It was one of those days.
On top of all my normal mommy duties, my day was scheduled to add two visiting teaching appointments and taking dinner to a family in the ward.
Then, Sarah (names have been changed to protect the (not-so) innocent) called to ask me a "huge favor." Her daughter, whom I used to teach in Young Women, needed to perform a piano piece in two days. She had been practicing, but some parts were really hard, and she needed to shorten the performance to a prescribed amount of time. The only problem was that she couldn't just shorten it because there was a significant key change before the end. They needed someone to transpose the music, pronto. They thought it should only be 8-10 measures of music, and I agreed to the job, thinking it would take me half and hour or so.
Now, some background. Sarah's daughter never liked me. I tried to be her friend, I prayed for her, I backed off, I gave her space. Sometimes, if she was in a good mood, the glares would disappear.
So Sarah brought over the music, expecting me to have it finished by dinnertime. I thought, what a great opportunity to serve this young women, and maybe win some points with her (even though I don't teach her anymore)!
Once I got into the music, I realized that I didn't know exactly how she wanted it cut and pasted together. So I put the boys down for an early nap and set Savanna up on the TV so I could concentrate. I figured that if I just went ahead and transposed that last 2.5 pages (closer to 30 measures), then the young woman could cut and paste exactly how she wanted and not be mad at me. With that in mind, I set forth on a journey that ended up taking me about 4 hours (in my already hectic day) because the music was rather complicated. I transposed it like a perfectionist, to make sure the music looked exactly the same as the original, just in a new key. I didn't want the girl to have any reason to be mad at me, since I knew I was already walking on eggshells.
Two days later, I attended the event where the girl was to perform. She did not even play the piece.
I want my four hours back! was my immediate response. I tried to have Christian thoughts, like It was too stressful to learn the transposition in such a short time. And, I need to love and serve no matter whether I am appreciated. And Maybe someday she will understand the sacrifice I made for her, but I need to let this go.
I am fairly certain I will never receive a thank you card. And I am almost as certain that she will never appreciate my sacrifices on her behalf.
But if she had just played the blasted song, I would have felt appreciated. And if she couldn't do that, a thank you card would have been enough. Just a little acknowledgement from either mother or daughter would do the trick. I have heard nothing from either.
And she still avoids eye contact with me.
My solace is that "When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God." And I know that He appreciates my effort.
But it's still hard.
2 comments:
That is really rough! That blasted teenage-stage. You can only hope she's a happier adult. I'm surprised that even the mother didn't say anything. You think if they didn't understand/needed help with the piece further they would have just asked. I know if I was performing something and was changing the music like that, I'd want all the help I could get from the transposer! It only makes sense to me as a musician...
Yikes. I am surprised the mom didn't even say something like, "we really appreciate your help, but she decided to just play an easier/shorter piece". And sounds like that girl is going to have a bad attitude no matter what others do. I had some YW in my previous class that were like that. No matter what you do, they seem incapable of thinking of anyone but themselves and treating adults like they think we are the idiots.
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