Personal Narrative: Three Lessons Learned

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My mother played the violin before she married Dad and had me. She told me that she quit playing to have more time for the family. But she still loved music, I guess, because she tried to relive her glory through me.

When I turned four I took violin lessons three days a week. I was terrible. In my defense, four year olds aren’t the best violinists around. But I still enjoyed it. Not for the music or anything, though. Just because my mother would smile at me.

Every coming birthday the number of lessons grew. By the time I was nine, I took lessons every day; on Saturdays I took two. I could play more complex songs and they weren’t as off-key. But my mother wasn’t satisfied. I wasn’t the prodigy she wanted me to be. She began to realize that …show more content…
I received the invitation two weeks later when my mother handed it to me. It was for your own good, she told me. I didn’t have time to be angry or cry, since I had to go to my lesson as I had done for the last 10 years.

My first proper recital at fifteen was a mess. My hands were shaking as I pulled through the song but when I met my mother’s cold eyes my mind went blank. That night she hit me for the first time in my life. But it didn’t hurt as much as I expected it to.

A month after I turned sixteen, I was taken out of the lesson by my dad. We drove in silence. I spotted the hospital in the distance and I knew right then and there that my mother was dead. She wasn’t, though. She’d survived the accident but she couldn’t move anymore. Dad’s flushed face was filled with relief, but I only felt disappointment.

Now, as I sit by my mother’s bed, I stare at her face in silence. The beep of the oxygen tank fills the room every few seconds. But other than that, the room is quiet. Her face isn’t as rosy as the one I remember. Bits of grey hair are hidden in brown. Creases around her mouth and eyes make her look much older than she is. I wonder if I will look like her when I am her age. But my musings are pointless, I
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