My violin teacher has about 50 students. Most are children, but several are adult beginners. She is Generation X; I am trailing-edge baby boom. She is the disciplined offspring of rural Minnesota hippies; I am the restless daughter of the cautious Silent Generation. We share a love of Bach.

It is our first lesson. She places neon-colored tape strips on my poor fiddle to guide my fingers to the notes. Then, with a green felt-tip pen, she draws an X near the first knuckle of my index finger to indicate where the violin's neck should rest against my left hand.

Aside from singing in school choirs, I have no musical background. I cannot even read music. The only way to learn is to give myself over completely, with a pure and open mind. I will trust, she will mold. I am clay.

She asks about my goals and I tell her my dreams. The Mendelssohn violin concerto, the Beethoven Romance in F, the string music of Bach, Boccherini, Haydn, Vivaldi, Handel - I want to play it all. I wish to be borne aloft by exhilarating rhythms and patterns; take wing with fiddle and bow, glide over the treetops, catch an updraft, and soar above the clouds.

"I just want to play well," I say, finally. She does not laugh at any of this. Still, Mendelssohn must wait until I master "The Happy Farmer" and "The Two Grenadiers."

A certain athleticism is required for playing the violin. She sizes me up physically. She examines my hands, approves of the length of my fingers. I am Paganini. She asks me to move my arms so she may gauge my flexibility. I give her graceful sweep of the arms to the east, west, and north. Ten years of childhood ballet lessons, I explain. I am Anna Pavlova.

Violin love is not rational. Violin love is an infatuation, an obsession. The instrument is bewitching and intoxicating one moment, sullen and reticent the next. It is responsive, sensitive to every mood. I do not understand the violin, but I adore it. When I am away, I cannot wait to be with it again. I go to it like a lover, never knowing whether it will spurn me or sing for me. Though its shape is unmistakably feminine, I think of my instrument as masculine. Its voice in the lower register is as satisfying as hearty winter soup. Bass and baritone, beef and barley. Its flame-maple back ripples in 3-D beneath the varnish like fine shoulder muscles under warm skin. I wish to race my fingers lightly up and down its sleek neck.

Music is water, essential and basic. The bow must break the string's tension like a water strider insect breaks the surface of a calm summer lake, my teacher explains. But there are maddening days when the fingers are leaden and slow, the bow hand too fast. "Concentrate on enjoying the sound of each note," she says. "Try to be more Zen-like." No one would ever describe me as Zen-like, but I resolve to try. I am the Dalai Lama.

One of my work colleagues has a 7-year-old Suzuki kid. We are at roughly the same place in the program. One day I visit their house to practice with the daughter, who is having difficulty with a variation on "Perpetual Motion." As I play the piece once through for her, I become aware that my little fiddle friend has flopped onto the floor and rolled under the dining room table. Adult musicians rarely do this. But being on the floor must help one think more clearly, because when I finish, she jumps up, grabs her tiny fiddle, and successfully plays the troublesome piece. Then I get to meet her hamster.

The four-month mark. My teacher removes the neon green tape. It is a rite of passage; time to remove the training wheels. For the first week, my fingers struggle to find their way again. I worry about running up against my limitations. My brain is a hard-hat area. "We are building nerve pathways," my teacher says, adjusting my fingers on bow and strings. "You'll get it."

I stray from the program. A friend gives me the soundtrack to the PBS series The Civil War and suggests I try playing "Ashoken Farewell." It is lovely. I fool around long enough to figure it out. The teacher professes herself "blown away" when I attempt it for her one day. "You're very musical. That's difficult to teach," she says. "You know, you could play in a community orchestra at some point."

An inner critic scoffs and whispers that I should not quit my real job. Good teachers are the antidote to inner critics.

I am playing Bach and Handel, and will soon tackle minuets by Beethoven and Boccherini. And though there are finger positions at the end of "Ashoken Farewell" that are still beyond me, I am close to playing the song all the way through. On a lark, I buy the sheet music for the Beethoven Romance in F, which I cannot play. It is a sweet and tender little carrot for my horsehair stick. I find the first note. It is an F natural. A journey of a thousand measures begins with a single F.

I am the girl under the table with unlimited potential.

I await my wings.

This article appeared as "Learning to Fly" in the September 1997 issue of Minnesota Monthly. Copyright Minnesota Monthly.