Little Asian Children

I never imagined I'd spend every day of my life with Asian classmates or Asian professors, but I should've guessed. I'm a music student in the US. Conservatories and schools are full with with promising young students from the Orient. Competitions are won every weekend, and the prizewinners? Soloists from Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China whose note-perfect renditions of Lizst's Transcendental Etudes and Chopin's Ballades and Mozart's Sonatas and Bach's Fugues leave anyone who listened breathless, yet often emotionally unmoved.

My professor, Dr. Yang, has a six-year old student name Richie. I'm not sure what his ethnic heritage is, but he is a beautiful little black-haird, almond eyed little boy. He'll probably be the next Mozart. He played a Haydn Concerto for me today, and I was so impressed by his playing. I think I was even more impressed, though, when he and his 2-year old brother were running past me and some string-playing friends, chasing and laughing at each other in their own little language, an amalgamation of something like Cantonese and English.

They were so full of joy. They were so innocently happy. I remembered how some things make life sweet.

Even though Richie will probably be competing against my own future students and winning state and national competitions, both he and his little brother made me want to figure out how to have my own little ones, someday, running down the hall of some music school, making tired conservatory students smile.