This week, a landmark event took place — my first guitar lesson in twenty years. I know it was almost exactly 20 years because of the dates that had been written into my copy of “Mauro Giuliani: Studies for Guitar”. Written in the haphazard penmanship of my former classical guitar professor, he designated which subset of right hand finger exercises that I needed to practice that week. The final date inscribed was 11/1/04 — approximately two weeks before my 26th birthday.
Leading up to that final lesson was a few tumultuous years of trying to figure out what to do with my life post-university and post-layoff. I had graduated with a Computer Science degree from a decent state university, having given as much thought to choosing my major as I did with choosing my school — which is to say, a lot less thought than I expended shopping for an InstantPot. How I managed to graduate with such a difficult major knowing so little is mind-bending, akin to how some kids can move through the school system never learning to read. I faked it till I made it to the finish line: a big bucks software engineering position right out of school.
However, when I got laid off, I had already realized I couldn’t program my way out of a paper bag, let alone to another position in the computer science field. In essence, that Bachelors degree now shares the same utility as the forsaken InstantPot, languishing in storage. After moving back home and spending whatever I had in savings (haha) and my cashed-in 401K, I resorted to the only thing I knew how to do: I went back to school. I was obliged by my mother, who put me back on her health insurance after my COBRA ran out, to take the necessary prerequisites for a nursing program.
In the past, she had always expected me to take up nursing, especially if I wasn’t going to pursue the only other valid alternatives in her mind — Engineering. Doctoring. Lawyering. So, naturally, I did my very best to avoid giving her what she wanted. When I told her that I would be majoring in Comp Sci midway through my freshman year, she went completely berserk and threatened to stop paying for tuition. I called her bluff and landed back at home five years later. It would’ve taken superhuman restraint to refrain from saying “I told you so!”, given that I was in such a pitiful state. But my mother is a mere mortal, so the I-told-you-so’s came in all manners — fast and hard, slow and subtle, day in, day out.
I enrolled in a community college on Long Island, applied for the nursing program, and started on all the health science prerequisites like Anatomy and Physiology and Microbiology. I even found a part-time position at an oral surgeon’s office, ostensibly to pad my future patient-care oriented resume. (Plus, drinking money.) I told myself that I would do whatever it takes to carve a path for myself, away from my childhood home, back to independence — and if nursing was the only way out, so be it.
But… since I’m already here…
While perusing the college catalog, I was thrilled to see they offered introductory classes to piano and guitar, and added both to my course load. I had never learned to play the piano growing up (perhaps because we weren’t affluent or Asian enough to own one) but the prospect of finally learning to play the guitar was what most intrigued me. I said finally because my journey with the guitar had begun nearly a decade before that, between sophomore and junior year of high school.
Like many a classic tale (think Hemingway), it involved a cute boy who worked in a smoke shop in the Village. Without going into details that might later be held against me (specifically by my young, impressionable daughter), my best friend in high school, TC, and I met him during our foray into NYC during school sanctioned hours. What exactly possessed us to enter a smoke shop on Bleecker Street, I don’t recall, but I’m sure it had something to do with looking for, um, school supplies. The cute boy behind the counter, a tall Korean guy with handsome features and a quiet demeanor, gave me his number. I can almost remember girlishly squealing with TC once we were out of earshot.
He drove out to Queens to pick me up for our date in his forest green Jeep Wrangler. As I tottered in kitty heels to the passenger door which he held open for me, my father shot out of the house to glare at this stranger, this… man, for all intents and purposes, who was about to whisk his underage daughter away. But CG (Cute Guy) surprised him (and me, too) by replying in the most sincere fashion, “Sir, I promise to take care of her and have her back safely before eleven.” My father was visibly thrown for a moment, then relaxed into a smile.
“Make it twelve,” he said. Maybe not with actual words, but it was written all over his face. CG had won him over.
Everything about that night was surreal, including my awkwardness. It felt like I was masquerading as a grown-up, desperately trying to appear more sophisticated than I was. He drove us back into the Village, where we shot pool and ate Thai during what was probably the quietest date in the history of civilization. But, the magical part of evening was driving beneath the sparkling lights of NYC, listening to a double album of a band I’d never heard of before: The Smashing Pumpkins.
I never saw CG again, which only served to heighten the surreal quality of that experience. My parents shuttled me off to spend that summer in Mechanicsville, VA, where my aunt and uncle lived, as one would send a troubled teenager to boot camp in a far-flung locale. Nearly two months living in a remote cul-de-sac of a developing community, babysitting my cousins, and living for the long, handwritten letters that TC and I exchanged with religious regularity. On the occasional trips to the mall, I purchased every Pumpkins album I could find — Mellon Collie, Siamese Dream, Gish, and Pisces Iscariot — and listened to them obsessively until their songs wound themselves into my DNA. It was then that I vowed to learn how to play the guitar.
So, you might wonder, why had I not managed to learn how to play in the ten years before registering for Beginning Guitar? And what happened after that final lesson on November 1st, 2004?
On the surface, it could amount to laziness or an obscene underestimation of the work and dedication needed to learn. After returning from Virginia that summer, I promptly made my way to Sam Ash and purchased an intro-level Stratocaster set up with my babysitting money. I haunted my old junior high school and recruited my former band teacher, Mr. D, to give me private lessons. He came to my home a couple of times and I picked through the first notes of open position, but I quickly became discouraged and quit. If I had given it any thought, I would’ve realized that even Billy Corgan must’ve started by learning to play Three Blind Mice or Jingle Bells before becoming a legendary alternative rock icon. But for me, it felt like I wanted to summit El Capitan when I didn’t even know how to crawl.
Ten years later, in a bid to carve out my own path, I eventually declined my admission into the nursing program, and registered to become a music major with a focus on classical guitar. Although classical guitar was a wide departure from my original vision, it was the only option available; and I figured, obtaining a music degree would allow me to earn a practical living as a music teacher. This drove my mother to a conniption fit of epic proportions, likely having felt deeply betrayed once again.
Once I started the new semester as a full-fledged music major, I quickly realized how in over my head I was. Talk about imposter syndrome. I was surrounded by students who probably lived music all their lives, whereas I could barely recognize a major scale from a minor one, let alone the difference between a harmonic minor and a melodic one. The ear training class, where we had to identify different musical intervals, literally made me break out into a cold sweat. To top it off, I had developed an overwhelming self-consciousness in playing the guitar — it was always there, but now, so much more was at stake. It was if I had committed to free soloing the most dangerous slab route on the Salathe Wall. And so, days before the first guitar ensemble performance, I dropped out of the major, and almost died of shame.
Fast forward to 2024. This is the baggage I have carried with me to the base of El Capitan, laid out for everyone to see. But I will leave it here, for inspection and reflection, because I cannot scale a mountain with such a heavy load. The only things I’m taking on this journey from now on is my pretty little Gretsch Streamliner, which I have faithfully played every day since my 45th birthday, and a fervent belief in myself.
For I am not the same person I was 20, 30 years ago. Though I had reluctantly become a nurse, not only did it lead me to my husband and a host of other blessings, I learned something vitally important: That I can do hard things. I can keep my composure while changing a gruesome dressing. I can advocate for my patients whose needs are being neglected by inconsiderate, overambitious residents. I can survive a verbal thrashing by the attending physician for having withheld treatment due to my nursing judgment. I can calm the most ornery patient on the unit because I can give my whole hearted self. I can push the natural limits of my urinary tract system to the extreme because there is just too much to do in a 12-hour shift.
“I can do hard things.”
I may not excel at everything I do. Or anything I do, for that matter. Often, I’ll be doing too much to be truly decent at something. But presently I am doing my best not to shy away from the things that are hard, because they are often the things that matter. Learning how to play the guitar matters to me, and so does climbing. Alex Honnold’s mom began climbing at 58 and became the oldest woman to climb El Capitan at age 70, as well as an inspiration to many. Surely, I can pick up the guitar at 45 and learn to play a Smashing Pumpkins song before I turn, say, 60.
One move, one barre chord at a time.
And you can do hard things, too.
