“Love of beauty and the desire to create it is a primal instinct of man.” Eleanor McMillan Brown

This weekend brought me the privilege of chaperoning forty
musicians to the Catskill Mountains of New York for a youth
orchestra retreat. Designed as a scenic get-away in which to
ardently rehearse for an upcoming concert, it proved an
exhausting-but delightful-escape with teens.

Considering that I made the preliminary arrangements, and
actually booked the accommodations at the retreat center, I
thought I had a fairly good idea of what to expect. When the
retreat director described our cabins as “rustic,” I envisioned
cute and cozy. Campy. Kind of with a Ralph Lauren meets L.L. Bean thing going on.

She greatly oversold them. I had better luck in third-world
countries. While the kids rehearsed late that first night, I
searched for the cabins in the middle of absolutely nowhere-pitch dark-with a couple of flashlights, a poor-to-scale hand-drawn map, and two very tired orchestra moms as my only guides. We found these tarp-roofed, no-mattress-bunks-with-little-heat-and-bad-lighting-and-did-I-mention-no-locks-on-any-doors near midnight after a long three and a half hour drive and a very bad camp retreat dinner. We moms thought it would be a good idea to locate the cabins and get things “settled in.” Mortified when we finally found them by the thought that these cabins were really “ours,” we let out a half-hour litany of moans and groans, only to decide to make the best of the situation by trying to cozy them up. That literally meant
turning on the singular light and cranking up the space heater
per each cabin.

Then came the rain. It started as a sprinkle and turned into a
constant stream, silently but surely soaking the hundred-plus
suitcases, sleeping-bags and pillows that had been dumped onto
the ground (no, dirt) by the camp help. So at nearly midnight, in the cold downpour of the rain, we schlepped forty kids’ stuff
into one of the cabins. It was pitch black, excepting the two
puny flashlights and those five measly light bulbs.

Suffice it to say that the first night was character-building.
I had eight twelve-year-old girls in my cabin. Giggly, wanting
to chat well past “lights out,” but with the cutest tank-top-pajama-bottoms combos I’ve ever seen, (and more make-up than one could imagine for a weekend retreat in the middle of friggin’nowhere) I had the distinct impression that it could be an interesting two days.

And then came Saturday. And Mozart. Grieg and Bizet. Rehearsal
after concentrated rehearsal brought teenager to his instrument
and magic out of chaos. For somewhere beneath all of the acne
cream and the eyeliner came focus and discipline and the desire
to master music of magnificent proportion.

After all-day rehearsals, as well as sectional rehearsals with
master teachers brought in from New York City, the group came
together and practiced one last time, late Saturday night after
dinner. As they were tuning, I walked around the room making sure everyone was comfortable and ready for one last practice session. I walked up to my fifteen-year-old son and twelve-year-old daughter and whispered in their ears, “Create Beauty.” Fueled with little sleep and bad camp food, neither were amused. But then the conductor raised his baton, the cute high school senior lifted her flute, and thus began the genius of The Magic Flute. And then the oboist, a highschooler I had never met before, with a bandana covering her hair and too-many earrings covering her left ear, came in, followed by the clarinetist, to create extraordinary beauty. And I just sat there, with tears rolling down my cheeks, an uncontrollable reaction to witnessing magnificence.

It caught me quite off-guard that these kids-dirty from too much
of the retreat experience and too little of the available hot
water and soap, and sleep-deprived from too much sleeping-bag
chatter-could produce something so glorious.

Sometimes kids surprise us. Sometimes, after we want to wring
their necks for their appallingly irresponsible behavior (losing
their backpacks, forgetting their music, leaving their dirty
dishes for us to clear), they sit down and do the most astounding thing. They pick up and instrument and play something
extraordinary. Or they write an essay and it changes our
worldview. Or they perform ballet with perfect timing. And we
scratch our heads and think, “Could this possibly be my kid?!?”

Because just when you’re ready to throw in the towel, throw
your hands up in quiet desperation, and pound your fists on the
table in a round of madness, your kids will do something that
will convince you that they are filled with brilliance. That
they possess a hidden gift or an indescribable magic or a
hilarious gift of humor or a quick mind or a strong shoulder or
a gentle spirit.

And you are so thrilled to have had some small part of the
creation.