Wabi-Sabi and the Art of Piano Panic

Once a Bunny, Always a Bunny

Snowflakes for the Snowflakes

Calvin's Media Productions at Work

Trouble, Right Here in River City

Grandma Hope's Chairs All Repaired and Ready for Kotrba Life Again

At the Feed My Starving Children Gala

Kitten Kisses

November 5, 2018
The days are getting shorter and the clouds are getting Novemberish. I'm feeling an overwhelming sense of peace, because I love the upcoming season. I've started putting the pre-advent lights around the house and last week I repaired and hung the snowflakes. No Santa Claus or Jesus yet but the Christmas recital is early this year and the days are ticking by at record speed. So we listen to the Messiah and start to do the November things. The kids have accused me of getting ahead of the scheduled Christmas music, i.e. Josh Groban on 12/1, Carpenter's on 12/2 etc. . . I don't care. I resemble that remark.

Calvin is seventeen, which means our house is seventeen. The house feels tired to me. The wood floor is tired, the upstairs carpet is tired. The paint on the walls is tired. The finishes on the furniture we use are tired. The kittens aren't helping. Well, they are helping, they help me with everything. The laundry, watering plants, practicing. Everything. Everything comes with a little extra mess. But, still, the list of capital improvements that could be done to the house is growing. Where the line is between well-loved and just plain needing some repair?

Wabi-sabi is the Japanese idea of the acceptance of transience and imperfection. Beauty that is imperfect.

My friend Sandi told me she hated to refinish her kitchen floor because the place that was worn was where she stood to cook her family dinner.

It's true. The house is real. It's full of little children's finger prints and cat scratches and blueberry stains and little smudges on the walls going upstairs. Don't ask what they are and don't think too much about it.

But. . it's smells like a fire in the fireplace and homemade pizza and pine candles and hopefully not too much cat litter.

Seventeen years ago when we moved in and everything was perfect, while I was beyond ecstatic to own a real home that we designed and built, there was something missing from it all.

Life.

It took two babies, a bunny, seven cats, 100 recitals and seventeen winters, springs, summers and falls with their dirt and pine needles and sunshine to temper the house into a home.

I'm not in a hurry to fix it all. There are woodpeckers living here and there around the siding and we probably should take care of that.

We will get to it. It's the non-dual acceptance of simultaneously taking good care of things while also using and enjoying them. It's the little things, that make a house a home.

November 12, 2018
Yesterday, I had a pretty major performance panic attack during the concert at Easter. I was well-prepared and excited enough for our six anthems, four of them with substantial accompaniments. There were however some extenuating circumstances.

The beta blockers.

I've been on the beta blockers for my thyroid for a good eight weeks now. They help control your heart rate and keep it from racing, which is one my symptoms. Coincidentally they are also the prescription drug of choice for performance anxiety. Four days ago I decided I was feeling pretty darn good, probably on account of the quart of celery juice I've been consuming (don't think about it too much) and I went off the beta blockers.

When the Easter Choir collaborative concert moment arrived, there were just a few things that triggered the attack--the guest choir and their accompanist (new people) --the distance of the piano from the choir, (Barb and Bev's soprano voices are my security blanket) distance from the conductor, (my eyes can't change focal points that quickly) and God knows what else. The tipping point of the fragile ego and the pulse and the little voices of judge and jury quarreling in my head. The irony of the medicine that could have put me back together being at home in the bathroom drawer. The guilt that I was not mentally strong enough to wrestle my own mind and heart rate. Not completely being in my own body during those four anthems. For shame.

If Wabi-sabi is the beauty of imperfection then I truly achieved that. . .
The recovery steps? Cry in the parking lot. Call your husband to confirm that somebody still loves you. Weight the pros and cons of completely leaving the music industry for 12 hours. Prepare for teacher training the next day and remember that you do really love most of the pieces from Book Five. And most music. And most children. Decide that maybe you are still of some small value even after a sloppy concert. You think I'm joking. I'm not.

One of my favorite authors, Brené Brown, talks a lot about "the shame storm" of our failures and imperfections. How we recover is really the whole deal, because sooner or later we will all and our children will all, and our students will all, survive some big or small mistakes.

So like my house, I'm considering myself wabi-sabi today. My performance had a few boogers on the wall, but we can clean that up and the house still stands in warmth and love. Even some beauty.

Here's to wabi-wabi.