I’m a Yamaha
I was a miserable teenager. I remember that time as sort of a fevered nightmare, murky and dark and awful.
I didn’t act out in the way troubled teenagers typically do, but I was incredibly lonely and angry and sad. I was awkward and emotionally immature, poor with really bad clothes, lacking the personality or attitude to make all of my insufficiencies something you could overlook.
The night I graduated from high school, my parents took me out for a celebratory dinner. As soon as we were done eating they told me I was free to go. “Go have fun with your friends,” they said.
I dawdled a little, not in a particular hurry. “I’ll be home at midnight. Eleven thirty, maybe.”
My parents exchanged conspiratorial glances. My mom smiled and said, “No curfew tonight, honey. We know there are lots of parties and things going on. You only get one graduation night.”
I feigned enthusiasm and thanked them, depression sweeping over me. They had no way of knowing I’d thoroughly alienated all of my friends. I spent that night sitting alone in my car, in the parking lot of a grocery store a block from our house, crying and checking the clock, wondering when it would be late enough for me to go home without having to face any uncomfortable questions.
I know we all tend to write off our teenage angst as just that, but I can never do that. That time in my life taught me what it means to despair.
I found my salvation in music.
I lived to sing and play the piano. I would play the piano and sing for literally hours until my brothers would come storming in the room, begging me to “SHUT UP already!” My mom would have to come into the music room after a while to try to get me to stop. She didn't want to discourage me from singing or playing, but there was a limit to how many times anyone in the family could listen to me sing “On My Own” at full volume before they went stark raving mad.
I used to dream I might be good enough to sing on Broadway someday. It wasn’t really an option. I had a nice voice in the way that millions of girls have nice voices, but I just wasn’t at that level. It didn’t stop me from wishing it were true though. After all, my mother told me music was my gift, and dreams of impending discovery were a nice distraction from the social nightmare I’d managed to create for myself at school.
I was very unhappy, but now and then people would turn around in their pews at church to tell me I had a pretty voice. It made me feel like maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t totally worthless. One day when I was feeling particularly awful about my life, someone told me I sang like an angel, and it made me so happy I started crying right there on the spot. When I sang a solo in church, people would seek me out afterward to tell me how much they enjoyed it. I collected those little compliments and stored them up inside, bringing them out and thinking about them when I was especially unhappy. They were like little pockets of warmth in the middle of a long, bitterly cold winter.
As I grew out of my teens, I gradually began to figure things out emotionally and socially. I started to recognize my own value, and started to feel hopeful. I still sang whenever I had the opportunity, but I didn’t crave the attention as much. Music was just something else that was good about life, not the only thing.
A year after I got married, I decided it would be fun to take voice lessons, even though I knew I’d never really do anything with it. My sister was taking lessons from someone she raved about, so I made an appointment.
The teacher spent a half an hour getting to know my voice.
“You have a nice voice and a good ear. You are perfectly in tune and have a nice tone,” he told me. His comments made me feel great, and I thanked him with practiced modesty.
Then he went on.
“You know, I like to compare people’s voices to pianos. Some people, like Leslie”— he pointed to a picture of his star pupil—“have Steinways. Other people have cheap little Casio keyboards. You, I think, have a very nice, serviceable little Yamaha.”
I didn’t know enough about piano brands to be able to place myself very accurately on the range of piano goodness, but I could tell from his unenthusiastic tone that a Yamaha wasn’t that great, wasn’t that special, and never would be.
Even though I already knew that I had a “nice” voice, and not an amazing one, it broke my heart a little to hear it from a professional. I think somewhere in my heart I'd always held on to that dream of singing in Les Mis, however unrealistic a dream it might have been.
I came home crying from the first lesson and never went back.
After that, every time I sang I thought, I’m a Yamaha. Not that special. Not that great. What was the point of singing if it wasn’t going to end with applause and admiration and compliments that propped up my self-esteem? My mom had always talked about how music was my gift. Well, what kind of a gift was that? I was never going to end up singing back-up on Broadway. I was just another mediocre singer, singing show tunes at the piano and completely kidding herself. I lost my confidence, and sang less and less.
It was my kids who helped me to discover my voice again. When I sit down at the piano, they crawl all over me, requesting Disney songs, or “On Top of Spaghetti,” or songs from Annie. Because of them I've started to get reacquainted with how happy it makes me to sing, just for the sheer joy of it.
I don’t crave the recognition and attention the way I used to. My sense of worth isn’t based on what my voice sounds like on any given Sunday.
Away from the spotlight, I’ve started to understand what I didn’t before. Not all talents lead us to recognition or fame. But they are gifts all the same. God loved me enough to send me a gift that carried me through a time of despair. He knew I would need something to hold onto. He sent me a reason to feel special when everything was dark.
When my daughter Emma had croup a few months ago she asked me, “Mom, are lullabies just for night time?”
“No,” I said with a smile, helping her climb up onto the couch. She put her head in my lap, and I sang to her for a few minutes, stroking her hair.
After a bit, she asked me, “When I grow up, will I sing just like you, Momma? I want to sing just like you.”
Through a haze of tears, I nodded and said, “Even better,” then cleared my throat and sang her to sleep.
Sue Marchant lives in Highland, Utah, with her husband, three kids, and a freakishly overactive imagination. She works from home as a technical writer and spends her spare time transporting kids hither and yon, plotting to take over the blogging universe, and writing fluffy fiction. She blogs at borrowedlight.blogspot.com.
