Those were the good old days. Four decades ago I was a happy school girl in Michigan, well liked and with numerous girlfriends. Winter was especially fun, with all the sledding and ice skating. We were cheery and helpful to one another, in class as well as on the playground. Occasionally it took several of us, all holding on to the waist of the girl in front and pulling with all our might, to get someone’s boots off after recess. I was rarely alone. There were girlfriends to walk to school with, girlfriends to play with at recess and after school. There were also girlfriends ready to cut me down anytime I showed signs of liking myself a little too much.

They called it being “stuck-up.” I was never a part of the don’t-be-stuck-up schoolgirl police, and it irked me that they would pick on things of little significance. I suspect that this has been going on since time immemorial, generations of girls socializing each other to their view of what is right and proper behavior. Women of my grandmother’s generation called it being “uppity,” a word that means more than inflated self-esteem and snobbishness. It also means being too self-assertive and not deferential enough. So how does one draw the line between self-esteem and inflated self-esteem? I grew up with the phrase “nobody likes a showoff” running through my head. Now I am beginning to wonder if I would have been more successful in my career if I had not paid quite so much attention to what my friends in elementary school said. It was not until the age of 14 that I decided to stop worrying about what other people thought of me, but by then it was too late. The damage had already been done.

At times, my expectations for myself have not been high enough. My father was a sociologist. Once he suggested that my lack of success in high school geometry might have something to do with negative socialization: an expectation of teachers that girls were not as good at math as boys. I think he was right about that, just as he was probably right about the women in the Sacramento Symphony League. I had just performed a short piano recital for them, and my father said that, most likely they thought of me as a “beautiful example of accomplished young womanhood” rather than as the serious musician that I was. The fact that he took me seriously, admired my accomplishments, and bragged about me to anyone who would listen went a long way. I thought that having an excellent upbringing by smart, educated parents, along with a dose of healthy self-esteem, would be enough. I was wrong.

For most of my life I have bounced back and forth between being too outspoken of my accomplishments and not outspoken enough. It feels like trying on pants and never finding a pair that fits right. It took half a century for me to realize that my problem was not what other people thought about me, but what I thought about myself. In my heart of hearts I had been downplaying myself for most of my life. One day, while surfing on the internet, I discovered the “Annual Festival of New Organ Music.” It seemed strange that, although I had been performing and composing organ music for decades, I had never composed an organ recital piece. Not only that, but since college I had not composed any modern music. I was flabbergasted when I tried it and succeeded. My organ composition was premiered in London last November.

None of us know what we are capable of until we try, and a willingness to try new things goes a long way. So does an expectation of success. As I go gracefully into my fifties, my first expectation is that my family history of longevity will serve me well. No matter what happens, I plan to spend the second half of my life thinking my way towards success. The first half was wonderful, interesting, and fulfilling. I can’t wait to see what the second half will bring.