Choices, Choices, Choices. . .

Congratulations to Samantha Gauer and Calvin Kotrba, along with three other Twin Cities Suzuki pianists upon being selected to play in the Suzuki Association of Minnesota upper level graduation honors recitals on March 15 at Bethel University.

This is a lovely event in a beautiful hall with a wonderful piano. I hope a lot of people will come and watch. For the record, because I had a student of almost fifteen years and my own child auditioning I took myself off the judging committee. Too much love floating out there to be objective.

Calvin will not be representing Blackhawk Middle School at the state spelling bee. Alas, he did not qualify. I confess that I'm relieved. The state bee is also March 15, and had he made it he would have had to choose between representing his school and representing the advanced piano kids.

This got me to thinking about all the choices in our lives. Even choosing between two good things can be difficult.

Personally, I'm happier when I have fewer choices. I'm paralyzed by the mall and I can't even order at a restaurant with too many foods. I shut down. Plus, how can they have all that food ready to serve?  I don't get it.

But I still want  little choices.

Chances are if you are reading this blog you are probably a parent or teacher who is accustomed to giving the children in your life good choices. I do better in some areas than others.

Mary scored very well on her standardized tests, but it still takes a good seven minutes to get her shoes on. That's not including the time it takes to choose which of her umpteen pairs of shoes to wear for the tasks of the day versus the ensemble she is wearing. Too many choices.

I'm better with her clothes. Since she started kindergarten, each morning I give Mary two or three choices for what to wear to school. She gets to choose but she isn't choosing from the whole closet. This works smoothly. Otherwise we would have to home school or find a school that starts mid-morning.

Same with breakfast. . . do you want this or that? Toast or bagel? Chocolate pop tarts is only an option when I'm out of town and Bill is in charge.

Same thing with piano. Do you want to start with a scale or theory? How many repetitions shall we do? What shall we do next?

Asking a lot of questions and giving limited and acceptable choices helps kids develop autonomy and eventual independence. The dance is knowing how much and when.

Our culture has the total curse of over choice.  It's everywhere all the time. I pay a little more to grocery shop at a smaller store because it's bad for my brain to see all those breakfast cereals. I'd have to let go some students for the time it takes me to stand there and make all those decisions. See how much I'm saving?

Bill and I try to protect our kids from having to make every little choice about every little thing. Dole out appropriate freedoms. We've done good with bedtime and not so great with food. Every family has their issues.

There will be enough tough choices in life.
I'm glad Calvin can postpone the academic vs. music a little longer. In eighth grade I had to choose between jazz band and algebra. Even then I knew that wasn't fair.

Speaking of academics and music, I saw Aidan last weekend and he announced that he is officially pursuing a double major of music and computer science. Congrats, Aidan! I'm happy for you.  Perhaps you too can postpone a difficult decision just a little longer, heck, maybe forever.  After all, my husband has two big band gigs this weekend.

Congrats on the Debussy, Calvin, and you can try the spelling bee thing again next year, though you should know genetics are against you. . . hopefully your DNA won't hold you back on either front.

Congrats to Sami, too. And good luck to everyone, with your own family's dance. May all the choices be win win.

Look How Far We've Come

The February 1, 4:00 Suzuki Piano Teachers Guild Advancing Recital Group

My Advanced Kids

My Seniors 

In the Blues Brothers movie the club owner says they have both kinds of music, that is, country and western. Here in Minnesota we're having both kinds of weather, that is, cold and snowy. Another ten below drive to school today. I can't remember a colder snowier winter. Sunday was ground hog day. It ain't no six weeks till spring here. More than one person said--we don't care about the shadow, just shoot the dang rodent.

The new four year olds in the studio are something else. She wiggles. He looks around. He asks a million questions about the minutia of the room. She wiggles some more. Then she actually plays a song. Then he wiggles some more. He tips the foot rest over on purpose and looks to see what I will do. I try to play a game and the game takes over. I'm about to pull my hair out and then he does this Twinkle and lifts his hand so pretty on each note and the tone is so sweet. I say that was so BEAUTIFUL and she smiles the cutest smile you've ever seen. Then she picks her nose.

It' frustrating. It's amazing. I love it. It's exhausting.

We simply must acknowledge every smidgeon of marginal progress or we will never make it. This is a long road. I'm still on it.

Look how far we've come. Four months ago these munchkins wouldn't even look at me. Now they are playing Twinkle with finger numbers and working out book one songs by ear. They understand a gentle round hand. They don't jump on the sofa when they come in. They listen to the sound. Slow and steady wins the race.

I'm taking a lot of video at these lessons. My personal teaching goal is to keep the lesson as short as it needs to be to work toward complete focus. Even though I know better, there is still some misguided pressure inside me to keep them at the piano for their entire 30 minute lesson, even when the focus is gone. That's teaching them how not to focus. I try to ignore any negative behavior and praise every effort, no matter how small. I believe I'm really good at teaching these little ones, this is what I do really well, but I tell you, every lesson with them is still a lesson for me and I'm reflecting and growing every week as well.

Thank God for the seniors. They are a daily reminder of how far we've come. They are so calm. And still. We've made it. We've changed from Mrs. Kotrba to Sara. It's all about the music. And a little about life. In a year they will just be my Facebook friends but back in the day. . . they were wiggly too.

I also love the middle kids. The biggest challenge for the middle kids is setting weekly goals and helping them be accountable for their own progress and musicality. It has to be theirs. Sooner is better than later. And there is also the whole relationship thing. . .

I have my own middle kid, Calvin. So I'm thinking a lot about middle kids these days. I'm happy to report that at the moment he loves music and he still loves me. And the music is his. He owns it. It's the greatest privilege and opportunity for me to coach him everyday. He's playing in Book Seven but we are doing a broad foundation. He picks the repertoire from carefully selected options I provide. And he wants to play it all and eventually we will. We aren't in any hurry. He will play everything from the Suzuki Repertoire and Chris Liccardo's books and all the Keith Snell editions. He's playing through and making recordings of all the Burgmuller and Streabogg. On his own. His idea. All the Schumann Album for the Young and the Tchaikovsky. We are going to play it all. After Book Seven he wants to do a recital of all 15 Bach Inventions. His idea. He looked at my shelf of "real" piano music and said, "jeesh, you could spend your whole life learning all this."

Yep. People do.

It's the same with teaching. Every week I think about how to be a better teacher to him and to Mary and to every single piano kid. I'll spend my whole life doing this. How to make it fun but still get something done. How to make them make it their own sooner than later. How to help shape their hearts while we shape the phrase.

Yet, look how far we've come. I have a whole drawer full of Calvin's charts that have little boxes for keep your feet flat. Charts for a happy heart. Charts for "yes, mama." We played a lot of games. We "wasted" a lot of time. But he loves music. And he still loves me. Slow and steady wins the race.

Look how far we've come. I'm amazed and I hope you are too. Yes, reflect. Yes, make it better everyday. Love the music. Love the child. But whether it's been four months, four years or fifteen years, take a moment to look how far you've come.

Cliches of Strength

I believe at our core we are each beautifully strong and terribly vulnerable. These forces are always in some equilibrium. Sometimes the stronger we are the harder we fall, and sometimes the weaker we feel the more we conjure up some superhuman strength--I'm thinking of the Grinch holding the entire contents of Whoville's Christmas when his heart grew.

Our church did a sermon series of cliches of faith. I was thinking about the cliches of strength. You know--what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, no pain no gain.  Blah, blah, blah.

I'm feeling stronger than a year ago, that is, I can hold a plank pose longer and do a couple more pushups. You can feel mentally strong too--I'm memorizing music for the first time in a while and Brahms will stretch your brain, that's for sure.  It feels good to be strong--mentally and physically. Emotionally.

At any given time we are all on the tight rope, that balance beam of strength and weakness, love and fear.

When we don't feel so strong we sometimes fall back on cliches. Here's one: we don't know how strong we are until being strong is the only choice. After the sacred and terrible phone call confirming my dad's terminal diagnosis, I hung up, and like I often do, stared out at the beautiful nature I'm blessed to see through my back window.  The only thing that I could think of was. . . here we go. We have to go through this. We are not given a choice. Five years later, I don't know if I'm stronger or weaker for that. It just was.

Our lives are not perfect. Sometimes we make bad decisions and we have to live with that, but sometimes things just happen and we have to live with that too. And sometimes someone else makes the bad decision for us. I'm thinking of the hit and run drunk driver from last February. We were fine, but bad things happen to good people every day. Accidents happen. Illness happens. Addiction happens. Whatever the cause, sometimes we just have to put one foot in front of the other and go through the result. We don't always have a choice. Being strong becomes our only choice.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Calvin has that on his bedroom door. But Christ mostly works through our people. Our local angels. We never have to try to be strong alone. There is strength in numbers. That's why we are here. To pray. To show up. To be a community. Didn't we learn that with my dad? Maybe that is the strength lesson. When life gives you more than you can handle, God gives you people. And they show up mysteriously at the right time.

Here is my favorite less famous cliche, from a Curly Girl greeting card: I don't think we know our own strength, until we have seen how strong love makes us. The gal has heart shaped boxing gloves. Heart shaped boxing gloves. I like that. And, I know it's true, love makes us stronger than we know. God's love through our people. Sending it out. . . to everyone who needs a little strength.

What is My Actual Life?

This is Bill baking bread. A typical weekend activity at the Kotrba household.

Not.

It was the first weekend afternoon home alone as a family since November? The bread was pretty good.

I follow a Christian family life writer Jen Hatmaker. In her latest blog entitled "I Miss My Actual Life" she explains how she is taking a break from her traveling speaking engagements because the thing she speaks about, Christian family life, is actually not happening while she is so busy being a traveling speaker.

A colleague asked me if I read it and we both shared a knowing nod of the head. What is our actual life? What would we do on a weekend without recitals, workshops or church gigs?

I spent the better part of seven hours stuck in the Austin airport last Monday working on the rough draft of my Suzuki Teacher Training Application. To be an official Suzuki Teacher Trainer you must have this application accepted by the powers that be and then go on to do some kind of apprentiship and then you can teach teachers and they can get credit for the classes and levels they might take from you.

The application includes references, student performances, your own performances, a thesis type paper, community service, evaluation of your teaching through videos and documentation of every minute of your professional life for the last quarter of a century. For real.

Sometimes the journey of a thousand miles ends very badly. But, nothing ventured nothing gained.  The idea of being a teacher trainer assumes that you probably must almost know it all. If that is the case the whole thing is hopeless because this road of teaching children music is very long and winding and I learn something from every parent, teacher and student that I come in contact with. These type of endeavors are casually accompanied by the fear that you just might not be good enough.

I did meet the first qualification toward being a crazy cat lady piano teacher this week when I taught my first two Wednesday students with a velcro curler in the back of my hair.  I think I got it on video, which I probably will not submit to the committee.

What is my actual life?

So far this year we are miles away from a routine.  It's been twenty-five below zero and we've been sick and Bill and I have traveled. I haven't put Christmas away. I haven't unpacked from Austin. The pantry is loaded with random stuff to process including leftover Christmas cookies. But I'm happy.  I'm excited about the path. I'm rebelling against thinking I can follow it and still have all my ducks in a row every minute. I'm letting go. Really!

Bill and I had a female calculus teacher at Northern Illinois. She was the typical well-dressed tenure track smarty. Most days it was a wool skirt, turtle-neck and tweed blazer. Glasses. But each morning at 8:00 a.m. there was one thing wrong. One day her slip was showing. One day a glob of toothpaste in her hair. One day a run in her stockings. Wabi sabi professor.

This year, if I'm gonna make this application complete, and that is my goal, there might be a square of toilet paper stuck on my shoe from time to time. The storage shed is not gonna get cleaned out. Nor the freezer. I'm buying the cakes for my parent party. No house projects. I'm even pretending that I might plant fewer flowers.

Making a goal public is a good way to humiliate yourself into making it happen. Sometimes the good is the enemy of the best. A perfectly tidy house might be the enemy of a long term plan. This is not easy for me. It's hard to practice when the books are disheveled and the CDs are not alphabetized.

Step one--memorizing the Brahms Intermezzo for Houston. Step two--references. Step three--making videos. For the sake of making a really good impression on the Suzuki piano gurus, I hope you will tell me if the hair curlers are showing. Or worse.

What is my actual life? Blessed. Family, music, and faith that God has a plan for us--and if this is the right path it won't matter if our actual life is a little wabi sabi.

P.S. Please remind of this when I start to forget and organize the sock drawer at the expense of page 43 of the application. . .

Up to No Good. . .

A well-loved Harry Potter Quote

It's been a crazy week.
Congrats to Calvin for winning the Blackhawk Middle School spelling bee. There are all sorts of comments or jokes I could make but the truth is middle school is turning out to be a great time not to comment or joke. Yes, I have learned this the hard way more than a couple times. Seriously, congrats to Calvin and I'm sure you know, if you know me, that he didn't get this talent from me. I'm the worst speller on the planet and even Mary caught my typo on my new flashcards. . .  "Gallup". . . moments before they went to print. It's true. I can't spell. But lucky for Calvin and Mary some genes must be recessive.

I've been sick the last three days. The nasty kind of sick. So has Mary. This afternoon I was trying to hack through some choir music before rehearsal tonight, which by the way was not one of my shining moments, and Mary was lying on the couch listening. She asked me if I got to keep the music. I told her I make copies so I can turn pages more easily and so that I can write stuff in color in the music. I keep the copies in my file so I can use them again.

So later at choir, after a particularly botched sight-reading attempt, I looked at my music for the next piece and there was a gold star and "I love you, Mama" printed at the top. I just happened to have practiced the wrong arrangement of that particular piece AND was disoriented from my mistake AND feeling pretty puny to begin with. . . but the little gold star fixed it all.

I had about the worst hour and a half of my musical life. . . but I still got a gold star, from my baby.

Mary also brought me her blankie and several stuffed bunnies yesterday.

Virus? Food poisoning? I don't know, but as it turns out compassion can also be extremely contagious.

Heaven to Me

Heaven to Me
Heaven to me is a beautiful thing,
with rainbows that have all their colors to bring.
Animals everywhere bunnies galore,
real sand castles built on the wavy seashore.
Peace all the time, no crying will come,
everyone would have good foods, yum!
My family would be there, Grandaddy too!
They would all hug me and say "I love you."
There would never be war. It would be great!
And it would not matter if you arrived late.
You would not enter for how good you are
even the dragons and kings from so far.
Magic would be there, not just from fairy tales,
not magic tricks magicians would sell at sales.
It would have true spirit to bring
not just the bells that go ding, ding-a-ling.
Everyone there would be treated the same.
no riches, no servants, that would be a shame.
There would be no animals left on the streets,
they would all have warm cosy sheets.
even in winter the flowers would bloom
all the parades would have drums, boom boom!
Heaven to me is a beautiful place,
and it would put a big smile on my face! 

by Mary Ray Kotrba, age 9
At this moment, Mary wants to be a writer when she grows up.  

A Good Enough Year

Happy New Year!

Did you have a good enough Christmas? Did you have a good enough New Years?

Last night at dinner our family sat at the dinner table and talked about the best and worst parts of 2013.

Lows? The hail storm. The roofing debackle. The kidney ER trips. Garfield missing.

Highs? Hawaii with Savannah and my mom. Anniversary trip to Austin with Bill. Celebrating Bill's folk's 50th. My mom's surprise party last summer. Camping with friends. Finding Garfield.

Julie, a spiritual director from from our church and a Facebook friend of mine was encouraging us to contemplate a word for 2014. My word for 2013 was sabbath which I think was a fail. The word that is. Taking time off last summer did not turn out to be restful at all. Oh well. We are all here and as Pastor Paul has often said--heaven is not a place of leisure.

I think my word for 2014 is actually two words. . . .GOOD ENOUGH.

Perhaps my exercise routine is GOOD ENOUGH. Perhaps my diet--gluten, sugar, butter and all is GOOD ENOUGH. Perhaps my piano playing is. . . perhaps my teaching and my students are. . . perhaps my parenting is. . . perhaps the upstairs carpet. . . my garden. . .

Yes, I have some personal goals and goals for the kids at piano. I want to start the teacher trainer application process. I want to be more consistent practicing piano with Mary. I want to expose Calvin to some other fine local teachers and highly committed piano kids.

Yet, I want to approach these things and this year without some pie in the sky thing that needs to be fixed, just because my brain tends to look for those things in order to stay stimulated and awake. I want to have A.P.T.S.--automatic positive thought syndrome and not A.N.T.S., the negative version.

Then again, maybe even that doesn't need to be fixed. See how hard it is?

It's so hard to just be. To just be good enough. A.G.E.T.S.? Automatic good enough thought syndrome. It doesn't really have a ring to it.

Well, I could wish you a wonderful, peaceful, joyful, musical, enlightened, mindful, organized, healthy, disciplined, focused, meet all your goals and observe every resolution while still taking time to rest. . . all the way to December year. . .

But, maybe instead, I'll wish you one moment. . . to just be GOOD ENOUGH.

Happy New Year!