I live in the old part of Olathe, where the houses are small and the trees are tall.  Hardly anyone here has a real lawn, it’s more like just lots of grass with some weeds here and there.  In my backyard, the first flowers to appear in the spring are usually dandelions and those prolific purple groundcovers (name?), and tiny plants with tiny sky-blue blossoms that look like they just fell out of the sky, and violets (the weed, not the kind you buy at the store).  I especially love the cheerful dandelion yellow - which happens to be my favorite crayon color, too.  It’s a rare sight to see the “chemlawn” guy drive through our area.  People here don’t have much money, and a weed-free, year-round-green lawn is not a top priority.

I recently came across a cute little peom that, years ago, I enjoyed reading to my young students.  The poem is called “Dandelions everywhere” and was written by Aileen Fisher.  I had copied it onto a worksheet and included a coloring picture; that way they would be able to have it at home and hopefully re-read it or have it read to them, for the young ones who didn’t read just yet. 

Looking at it now, I realize, with sorrow, that it would probably be meaningless to the students I have here in the greater Kansas City area: sadly,  they have perfect lawns, with not a weed in sight.  I’m afraid to even try to share this poem with them, I don’t think I could bear their asking me, “What’s a dandelion?”

When I decided, before Christmas 2006, to close my studio in Manhattan at the end of the school year in May 2007, and move to Overland Park, I knew that the move and a new start in a new city was most likely going to be a “time of personal growth”. 

I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to do, but the general idea was to open a studio here, in the Overland Park / Olathe area.  I was going to travel to students’ homes instead of teaching out of my home.  I was open to new ideas.  Or so I thought.  When it became apparent that finding new students was much more difficult than I expected - an unfortunate combination of “the economy” and the fact that reputation doesn’t travel -, I realized that I was much more fixated on repeating the old (tried and true) than “open to new ideas”.  I realized that I missed my studio in Manhattan and that, despite being open to new ideas, what I really wanted was - my studio in Manhattan.  It also became clear that my identity is tied to being a piano teacher to a much larger degree than I had realized.  Without students, unable to teach, I felt like a fish out of water.  I felt bad for not taking advantage of the fact that I had all this time - time I didn’t have before when I was teaching all the time -, except I didn’t want all this time.  I wanted to teach.

My friend Linda tried to comfort me by saying that, many years ago when she moved from Manhattan to the KC area, she started her studio with three students and by the end of the first month, she had 36. I started, after weeks of advertising, with two siblings, and after two months, I still had - two siblings. Mark, patient saint that he is, kept telling me that “they’ll come”. Ever so slowly, I am now adding a family every couple of weeks.

We had discussed the possibility of a very slow start beforehand and knew that financially, we would be ok.  Spiritually though, and emotionally, it has been hard.  It took quite a bit of soul-searching before I came to realize, a few weeks ago, that while Linda may have had a full studio at the end of the first month I do remember her complaining about the difficulties she had with her new students: so many of them had had poor training prior to studying with her which turned teaching into damage control, and there were problems with the parents as well. 

My students, all five of them (beginners between the ages of 4 and 8), on the other hand, are simply wonderful.  We make good progress and the lessons are enjoyable.  They present me with pictures of pianos (labeled “peanoe”) and rainbows and flowers, one little girl can’t end the lesson without giving me a hug, I’ve already been nominated for the “Official 18th Kindest Kansas Citian” award, and I feel I have the full support of their parents. 

Still, there is the thought that on my own, without Mark’s support, I would not be able to make it.