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chicatingFrom BTVS
The power isn’t the only thing that lets Tara know she’s different, though she is very careful to float flowers and herbs under her mother’s protective and affectionate eye. Later on, in the sixth grade, she wonders if it’s the same power or a different one that makes her flutter with something besides envy when pretty, blonde, Charlotte Crowe has a cousin that sent her an expensive bathing suit from Florida. Char was always something to look at, but now Tara feels something drop out of the pit of her stomach that she doesn’t think the other girls notice. She is too shy to ask, though, even though they used to be close in the early grades, being such a small class. Other students don’t notice Tara in school, but her teachers have sometimes: The careful yet beautiful drawings in her notebooks, too meticulous to be called doodles, too lightly regarded by their artist to appear in the school magazine or Culture Night.
Tara’s father thinks any talk of her being gifted and talented is demonic, too, and the polite wall of resistance Tara herself puts up when asked to do a solo sometimes causes Mrs. Magnuson,choir instructor to three schools in their district, to lose more sleep than all the miles she puts on her Ford Escort. “You have a gift,” the teacher prods, trying to be gentle, but she had a lot of voice lessons and is twice Tara’s age and has still never managed the clear, pure sound that comes from Tara McClay’s mouth. “a God-given gift. It would be a sin not to use it.”
“That’s not what my father says,”Tara shrinks into herself again.
“Fathers don’t know everything,” Mrs. Magnuson said, and Tara looked delighted. The choir instructor knew better than to push, though. Sometimes parents moved rather than answer questions about their kids, even ones about their talents. Over the years, she wondered if she’d done the right thing.
The power isn’t the only thing that lets Tara know she’s different, though she is very careful to float flowers and herbs under her mother’s protective and affectionate eye. Later on, in the sixth grade, she wonders if it’s the same power or a different one that makes her flutter with something besides envy when pretty, blonde, Charlotte Crowe has a cousin that sent her an expensive bathing suit from Florida. Char was always something to look at, but now Tara feels something drop out of the pit of her stomach that she doesn’t think the other girls notice. She is too shy to ask, though, even though they used to be close in the early grades, being such a small class. Other students don’t notice Tara in school, but her teachers have sometimes: The careful yet beautiful drawings in her notebooks, too meticulous to be called doodles, too lightly regarded by their artist to appear in the school magazine or Culture Night.
Tara’s father thinks any talk of her being gifted and talented is demonic, too, and the polite wall of resistance Tara herself puts up when asked to do a solo sometimes causes Mrs. Magnuson,choir instructor to three schools in their district, to lose more sleep than all the miles she puts on her Ford Escort. “You have a gift,” the teacher prods, trying to be gentle, but she had a lot of voice lessons and is twice Tara’s age and has still never managed the clear, pure sound that comes from Tara McClay’s mouth. “a God-given gift. It would be a sin not to use it.”
“That’s not what my father says,”Tara shrinks into herself again.
“Fathers don’t know everything,” Mrs. Magnuson said, and Tara looked delighted. The choir instructor knew better than to push, though. Sometimes parents moved rather than answer questions about their kids, even ones about their talents. Over the years, she wondered if she’d done the right thing.
Re: Oh my goodness
Date: 2023-06-15 11:49 pm (UTC)Re: Oh my goodness
Date: 2023-06-16 12:08 am (UTC)I was glad to meet her, and wherever she is and whatever she's doing, I hope she's thriving.
Re: Oh my goodness
Date: 2023-06-16 01:38 am (UTC)