Filling the Quiet Spaces

Bill and Sara across Monet's Lily Pond

Some of the legal treats in Amsterdam

Me in a Swanky Paris Hotel

Calvin and my mom are out in Glacier this week. Mary is at band camp. It's just me and Bill here. A small taste of the future.

There are some quiet spaces.
Too quiet.

The MacPhail institute was last week--I got to spend time with the MacPhail piano kids and also my teaching friends. Again, it was a small taste of what it would be like to have a social life. To go to dinner with friends a couple nights a week. It was nice. Piano teachers are nice.

A lot of my projects are complete. Monday morning I woke up with no kids and no colossal obligations. It was like the first day of summer.

I'm dropping Calvin at the University of Iowa three weeks from today.

At the Hotel D'Orsay in Paris there was jazz playing every morning in the glorious Parisian breakfast room with cheeses and honey and croissants. And a silver coffee service. Good cheeses. Good honey. Good butter. Good jazz. Fruit is overrated. If you are trying to be gluten free or dairy free or sugar free I do not recommend France. I did not ask for decaf coffee.

We have come to the close of 5:30 a.m. piano practices, but I'm still waking up at 5:30. Eighteen years of 5:30. It could be that I will wake up at 5:30 for the rest of my life. It's so quiet, I'm gonna put some jazz on for Bill. Never mind that he is not awake yet. I need to fill the too quiet space. We still play CDs on the six CD carousel player. Eighteen years ago on a rainy day in March when the house was being built and I was pregnant out-to-here Bill ran speaker wires through the whole framed house so that we could have music in every room. We didn't know there would be blue tooth. . .and iTunes.

Bill Evans at the Village Vanguard will do. Something with My Foolish Heart. Through the whole house.

There are no speakers on the porch. It's the only room. I can't hear the music very well sitting out here writing.

Never mind, it is filling the space.

Eighteen years. That was a long project. From nighttime feeding to board books to big kid toys to driving.

What if you got to do it all again with what you know now?
I don't think I would have done very much differently.
You do the best you can with what you know at the time.

There are all these things in life that everybody goes through but then when it's you, you wonder how you will do it. Childbirth, death of a parent, teaching someone to drive. Kids going to college.

I'm hopeless. I spent my entire childhood dreading the day my sister would leave for college and fearing losing my grandparents. Those things happened slowly but surely. And, of course,  it turned out there was more joy to come. But it was never the same. A new same. I'm hopeless, but wise enough to not get stuck for too long.

I'm excited for Calvin. He's so ready and it's a whole new glorious world. I loved college. It's just gonna be an explosion for him. I'm also excited for Mary. Calvin got some years as an only child before Baby Sunshine came along, now she will have some years here alone. We all need to be loved alone.

And I'm excited for me and Bill. We love a project and this has been a good one. It's been the best.

My Romance is playing now. Bill Evans has always been my favorite jazz pianist. I can hear it a little.

Filling the quiet spaces.

Dear Lord,
Much of the time there is so much music and conversation and noise. In these quieter times, help fill the space not just with jazz piano CDs but with your presence and reassurance of the joy in change. Thank you for the blessing that family life has been and will continue to be. A new same. The blessings yet to come. Bless Calvin and Janel out in Montana and Mary alone at band camp. Bless Bill and I and our projects. Bless our quiet spaces. Alleluia.
Amen