I didn’t work with her or if I didn’t work, I spent every minute learning for the GRE and the LSAT. She discovered that my dedication and motivation towards her academic achievement were just as strong in me for my own academic achievement. Well, she saw it a bit as an academic competition between the two of us. On my side, such thoughts didn’t cross my mind but I did wonder if she minded not getting my full attention anymore, independent of what occupied my attention – learning or something else (and we have not even considered “someone else”).
She developed two new ways to protest. In the evening when she came to the end of her day, she would come to my room where she found me in bed surrounded by books. She took them all and with one move she wiped them away. Poof! GRE and LSAT on the floor! Her message was clear, “Mommy, enough learning for you! I am here now!!” And then she sat next to me and expected me to get busy with her, which I did.
“You realize, Angel, that every normal woman in her right mind goes to bed in the evening with a man! Mommy goes to bed with books!”
She found this comment very funny and laughed from ear to ear! Her possessiveness was incredible; I think she had it from me! I’m saying “I think” because I was never allowed to assert my possessiveness as Mami discouraged any trace of it. What a strange attitude. Papi was more flexible with possessiveness, but he had his limits – better than Mami, but not to the extent that I would have liked! Yes, there was something very familiar about her possessiveness. I was glad for her that she had the freedom to live it, I was glad for myself that she had the freedom to live it. I had the impression that when she experienced something I would have liked to experience when I was her age, but did not do due to my family’s misconceptions that “possessiveness is bad” and “sharing is good” I experienced healing. I had found these ideas nonsensical already as a child and soo much more so as a mother.
Raffaella-Bianca was sweet and genuine, and such a free child. I wish I would have been allowed to be the same as a child. Probably I was on some level, but I didn’t feel good about it. She was free and felt good about it. What a miracle! I refer to it as a “miracle” from the perspective of my inner child. Allowing Raffaella-Bianca all the freedom she wanted and which I had also wanted to have at her age, I experienced a lot of healing. I had never expected to find this healing side effect of my motherhood. It was such a present from Life to me, one I never thought I would receive.
But the expression of her possessiveness did not stop at throwing my books off my bed in the evening! Her other new habit consisted in following me to the toilet and in a warning voice exclaiming, “Mommy!!” and taking whatever book I had in my hand and bringing it in! “You do not work at the toilet!”
“Why not, Honey-Bunch?”
“I don’t know! You work much more than me!”
“But Sunshine, Mommy is a grown-up and grown-ups have to work more than children!”
“No!” For her it was as simple as that!
While she could be absolutely hilarious when it came to expressing her true feelings regarding certain aspects of our lives together, there was an issue which swam in deeper waters and only became an overt issue in a very unusual way. It had been quite a while that something was bugging her. It was very, very subtle, but palpable. She was the same, but I saw it in her eyes that something was going on that she never articulated directly. One day I addressed it head on.
“Angel, Mommy has the impression something bothers you. What is making you unhappy?”
She was very surprised that I noticed. She apparently had not expected it.
“Would you like to tell Mommy?”
“Yes!” But then she fell into silence.
I didn’t know if it was better to wait a while or if I should start asking questions. It became clear she didn’t have the words available to articulate her problem. We sat there together waiting. This was a new scenario for us, wanting to communicate without being able to. What was going on?
“Beautiful, you want to tell Mommy what bothers you, but you don’t know how!”
“That’s right!”
“But then Mommy has an idea! How about you make a drawing?”
“A drawing?” She was open to the idea, but looked a bit skeptical. I felt I needed to explain a few details to put her at ease.
“You take a white sheet of paper and your box of crayons! You can use as many colors as you want and you can take as much time as you need! You can sit here with Mommy, or you can sit alone!”
“I sit alone.”
“Fine!”
I accompanied her to the other room. She made herself comfortable. When I left her she looked ready for work. I got busy with other things. I had no idea what issue she was working on. I was glad she agreed to let me know what was on her mind, on her heart, on her soul. How strange not to be able to anticipate anything! Within minutes she came out and handed me her drawing. It was all in black, no other colors! The scene represented a cemetery. It was full of crosses one next to the other! As far as I knew she had never been to a cemetery. Her drawing was chilly, and scared me. And then I discovered the main message: On one of the crosses there was my first name. I fell from heavens.
“Darling! Mommy’s Darling!” I took her in my arms, “You thought Mommy would die!”
“I was so afraid!” she started crying, and she cried and cried and cried. She cried two rivers that day! All her pain was oozing out of her. It is amazing how the two of us were similar. I had tried to hide my pain from her and she had tried to hide her pain from me! Neither of us managed – she noticed and I noticed.
My heavy metal poisoning had affected our lives on all levels in much more profound ways than either of us could have imagined. I had discussed my health situation with her. I always tried to be matter-of-fact, but obviously there is only that much space for rationalizing when facing health problems. She was very sensitive. My doctor had mentioned to me that some people die when the metal toxicity is too high, others kill themselves. Some people experience all sorts of complications because the heavy metals damage inner organs starting with the brain. Mercury has an extremely deleterious effect on our bodies.
I was able to watch a video that a friend of mine had recorded at a conference about heavy metal chelation. Scary to find out that from the very beginning, I think about the 1880’s or so, dentists were fully aware of the dangers of mercury but still moved on to use it on a wide scale for the general population because it was cheap. All these years, all these countries in the civilized world, all these patients. There is not the smallest amount in which mercury is not toxic for the body. That means that any amount of mercury in the human body leads to serious symptoms. Most people don’t seem to be aware of all the possible implications, and they have a really hard time understanding their bodies, especially since conventional doctors completely deny the existence of the mercury poisoning. The number of dentists who work without mercury on the other hand is very small.
Here I was with a highly sensitive child who could not be fooled into rationalizations. She was genuine and raw in her emotions, naturally connected to her heart. I was unnaturally connected to my brain – the disadvantage of being a grown-up. We needed to synchronize our disparaging views on my symptoms and treatment and how badly our lives had been affected. I wanted her to know that it was fine to have a fear of death. Death is a serious issue, on all levels, not only the physical, the emotional and the spiritual. It is a difficult concept for all humans independent of our age, I can’t imagine that a child can ever make sense of it.
For all of the rest of us, rationalization reigns supreme. It was more natural for her as the child to be worried about my death than for me as the grown-up not to. She was teaching me a lesson again! I had distanced myself enough from my own feelings as to appear functional while fully aware that I was not. Regarding the outside world, it worked. Regarding my own child, it did not.
She touched me deeply with her drawing and tears. At some point I started crying as well, I couldn’t help it. We held each other and we cried, it was cathartic. Decompensation at its best.
What a pity that we go to the doctor thinking we do something good for our health just to realize how little we know about the deeper connections. We get a vaccine: Hello mercury! We get a tooth filling: Hello mercury! It hit me like a bomb to find out the real reality of things as opposed to the reality we usually get informed about, if we get informed in the first place. Medical decisions are often made over our heads, there seems to be very little choice, if any. Why is this?
Is the painful conclusion that modern medicine is a source of huge disempowerment? A trap? Is the absurd conclusion that modern medicine cannot be trusted? I believe in differentiation and I think that medicine is one of these fields where differentiation decides over Life and Death. They warn us about having sex with the wrong person. Fine – I get it! But they should also warn us about having a treatment with the wrong doctor. The second one is not less lethal than the first one. How can that be? Trust? Misplaced trust? Abused trust? What is this all about? It is all beyond me.
In any case, Raffaella-Bianca and I had experienced a very tough time during my heavy metal poisoning and if I could play it down, she was not willing to overlook it. For the sake of both of us! I could only feel gratitude for her awareness and her courage. What a special soul! And what a special alignment between this young girl and her soul! I had always respected her. I promised it to myself already during the pregnancy. I felt so lucky that I had done it. Promised it and kept it! Well, maybe with the exception of Santa Claus and Easter Bunny. But this incident with her cemetery drawing convinced me that Raffaella-Bianca had fully earned my respect. Not that I was after her earning my respect. Not at all! But the incident showed me how important the ingredient of respect was when bringing up a child. The incidence confirmed to me that I had made the right choice. That felt good! Really good!
Our relationship did not suffer after we shared our pain, we handled it. I offered her all the consolation she needed and I took her and all her fears seriously. No put downs. She felt what she felt and she had every right to feel it. I communicated more about my treatment after each appointment and assured her of my recovery.
“You know, Sunshine, Mommy would not be able to study for her tests if the treatment had not been successful!”
She understood and saw the improvement. She transcended her fear that I might die of mercury poisoning. I never felt I could die of it. It was time for Death to make space for Life, enough of all these ugly clouds of worry and scare!
. We were waiting for the traffic light to turn green when Raffaella-Bianca started in a most complaining tone, “You know, Mommy, I am the only child in my class who…” She interrupted to look me in the eyes while we were holding hands and crossing the I am not so sure that the following two anecdotes are funny, but at least they are not about Death. And in the end for me they entail a positive message. For the world, less so. But for the world most messages are not positive. Unfortunately. But only the world can change the world. So, what story is coming around the corner? I can tell you that much: An unexpected one! We were walking towards the stop of the second tram in the morningstreet on green. I started to wonder about “the only child who” what?
“…who doesn’t get beaten up at home!”
“Wow! Are you complaining? Do I read you correctly?”
“Yes, Mommy!”
I couldn’t believe it! A child complaining for not getting hit and spanked? Was I in some sort of a dream?
“And do you want Mommy to start right here in the middle of the street?”
She noticed my sarcasm and gave me an angry look for not taking her seriously.
“Sunshine, I’m sure you misunderstood. I can’t imagine that all parents in that class…”
She started stamping her foot in protest for my disappointing lack of imagination.
“Mommy, I tell you, I didn’t misunderstand!”
“But, Beautiful, do you know what that really means?”
“Of course! That I am the only child who doesn’t know what’s that like!”
“Honey-Bunch, Angel, if you are keen on that then you need to find yourself someone else. I cannot be the one!”
“But why not?”
“What kind of a question is that?”
She was furious at my stupidity or whatever!
“Darling, I made a promise to myself never to hit you! Not only that! I made a promise to myself I would bring you up without punishments!”
“I know!”
You never heard a soul more disappointed! Poor girl.
“I like my promises! I like keeping my promises!”
She didn’t agree.
“You don’t really think some unenlightened parents could ever make me change my mind. I don’t identify with any of these people. I feel good about myself!”
“I know!” This was no subtle reproach.
I hoped even then that this entire dialog was some form of misunderstanding, a chain of misunderstandings from beginning to end. What else is there to hope for? Is the world really that bleak? If yes, then I don’t really want to hear any details! The general picture is revealing enough. Tendencies are clear, inclinations are clear, just that I don’t like any of them! We define ourselves as highly civilized and prefer to overlook the huge gap between our technological advancement and our collective emotional stagnation. We live a futuristic technology coupled with a prehistoric psycho-sociology. The guaranteed recipe for world-wide disasters. While technology can be dominated by a few super-brains followed by the masses, collective emotionality is simply a conglomeration of individual potentials where the followers define the quality of the phenomenon. Pathetic when it comes to our relationships. How could I explain to my young child all these complexities? Could I explain it to a grown-up? To some more than to others, I suppose.
But I admit that I never felt like philosophizing with any of the parents from my child’s class. The frequency was just not right. So I never forced myself to. The story of this and that got put into a mental archive like an invisible drawer I could open at some later point if I ever felt like it, but ugly things never attract me and such drawers stay closed forever. They constitute energetic pollution of the universe! What a pity. Pitiful world.
But whenever we think it couldn’t get any worse, Life shows us how wrong we can be. A few weeks later, same intersection, same activity, same characters another hot topic came up! Ready?
“Mommy, some of the children go to religion! Can I take that class too?”
“NO!”
“It’s just singing!”
“It appears to be just singing!”
“The teacher plays the guitar and the children sing along!”
“Mommy’s Darling, if I felt they could teach anything relevant about Life, I wouldn’t mind, but how can anybody teach you about Life when they don’t know anything about it?”
“They seem to have fun!”
“Beautiful, let’s stop walking for a moment. Please look around and take a closer look at the people walking around us.”
We stopped and we looked.
“Do these people look as if they seem to have fun? All of these people had religion with a teacher who played the guitar and they sang along. Look where ‘just singing’ took them!”
“The teacher is nice!”
“I know, Sunshine, they always are! That’s not the problem. The problem is that even nice teachers can teach useless stuff, even dangerous stuff, about Life.”
“Really?”
“Really-really! Before we walk on, look closely at all these people passing by! Do they look happy or unhappy to you?”
“Hmh! Some happy, some unhappy!”
“The happy ones, how happy do they look? Happier than you?”
“No way! A bit happy!”
“Why do your happy ones look as if they were in trance? Are they on tranquillizers?”
“I don’t know!”
“But I do, my Honey-Bunch! They are unfortunate beings who grew up with “just singing” and were told they were bad and damned forever in Life and in Death never in control of their lives, never worthy of anything special! And they were also told something about the holy spirit that could be taking mercy on them from time to time, but definitely not often, if at all, and then they might, just might, be able to take a breath before getting stuck in their miserable lives! This is where ‘just singing’ brought them. Take a good look!”
She looked thoughtful. She looked intensely!
“Religion is not empowering people! It keeps them in a state of fear. The way divinity gets presented it makes any critical mind think god is either an asshole or a pervert or a schizophrenic.”
“Wow!”
“Yes, very ‘wow’.”
“You use bad words! It must be really bad!”
“It is, Mommy’s Beautiful.”
Now we had to walk faster to make up for the lost moments invested into our social field analysis. It’s not worth being late to school because of religious misconceptions.
“I can tell you this much: There are very few people on the planet who can afford to be ‘just singing’. These are the few who take care of themselves, of all the aspects of their lives, who have true quality of Life, who are in control of their lives, who work for it and achieve it by their own actions, who understand deeper interconnections, who listen to their intuition and their inner voice and who transcended conventional views about everything and anything, including divinity.”
I though that was enough on our subject at hand, at least for the time being. It was time to get on the tram, sit down quietly and meditate on our conversation while going to school, aware that religion was not for us. Not for either of us!
The nice part of the bilingual program was that in the international group, all religions were represented. Roman catholicism was the main religious affiliation of the German group. Probably these were the children going to the class of religion. Some time later the existence of different religions came up and I explained to Raffaella-Bianca that religious views were social conventions just like grades were. People decided what god is, they agreed, they taught each generation and perpetuated their understanding over thousands of years. To the benefit of a certain social layer, mainly the ruling class, but to the detriment of the masses who were made to believe they were born to be ruled and to follow. I really felt that was more than enough about our subject at hand.
It was much too early to get into the atrocities of the Roman catholic church, an institution created on a flawed foundation, an institution that was never meant to exist in this form and shape from a spiritual perspective. The misconceptions around the figure of Jesus Christ have brought pain to the world instead of divine rapprochement.
How can anyone share with a child the thought that if anyone today behaved like Jesus they would immediately end up in a straight jacket in an ominous psychiatric hospital never to be entrusted back to society due to permanent insanity?
And how can anyhow encourage a child to question what was wrong with the same Jesus that he got in deep trouble not only with his own society but also with the colonial power to such an extent that the mob chose a criminal over him? Not to mention the ultimate question of how one of the world’s greatest avatars ended up on the cross when only the very worst of his time ended on the cross?
Can such a figure really be a good model? And for what? Would anyone want to talk to a child about the role of sexuality for human society as recommended by men who completely deny its significance for their own personal lives, but who simultaneously want to tell the world how to handle it, who expect the world to follow without ever questioning the fundamental contradiction that a teacher needs to be a master of his subject?
Are these questions a young child could be expected to contemplate on and come to some conclusions? I was not sure. Since grown-ups don’t seem to identify the manipulations, how could a child? Since grown-ups don’t allow themselves to transcend the nonsensicality of the flawed dogma, how could a child? I felt that bad news could be addressed later, much later. For the time being, clarifying that religion was a subject matter to stay away from was all that could be achieved under our circumstances, anything more would have been too much as an introduction to the topic of religion for a young child like Raffaella-Bianca.
There are other things a child can get busy with, for example which boy could be her future husband(!). In first grade this question did not arise. In second grade, I heard it a few times, nothing to worry about. But now in third grade, this was the question of the school year! Sometimes I heard it every day depending on how fast her favorites changed.
“Mommy, tell me what do the energies say about me and A?”
Well, what could the energies say in third grade? I could not reason with her that it didn’t take a psychic to know the answer! Mentioning probabilities as the old-fashioned human concept that holds quite many answers for us, did not make a difference either.
I needed to go through the same procedure time and again and soon enough I ran out of alternative ways to explain an energetic “no”. Well, if things were clear from a grown-up perspective, from the perspective of Raffaella-Bianca nothing was clear. Understandably, actually she fell from the heavens each time she got a no to her potential future marriage to A, B, C, as if fearing she would have to die as an old spinster, a modern Miss Bates. I felt there was absolutely no need to get obsessive over marriage in third grade (as a matter of fact, there is never a need to get obsessive over marriage, if you ask me).
“Beautiful, no one can say right now who will be your husband because the energies can change, from a no to a yes and back and forth a couple of times by the time you grow up!”
“The energies can change?”
“These energies can easily change because it is not now the time to decide!”
“But Mommy, I’d like to know now!”
“Many girls want to know such a thing early on, but it doesn’t work that way, you have to be eighteen to have the legal right to marry!”
“Eighteen?!” She sounded as if that meant half an eternity!
I suppose from her perspective it did.
“You know they have introduced this new law that says that one can marry at sixteen, but only with parental consent. That means if you are sixteen and want to marry, you may do it if I agree to it.”
“And would you?”
“I am not sure… it is much too early to tell.”
“But why not?”
“Sunshine, marriage is a doomed institution. It is a disaster at all ages, sixteen or sixty!”
“But Mommy!”
“I think men and women are made to have sex together, but not made to live together!”
“What do you mean?”
“Men are very instinctive like animals. That works very well for sex; that always works for sex. But it does not work for anything else.”
“But people get married all the time!”
“By social convention!”
She looked puzzled.
“People regard it as normal to get married. That’s the thing to do! That’s what they think and that’s what they do.”
“I will get married!”
“Of course, my Beautiful!”
“I want to know whom I will marry!”
“I understand, Sunshine! But you know what? For now, enjoy the company of the boys you like so much!”
She giggled.
“I find all your favorites from the English group to be very nice, and their families are very nice too!”
“Yes, very nice!”
“Enjoy your friendships to all of them. This is something you can do now independent of anything else.”
“Yes! But can you check the energies from time to time?”
“Of course!”
I kept my promise by checking her three-four favorites from her English group from time to time as she desired it. The answer was always a no – what else? I would have been shocked had it been any different. Some things can only be learned by experience, not by words. Waiting to see who will be the future husband is one such a thing!
The few boys she liked more were really nice. I’m sure they had no idea how much they were liked. I didn’t count on any of them to become a future husband though. Having drawn her attention to the reality of here and now and the enjoyment of present friendships helped Raffaella-Bianca to relax regarding the future. She didn’t like the idea that there will be many more boys she will like before being a grown-up and seriously considering a relationship, let alone a marriage. I knew time and experience would help her understand.
In any case, I liked her favorites. I liked liking her favorites! I dreaded the scenario of meeting favorites I did not like (the eternal topic, I know!). In this context I reminded myself of the promise I had given myself during the pregnancy to be neutral regarding her boyfriends. Parental comments about potential boyfriends are usually only triggering resistance, aren’t they? Best to stay neutral. That was my vision, but I admit I wondered how neutral I would really manage to be when confronted with the situation. Luckily I still had time – maybe not a lot, but some! Anyhow, in third grade I felt there was nothing to worry about.
There was something I worried about, however. Something else completely. Something academic and energetic. In the course of third grade I started noticing a phenomenon that worried me: Raffaella-Bianca started losing more and more of her grounding. It really worried me a lot. The child with the incredible grounding from birth was starting to lose it! I couldn’t cope.
I started noticing it when her concentration began to falter. She didn’t pay attention anymore, at least not the way that had been customary before as a standard. I never needed to repeat myself so many times during schoolwork. I also needed to repeat myself more than usual in everyday non-academic situations. About two and a half years of schooling and the grounding disappears. Wow! How unbearable! Absolutely unbearable! I had brought to school a child with a perfect grounding and now in the middle of third grade the grounding disappeared! It dematerialized! Gone! Gone without the wind! Shocking realization! Day after day there was less and less grounding and more and more resistance. I had no explanation for my observations! I spoke to Raffaella-Bianca about her concentration. She didn’t seem to be aware of any change!
“Sunshine, you behave the way you tell me your classmates behave in class, especially in the larger group!”
“Yes!”
“Do you notice it too?”
“Yes!”
“Wow, Darling! This is scary!”
She looked scared, but definitely, not more than me.
“I would like us to do everything we can to save your grounding!”
“How?”
“Whenever I notice you imitate the bad behavior of one of the children in your class, I call you by his name!”
And I gave her some examples.
“I am not sure it works, but at least we notice and can stop the behavior immediately.”
She nodded.
“You are a very nice girl who knows how to behave. There is absolutely no need for you to imitate boys who never learned how to behave!”
She fully agreed.
From them on whenever she behaved in a way that we knew from the bad boys, all I did was to call her by that boy’s name. I had already learned to differentiate among the different bad boys’ behaviors, unfortunately. There were days when none of the bad boys made it to our home, but then there were days when I felt they all came at the same time. I tried to be especially patient on such full days. I found it a pity that I had to neutralize so much regarding school. Sad enough that I had to do Ms. W.’s job and teach for understanding! I did it every single day fully aware that she would never get any teaching for understanding from her Austrian teacher! That was a fact of Life! I didn’t like it, but I could handle it!
Having to neutralize the bad behavior of Austrian boys had not been on my list, however, I did that as well. Raffaella-Bianca was worth every effort. But it made me sad and angry to see how affected she was. Having to imitate something bad in order to cope with it was definitely not my type of solution! I wanted the two of us to transcend the problem not to reinforce it! I hated having these energies at home! I hated it! I was very honest about it to Raffaella-Bianca!
“I will not tolerate any of this bad behavior in our home, in our lives. I will interrupt you immediately the second I notice it.” I looked serious.
She knew I was serious.
“Having to be reminded of who you are is a sad thing. But if that’s what we need, we will do it!”
It took us several months to neutralize the bad boys’ behavior. It is not that it was difficult, it was just unnecessary to have to suffer at the hand of bad boys’ behaviors. But we managed! By the end of third grade the bad boys were banned into energetic exile. What a relief! Finally, free of disharmonious and poisonous energies! What would I have done without my knowledge about energetics?
One day I woke up and knew right away it was going to be a strange day clouded by dense energies which even intensified by the time I needed to leave to go pick up Raffaella-Bianca. I started to worry by the time I was in the tram. I was a few stops away from my destination when the tram broke down. The message was so strange completely matching the energies: “We are sorry that we cannot say how long it will take until the next tram will be here!”
Usually the message referred to five or ten and sometimes even twenty minutes. This time the driver had no idea. Everybody got out and went their way. I wondered if I should take a cab or simply walk between the buildings and come out right at the top of the street next to the school building. The energies were not in favor of a cab. I always listen anyhow, but under such circumstances I follow the energies knowing that otherwise more trouble waits just around the next corner. No cab was fine and I walked. I wondered if I could walk fast enough to make it on time. By the time I got to school I transformed some of the negative feelings I experienced although the energies got denser than before.
I wondered what expected me upstairs. Usually I didn’t go upstairs anymore, but according to the energies it was best to do it. So I did it! The class was already in line in the corridor in front of the director’s office just about to go downstairs. The timing was perfect, but what for? Once upstairs a few of Raffaella-Bianca’s best friends ran towards me all upset by the fact that the new boy had written with felt pens on Raffaella-Bianca’s new sweater. The girls were furious. I couldn’t believe it. Raffaella-Bianca was completely silent while her friends showed me the stains. She was too sad to talk! Grandma bought her new clothes which Grandma did on a regular basis and that day she put on for the first time the white sweater that was now covered by different ugly stains. The girls named the bad boy in a choir.
I made a few steps towards the beginning of the line and looked the culprit right in the eyes. He looked at me as if I was disturbing his brainless conversation for nothing. Have you noticed how arrogant these little assholes can be? Now I understood the energies. I was beside myself! And when I am beside myself I speak English to everyone, even to an Austrian boy who is not bilingual.
I exploded: “What do you think you’re doing?”
The corridor, our class and all the other ones were dead silent!
“If you ever do that again, you’ll get in trouble! This is absolutely unacceptable behavior! Step up here now and apologize to Raffaella-Bianca!”
One of his bilingual friends played the interpreter. In his German he apologized. What I mean by “his German” was the fact that this was a boy unused to apologizing for his bad behavior. He had no idea what to say! At least, he got all red in the face. He felt uncomfortable – not because of his bad behavior, I was fully aware of that, but because he found himself in an unusual situation. This was a little tyrant on his best way to turn into a big tyrant.
I ended with: “From now on, you stay away from Raffaella-Bianca! If not, I’ll be back, and I’ll talk to you again. I can’t imagine you would like that!”
He shook his head as if I had announced his forthcoming execution.
In the meantime, Ms. W. came along and offered to pay for the cleaning! Well, what could I expect of her?
“This is not about the cleaner’s – I can pay that myself! It’s about something else, Ms. W.!”
I left it to that. Let her figure it out. She didn’t look as if she could! I had no expectations regarding her.
I needed to go take care of Raffaella-Bianca instead of listening to an awful teacher who had no idea about values and how to convey them to her students! I told Raffaella-Bianca we can buy the same sweater again. She wanted to try first to get out the stains, “because t-h-i-s sweater is from Grandma!”
“I fully understand, Angel!” She brightened up in the shortest time.
“This new boy is horrible, Mommy! It was great how you spoke to him!”
“Just imagine I did it just in front of the director’s office as well!”
“That’s right!”
“Tomorrow I’ll bring you right into the classroom! Too bad I have to play policeman with people around here!”
She giggled. At least one of us liked the idea!
“We’ll have to see if we can get out the horrible stains caused by the horrible boy!” By the time we arrived home the dense energies disappeared. And the stains also disappeared. On the way home we bought a special stain remover and washed the sweater immediately. The problem was solved!
The following morning, the bad boy’s mother was waiting for me. We didn’t know each other well; the truth is we didn’t know each other at all! Aggressiveness in kids is an automatic turn-off for me when it comes to meeting their parents. Turn-off! Turn-off! Turn-off!
“I’d like to thank you because you are the only one who knew how to handle my son!”
I felt like screaming: “Why the hell am I the only one?”
“He misbehaves at home all the time! I don’t know what to do with him!”
“I see!” Was there a simpler and more adequate reaction in this context?
She took out a chocolate and gave it to me. “This is to say thank you!” Poor woman! You know how much I love chocolate, but chocolate was out of place under the circumstances. She was one of these helpless mothers. She behaved as if she was a teenager who accidently, unexpectedly and unknowingly became a mother! Pitiful!
“There is no need to thank me! I only took care of my child!” I accepted the chocolate because I am such a harmony junky, but it would have been better for both of us to refuse it. I don’t like to feel I am mean to someone in need of healing. I also did not want her to think I was holding a grudge. It was not for me to swim with her into deep waters! Once again confronted by such a mother with such a child was turning into a nuisance, to say the least!
Regarding learning, the grades were as perfect as always. But it took more effort once the grounded started to diminish. This effort was not due to any academic problem, but came from the resistance the lack of grounding produced. Staying focused and centered was more difficult without proper grounding and getting easily distracted became the name of the new game. A stupid game and a waste of resources. One day I felt deep despair and talked to the spiritual world.
“You’ve got to do something about it! It is unbearable!”
“We know about the problem!”
“And what do you do about it?”
“Nothing! It is part of her process!”
Nice to hear, hard to accept.
“She will spend quite many years before her grounding will return!”
Now that was unacceptable!
“Many years?”
“Yes!” The guide left but gave me an energy from which I could read the time! It felt like early twenties! Without grounding until her early twenties? I had felt like crying before, but now I really cried! The guide’s words resonated like an echo. I felt informed, but not ready. At least, the spiritual world knew! I was really not looking forward to the many years without grounding. It took about two and a half years for societal energies to take over, that little! Who would have thought? That day I cried bitterly, I was devastated. What a disaster! Having to neutralize the system already in third grade appeared mightily early! Science talks about adolescence! But by that time everything is lost! The societal energies are entrenched by then! Science is half blind! And it limps!
Just imagine all these parents who bite into the limited views of modern science. Oh my, what a pain! If we are blunt honest about things, then nothing is the way it seems. Connections are not recognized early enough, no action gets taken early enough, no change can happen early enough. The frequencies of societal energies are relatively low. There are spots of high energies in society, but they are relatively rare. They still represent the exception, not the rule. One needs to navigate these energies very carefully – swimming in low energies leads to drowning!
It was also sad that I had no one to talk to about my observations. I knew I would have to go through it all alone. I wanted to help Raffaella-Bianca as much as possible- That was as always my number one priority!
As if things were not complicated enough in this third grade, somewhere in the second half Raffaella-Bianca came up to me one evening and declared: “Mommy, starting tomorrow I want to go to school all alone! What do you say?”
What do I say?
“You feel you’re ready for that?”
“Yes! Absolutely!”
The energies confirmed the new status.
“Well, then you will start going to school all alone! But not tomorrow!”
“Why not? And when?”
“Tomorrow after school we’ll have to organize a cell phone for you! I can’t allow you to be on the street alone without a cell phone!”
“Can’t we buy one today?”
“Today is already too late! And I’d like Grandpa to go with you tomorrow! I don’t really have that much time tomorrow!”
“I could stay home tomorrow!”
“You could, but you won’t! I can’t agree to that! Tomorrow we buy the phone, the day after tomorrow you go to school alone!”
“But I’d like to go already tomorrow!”
“Not without a cell phone! It is life-saving. You have to have it. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about!”
“I am unhappy to have to wait!”
“Sunshine, it’s only one day! We have to wait!”
“I don’t like it!”
“I understand you, Beautiful, but that’s how I feel we have to do it!”
Grandpa went with her the following day to buy a cell phone. When they came back we both thanked Grandpa for taking the time to accompany her. We could always rely on Grandpa to help us when I didn’t have time and something had to be organized! I needed to sit down with Raffaella-Bianca and say some very important words to her.
“Sunshine, Mommy wants you now to listen carefully to what I have to say!”
She was a bit surprised but paid attention.
“Starting tomorrow you will go to school all alone because you feel ready for it!”
“I know how to go to school alone, Mommy!”
“Beautiful, Mommy knows you know it! That’s not the problem!”
“But?”
“Mommy won’t be there to take care of you anymore! That means you will have to take care of yourself. Mommy will send you the best energies, but you will be in charge!”
“I know!”
“There is one thing I want you to remember from now on for always: Since Mommy is not there with you anymore, there is only one thing you can rely on: Your intuition!”
“I know, Mommy!”
“You’ve only got your intuition! Remember that! You have to promise me you will always, always listen to your intuition!” She noticed I had watery eyes as I finished my imploration. I was not going to tell her go without a lecture. How could I have?
She was so happy, but I was not sure how I was. In any case, the energies were fine for her to start going to school alone.
That night I also spoke with the spiritual world. “As you see, your Angel is ready for more independence! I entrust my Angel to all of you in charge of her! Take good care of her! I did my best to take care of her myself, but now a new era is starting! I entrust her to the spiritual world! That’s all I can do! Thank you!”
I felt sad, but in a positive way. Raffaella-Bianca was so right! She was ready to go to school alone. The energies also confirmed it! What more did I want?
I am not sure how things really work in other countries, but in Austria kids take the tram alone or walk alone to school and it works. The exception confirms the rule. I based my decision to allow her to take the tram alone on the energies, I clearly accepted the message that she would need a cell phone. Probably at some point the tram would break down and she would need to communicate with us at home and the school. The tram did break down from time to time, but it was nothing tragic. We would all get out and wait for the next tram. We had experienced it together a few times.
The following day our new plan of action was put into practice. Raffaella-Bianca felt confident and after arming her with the cell phone required by the energies, I felt confident too. She left with a big smile on her face! The usual “Have fun, Mommy’s Angel!” which was my greeting before I disappeared already happened at the door. This time she disappeared – unusual! I tried to behave as normally as possible. I really did not mind change. I am all for change when it makes sense, which it did. I got busy with tidying, especially in her room. There had never been any time available before leaving and in the past I did it after returning home. So I tidied a bit, drank some more tea still in my nightgown, and planned to have a shower. I really enjoyed my tea, around that time I liked having green tea with either vanilla or tangerine flavor.
While Raffaella-Bianca got ready for her “premiere” I had already drunk some while assisting her as usual. But things were new that day – new for her, new for me! I went into the shower thinking… I have no idea what exactly I was thinking actually. Maybe about my next highlights for my hair or what to watch on TV, simple, unimportant details of everyday life. I got out of the shower and I heared Mami call me. I went into her room.
“Raffaella-Bianca just called!”
“What??”
“The tram broke down!”
“Today? On her first day alone?? Is she still on the phone?”
“No!”
“Why not? Does she know what to do?”
“No!”
“No? How come the two of you didn’t stay on the phone?”
“I don’t know!”
“How come you didn’t get me out of the shower immediately?”
“I don’t know!”
I tried to call Raffaella-Bianca on her cell phone but I only got the mailbox each time. For me it was time to act! A child who all of a sudden did not know what to do, a grandmother who as usual didn’t know what to do. I got dressed. I never got dressed faster in all my lifetimes. I never walked faster in all my lifetimes either! It felt like flying! I crossed over to the stop where we returned from school not where we left for school. While I was waiting for the light to turn green a tram came and Raffaella-Bianca got out. What a relief! We needed to wait for the light to turn green. It felt like an eternity. Finally, I could give her a hug!
“What a horrible thing to have the tram break down right on your first day alone!”
“I didn’t know what to do so I came back home!”
“Well done, my Super-Pie!” Reassurance is always important under such circumstances.
“I tried to call you! Where is your famous cell phone?”
“In my school bag! Turned off!”
“That’s not the meaning of it! Keep it turned on at all times when you’re on your way!”
“OK!” I really had to explain every little detail! Why was that?
“I suggest we go for hot chocolate or tea and some cake before we decide if you want to go back to school or not!”
We entered the next best coffee shop. There was one at the stop, the one where we got off on our way back. It was a familiar place. For a little something in between it was good enough. We entered, we sat down, we ordered.
“Beautiful, make yourself comfortable! You need to relax from your horrible shock!”
She nodded in full agreement!
“Mommy will call the director and tell her what happened! You relax and enjoy!”
I called the director and told her the details adding that I was not sure if Raffaella-Bianca would come to school or not! If she was not going to I promised to call again.
“Now I’d better call Grandma as well!” I did.
She was so glad to hear we found each other and were relaxing before deciding what to do.
“You know, Sunshine, Grandma is great with routine, but not at all with emergencies!”
Mami always defined herself as “a loyal follower and a bad leader”! She didn’t believe in differentiation. She also never discovered the advantages of leadership.
“I know!”
“It was your bad luck that I was in the shower when you called. And then you turned off your cell phone!”
Yes, Raffaella-Bianca was her grandmother’s granddaughter. The same was true of me! How fascinating and ironic at the same time. Mama Ana and I were born leaders, Raffaella-Bianca and her Grandma were not. With one eye I felt like laughing, with the other I felt like crying, sobbing, even! But not here and now. The leader just can’t afford to sob in front of the follower. The leader needs to be strong and clear and determined! A decision-maker combining realism with pragmatism according to wise priorities. OK! Let’s get to work.
“Sunshine, you do not have to go to school today if you don’t want to!”
“I think I’d like to go!”
“Tell Mommy after we are done here! Whatever you say, that’s what we’ll do!”
“I think I’ll go!”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone!”
“You may, but just don’t turn off your phone going to and coming from school!”
“OK!”
The cake and hot chocolate for her and the cake with tea for me worked wonders for both of us. It was time to give last instructions.
“Please call home once you are in the building so that we know you are fine!”
“OK!”
“And stop by the director’s office for her to know you’re present!”
“OK!”
“I will write the excuse in the afternoon for tomorrow! Please remember for how many hours I need to excuse you!”
“OK!”
“And remember when the tram breaks down again, there is one coming soon afterwards. Unless the entire public transport system breaks down! But that is very, very rare. And turn on your phone!”
I accompanied her back to the tram stop and we waited together until she got on.
“Have fun, my Darling! Mommy loves you!”
We waived each other kisses and she was back on the way to school. At least when she returned from school she felt fine and looked somehow triumphant, but also a bit humbled.
In the recent past she had started to react to some of my recommendations with “Oh Mommy, you are exaggerating!”
For a while after the incident I didn’t hear this comment at all. It did return at some point. Maybe she was even right! (Actually, I agreed with her!) But the world is made in such a way that only exaggerations seem to help to cope with the chaos and the unpredictability, with the anonymity and indifference of modern society, with the widespread lack of accountability and abuse of power that surround us on an everyday basis.
Exaggerating seemed to be the only action that defeated the constant and invisible attack of automatisms modern man falls into robotically. But going through Life with blind eyes and deaf years is not the solution, even if it has become the norm because so many people practice it. Civic courage is comatose. For a child to be alone in such an environment can only spell trouble, pain and trauma. I didn’t know how better to prepare her for every eventuality than by exaggerating. There we have it! I really didn’t know better. Already school felt like survival camp to me and I find that’s not what school is about. General society is what kind of a camp if we extend the analogy?
That third grade also brought along the decision when, where and how to celebrate Raffaella-Bianca’s 8th birthday. For some reason, I don’t even know for sure why, we postponed the party to a later point which turned out to be the last Sunday in March. We invited children and parents to Liechtenstein Museum, one of our favorite museums in Vienna. After our museum visit we would all walk home and celebrate together. We were looking forward to the event, but were late in fixing the date. Raffaella-Bianca apparently felt some pressure to do it. Linearity requires such an approach, birthday in February, party in February! End of March was already non-linear. If I could only remember why we were so late. Spontaneously, really nothing comes to mind. There was a reason, but who knows what it was! In any case, that last Sunday in March was the day when summer time returned which practically meant that when we woke up it was already one hour later. I completely forgot about summer time! After waking up comfortably I received a phone call from one of the mothers asking what had happened! I admitted that I was completely unaware of the time change and that we would be there soon. We got into our fast-forward mode and got into a cab. I apologized to the children and the parents! Raffaella-Bianca relaxed as soon as she joined her friends.
I spent some time with the parents who must have thought the date was a mistake. Then I went to the cashier telling him that I was the mother of the child who celebrated her birthday with her friends attending the day’s children’s program and I wanted to pay. We worked out how many children how many parents and as I was about to pay, some of the parents jumped up to say they already paid!
“But how come, you all get invited as our guests!”
They explained to me that they wouldn’t have been allowed in without payment! The cashier, the parents and I worked things out. I paid for everyone and every parent got the money back. I was so glad I could clarify this point too! It would have been unthinkable to let the parents pay! What kind of a strange invitation would that have been?
After all details were in their place again, we all concentrated on enjoying the arts! The Liechtenstein Museum is a special place. Especially living within walking distance from it made it a regular destination for our cultural endeavors. I cannot say how much fun Raffaella-Bianca and I had in the course of time with the children’s program in Vienna’s museums, be it Liechtenstein, Belvedere or the Art History Museum! We wanted to share our pleasure with her friends from school as well. Although no one in the class attended the children’s program on their own they all seemed to enjoy our various invitations.
Art is so important and so neglected. Art is holistic and thus extremely relevant for human development! It really expands horizons and opens our minds, if we allow ourselves to get touched by it. After our cultural assimilation we moved to the epicurian phase which was just as pleasurable! Chatting about this and that while self-indulging in delicious food makes for a round experience. Body, mind and soul need attention and I always tried to offer stimulation for all levels – not only in our everyday lives, but even more so for a special occasion like a birthday celebration! Raffaella-Bianca was always pleased. She was always part of the planning to allow her to get the most out of every party. I wanted to convey a great sense of value to her. In our own little world we could have value and quality by paying attention to details and by making conscious choices. Why not enjoy Life as much as possible? She enjoyed it and so did her young friends. It is interesting how open children are to whatever they are offered. Not that our museum parties had any long-term effect on our little guests, but for a moment in time they got in touch with a beautiful world.
Being as open to culture as we were, Raffaella-Bianca and I had a theater subscription already from first grade onwards. I found the performances so boring I was shocked! I thought it was because I was a grown-up, I didn’t dare say one word to Raffaella-Bianca. I didn’t want to influence her! I was willing to endure for her sake, but she must have had the same impressions I had because the second year she honestly admitted to be utterly bored herself, but felt we should continue going because we paid for the subscription.
“No way are we gonna continue if we have no fun! We didn’t pay for getting tortured!”
She laughed from ear to ear and was relieved to hear my point on it all! Now in third grade we gave up the subscription altogether. I was happy it was not just me, but I was sad that we were both disappointed. The only theaters in Vienna I truly liked were the English Theatre, just as the name says the English one, and the International Theater, the American one. But her school subscription did not include any of them, unfortunately. So there went the world of theater out of our lives – for the time being, at least!
Another cultural activity captured our attention in the family: Piano playing! It was true that Raffaella-Bianca had enjoyed it already as a little girl. She was interested and talented, as far as I could appreciate anybody’s talent. Grandpa bought her a nice instrument, the kind people buy for professional purposes. The idea scared me a bit. I had tried to talk him out of it for many reasons, but to no avail! He wanted, she wanted, so we went shopping. The other task was to find the right teacher for her. I honestly did not see her as a professional pianist. (Don’t ask me why, I just didn’t! Many because the energies were not encouraging!)
With the help of Romanian friends we found a young Romanian woman who was a student at one of the music schools in Vienna. She was a wonderful being who was known for her talent, dedication and passion for her instrument. She played as if she had learned it already in her mother’s womb! An absolute delight to listen to her. I hope she went on to make a remarkable career out of her talent.
What worried me was that during the few minutes I was present for the testing, Raffaella-Bianca looked uneasy, even a bit tense and scared. I thought I was wrong. I was told to leave the two of them alone and after checking with Raffaella-Bianca if it was ok with her and getting her permission, I left the two of them alone. I joined them again after their lesson. The teacher explained to me all the things Raffaella-Bianca needed to learn and what schedule she would have to follow.
“As I told you already on the phone, she wants to learn it for fun, as a hobby, for her own enjoyment! She will never be a concert pianist like you!”
The young woman left me with the impression that it did not matter whether she wanted to learn it as a hobby or not! I was not at all aware how strict such lessons were supposed to be or really were.
When I was a young girl, my parents took me to a famous pianist, but I did not pass the test because I did not have the right fingers for playing the piano and he recommended to them to let me study the violin which they were not in favor of. I never learned to play an instrument. I had no personal experience from my childhood how intense an instrument could be. I could remember playing musical instruments from other lifetimes and I think I would have been fine in this lifetime with any instrument I felt attracted to! I would have been good enough as a hobby musician. But could I draw on such experiences of mine to help Raffaella-Bianca with her decision of starting a relatively rigorous program?
“My daughter and I will talk at home and I will call you to let you know what the decision is. I am myself not sure what is best for her right now! She is still young and has her school that keeps her busy. And really she will never be a professional!” On the way back home Raffaella-Bianca spoke about how interesting she found the lesson, and was very positive.
“But she is very strict!” She looked at me as if checking if I agreed or disagreed.
“You are absolutely right, my Sunshine!”
She reacted relieved. It was interesting that she noticed it and articulated it so well.
“Her strictness scared you a tiny, didn’t it?”
“Absolutely!”
“She is highly disciplined and highly committed. I bet she will have an exceptional career! And you need to decide if you want to play piano as a hobby or if you seriously consider becoming a professional.”
“A hobby!”
“Mommy thinks the same! We will also talk to Grandpa and I suppose we will have to continue our search for the right teacher for your hobby!”
She smiled happily and I was so glad she didn’t feel under pressure to start a program that did not match her needs and wishes, no matter how promising it sounded. The piano was redefined as a hobby, a completely different universe from a profession. We also spoke to Grandpa who would have wanted a rigorous training, but understood that it was better for the young student to approach her instrument playfully.
We found a young woman who had attended a music school and was experienced in teaching young kids. She came home for the lessons which made the entire organization uncomplicated. Student and teacher spent quite a number of years together. They had fun and made nice progress at the same time. Playing the piano became an important part of Raffaella-Bianca’s life who sat down to play whenever she felt stressed and needed a transformation. I refer to an energetic transformation! I was so happy for her that she had access to this enchanting instrument and its magic universe. Grandpa was especially proud when he heard his granddaughter play! For him the investment was worth every penny, and Grandma was very touched and sometimes even shed a tear or two. For me it was a pleasure to hear her play, too. Music is beautiful in so many ways.
…
(End of Free Reading Sample)
Cristi-Ana Montesanto 