Originally published in LLL US Western Division’s Connections #83, May/June 1999
I remember the moment so well. I was 12 years old, and I was sitting on our piano bench in my California home. Mr. Scott, the piano teacher, had just arrived. He started talking about all these little black dots on the sheets propped up on our old upright piano. I told him I didn’t know what they were. “How could you not know what this music is, Kathy!†he said, astonished. “Your parents are both musicians! You really can’t read music!?†I really couldn’t read music.
My mother majored in music education, my father was a composer, my uncle played in a jazz band, my brothers played in their school bands, and my grandfather was a conductor of a big-city orchestra. I felt I had just let down several generations of my family.
I knew music was important and that I enjoyed singing. I enjoyed listening to my uncle’s bass, my grandfather practicing his violin, and I liked watching my dad work on orchestral transcriptions at our kitchen table. I just didn’t understand about half notes and rests and time signatures and staff lines. Fighting back tears, I kept on with that first lesson filled with shame and remorse.
I think about that now as my sons are growing up and will be leaving home in several years. I think about my friends whose daughters and sons are getting married and may be starting families soon. Will these daughters and sons know all about breastfeeding just because their mothers are La Leche League Leaders?
Even the sons and daughters of Leaders will need basic information and support for their decision to nurse their babies. My sons may listen every once in a while to bits and pieces of my phone helping calls, but they don’t attend Series Meetings anymore. They don’t read NEW BEGINNINGS, and they don’t ask me questions about breastfeeding. They—and their wives—will need information and support just as I did, the daughter of a woman who didn’t breastfeed.
There will always be a need for La Leche League—even for our children. They may know that nursing a baby is important and valued by their own families, but they will still benefit from the basic information, encouragement through difficulties, and the mother-to-mother support that an organization like ours can give.
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