Beethoven doesn't have braces!

"Beethoven doesn't have braces!"

That's what James said this morning as Elise dressed as Ludwig von Beethoven for a school presentation. Elise was undeterred; she giggled at her reflection and said, "I look just like him! Except I'm smaller and my hair is a different color." {More giggles.} How she knew this hair fact I don't know, it's not like Beethoven's legacy includes color photographs.

Elise has been working all month on her Beethoven biography. I was glad to see her so giddy about going to school today and giving her speech. That spark, that precious happiness, that giggle -- all have been overshadowed lately by her moodiness. Jeff and I both told Elise last week we couldn't deal with her whining ANYMORE. This shift was welcome.

I don't know why Elise chose Beethoven. Maybe the idea was subliminal, borne of the master's sheet music covering our piano stand for weeks, his melodies drifting through the stereo nonstop as I supplemented my practicing. Rifling through an instruction book I'd left out, Elise discovered a version of "Für Elise" and decided she wanted to do that for our piano recital. I mean, come on! A song with your own name! Who wouldn't want to? Only problem, the recital was one week away. I wasn't sure she could do it, given that it was levels above her other pieces, but she did play it -- memorized, and with feeling.

"Didn't you play this song the day I was born?" she asked me. It's true. After passing my due date (sigh) I was scheduled to be induced. The other children were at Grandma's, the house was in order ... the hospital didn't have room for me until the afternoon. I frittered away the time at the piano. The name Elise was one of two we'd picked in preparation for meeting our daughter.

It fit.

(Lest you think we were trying to cram in some last-minute in-utero culture, we surely negated that by watching "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" while I labored.)

I'm thrilled Elise is becoming a Beethoven fan. I'm a huge one. I marvel the way his music makes my heart feel in turns vulnerable and ebullient. That Beethoven could still compose after becoming deaf amazes me all the more. I think of him, oblivious to the audience's applause until someone turned him around to see. That makes me sad.

During his lifetime Beethoven was constantly compared to Mozart, whose quick, prolific output he could not match. Elise pointed out in her speech that some of Beethoven's works took years and years to compose, but "with a lot of hard work he finally did it. His students also learned to work hard from his example."

And that, she concluded, is a contribution as great as his music.

The brooding, the intensity, THE HAIR!

P.S. In telling me some of her Beethoven facts prior to her speech, Elise pronounced the word sonata "SAUNA-TAY." {Giggle.}