Summer Light

I took Ruby to guitar and brought some little gnomes with me to keep me company and get bubble tea.  Afterwards, it was such a sublime evening, we stopped off at Temple Square to take pictures.  The light was golden and effervescent, and I just had to place Ruby in it, with her golden hair and glowing guitar.  Notice how the kids don't have shoes or matching clothes.  While thy weren't the subjext of the photo shoot, they clearly idolize Ruby, so they appeared in several pictures, in all their end-of-a-summer-day splendor.  I love it! 

 Ruby is a musician with innate talent.  She just has a good ear and instincts.  And then she practices.  Classical guitar is anything but easy.  Ruby was playing her violin one day and made the comment, "Violin is so easy.  You only have to play one note at a time."  One day, Ruby took a violin to seminary.  She had volunteered to play a few hymns.  For some reason, she decided to play something she had never played before.  You can't pull that off on a guitar!  I couldn't pull it off on a violin, either, but Ruby has confidence beyond what I can imagine.  I love that about her.

As for guitar, it's like the pied piper.  Listening is intoxicating.  Maybe she should have done some panhandling during our photo shoot!  Next time, right?

Ruby's Journey

While Scott and the kids were in New York, life went on here at home.  I took Ruby to her guitar recital, where she played part of a Bach cello suite in D.  A Minuet, I think.  She has always had a musical intuition, perfect pitch and a love for the guitar.  She is a delight to listen to.  When her piece ended, the audience let out an audible sigh of pleasure.  She is one of the oldest students in Roy's studio, and some of the parents have watched her grow as a musician and a person for years now.  Other newer families just look to her and the older kids as examples of what their little kids are going to become, just as I did when Ruby was younger.

Ruby also played a Christopher Parkening piece with Atticus.  She has group class with Atticus and Roy every other Friday.  I made Ruby pose for these pictures because it was the day before Mothers Day.  Ruby thought I could have asked for a better present than pictures of her, but she was wrong.  One of the most gratifying parts of being a mom for me, and this isn't news for anyone, is seeing that my kids are developing a love and understanding of music.  My kids aren't the ones who practice 4 hours a day and end up with scholarships to Julliard, but that wasn't our path to take.  We're happy on our path.  We practice and we develop gradually, and we appreciate the unfolding of the journey.  Golda's senior recital last November was such a watershed moment for me, encapsulating everything Golda had accomplished over her whole life and demonstrating that she did, indeed, reach the heights that I had hoped for in the beginning phases of Twinkle Variations.  Ruby is on track for that same goal.  The guitar is my favorite instrument.  My heart aches when I hear some of the music written for guitar.  It's a big part of why I spent two summers in Spain; this music and the culture it came out of, a desire to know more about the place that could produce such haunting, heartbreaking, delicately crushing music.  Needless to say, I can't get enough of Ruby's practicing.  I'm thankful she loves it, and thankful to share the journey with such a mature musician and such a deeply soulful soundtrack.