This article originally appeared at The Huffington Post.
When I tell people I have had three scholarships in my life, 2 academic and 1 music they are impressed. When I tell them I studied piano for 12 years but stopped short of Grade 8 (the highest grade), they are impressed. When I say I won every form prize in my junior school, won competitions for speech and drama, poetry reading, the bishop chorister's award and played the lead 'Alice' in Alice in Wonderland, all before the age of 11, they ask me why I don't do any of it now? But of course I don't normally tell anyone these things. Because I didn't win them. My mother did.
My mother cared much for my education and my accomplishments. We were a team she and I.
"I want you to play the piano," she said. "Music is one of the greatest pleasures you can know. I was deprived of piano lessons when I was little, but you must have them. I want you to have it all. But you must practise. Thirty minutes every day."
That's a long time when you're 5 years old. But when I didn't, she'd get angry and remind me of her deprivation. She wanted me to be grateful to her. My fingers practised… and my teeth bit into the wood of the piano. I gnawed away at it, the instrument that I had been forced to play. And that I hated. The varnish wore off where I bit it and helped me cope because I could see physical proof of my hate. Hate that I couldn't share with her (or anyone else), because every time I did, she'd trot out the story of how she would have loved to be in my place. The only respite I had was on holiday. Until she bought me an electric organ for Christmas, because she cared so much that I would suffer from lack of practice.
Then there was the singing.
"If only your father hadn't thwarted my career. I was a semi professional opera singer when we met. I could have been great. You will have the chances that I never had."
I had singing lessons. I was in the general school choir, the special school choir and the church choir. She joined the church choir – despite her ongoing feud with God for making her infertile – because she cared about spending time with me…and drowned out my 11 year old voice with her powerful mezzo soprano. I made it to Grade 5 for singing on her impetus; you can train your ear and your technical skills for these things but singing actually requires a good voice…which I didn't have.
In academic work, it was similar. I lived in terror of the parent teacher evenings, never sleeping on these nights, waiting for when she'd come back home. To tell me that I hadn't been trying hard enough, that I was a failure. In my first school, I was too advanced. She'd taught me to read at 3 years old, which meant I was bored at school. They moved me to a different school. But the same thing happened. Home schooling from Mum meant I was bored and consequently made little effort. The teachers started sending notes home, which I tore up. I was 6 years old. But eventually it caught up with me…