Promises I Made When I Was 6 Years Old

Lin


"I'm no angel,
but does that mean that I won't fly"
No Angel by Dido
When I was 6, I made certain promises to myself.

I wanted to play the clarinet. Not just the clarinet, but music...I wanted to play music.

My cousin, Philip, played the piano. I can still remember hearing him play the scales up and down. His feet would move with the beat of music; tapping the beat on the floor, keeping a silent rhythm going in his head. Faster and faster until the sounds blurred into an acceptable rhythm. My eyes would just catch his hands as they nimbly picked ivory and ebony keys.

That's what I wanted. To make magic flow from my fingertips and into the air. To make someone's heart palpitate with the beauty flowing out of my hands.

My only objection to the piano was its cumbersome size. You could take it nowhere. It was a prisoner to its grandness so I settled for the less grand but no less beautiful clarinet.

I still remember my father asking if I was serious about learning to play an instrument. At the time, I believed it was what I wanted. Little did I know, my heart already had other plans. He told me to be serious in my lessons, to practice. That is what I desperately wanted, to be as serious and studious as he was. I wanted to be a miniature replication of my father. Thus started a long line of promises to myself and who I would turn out to be.

When I was 15 years old, I tried out for my high school's baseball team. My goal was to wear the grey pin-striped uniform with the black jersey and lead my team to victory. Much like everything else in my life, I accomplished my goal. I played until my senior year.

I thought I was happy. Even now, I believe a small part of me was. But I still felt a tugging in my heart as I played 2nd base. I think I knew then I wanted to be more than a bystander in history. I wanted to be more. I wanted to impress my father. But much like everything in life, we have to grow into this knowledge.

I studied. Hard. When I graduated, I was the salutatorian. I was accepted into Princeton. I knew what I wanted to be: a lawyer, just like my father.

I remember the excitement I felt as I nervously opened the white envelope with the orange Princeton stamp on the outside. My father sat in his chair as my mother stood beside me, urging me silently to take the letter out of its package. I read the words that ended up changing my life forever: "We are happy to inform you...." My father nodded gruffly as my mother and I yelled joyfully. But I wasn't disappointed. My father had faith in me. He knew what I was capable of doing and this acceptance letter only confirmed his thoughts.

When I was 25 years old, I met Josh Lyman. I can look back now and say we were meant to be best friends but at the time, it was not so obvious. We came from different worlds. I was from southern California. Josh was from Connecticut. I was Protestant. Josh was Jewish. I was neat and Josh was rumpled. The only things we had in common with one another were we both went to Ivy League schools and our fathers were both lawyers.

We worked as interns at Reese, Collins, and Thomason one summer. I worked in the corporate sector while Josh moved through the criminal sector. I could tell then that Josh's heart wasn't in what he was doing. He often told me he was going to pack up for D.C. as soon as he received his degree. Unfortunately, I had no real clue as to what I wanted to do. Being a politician didn't exactly pique my interest so I continued in what had become second nature to me, I worked in corporate America, doing legal work for some of the top businesses in the United States.

I was good at my job. I was on the way to somewhere. I was going to get married. Have babies. Make money. I was going to gain the respect of my father. Not just of a father to a son, but from a man to another man. That was until Josh Lyman knocked on the window one afternoon, rain dripping off of his coat, puddling on our immaculate floor.

Josh always did have a bad poker face.

A new world was built before my very eyes.

I am now 35 and my only promise for today is to write the best damned speech I can so I can get out of the office at a decent hour.

Once, I had my entire life planned in a schedule book. I knew exactly what I was going to do and when. Every year, every age, every season was blocked off for something new in my life. Now, my only promise to myself is to make it through each day. To do the best I can, to be the best I can.

I have no grandeur of illusion concerning my father any longer. I have discovered what others already knew: there are no role models in life, so we end up groping endlessly in the dark for our childhood dream of the person we want to imitate.

The man I tried so hard to gain the respect of, to be like, I have found is just a man. A man who happens to be my father. The knowledge of his 28-year affair nearly tore me apart. Everything I knew in my world was shattered. At some point, all the children who are searching for acceptance from their parents are going to learn their parents are people. People who constantly make mistakes but still have the ability to make the sun rise in the east and set in the west. This is what makes our parents special in our eyes. They control our entire world, our destinies, until we grow up and find out these demigods are people too.

So now my only promise can be only to be myself.

"I'm no angel,
but please don't think that I won't try and try
I'm no angel,
but does that mean that I can't live my life
I'm no angel,
but please don't think that I can't cry
I'm no angel,
but does that mean that I won't fly"
No Angel by Dido
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