What a task
on learning to love what will not last
In our current cultural milieu it seems insensitive to write a piece about something domestic. But this essay put words to an important distinction about what it means to care for people. Care is love in action, and for most of us, that starts at home, or in our neighborhoods, battling to stay present to the lives in front of our faces.
As the author of that essay writes, , writes, “Take the moments of joy where you find them. Don’t let your sense of privilege or your awareness of the coexisting horrors cancel them out. It doesn’t work like that.”
As all good Suzuki students do, I started violin lessons when I was five. This was the beginning of years of lessons, daily practice, string quartet camp, youth orchestra, summer camp, high school orchestras and honor festivals. My primary education culminated in the stress of college auditions, where I flew around the country to play excerpts and concertos, sweaty palmed and weak kneed, for panels of professors. The following fall I began four years of music school, where I learned the only certainty in life was that you could always be better.
During those years I spent hours in a dank practice room with a full length mirror, willing my fingers to cooperate. Mornings began with scales, played against a steady drone to check for intonation. On a good day I’d practice for an hour before I was even fully awake. No matter how much I practiced one day, I would start all over the next. I often envied my roommates with normal majors like microbiology, who had the luxury of working together in the library or cozying up to their laptops in pajamas. The closest I got to a study party was string quartet rehearsal. Their work stayed done and left them footloose and fancy free at Christmas break. Mine was never finished. My instrument became an extension of my body and when I wasn’t practicing I was feeling guilty for not practicing.
Ten years later it’s hard to remember the last time I picked up my instrument, but these same feelings echo through my vocation as a mother. My work is never done. No matter how much I do today, it’ll be here again tomorrow. When I’m not with my kids I’m still thinking about them. I envy people who get to work with other grownups, and at the end of the day I sometimes feel a quiet sense of desperation, knowing it will all begin again tomorrow.
During those years of music school I attended concert after concert.1 I practically bathed in beauty: Mahler, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Bach… I heard and played them all. Three times a week I sat in noontime orchestra rehearsal, learning masterpieces, but was often distracted by my growling stomach. Instead of being awed by my ability to participate, I could only think of how busy and stressed I was. A decade later I listen to the classical radio station, following the contours of a symphony as I sit in grocery pickup, and wonder, “How did I not know how special that was?”
Is this why older women tell me, “Enjoy every moment!” while I’m hauling five kids through Costco? Are they actually talking to me? Do they really want me to enjoy my toddler’s tantrum? Or do they just know these moments of surround sound parenting, where the beauty is so ubiquitous you almost can’t see it, are fleeting? Just as my music school self was worn down by the drudgery of long rehearsals, sometimes I can only feel how hard this daily grind is. But maybe when those women look at me they’re not remembering crying in a practice room. Maybe they’re remembering the glory of being right in the middle of all that beautiful music.
Charlotte Mason asserts that children are “born persons” - namely, they arrive as themselves. They are whole symphonies, concertos and tone poems already written. But the fact that a piece is written doesn’t lessen the task of learning it. You master it, part by painful part, slowly, carefully, sometimes re-learning the notes you got wrong or misheard. If you do your job well, you reflect back to the composer your own engagement, nuance and musicality. Sometimes the learning readies you for performance, but other times it’s a solitary endeavor that meets its end in the approving nod of a demanding teacher. Battling the technicalities of an etude is about making hard beautiful, even if you never perform it. The most glorious music builds on this hidden work.
It’s 5:45 PM and I should be making dinner. One child just got stung by a bee and the baby woke up from her nap screaming. I am weary and worn thin, feeling guilty that my love wavers at the end of the day. As I bear up under the demands of busy days caring for five small people, I wonder - how do you enjoy the thing that threatens to crush you? How do you hold the tension of wishing to escape, but knowing you’ll miss it desperately when it's gone?
When I was five years old, I told my mom, “I want to play that one” after listening to a CD with Vivaldi’s “Spring”. For six months I begged for violin lessons. My parents were rightly skeptical of allowing a beginning string instrument in their house, but finally procured me a 1/8th size violin from the local rental shop. I learned how to make the bow go “up like a rocket, down like the rain” and squeaked the beginning notes of “Twinkle Variation A”. I did not always love to practice, but I loved the music. I would dance around our living room to classical music, and arrive home from rehearsals starry eyed. Until one day the stakes got higher and the criticism got harsher. I learned how to hate myself and the music that once lit me up grew dull as weariness took over. There were so many other factors that went into this slow death, but whatever the exact reasons, I graduated music school and tried to bury the thing I used to love.
How can something you love so much hurt you so badly?
I woke up with a migraine this morning, blurry eyes blinking open to a yell from the bathroom.
“Mommy, I poooooped”.
The baby spent the 3 AM hour trying to play with my hair while I rocked her back to sleep and willed her to stay in her own bed. Somehow she still made it back to the crook of my arm by 7 AM. The physicality is unrelenting. I want to laugh at my own thesis. I’m going to miss this? What part?
The way her eyes light up when she sees me, the way she tries to eat her reflection in the mirror and leaves slobbery kisses behind, the unbearably cute speech quirks, the constant laughter, the warm heaviness of small fingers reaching around my neck. The oxytocin heavy rush of relief when the baby latches and we both relax, the sweet heads within kissing distance and the fingers that reach up to grab my hair. The “sit with me, Mommy” and the “watch this!”, the impossible questions and endless delight, the way I am the center of their world.
How do you handle knowing these once in a lifetime moments keep slipping past, when you recently googled, “Can you die from lack of sleep?”
As mothers our cooperation is required for the music of our children to be brought into existence at all. Our first steps in motherhood are about as tuneful as the squawking notes of a beginning violin. But what we lack in skill, we make up for in love. The music gets harder as we get more experience, always expanding in front of us. We struggle and sweat, sawing away at our proverbial scales and wondering how it will ever sound beautiful. Then one day we realize we can play the song, that the notes fall easily under our fingers. There may be a brief moment of bliss where everything sings.
And then our Teacher, like any good Teacher, gives us a new piece to master.
How do you make peace with letting a piece go?
Mary Oliver writes,2
Oh, to love what is lovely and will not last! What a task, to ask, of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or by the year, but by the hours.
I know that just as it’s not the hours in the practice room I miss now, it won’t be the crumbs or diapers or sleep deprivation I miss later. I don’t miss the arduous critique of lessons or heartbreak of auditions, just like I won’t miss tantrums and my inevitable breakdowns. I miss the way the music was a part of me, I miss being part of something that transcends myself. And I will miss being the center of my children’s world in this fleeting time when my world revolves around them. I will miss these days of being enveloped in an intensity that was never meant to last, but is mine to love.
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Reading: I really appreciated this article by
, eschatology matters quite a bit it turns out. And this article, by Auntie Leila, was a much needed reminder that my toddler and baby are not a hindrance to my “real” work.Listening: The sound bites I overhear on a daily basis are hilarious. Little boys and their imaginations:
7 yo: Let's go play monkeys downstairs! 4 yo: *whining* But I want to be a feral cat that can climb... *wailing* Why does it have to be monkeys?? 7 yo: *referring to baby* And how about she's our African wild dog?! *** 4 yo: *explaining why their Lion King derivative game must take place in the basement* It's GREAT downstairs, because we pretend that the sleeping bags are carcasses that we're eating!
Laughing: My kids like rearranging LEGO’s…. I like rearranging words. A little 4 year old in the PreK class got the “days of the week” (the theme to Addams Family) tune stuck in my head, which made me think of the homeschool family parody by Tim Hawkins… I couldn’t help myself and my kids and I re-wrote our own version (my 9 year old is responsible for the 4th stanza). Enjoy!
Ba da da boom, *snap, snap* Ba da da boom, *snap snap* ba da da boom, ba da da boom, ba da da boom, *snap, snap*
Some people say we're crazy They tell us that we're lazy, When they count us they get hazy, A homeschool family. The two year old knows Latin, We go to Friday Matins, Our hobbit cloaks are satin, A homeschool family. We school in our pajamas, We dream of owning llamas, We can point to the Bahamas, A homeschool family. The children fight with swords, The baby chews on cords, We're never, ever bored. A homeschool family. We diagram our grammar, We hit things with a hammer, With our LEGOs we're enamored, A homeschool family We love each other dearly, We bicker often, clearly We try our best sincerely, A homeschool family.
This was a requirement of our program - attending a certain amount of concerts. The quality was excellent (though I do recall a Stockhausen festival concert series that landed somewhere between bizarre and creepy), but to my shame I can report that I actually fell asleep during most of them. I was so tired. Maybe that’s not the worst thing - that I found a moment’s peace from beautiful music?
From one of my favorite poems, “Snow Geese”
As a mother of three daughters, now with children of their own, I resonate with your words- both for myself and for them. As hard as it often is to hear the theme running in and through and alongside the dissonance, oh, those sweet moments of resolution when you see what the piece can and surely will someday be. Sometimes the loveliest melodies emerge from the chaos. I love this wonderfully bizarre piece that is our family. And I love your writing. It speaks beautifully.
My three little ones are all grown and building their own families. As I started reading your post, I thought, “Oh, I hope she recognizes the fleeting nature of all that is good in this exhausting season.” And I kept reading and I breathed a sigh of relief because it’s clear that you do. This piece is truly beautiful. Thank you!