Practice Makes Perfect

This is another essay I wrote for my English class.  The topic was “This I Believe In.”  I got a perfect 50/50 – A for this one – I was very pleased and I know the three women in this essay would have been too.

Practice Makes Perfect

I strongly believe practice makes perfect. I learned this from three people early in my life: my mother, Grandma Allen, and Mrs. Mengel, my piano teacher.

Whether it was learning my ABC’s or my multiplication tables, my mother firmly believed and instilled in me if I practiced them over and over and over again, I would master these basic skills. And I found later in life, when I needed them the most, they came to me as easy as drinking a glass of water. When other kids were outside playing tag in the warm weather or bundled up in snowsuits sledding down the hill, I was at our black and white checkered Formica top kitchen table practicing my “2 x 2” and “principal vs. principle” until I knew them by heart.

In sixth grade, I competed in and won the local Spelling Bee Championship. My mother and I drilled over and over the words I would be given in this event and as they were presented to me at the Spelling Bee, what she taught me flowed effortlessly in my mind and out through my mouth. When I left home and started my family, I left my trophy with my mother as a tribute to the many hours she spent making sure I didn’t forget.

My Grandma Allen lived in Benito, Manitoba, Canada. My family visited her every summer from 1963 when I made my first trip on the train until 1978, when I saw her for the final time in the nursing home as Alzheimer’s overtook her brilliant mind. I tried to learn as much as I could from her each time we visited or on the rare occasion she came to stay with us.

My grandma taught me to crochet, sew, and cross stitch. I am left handed and my mother didn’t think she could teach me. My grandma taught me by sitting across from me so it looked like she was performing these simple tasks just like me. I have the first quilt we made, a simple, multi-colored, nine-patch, as well as the set of white, flour sack dish towels with the days of the week in counted cross stitch.
 

Grandma Allen also took the time to teach me to measure flour and sugar and other ingredients to make cookies, cakes and breads just like hers. She trusted me with time tested recipes, handed down from her mother and grandmother. One of my favorites is the Artisan White Bread and Dinner Rolls. I use her techniques to blend the yeast and warmed water and let the dough rise to hear that perfect “thump” before you place it in the oven and bake it to a hard, golden brown crust.

Out of all of the people in my life who taught me the importance of practice makes perfect, my piano teacher, Mrs. Bea Mengel brought the real meaning home every week. I began at age four, trying to sound out the melodies my sister played on her flute. My mom called Mrs. Mengel to see if she would take me on as a student. Although she normally started her piano students at age six, she made an exception after hearing me play and welcomed me to her methods of learning scales and arpeggios. She didn’t rap my small knuckles with the wooden ruler when I missed a note, but instead taught with love and understanding, instilling in me a pure love of music, not just learning notes on a page.

Mrs. Mengel called me a music prodigy: able to read a sheet of music the first time I saw it, having perfect pitch to mimic note for note the same she would play on her piano, and playing Bach, Beethoven, Chopin or Debussy with the ease of her older students. My mother didn’t have to beg me to practice. I was willing to spend an hour or more each day at home eagerly learning the new songs I was given. I spent 14 years with Mrs. Mengel, learning to play the piano, organ, harpsichord, and she was my first vocal coach as well.

I still play piano today and have taught a few students myself. I enjoy relaxing to classical pieces that still roll off my fingers like they did those many years ago I was first taught. Now I play a bit differently – more of my own style, a little blues and rock snuck in there between the Bach and the church hymns my mother used to listen to me play. Today I don’t play to make my mother or Mrs. Mengel happy; today, I play because I love it.

I know that practice makes perfect is an old adage, but learning the basics of life and hard work from my mother, Grandma Allen and Mrs. Mengel, I firmly believe that the path I have taken in my life began with what I learned from each of these women.