A Fragmented Response

There is a wonderful gospel anthem by Benjamin Kornelis called “Let Us Not Become Weary (Of Doing Good).” I suspect it is being sung a lot these days.

Friends, we are weary.

There are all the obvious reasons that don’t even need to be said out loud, and on top of those grave injustices in the world, the day after the election I woke up with a respiratory bug.

Friends, I am weary.

But when I am honest with myself, I know that is not the whole story. Sure, I have had my moments where I preferred to pull the covers over my head rather than face the day, but to say that the last month has all been a loss is a gross exaggeration of the situation, or even a kind of untruth. So here is a more honest, but somewhat fragmented, response to this unsettling season of our collective lives.

The Friday after the election was one of two final studio classes for the semester. As part of our warmup rhythmic activities, we played Categories. Seated in a circle, we kept a four-beat pattern: two claps, two rests. I lead with a category—say colors, or foods, or days of the week: Clap. Clap “Pizza!” The next kid in the circle inserts their answer: Clap. Clap “Cupcake!” and so on. The trick is to put the answer exactly on the rests. When a young kid doesn’t know what to say, often they will just repeat the previous kid’s answer. It’s a sort of learn-by-osmosis, one-room-schoolhouse kind of thing. All good.

The category was composers: Clap. Clap. Beethoven! Clap. Clap. Mozart! Clap. Clap. Debussy! Then came Josie, a new Little One, a smart and cute six-year-old. Clap. Clap. “Bloody Mary!” Josie shouted. “What?” I said, and against all good and graceful pedagogical practice, I stopped. “What did you say, Josie?” “Bloody Mary!” I tried not to laugh. I laughed. It was the best moment all week.

Another fragment:

The next day I took twenty kids to play at a retirement center. This had been on the calendar for months, a pre-recital performance opportunity and, as I told the kids, a chance to make some people really happy. That this event was scheduled the week when our country felt like it was coming apart at the seams felt just right. It almost seemed like an act of defiance: See! You can’t stop us! We can still do kind things for one another!

The piano was a challenge (“It’s an antique,” the activities director at the center had told me. “Just like our residents.”), but the room was full of enthusiastic bodies. In response to every child’s performance there was not just polite applause but cheering from the residents. After our program, a gentleman came up to me. “Seeing these young people playing the piano, well it just brings tears to my eyes.”

Truthfully, it often brings tears to my eyes too. That particularly sweet afternoon, I did a lot of hard swallowing as one kid after another stood up, marched to the microphone and shouted (I had told them that they should speak loud.): “HI! MY NAME IS…!!! AND I’M GOING TO PLAY…!!!!”

When I was kid, my pastor father often did church services in nursing homes. As soon as I could passably play the piano, he began taking me along. I’d play the hymns (sort of) and other things, and afterwards I’d eat cookies with the residents. I have very fond memories of this for a number of reasons. First of all, it was my first piano “gig” (Dad would take me out afterwards and buy me an ice cream cone.). It was time with my dad, which I always loved. I was made to feel very important by the residents, which I also loved. And somewhere in the middle of all that I kinda sorta understood that this was a good thing to do. That it made other people happy, me showing up with my music.

That Saturday there was no “Old Rugged Cross,” but we had “Black Cat Waltz” and Debussy and Chopin and “Zoom Zoom.” And all the feels.

Not just a fragment, but actual broken shards:

Last week we replaced the rear brakes on our 12-year-old car. Our dishwasher has stopped draining, so we just use it as a drying rack. Our nearly 20-year-old gas stove is living its last days. There is evidence that our roof needs attention. When it came time to start up the heater for the season, the plumber servicing the boiler shook his head and said, “Wow. This is really old.” Last week I broke off the switch on my favorite lamp. Our printer jammed. And then Sunday the tension rod holding up our shower curtain lost its tension and came crashing down. Later that night the toilet seat broke in two, making our single bathroom somewhat a challenge to use.

I do not think there is a metaphor in any of this. Sometimes things break. Sometimes a lot of things break all at once.

Another fragment:

Last night my last lesson of the day was Celia, a bright and happy 7th grader. It was the first time I had seen her since the studio class last Friday, and so I started by checking in about how she felt about her performance at the class.

"Well it was pretty bad."

She was right. It was pretty much a mess.

"But now it's going really really well!"

Wow. I said. What changed? 

"I don't know. Sometimes things just get better."

Sometimes they do. I’m holding onto this.

Still another fragment:

Already Trollope has forgotten about his short-lived campaign to make America “Big, Dumb and Sweet Again.” It was pretty clear in the final days that Grit, the local dog, had a lot of strong support, deeper pockets, and possibly better marketing. Everyone has been asking us how Trollope feels about losing to Grit, and I’m rather embarrassed to say this, but honestly, he feels fine. He is going to keep doing his thing, regardless of the polls. Back to his platform of naps. And sweetness.

He’d like to get back to his naps, except this week there was a chipmunk in our yard! (Friends, in case you were wondering, there should not be a chipmunk in our yard.) And a squirrel! And so many goldfinches! And that curved-bill thrasher is hanging out on the cacti by the front door! After an unexpected snow last week, the leaves are dropping fast. Walking out to the back garden, they crunch under my feet. “Like potato chips!” one kid said to me. Exactly like potato chips.

Truffle was never interested in campaigning. She already has a job. Every night she brings all the little toy mice from the basket by the front door and lines them up next to my side of the bed as an act of love. It’s hard work, this level of devotion. Also, there are a lot of mice. But last week she took her work to new level. On Tuesday night I was in an orchestral rehearsal when I reached down into my bag and pulled out little mouse. “Did you put that mouse in my bag?” I asked Matt when I got home. “What? He said. “No. That would have been a good idea, but no.” “You know what this means?” I said. I can hardly contain my excitement. “Truffle is putting mice in my bag!” What do you do with a love that big? I am still smiling.

And a final fragment:

Last Friday in studio class we played our last round of “Pass the Pumpkin” of the year. It was a mixed-level class, and served as the dress rehearsal for the fall recital. After we finished rehearsing our recital pieces, I told the kids that I was all in for one more round of “Pass the Pumpkin” for whoever wanted to stay late and play. “What’s ‘Pass the Pumpkin?’” asked one high school student. Sophie is the youngest in a family of four piano-playing kids; their collective time in the studio a record 19 years so far. I was teaching her older siblings when she was born, but she didn’t know “Pass the Pumpkin” because I didn’t know “Pass the Pumpkin” when she was a little one. “How can you not know ‘Pass the Pumpkin?’” asked one small child incredulously. “I’ve played ‘Pass the Pumpkin’ like a thousand times.” (This would be a gross exaggeration.)

Turns out, all the kids were in for “Pass the Pumpkin.” It is not a complicated game. We pass a pumpkin on the beat and when the song ends on “Boo!” whoever is holding the pumpkin is out. That afternoon I was the first one out of the game, which thrilled the kids. But one by one the “Out Club,” as I called it, grew. “The Out Club is really cool,” said a Little One. This was the same Little One who said to me last month, “I don’t like to lose, so can we play again?” an echo of the politics of our time, perhaps.

The winner was a high school kid, Jonah. I presented him with the actual real live pumpkin as a prize. The kid—who towers over me these days and hardly knows his own hands that can now reach a 10th, who just last week sobbed in his lesson over his struggles with his recital piece and his grandmother dying of cancer—grinned. “This is yours,” I told him, handing him the pumpkin. “Treasure this.”

Treasure this. There are things to treasure still. The crisp autumn weather and a New Mexico blue sky that could break your heart open. Flannel sheets on the bed. A pot of tea. The full moon shining down on my evening walks. A tiny tortoiseshell cat rolling in a spot of sun on the black and white tiles. A chamber concert to play this afternoon with my favorite musical friends. The people I love and the work that still feels relevant in this broken world. There are things still to treasure, I remind myself. Whatever happens next, my response is up to me.

The poet William Blake said, “If one is to do good, it must be done in the minute particulars.” I think this is another way of saying, Fill out your practice boxes, kids.

I think in this uncertain time, our good, our joy, our delight will be in the minute particulars. We are weary, but there is so much good that will need to be done, so many ways to be kind to one another. In the days after the election, there was a widely shared essay by Rebecca Solnit where she writes, “There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep walking whether it's sunny or raining . . . Take care of yourself and remember that taking care of something else is an important part of taking care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the ten trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed.”

Count your practice boxes, friends, but count as well your minute particulars, the fragments and broken shards that make up your life: The little mouse. The pumpkin. The Bloody Mary. The chipmunk. The kid who tells me that he played his recital piece at his grandmother’s funeral on Saturday. The tears. Treasure this.