(12/2018) It was beautiful. Although it was roughly seven years ago, I remember it like it was yesterday. I unzipped the brown case and pulled aside the covering cloth to reveal the most beautiful instrument I had ever seen. A soft, rosy brass lacquered the outside, the valves topped with milky white pearls, the tone smooth and mellow – not too harsh, not too thin. Although it was owned before it came to me, there was something about this instrument that seemed to fit me. This trumpet, in a way even I can’t explain, was immediately mine.

The trumpet was a gift to me from my mother just before my sixteenth birthday. A teacher at my high school was selling his, as the trumpet had gone unused for too long to justify keeping. My music teacher encouraged me to look at it; it was time, he said, that I move past my beat-up Jupiter student model. I had outgrown it, and it was time to remove the musical training wheels at last. I don’t know what inspired my mother to purchase the horn. What person in her right mind would buy something as expensive as a professional model trumpet for what was, as far as she could have known, a teenage hobby, as likely to change as a haircut? She must have known, before even I did, that music, to me, was more than a passing phase.

I will be forever grateful for the gift she gave me that day. It is a rare sort of gift—one that I have used nearly every day (sometimes multiple times each day) for seven years and counting. It is a gift that, each day, challenges me to be better, to work harder, to understand it a little more, one step at a time. Although I quickly outgrew my first trumpet, the student model, I fear I will never grow into the one I have now. As soon as I master one skill, another stares me down, untamed. Yes you can play it, but can you play it faster? Can you give it a twist the audience won’t expect? Can you make it sound beautiful? Music, I have learned, is about much more than playing the right notes at the right time. It is about giving life to the notes on the page that without you will never be heard. It is an art that requires a lifetime of dedication and constant work.

The trumpet, my daily companion and greatest adversary, is now a fixture that I cannot imagine my life without. It has introduced me to all of my closest friends, and is at the heart of all of my dearest memories. It has taken me to Orlando to perform in parades at theme parks, to Buffalo with the Mount Basketball team as they took on Villanova in the NCAA tournament, and the University of South Carolina for a three-day clinic. It has been by my side during weddings and funerals, along with fundraisers and formal concerts. It has introduced me to different cultures, inviting me to perform a Chinese oratorio with a bible church in Rockville, and a winter concert with the American Balalaika Symphony in Alexandria. I have built communities with my fellow musicians, and their friendship and inspiration have been a constant gift to me through every adventure.

If you told me those seven years ago, when I first played a note on my beautiful new trumpet, that I would be playing on it for seven more years, not to mention that I would earn a bachelor’s degree in music, I would have heartily laughed. That is part of what makes it such a great gift. It was not the type of gift that would give me a few days or even a few months of pleasure before being used up or forgotten. I didn’t even fully understand at the time how much such a gift could give. It is the type of gift that has allowed me to become a better person, a more disciplined, well-rounded, creative person. It has made me accustomed to my own many, many mistakes without losing the drive to get better, to practice more, to push harder all the time. It has forced me to become the type of person who shows up time and time again ready to fail until it is finally time to succeed (I am still waiting for that success by the way!).

My trumpet is the greatest gift I’ve ever been given because it has given me seven years and counting of joy. It has been the cause of countless hours of anxious practice, the sweat, blood and tears that led each time to the satisfaction that can only come from hard work and a lot of love. It has given me the gift of relationships, as I have been introduced to nearly all of my deepest friends through music in some way. It has stretched my brain, forcing me to speak in a new language, a new set of rules and codes, a new history to learn and theory to uncover.

I hope some day I will give a gift as special to someone else as the trumpet has been to me. I hope the gifts I give to others will encourage them to follow their passions, not only in the material things I may give them, but in the relationship we have. I hope I will be supportive to my friends and family in the future as mine have been to me. Perhaps even more beautiful than the trumpet she gave me seven years ago, are the countless concerts and performances my mom has traveled far to attend for the past ten years. I will never be able to repay her for a gift so incredible; all I can hope to do is play my heart out for her, and pass along the love she has always given so freely.

Merry Christmas to all! May the gifts you give and receive be filled with love this year!