Tracie Peterson by A Slender Thread

her.
    Erica could remember it as if it were yesterday. “I stood right over there,” she said, pointing to the window. “My music stand was positioned to get the best lighting from the lamp and from the sunlight. I played and played and it just didn’t feel right. No matter how hard I tried, I just kept messing up.”
    “And then I made you quit.”
    “Not before I was ready to throw my flute across the room,” Erica said, shaking her head. “I was about to send it sailing through the bedroom window.”
    “So I made you pack it up and stop practicing.”
    “That was the hardest moment of my life. The competition was the very next day.”
    “But you were ready. You knew the notes, but you’d lost sight of the music,” Grammy said.
    Erica nodded. “I remember telling you that you couldn’t possibly understand how important that first-chair position was to me. I cried and cried and you still wouldn’t let me practice. You told me I’d either do my very best and remain as first chair, or I would do my very best and become the second chair.” Erica could remember the words distinctly. “Then you told me that if the music was really my love, it would show in my tryouts. If not, I was in the wrong place and needed to know it.”
    “But you were in the right place,” Grammy said with a loving smile. “And you kept your first-chair position.”
    “And you were right about making me stop. I’ve kept with that practice ever since. When things get too stressful and I’m hitting more wrong notes than right ones, I make myself stop and do something else. Sometimes I just go jogging, sometimes I shop—but taking a break always does the trick. Sometimes I’m just as glad to run away.”
    “Is that what you’re doing now? Running away from Sean and his proposal?”
    Erica got up and walked to the window. She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and sighed. “I guess I am. Rachelle’s funeral seemed like the perfect way to escape dealing with him. I know that sounds terrible. But at the same time that I was running away from Sean, I felt like I was running to my family.”
    “I understand,” Grammy said softly. “But just like music had to be your focus rather than the position you held in the band, the love of your family should be the focus rather than the event that brought you here. You feel comforted coming home because you know you are loved unconditionally. We won’t berate you for choosing an orchestra that takes you far away, although we’ll miss you and wish you were closer.”
    “I do feel comforted here. Sometimes I feel so childish. Like everyone else grew up, but I didn’t. I’ll always be a baby in their eyes. The kid sister. Yet as bossy as they can be, I wouldn’t trade them.”
    “Just remember, Erica,” Grammy said, getting to her feet, “jobs will come and go. So, too, will passions. Your music is important, but family is more so. Maybe that’s what Sean recognizes and wants to share with you.”
    “But my music is so much a part of me that it’s often impossible to tell where I end and it begins. My music transports me beyond the emptiness and loneliness I feel.”
    “Maybe Sean is jealous,” Grammy replied, pausing to gently touch Erica’s cheek. “Maybe he wishes you would let him have that place in your life. Maybe he would like to fill your emptiness and take away those lonely moments.”
    Erica knew she was right. “I just don’t know how to make it all work. I’m making so many mistakes.”
    “Then quit trying so hard. Remember, you won first chair even though I made you stop practicing. You knew the music, but you were losing the heart of it. Maybe you’re losing the heart of this as well. Maybe you’re afraid to trust Sean to be to you all that music has been.”
    Erica wrapped her arms around Grammy’s shoulders. She smelled like cinnamon and nutmeg—no doubt left over from the coffee cake she’d baked that morning. Erica loved the fragrance and