Went to my mom's for dinner tonight, where I met my brother's new girlfriend. I am extremely happy for him, and relieved, to see that he's finally found a girl who's a real musician, not just an immature music student. He's dated a couple of the latter, and they always wound up resenting his work schedule and his need for practice time, figuring that because he doesn't have a job in a building outside of his home that demands his presence for a set number of hours every day, that he was therefore a man of leisure with no real demands on his time other than a girlfriend. These girls were (and still are) just biding their time in school, practicing not out of a passion for their instrument but to prepare for an upcoming exam or recital: they knew nothing of music as a vocation, and they planned, secretly, often unbeknownst to any including themselves, to pack away their instruments when they got their diplomas framed. They were lost and uncertain, about themselves, their futures, and what they were doing with my brother. I never disliked them, but neither did I feel especially attached to them. When the breakups happened, the only feelings I harboured with any depth concerned my brother's hurt.

This girl I met tonight, she's the first girl he's brought around whom my family was comfortable not only around, but more importantly, with. She's confident and present in a way his previous girlfriends were not. She's funny and direct. And the most promising thing of all, she and my brother seem to share in a world that he used to enter unaccompanied--that is, they talk to each other the way mature musicians do, sidestepping awe and talk of virtuosity--things that bog down laypersons when they speak of art--to pick at esoteric matters of technique and taste like chefs in a gourmet kitchen. If they can each remember to make time for one another, I can see them being together a very long time.