August, 2006: Late to piano lessons

We’ve come rather late to music lessons. I’m not a musical person myself, and while my husband had years of piano lessons, I’m the one who generally scans the recreation department booklet for summer and after-school activities, signs the kids up and carts them to and fro. With soccer, baseball, swim lessons and an endless parade of birthday parties, I thought our plate was full enough, and I didn’t pursue music. It wasn’t even a conscious choice, completely. It was an idea that fell off my radar. (And if truth be told, after it fell off, it was probably run over by the minivan as I backed out of the driveway to yet one more sports practice.)

            Last summer, though, we moved in across the street from Hy Pitt, a retired man with a gregarious personality and strong opinions.

            “Your children should be taking piano lessons,” he told me one day.

I told him if he could work it out for me that I wouldn’t have to drive them one more place, I would be happy to sign them up.

            So it came to be that Jacob and Liam are receiving weekly piano lessons from 80-something Hy Pitt. Shortly after the boys started their lessons, Bill’s parents decided their piano would get more use at our house than at theirs.

            So now we have two boys who have each had approximately 30 piano lessons. And the theme of our home is Beethoven’s “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.”

            A relatively easy melody, “Joyful, Joyful” is the first song Jacob received from Hy that he had actually heard before. Hy uses either his or his children’s old piano songbooks to teach the boys, which means easy children’s songs popular in the fifties, when his children were young, or in the twenties, when he was young. Either way, our boys had never heard of the songs they were playing until “Joyful, Joyful.” Liam isn’t quite up to the “Joyful, Joyful,” level yet, and is still playing songs about random ducks or “crunchy flakes.” A child of the 70’s, I have never heard of them, either.

             The strange thing about Jacob’s piano habits, though, is he never sits down for a half-hour of practice. Instead, he grabs a few minutes here or there, and pounds out “Joyful, Joyful.” Often, he chooses to practice just as we are about to leave for an activity. Faster at finding and tying his shoes than his little brother and sister, he is ready to go a couple minutes before them. Transition times are not Jamie and Liam’s best periods of the day, so the scene becomes a strange mix of screaming and fussing to classical music.

            Joyful, joyful, we adore thee.

            “Liam, get your shoes on now!”

            God of mercy, Lord of love.

            “I can’t find them. They’re gone. Oh, Jamie has one! Give that back!”  

            Hearts unfold like flowers before thee.

            “Jamie, give Liam his shoe, please.”

            “NO!”

            Opening to their sun, above.

            Eventually, all shoes are on the correct children, and “Joyful” is abandoned as we rush to another sports practice or something.

            Later in the day, Jacob will hit the piano again — at a different transition time — say, Jamie and Liam’s bedtime, which is forty-five minutes earlier than his. For whatever reason, my mind always picks up on the line he left off on last time he played. I guess this is helpful, as it provides a different background for the fussing.

            Melt the clouds of sin and sadness.

            “She walked into the bathroom WITHOUT KNOCKING!”

            Drive the dark of doubt away.

            “My toothbrush!”

            Giver of immortal gladness

            “No, that is MINE. I don’t want YOUR GERMS!”

            Fill us with the light of day.

            Sometimes, I notice that if Jamie and Liam’s argument escalates, Jacob plays faster. It’s all Bill and I can do to get the two little ones in bed before they are launched into orbit by sheer emotion, and I worry that Jacob could actually break the piano by playing too hard and too fast. 

            Every so often, though, when all things align, Liam and Jamie have a transitional moment that gives me a glimpse of hope. Jacob’s playing slows, becomes beautiful, and I am so thankful that when I backed over the potential for music lessons, I did not crush them completely.

            Thou art giving

            “Goodnight, Jamie. Could I have a hug?”

            And forgiving.

            “I love you, Liam.”

            Ever blessing

            “I love you, too.”

            Ever blest.

            Ever blessed, indeed. Not because things are always joyful, joyful. But because every once in awhile, hearts do unfold.

July, 2006: Liam is Catholic

Liam, our seven-year-old, is all about being Catholic. Having recently received his First Communion, he is coming off a school year where discussion of the sacraments and Catholicism were front and center most of the time.

            Interestingly, Liam often uses “Catholic” the way many people use the word “Christian,” as a way to describe a person acting in a compassionate way. The first time I noticed it was a couple of weeks ago, when he and I were walking to his little league game. About a half block from the field, we encountered a little girl who was crying because she couldn’t find her mom. I asked the girl a few questions and then helped her locate her mother, who had just run to the car to grab her sunglasses. When we were out of earshot of the little girl, Liam turned to me.

            “Wow, Mom, that was really Catholic of you,” he said. “That girl stopped crying when she saw her mom. You helped her to stop crying.”

            I thanked Liam, and wondered if I should address the fact that what I did really wasn’t specifically Catholic, or even Christian. It was just the right thing to do — the thing that almost any adult, regardless of their faith, or lack of faith, would do in a similar circumstance.

            But I didn’t say anything. While helping the girl wasn’t specifically a Catholic action, it was in its own small way, in keeping with Catholic values. I decided I had plenty of opportunity to correct Liam for the many other things he says that really are wrong (most to his little sister or older brother) and I should to let this one go.

            But in the next few weeks, I noticed “Catholic: The Adjective” cropping up quite a bit in Liam’s day-to-day speech.

            “Jamie, thanks for sharing your chips with me. That’s very Catholic of you.”

            “That cartoon has people fighting. It doesn’t seem very Catholic.”

            “Mrs. Doerr smiles all the time. She is really Catholic.”

            Every time I hear Liam saying something like this, it’s jarring. On one hand, I feel that Liam is exactly right. TV shows with violence aren’t in keeping with Catholic values, but sharing and smiling are. If Liam could grow up associating being a Catholic with how people should be acting in their day-to-day life, Catholicism will have done its job. Without understanding what he’s saying, Liam is right to assert that to be Catholic should be synonymous with being very good. Being a good Catholic so much bigger than just noting the rules that make Catholicism different than other Christian religions. Too often, when I hear someone described as “very Catholic” or “a good Catholic” it relates to only one thing— the many children in the family. If we truly look at the teachings of the Catholic church, however — teachings on poverty and social justice along with Humane Vitae — we find that being “very Catholic” can look a lot of different ways, but all of them will somehow involve reaching out to others.

            The thing I don’t want for Liam, though, is for him to grow up thinking that Catholics have cornered the market on the truth. While right now, due to his Catholic school and Catholic extended family, he has very limited experience with non-Catholics, we are working on broadening his horizons. I went to a funeral of a friend’s grandmother a few days ago, and left the order of worship on the table.

            “Christ Episcopal Church,” he read, sounding out Episcopal syllable by syllable. He paused. “Do people who are Episcopal believe in God?”

            I laughed, thinking of the service, where the only thing different than the Catholic Mass seemed to be that we knelt to receive Communion. It was a good opportunity to teach Liam about the many Christian faiths. This led to a discussion about the many Orthodox Jews in our neighborhood and how, while they do not believe Jesus is the messiah, they and we share the same belief in God.

            That night, when I was tucking Liam in bed, we said prayers together. He had a long list — the school secretary who has cancer, his great uncles, his previous foster sister, and Bill, who was finishing his eighth grade report cards that night. After Liam finished and I kissed him goodnight, he smiled at me in the darkness.

            “I love being Catholic,” he said. “Everything about it is right. Not that the other religions are wrong. But I love being Catholic.”

            I closed the door, feeling that Liam put into words my own belief about Catholicism. There’s a piece of the truth here. And saying there is truth here does not diminish the truth that can be found in other religions. But this is what I have. And like, Liam, this is what I love. 

            

July, 2006 Am I blessed?

I love each of my children so much that the thought of losing any one of them can bring on a physical reaction.  Last night, a story of a little boy dying in a car accident made the news, and my mind, just for a moment, allowed that child to become my child.  Just for a moment, it was Jacob who died in that car accident.  The thought was so terrible that my breathing started coming in gulps, and I began to gag. I tried to pull away from the words and images, but my mind paid no heed. It went to that “what if” place that, on most days, I am able to avoid visiting. As I tried to screech my thoughts to a halt, my brain played out the scene, and I was dragged along, a reluctant viewer.

            Our children have had a very healthy time of it so far. In my eleven years of parenting, I’ve picked up prescription medicine for one of the kids a total of just three times. They’ve missed maybe ten days of school, combined, since our oldest, Jacob, started pre-school, eight years ago. We’ve had two broken bones so far, and three stitches. I don’t know if it’s because they’re coordinated or aren’t big risk-takers, but I doubt that we’ve gone through more than a couple boxes of Band-Aids in the past decade, not counting the ones Jamie wears just because she likes the way they look on her fingers. We are blessed with health, I would say, if the word “blessed” didn’t stick in my throat.

            I don’t know why my children are so healthy. While I can feel blessed, I’m hesitant to say we’re blessed, because it seems to imply that a parent with a seriously ill child isn’t so blessed. If God is giving my children their health, what does that say about all the other children who have chronic diseases or get injured — or killed — in accidents?

            God created a physical world for us, with physical limitations. Bones can break, organs can fail, cancer cells can divide. Hearts can stop. And while miracles do happen, it seems that more often, the course of an illness or injury is subject to the laws of nature and the limitations of medical science.

            My own faith hovers in that middle ground between nature’s roll of the dice and “everything happens for a reason.” The reason so many children are starving, after all, has nothing to do with God’s will for them and everything to do with an unequal distribution of wealth in the world.

            Perhaps good health itself is not the blessing. Perhaps the blessing of good health is that it affords us the time and energy to reach out to others.

            A good friend has a daughter with Type 1 diabetes. My friend has to spend hours each week managing her daughter’s care. She often gets up in the middle of the night to check her daughter’s sugar levels. She gives her daughter insulin injections at least four times a day. She is constantly aware of exactly when her daughter needs to eat and exercise, so her sugar levels don’t spike too high or dip too low.

            None of my children are diabetic, and because of this, I have many hours each week “free” that my friend does not have. It is not enough simply be thankful for my healthy kids and move on. It’s not enough to label them blessed.

If, as Jesus told the parents of the blind man, their son’s blindness was not God’s punishment for his sins or their sins, but rather a way to display the work of God in his life, so too, must parents of healthy children realize their children’s health is a way to display the work of God. With less to worry about in our own families, we are called to take that saved time and energy to concern ourselves with those who need us.

Statistics show that the lower an income a family has, the bigger percentage of that income they typically give to charity. So while the very wealthy often give the biggest donations in terms of actual amounts of money, it is the middle class and the poor who give the larger slice of their own family dollars.

I have seen the same to often be true in terms of families struggling with an illness. My friend with the diabetic daughter, for example, will be the first to make a casserole or pot of soup for a household with a new baby or a sick family member.

It is often the doing without — whether it’s money or health — that helps us look with empathy toward others also doing without.

So maybe it is when our own road is easiest— when it’s difficult to imagine the hardships that some families must go through— that we most need prayer. During these smooth-sailing times, maybe we need to go to God, not to simply give thanks for our blessings, but to ask, “What now? What would you like me to do?”

The answer we receive will be the real blessing.

June, 2006 Startling growth

All the trees outside my window have leaves today. Full leaves, not just buds. I sit at this desk every day, but last time I remember looking out the window, the trees had only the tiniest buds. I remember thinking that spring comes so late to Wisconsin. I remember staring out the window, between paragraphs, wondering when the leaves would arrive. And then today, I look out, and boom — leafy trees. Green everywhere. Looking out the window, I am so happy to see the greenness and the bright pink of the crabapple tree, but I wonder when it happened. I know the buds didn’t become leaves overnight. Why didn’t I take note as the buds grew? Did I go weeks without looking out the window or did I look without seeing? Why do the leaves appearing seem sudden to me, instead of gradual, as I know was the reality?

            I fear the same thing is happening to my children. Jamie goes on the potty now.  Her diaper pail has been empty for how long? Two weeks? Three? I honestly don’t know. One day she said she wanted to go on the potty, and each day after that, she stayed dry longer and longer. I bought her some underwear, knowing full well that she could be back in diapers the next day, but she wasn’t. She potty trained herself — my first child to do this. I had nothing to do with it, and because of that, I can’t say when it happened exactly. She is likely our youngest child, and I will probably never buy a pack of diapers again, until I buy them for our grandchildren. Yet, at the time I bought my last pack of diapers, I had no idea it would be my last. It wasn’t even the biggest size.

            Liam is reading Harry Potter books. Wasn’t he just reading those easy chapter books last month? Or was it the month before? Where did Harry Potter come from? I guess, if I really thought about it, I would admit that I saw some Beverly Clearys in between the easy chapter books and the 300-page Harry Potter. But it still feels sudden. My little Liam, curled up on the couch with such a big book.

            Jacob is in contacts. He’s never worn glasses, but we took him to the eye doctor and it turned out he needed corrected vision. Apparently, age 11 is old enough for contacts. So now, as the kids get ready in the morning, I walk past the bathroom to see Jacob, index finger to his eye, putting in his contacts. Wasn’t I just brushing his teeth for him last week? It wasn’t last week, I remind myself. It was when he was three. But sometimes that feels like last week. And now he wears contacts.

            Growth is such a strange thing to witness as a parent. I eagerly await a stage of childhood to end so that my child is bigger and more capable, but then when it does finally end, I look back wistfully at what used to be. I look at picture albums from two years past and am amazed at how young my children look.

            I am still learning how to appreciate the moment — to really live in the moment as a parent and experience who my children are right now. It’s the only way I know of to slow down time.

Once, when I was about 11, we had a snow day. The snow was so deep and drifted so high that no cars could pass in front of our house. I pulled on my jacket and snow pants, and went out in the early morning, before anyone had a chance to disturb the snow. I lay in a drift in the front of our house and looked up at the sky. I had never heard it so silent outside before. As I lay there, I thought to myself, “I will never forget this. I will never forget how the sky looks and how quiet it is.” I was completely present to the cold air, the gray sky, and the soft snow. I experienced a peace that I had not known before. And I never forgot that moment. That memory of lying outside in the snow is as clear to me today as it was the day after it happened. But it is so difficult to make a conscious decision to remember something— as much as we love our children, it is so hard to be completely present to them and nothing else. Yet without regularly taking time to give them our complete presence, we risk being startled with their growth. We risk having years of their life that are, at best, a hazy memory.

The reason, after all, that I didn’t see the buds change to leaves outside of my office window is that I wasn’t attentive to the buds. I had other things to do — articles to write, e-mails to send, and bills to pay. These were necessary things, and I don’t regret missing watching the buds change in order to do them. I know, too, that there are necessary things to get done as my children grow, and it would not be good for them — or for me — to be focused on my children every second of the day. But amid all the necessary things to get done, there are also some things that can be put aside. There are snowdrift opportunities being offered to me each week. Moments that I could remember for a lifetime, if only I’d choose to be present to them, and nothing else. And I pray I may put aside the unnecessary so as to be present to my children. So as not to spend my life wondering how the buds became leaves.