hiding

I took piano lessons for 14 years. I started in the first grade and kept it up until my sophomore year in college. During my high school years I took lessons from Mrs. Eaton who charged me $2 for an hour of lessons each week. She was an adorable grandmotherly type and I benefited greatly from her patient demeanor, her encouraging spirit and her poor vision. I got away with all kinds of mistakes.

Mrs. Eaton took me from graded practice books to the real deal: Rachmaninoff. I loved Rachmaninoff at my first encounter with him. He was the kind of guy that had you play loudly and largely. I felt showy and big and important playing Rachmaninoff. It was great.

In college I continued on with piano lessons, but my musical heyday ended in high school. It was just too hard to find the time to practice in college. But what I did know about music still came in handy from time to time. There was a composition major in my theology class that I was determined to impress. I struck up a conversation with him about music and told him of my fondness of Rachmaninoff. He said that Rachmaninoff is nice, but he preferred Mozart. With Rachmaninoff there is so much going on that it is easy to hide in it. Mozart is so clean and simple that in order to play him well, you have to play him perfectly. There is no where to hide. It's all or nothing.

Today I was thinking about that encounter as I was designing this card. My time looks so differently right now. I wanted to make a dozen cards quickly and maximize the time when both boys slept. I wanted a simple design, but I knew the pitfall to that. Simple means little mistakes will stand out more. There will be no where to hide. Did they come out perfectly? Nope. Little mistakes here and there. But honestly, I'm glad to have them, glad to cross one more thing off of my to-do list and willing to put time over quality...this time.

And it worked out well that I didn't end up impressing that composition major. Because things with the communications major are working out really well.