by Emma Riley Sutton

Created on: May 10, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

"Sugar and I had a talk today," my mom told me one day after school. "She loves you and wants you to be happy. She just can't take it anymore. She said she was going to move away if you kept playing to violin."

Thank God for Sugar! I wanted so much to learn to play the violin, but I couldn't do it anymore. After one year of private lessons, I still couldn't play a single note. It all sounded like an animal dying a painful death. I practiced and I practiced, but I just couldn't do it. Maybe I was too young. Maybe I didn't want it badly enough and didn't try hard enough. Maybe I wanted it too badly and tried too hard.

I held the violin in my stubby fat hands and tried to put my fingers where they belonged. I drew the bow across the strings and it howled an awful sound. It screeched and moaned - nothing remotely similar to music. I cried and tried again. Same thing - awful noises, dreadful sounds.

My instructor was an elderly man with patience that would have made Job jealous. He would smile and show me again. He drew pictures. He made jokes. He demonstrated what I should do on his own violin. He sat next to me and put my fingers exactly where they should have been. He guided my hand as I slid the bow across the strings. Bless his heart. He tried so hard to help me. I just couldn't do it.

I knew how to play the violin. I could explain what I should be doing in such lovely detail. To actually do it was another story. I did not have the ability to put what I knew into action. It was as if everything I knew got stuck in my elbow as it attempted to travel from my brain to my hands.

I could read the music, every single note. I just couldn't play them. I knew where my fingers needed to be to play those notes. When the time came to play those notes, my fingers did not cooperate. I had to face the ugly truth - the violin was not for me.

I am not a quitter. I keep trying at everything until I master it. Besides, I had been warned if I quit violin lessons, I wouldn't be able to move on to another instrument. Not that I wanted to play anything else; the violin was my true love and all I wanted to ever play. I could see myself on stage, playing beautiful music in a lovely pink gown. I could also see myself, barefoot, fiddling away on the back porch of my grandmother's house with our family's bluegrass band. The violin was the key to my future; it would take me places I never would be able to go and yet keep me close to my southern roots. It was the perfect instrument for me. I just wasn't perfect for the violin.

I had a decision to make. I could keep torturing myself and everyone else with my futile attempts at becoming a violinist or I could move on. I decided to move on. I hated doing it, but it was for the best. I packed up the violin and put it away. I felt good about my decision. I had given it more than my all.

Sugar was thrilled with my decision. She no longer wanted to leave. I was so thankful and happy. I would have missed her greatly and nothing was worth loosing her. She wasn't just my dog, she was my best friend. And, she saved me from the violin. Well, she saved the violin from me.

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