The Wrestling Match

“Well,” Maggie said, looking at her daughter Sally. “I don’t know if those last two practice boxes really count.”

We were examining Sally’s five practice boxes. Sally is one of five new Little Ones in the studio this fall, a record number. My studio is bottom heavy this year, full of wiggly, squirmy, energetic young kids and short on the older, seasoned, experienced pianists. After nearly 15 years of having a large high school class, I am starting over and growing up a new crop of students. (Or as one long-time parent—19 years and 4 kids—said, “you know what this means, don’t you Amy? A really cute studio recital.”)  I love the Little Ones, the chance to begin again and finally (!!) get it right, but oh my, it’s exhausting. I remind myself frequently that this is not a permanent state. These Little Ones too will grow up, right before my eyes.

“Why don’t the last two practice boxes count?” I asked Sally. She shrugged, nonplussed. After only two months of piano lessons, her practice notebook is already covered with scribbles and hand-drawn emoji-like characters (stars and hearts and cats, oh my!) throughout the assignments. For my birthday last month she made me three cards, each one covered with the lyrics of the rote pieces she had learned this summer. And she tied a balloon to my front door. Did I mention that Sally is five?

I am reminded of the controversial research about using rewards to motivate behavior. My new Little Ones can hardly wait to rehearse their skills and pieces and to fill in their practice boxes in their notebooks. No gold star bribes needed here. I have to gently restrain their enthusiasm by limiting the number of boxes they can X out on any given day. You can see the disappointment on their faces when I suggest that we must “sleep between boxes.” There may be a lot of naps these days in these households.

I suspected the question Maggie was raising about the practice boxes wasn’t so much whether or not Sally had gone to the piano on those days, but rather if the quality of the work done counted. I smiled, remembering the kid, who years ago used to evaluate his practices based on whether they were “Amy Practices” LINK (good, attentive work done at the piano) or “George Practices” (just slopped through things as fast as possible). George is now in college, studying neuroscience. This summer he dropped by for a two-hour conversation over tea and cookies. (He brought the cookies.) The kids grow up so fast.

Practice boxes notwithstanding, if we are being honest about our work, isn’t every day a reckoning where we ask ourselves: does that count?

The Little Ones are full of possibilities; I haven’t yet messed up their musical education. And the new school year before us feels like a fresh start even as it settles into familiar rhythms. One of my high school kids even brought me five new pencils to replace the two-inch eraserless gems we’ve been using forever. “Musicians have to be frugal,” I tell the kids when they complain about our sorry writing utensils. “Pretend like you are playing miniature golf.”

Transitions are tough, however, even expected ones. I try to encourage myself that they are ripe with their own possibilities too. “When things are shifting there’s space for new patterns to emerge,” I tell another now grown-up kid visiting last week. Sophie is an artist living in Brooklyn. She is in-between jobs, apartments and relationships. It is uncertain and thrilling, both. There is so much possibility for change.

These days I have to look for the cracks in my own routines, a little wiggle room for a new pattern to emerge. I may have a fresh class of Little Ones this year, but so much of my life and work is all-too familiar. I comfort myself with small shifts: the daily salad habit I adopted this summer, the new practice of sweeping the kitchen floors and refilling the ice trays before bedtime, the hearty grasses and succulents I planted this summer in the garden after years of struggling to keep flowers alive in a drought. Recently I started reading children books in Spanish and walking to the Zen center once a week for early morning zazen. Such tiny things, but then I remember: a cracked glass cannot hold water. Small things matter.  

“What is your wrestling match these days, Amy?” Sophie asked me. After years of questioning her practice charts, she now questions mine. But I have an answer ready because I have been sitting with this very tension all summer: I need to learn to accept and even embrace impermanence. I can easily grasp the idea that nothing is permanent in this world, but every day is a struggle to hang onto the parts I particularly like: my work and marriage, my good health and the well-being of my community of friends and family, my sweet cats and colorful house. Maybe the world won’t keep getting hotter. Maybe the latest political polling will hold. Maybe we will always stand up for democracy in this country. Maybe the yellow roses outside my sunroom door will stay in full bloom forever. Maybe no one I love will ever die. Hope is the thing with feathers. I believe that impermanence is the reality of life. I have trouble living peacefully inside walls of this truth.

But the evidence is all around me. The Little Ones grow up. The former kids come back with cookies and scars from their own wrestling matches. Day after day we have to learn what counts and keep filling in our practice charts with stars and hearts and good intentions.

Here’s what I know: the perfect practice does not exist. The point is the struggle, the wrestling match with God. Swords are turned into ploughshares and then back to swords. We peel back the layers one by one, and discover a new, more piercing truth amidst the tears. We shift and change, we compromise and negotiate, morphing again and again into new shapes. At times we drift ever more near to the meaning hidden under our rituals before being carried away by the winds of our restlessness, our inability to sit still without squirming. Living fully within tension that is created between the ideal we are always reaching for and the reality we find ourselves in, well, that’s the practice.