Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua [71]
“Oh no!” Elizabeth said. “That’s too bad. I remember she was so gifted. She inspired my two little ones.”
“It was her decision,” I heard myself saying. “It was too much of a time commitment. You know how thirteen-year-olds are.” What a Western parent I’ve become, I thought to myself. What a failure.
But I kept my word. I let Lulu play tennis as she pleased, at her own pace, making her own decisions. I remember the first time she signed herself up for a Novice USTA tournament. She came back in a good mood, visibly charged with adrenaline.
“How did you do?” I asked.
“Oh, I lost—but it was my first tournament, and my strategy was all wrong.”
“What was the score?”
“Love-six, love-six,” Lulu said. “But the girl I played was really good.”
If she’s so good, why is she playing in a Novice tournament? I thought darkly to myself, but aloud I said, “Bill Clinton recently told someYale students that you can only be really great at something if you love it. So it’s good that you love tennis.”
But just because you love something, I added to myself, doesn’t mean you’ll ever be great. Not if you don’t work. Most people stink at the things they love.
34
The Ending
Lulu on court
We recently hosted a formal dinner at our home for judges from all over the world. One of the most humbling things about being a Yale law professor is that you get to meet some awe-inspiring figures—some of the greatest jurists of the day. For ten years now, Yale’s global constitutionalism seminar has brought in supreme court justices from dozens of countries, including the United States.
For entertainment, we invited Sophia’s piano professor, Wei-Yi Yang, to perform part of the program he was preparing for Yale’s famous Horowitz Piano Series. Wei-Yi generously suggested that his young pupil Sophia perform as well. For fun, teacher and student could also play a duet together: “En Bateau” from Debussy’s Petite Suite.
I was incredibly excited and nervous about the idea and nurturingly said to Sophia, “Don’t blow this. Everything turns on your performance. The justices aren’t coming to New Haven to hear a high school talent show. If you’re not over-the-top perfect we’ll have insulted them. Now go to the piano and don’t leave it.” I guess there’s still a bit of the Chinese mother in me.
The next few weeks were like a replay of the run-up to Carnegie Hall, except that now Sophia did almost all her practicing herself. As in the past, I immersed myself in her pieces—Saint-Saëns’s Allegro Appassionato and a polonaise and Fantaisie Impromptu by Chopin—but the truth was that Sophia barely needed me anymore. She knew exactly what she had to do, and only occasionally would I yell out a critique from the kitchen or upstairs. Meanwhile, Jed and I had all our living room furniture moved out except the piano. I scrubbed the floor myself, and we rented chairs for fifty people.
The evening of the performance Sophia wore a red dress, and as she walked in to take her opening bow, panic seized me. I was practically frozen during the polonaise. I couldn’t enjoy the Saint-Saëns either, even though Sophia played it brilliantly. That piece is meant to be sheer virtuosic entertainment, and I was too tense to be entertained. Could Sophia keep her runs sparkling and clean? Had she overpracticed, and would her hands give out? I had to force myself not to rock and back forth and hum robotically, which is what I usually do when the girls perform a difficult piece.
But when Sophia played her last piece, Chopin’s Fantaisie Impromptu, everything changed. For some reason, the tension in me dissipated, the lockjaw released, and all I could think was, She owns this piece. When she got up to take her bow, a radiant smile on her face, I thought, That’s my girl—she’s happy; the music is making her happy. Right then I knew that it had all been worth it.
Sophia received three ovations, and afterward the justices—including many I’ve idolized for years—were effusive in