The Live-streaming Winter Blues

Half a mile from our home, this intersection is the crossroads of the north and the south. Interstate 35 south goes to Austin, where you are forever twenty-five and the sun is always shining. North, well, it’s even colder, and spring comes even later. Bill’s folks are there. Hibernating. Waiting for cabin season when we bring smiles and food.

We were gifted tickets to the Minnesota Orchestra Friday night. The Firebird Suite. Live music rises from the covid ashes. What a treat to dress up and hear an amazing program.

A musical friend commented yesterday that one good thing that has come out the pandemic is the livestream. Agreed. Today Bill, Mary and I gathered round the kitchen table at 3:00 to watch Calvin perform on the University of Iowa School of Music Beethoven series. Dr. Nosikova’s project, the school is performing all 32 piano sonatas live in a series of Sunday concerts. Lucky for us, they are also live-streamed. We called Bill’s folks during intermission. They were watching on their computer as well. A bald eagle gave us a fly over out the dining room window somewhere in the third movement, representing my dad. And. . . Janel was there in the hall, listening in person, of course she took Calvin out for dinner after the recital. What else are grandmommies for?

With the livestream, you can have a meatloaf in the oven and wear your comfy jeans and eat m&ms during the show. You can have a fire in the fireplace. It’s like water for chocolate though, listening to a nine foot Steinway through the computer speakers—texting good luck and bravo instead of real applause and a post-performance hug. Still, it’s ever so much better than nothing.

Well friends, this is the time of winter in Minnesota when you have to be the most careful. S.A.D. It creeps up gradually. You wonder why you are feeling so blah and crabby. Why you can’t keep your hand out of the m&m jar. Why everything looks a little grey like the color has bled out.

Then you remember. Oh, yah, it’s February in Minnesota, don’t you know. Those of us who are not down hill skiers have not seen the sun in a month of Sundays. We haven’t seen green grass since October.

It’s good to have the seasons. I wouldn’t trade it. But. . . I might pencil in a couple weekends to Austin on the future empty nester’s but not yet snowbird’s calendar.

Next weekend we get to hear Mary on clarinet, live at Orchestra Hall with the Minnesota All-State Orchestra. We have to present our vaccine card, and probably a passport and social security number to get in, but we will be there, live and in person. She has a solo.

I’m thankful for it all. All the music, live and live-streamed. And all the concerts and workshops coming back.

It’s still awhile to spring, but I can’t complain. We do have a spring break trip planned to someplace warm. In between now and then there is a lot of work to do. There is teaching to do, workshops and teacher training classes to prepare for. Clarinet accompaniments to learn.

We have to keep our light bulbs plugged into the source. I couldn’t do it without my morning time. Thirty minutes before anyone else wakes up, my own little livestream, to secure my own oxygen mask with my journal, my Bible, and a pile of miscellaneous hard cover inspiration. It takes a lot of candle light to warm the Minnesota winter mornings. And a fancy cup of coffee.

We have to cut ourselves some slack. Leave the m&m jar lid closed loosely. Spring for the yellow tulips at Kowalski’s. Brew a second cup. As we round the corner of two years of covid, I’m thankful for my family, our home, my studio, dear friends, and yes, even the live-stream. I’m thankful that there is hope of normalcy. Till then, we keep walking in love, giving as much grace as possible to everyone on the path. Keep trying to let our lights shine.

If you are having the winter blues, hang in there. You are not alone. There is light ahead. If you had a peaceful weekend going to some concerts and watching some livestream with a fire in the fireplace, that’s okay too. Thanks for reading and I hope you have a good week. Spring is on the way.

Sara

Those Holiday Feelings

It’s that time of year. . .we get those holiday feelings. They start at Thanksgiving. We had a lovely, lovely Thanksgiving week. We got to see Sam, Janel and Calvin came, and we saw Bill’s folks and friends too! We started the season off strong with Beethoven’s 9th at Orchestra Hall. Listening to that fourth movement, with full orchestra, chorus and soloists, Beethoven’s cry to the universe, well. . . it makes a lot of our frustrations seem pretty petty. To me.

Janel and I had our traditional Christmas shopping day, and this time we got to have lunch in a galleria restaurant instead of covid takeout in the car. It was lovely. Traditions. Traditions. Those holiday feelings.

I pride myself on focusing on love and not fear. Perfect love casts out fear, or so the good book says. I work hard at not dwelling in the past nor worrying about the future. But, if there is a chink in the armor, it’s those holiday feelings.

Each Thanksgiving brings with it every Thanksgiving. Childhood trips to cold farmhouses in cold cars with cold feet. I’m singing carols with Susan on the dark drive home, Mama and Grandma waiting for us for leftovers in Eldridge. I’ve written it all before, rushing home from Friday’s Christmas shopping downtown, long before it was black friday, begging to get home in time to watch Rudolph on network television.

Then comes the college Thanksgivings. Epic road trips for 48 hours of family time. Five years of Thanksgiving night Texas dance hall gigs. Then marriage and our own littles— in Nisswa, and New Brighton and Eagle Lake. The Wednesdays of cooking, teaching, practicing for choir, packing and getting to church for the kids to sing. Road trips after choir rehearsals. Exhausted Thursdays, before I knew better. I mean, I kinda know better now.

Since 2019, Thanksgiving is waiting for Calvin. That first year was the hardest.

I was living on the memory go round, stuck in the notion that maybe the past was actually better, the four of us living under one roof. I forgot that while my mind can glorify just about any memory, that’s not a great place to stay for too long. I snapped out of it. Pretty much. . . I accepted the new normal. It actually took some divine intervention, which I already wrote about back then. Sometimes there are real angels in the felted wool decorations I hang on the tree.

Two years later, and now I have two juniors, one in high school and one in college. A new threat! That new normal of Calvin coming home for Thanksgiving with Janel, only has one more year. . . then God knows what he will be doing and Mary will be off as well. Heaven help me. I just got it figured out.

Moving on.

Each Christmas brings every Christmas. Those holiday feelings. Letting my mind take trips down memory lane with a just a little healthy nostalgia. Quelling the projection of future holidays that will be. . . DIFFERENT.

I’m holding the conflicting mindsets of making the holidays special, without making an idol of them. And holding space for that darker place that tells me that things will not stay the same. The people and circumstances in our lives will always be changing. Perhaps our fear of losing the people we love, could actually serve some greater purpose of breaking us out of the spell. We can appreciate this moment. This holiday. These circumstances. Be there now.

For better or for worse, I am a creature of habits and rituals. I probably write the same thing every year, my quest to be in the present moment. It’s just in my DNA to change the decorations on the bulletin board in my childhood room each month, from one holiday to the next. Now the bulletin board is my life, my home, the holiday calendar, the grocery list. Christmas recital pieces.

I’m so thankful for the Thanksgiving week we had. There was so much love and food, family and friends. I’m truly looking forward to advent and Christmas. I’m happy with the way things are RIGHT NOW. . . and when I’m being my best self, that perfect love, that casts out fear, tells me that it’s going to be okay, even when things change. There will always be those holiday feelings.

Lord, thank you for the gift of memories, and thank you for this year’s precious Thanksgiving. And keep us hopeful knowing that you have everything under control, the Alpha and the Omega, the cosmic cry of Beethoven’s universal gift for us. Let the most important holiday feeling we long for, be your peace, now and forever. Amen.

Cats and Construction

It might be too soon to talk about my day yesterday.

Let me start by telling you that Rosie is fine. She is here on the desk complaining that I am typing instead of petting her.

Yesterday was supposed to be the last day of stage two of our home renovation. The floor guys were putting the last coat of polyurethane on the new oak flooring in the upstairs hall, master bedroom and closets. I was leaving to run errands as they arrived. When I returned they were already finished and gone.

I went about my business, unloading groceries and preparing for an afternoon of teaching and an evening of chamber music. An hour and a half later I heard the meowing.

Yes, Rosie, with her long white fur and four furry paws, sweet little Rosie, was locked behind the upstairs hall door, also secured with an extra layer of plastic, zippers and duct tape, in there alone, with the fresh oil based polyurethane on the floor.

You can see two big problems here.

I scooped her up and tried to clean her feet with paper towels, but her paws were all glued tight and all the fur stuck to the pads in a big mat of dried gluey poly. I just held her for awhile, mind racing. . . I prayed, seeing her as God’s perfect white fury kitty. Then, after calling the vet, who referred me to Minnesota Pet Poison Control, whose web sight had nothing like my plight. . . I made what seemed to me like a life or death call.

I soaked eight cotton balls in mineral spirits and worked on each paw as long as she would let me. Then I took her to the kitchen sink and used the strongest non-toxic soap I could think of, Dawn dish soap, which is supposed to take grease out of your way, and washed her feet in the hottest water I thought she could stand. She was of course the devil incarnate, but I stayed the course, continuing to wash her feet until she could take no more. I wrapped her in a towel and continued to pray, hoping I had not made the situation worse, or further toxified her. She gave us a quite a scare all afternoon. At age 11 she is officially down to eight lives.

I don’t know if an ER vet could have done better, or would have taken a different course. I made the decision to keep her home and stuck with it. I do believe that Rosie has angelic characteristics and perhaps her fellow angels helped her out a little.

And then there is the second problem, hundred of kitty prints in the poly, tracing Rosie’s path from Mary’s room where she must have been hiding, to our room, to the master bathroom, back over to Mary’s bathroom and then down the hall to the door. She stopped back in Calvin’s room and rested on the sofa from our room, getting poly all over the arms and cushions. There may be other areas she explored in her confusion. It’s too soon to tell.

So, we will not be moving back into our upstairs Monday as planned. Tra la la, as I like to say.

I happen to think little cats prints all over the floor are a cute decorating idea, but the contractor and Bill? Not so much. I guess there will be some sanding and and another final coat. Did I mention that Bill was out of town?

And, I never really liked that sofa anyway.

I’ve been meaning to write a blog about cats and construction for a couple months, as we are into the fourth month here and the cats have become very friendly with the contractors. This was not what I had in mind.

Well, that’s my story. Thanks for reading it. All is well that ends well, or better yet, all will be well and all will be well and all will be made well.

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His and Hers and a Nice Long Break

Congrats to Mary on her week at Minnesota All-State Orchestra camp. She had a great week. There were like-minded kids, long rehearsals and sore chops. She got to play the first clarinet part on Prokofiev V. There were many exposed solos and she was super excited and challenged. Bill and I had to miss the concert on Saturday, because it was my own studio recital at the cabin. Calvin was able to attend and made a video for us. We will get to see the concert when the orchestra meets again in February and they get to perform at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. She seemed so high from the whole week. To me it was a reminder that when things are right, it’s easy. I didn’t say it isn’t a lot of work, but it’s the right kind of work and when you are with equally yoked kids, friendship comes naturally. She is definitely more focused on clarinet than on piano these days, and I’m fine with that. She is a lovely pianist and will keep her foot in the studio door, but she plans to continue woodwinds in college and that is where her heart is. I’m thankful that I married a woodwind guy who can help her. Bill keeps her horns tuned up, albeit with extra stops at Tenor Madness in Waterloo, and he keeps her in reeds. I don’t know from reeds. She starts her junior year at Eastview next week. We are hoping for as normal a year as possible. She is the clarinet section leader for the Eastview Marching Band and that’s keeping her busy and outside. I can’t wait to see the show!

We got the boy back to school. I actually had two trips to Iowa in four days. One for a family funeral. I was reminded of the bittersweet Lyle Lovett lyrics, ”I went to a funeral, and lord it made me happy.” It was good to be with family. I hadn’t seen some of these folks since my dad died in 2009. Why does someone have to die to really get us all together? We lost my cousin Jill way too soon. The impact crater on the Stephens’ clan will be enormous. The Stephens folks? They are just good people. Nice people. I love them. Aunts and uncles and cousins and cousins kids. All of them.

Back to the kid. . . Bill and I had to take him back to Iowa City without Mary. She had already missed too much EVMB time while she was at camp. We did what we call the strategic hit. Down to Iowa, have lovely dinner with my mom, my sister, her fiancé Ray, and his daughter Sarah. Toast to their engagement. Go to bed and wake up and get the U-haul and move the stuff from my dad’s shop to Calvin’s rental house. One of Calvin’s roommates helped, so I didn’t even have to carry a sofa up the stairs. As Jonah and Calvin were carrying the IKEA desk down the narrow stairs to Calvin’s basement room, I heard the roommate tell Calvin to move his hands to the inside of the desk to carry it, to protect his fingers. Having the roommate concerned about Calvin not crushing his hand between the desk and the brick wall completely moved me to tears. Sniff. Sniff. Choke. That’s all you need sometimes. Just a little. There was time for lunch downtown Iowa City at the Dandy Lion. Then Bill and I were on the road. We dropped the U-Haul and stopped in Waterloo to tweak the clarinet and it was all too fast for me to even really cry. Until, we got the Minnesota border, where I pulled out my bullet journal to plan meals for the week. I realized there was no food to buy or cook for Calvin. Whaaaa. But, it does get easier. A lot easier. And it helps that he has great roommates and a great house and he’s looking forward to a great year of piano and math. He is in the right place at the right time.

Me? I’ve been on a break the last two weeks. There were some end of the summer graduation recitals and the two trips to Iowa. Now? I’m just here. Our house is having it’s twenty year face lift. There will be a lot of little and big projects happening in the next few months. I’m pretty excited. Taking care of my home and studio is important to me. Now is the time to take care of this home, so that it can continue to bless us and our guests. I’ll keep you posted on the progress. I still have some time off. I’ll plan my studio year, and take care of Mary’s back to school tasks and do what I can in the garden. Breaks are important. Really important. I’m thankful I can take this time to renew my energy and do some creative endeavors to prepare for the new school year. See you soon!

The Real Thing

This last week I taught at the MacPhail Suzuki Institute. It was a hybrid format, part live and part Zoom. The kids were amazing as always, and it was all very well-orchestrated. Still, I confess to feeling slightly empty on the drive home Friday, while not dropping Fay at the airport. Also, I missed packing a huge lunch for myself, Calvin and Mary and the chaos of getting everyone packed up and practiced and downtown. I missed having my own piano kids there to eat lunch on the giant steps and have picnics outside. I missed chatting with colleagues in the hallways. I missed walking to Izzie’s ice cream Thursday after class. Our faculty dinner was delicious and lovely, but there were empty seats at the table since Fay and David were zooming.

I feel like until we are completely past covid, and all the teachers and families are back in full glory, things just aren‘t really real. We make the best of it. We keep trying to make the best of it, but it’s not the real thing.

Even aside from summer institutes, which again, are doing the best they can. . . there is something missing in our new Zoom culture.

It’s not the real thing.

I feel like we are asking our kids to do all the work, put all the time in, and expecting them to just be satisfied with their own personal growth. To be satisfied to play their Zoom recital and click the red “leave meeting” button, change clothes and go back to whatever they were doing before the recital. Well, here is the bottom line, it’s not really that satisfying. In fact, it’s a recipe for burnout. I know the kids are feeling it because I’m feeling it. It’s not the real thing.

I’m not going to Zoom anymore recitals this fall. If families want to make a video and post it and send to relatives afar, that’s fine. I’m putting all my eggs in the live music basket. We are gonna play a real piano in a real room with a real audience. Real applause. Then we are going to have real treats and real conversation. And give real hugs. I’m gonna sit in a chair with no screen between me and performer and listen. Just listen. No beeps, and no someone’s beloved grandma making commentary unmuted. I’m just going to watch and listen.

I’ve got six studio graduations in the next ten days. I’m looking forward to each one. These piano kids have worked hard. They did the real work, let’s give them the real celebration. Let’s get back to the real thing.

The Circle Game

Happy birthday Calvin. You are twenty. The boy is twenty.

Here is a song for you by Joni Mitchell. . .

Yesterday a child came out to wander
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star

And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind, from where we came
And go round and round and round, in the circle game

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, "When you're older" must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind, from where we came
And go round and round and round, in the circle game

16 springs and 16 summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
And they tell him, "Take your time, it won't be long now
'Til you drag your feet to slow the circles down"

And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind, from where we came
And go round and round and round, in the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is 20
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind, from where we came
And go round and round and round, in the circle game
And go round and round and round, in the circle game

Listen here: The Circle Game

It’s so cliche, but I can’t believe it. Twenty is so much more grown up than eighteen. You are our adult child, my travel companion and duet partner. You are an amazing man. A musician, a scholar, a traveler, a creator, and a listener. I pray that your dreams continue to come true, that you always meet the right people at the right time, that you always shine your light and that your heartbreaks, although necessary, are few.

Love Grows Here in the Overgrown Garden

Welcome to my new blog! I’ve been blogging for over ten years. Lately, it hasn’t been so easy to write. My kids are older and their news is their news. Maybe covid and current events have closed me off a little as well. Yet, that’s not how I want to be. I started writing because it was therapeutic. It still is.

I titled this new site, “Notes From An Overgrown Garden Of Life” because that’s how I often think about the largeness of family life, being a serious piano teacher, and taking care of a whole lot of flora and fauna. It is a lot like working in the garden. We want to plant new plants and try new ideas but the old plants still need water and love and meanwhile they are propagating all over the property and also meanwhile the weeds are growing like weeds. It’s time sensitive and it can be overwhelming, and depending upon the eyes you look through, at any given moment it’s either beautiful or complete chaos.

A wise man, in the form of my husband, once said, if you are only going to be happy when things are perfect, you are probably not going to be very happy. True in the garden, and true in life. So I get down on my knees and pull some weeds and try to maintain some semblance of order and beauty. While I’m there I say a little prayer that God would use me to some small service through it all.

Every day we make moment by moment decisions to place our focus on the weeds or on the flowers. As Jesus said, the weeds will always be with you. Wait. . .that wasn’t quite right. Anyway, the weeds are always there, still, we must try to shine the light towards the flowers of gratitude.

My hope is to make this blog a place where love grows. An alumni parent gave me the idea for the title, “Love Grows Here.” That is my goal.