Perfect Score

Today Sarah is singing with her middle school music group at a school fundraiser being held at a local bookstore. They did this last year at this time, too, and it brings back a vivid memory. 


Last year, while I was watching Sarah perform, Emma was about 45 minutes away auditioning for the regional music festival. Emma had been practicing the music for this audition for months and it played in all of our heads all the time. It was beautiful music and she played it beautifully, though, so we loved listening to her practice. 

This was Emma's third year auditioning for the music festival. Her first year she auditioned for voice, flute and piccolo. She missed qualifying on piccolo by one point and on flute by three points. But she did qualify for voice and sang in the regional festival chorus. The next year she auditioned for all three again and qualified for all three. This left her with a difficult choice. She chose to participate in the regional festival band on flute. This third year she had decided to make it a little easier for herself and she was just auditioning on flute.


Sarah's group had just finished their performance when my cell phone rang. It was Emma. "Mom, I got a perfect score!" I had to ask her to repeat what she said so that it could sink in. "Wow, Emma that's unbelievable. You must be so excited! " "I know. I am really excited," she responded. And she was excited. She was almost singing as she spoke. "You need to call Adrianne (her flute teacher)," I said. "Adrianne is going to be absolutely thrilled." "I know," said Emma. "I can't wait to tell her. Mom, this means I'll be first chair at the music festival" "That's amazing, Emm. But you know what? You deserve it. You really do."



Emma was absolutely on top of the world that day. That's how I like to remember her.