My Story: The Day I Though I Failed

 Twice a year (three times for the students who do Festival), I tell my students, "Remember: If you mess up during a performance, it's not a big deal. Everyone messes up. What matters is what you do with it. What matters is that you keep going."

   I know about messing up at a performance.

   There was the time I ran into another student at a recital -- on stage. There was another time where I hadn't actually even started playing, and I cried my way through my piece. (Incidentally, although I felt so rotten about that recital, according to other eyewitnesses, I actually played really well. Maybe all the turbulent emotions inside made me play more expressively? 😆) In short, I made all the typical mistakes students make at recitals, and then some not-so-typical blunders. 

   But the biggest one in my memory is the day I had a memory slip... during an exam. 

   It was my Grade 8 exam. I don't remember much about how I felt before the exam, but I suppose I had normal feelings: nervousness, cold hands, racing heart, that sort of thing. Also, guaranteed, I had not slept well the night before. I don't need to remember the details of the day to know that. I invariably used to have nightmares the night before the day of the exam about leaving the house an hour late. Also that, whenever I had something big coming up the next day, it took me forever simply to go to sleep. The more badly I wanted sleep, the more it would elude me. 

   The exam started. I made it through my technique, through the awful sight reading and the not-quite-as-awful ear tests. I made it through my first piece.

   In my Classical piece, I had a memory lapse.

   I drew a blank. I couldn't keep going; I had no clue what happened next. 

   The examiner let me have my book, and I finished the rest of the piece. 

    Somehow I made it through my other pieces too -- without the book. 

   When I finished, I went straight to Daddy. "I failed," I sobbed. "I just know it. I failed." 

   Now, if I had been in a rational mood....

   At a Grade 8 level, you cannot fail simply for having a memory lapse in one piece, because having your piece memorized is only two points per piece, and you pass at 60. If that had happened during my ARCT, it might have been a different story. But not at Grade 8. And technically, I had known that.

   But I wasn't thinking rationally. I'd never had a memory lapse while performing before, and that one thing dominated my mind like a cruel giant. 

   Later I would learn that I had scored a very high mark. I'd made it to First Class Honours with Distinction. Even later, I would look back and laugh, because ironically, that exam that I "failed" in turned out to be my highest-scoring practical exam that I ever took. 

   But what mattered then was Dad's response. 

   We drove towards home. My siblings were in the van with me, but I didn't want to hear their chatter. I sat looking out the window, tears still coursing down my teenage cheeks, as we stopped at Safeway for some groceries. 

   And then Dad came to the back of the van with a beautiful bouquet of orange roses, like the colours of a sunrise. 

   I didn't clue in at first, until he handed them to me and said with feeling, "Because I am still proud of you."