Where You Lead, I Will Follow

Mary's First Quilt Top

Where you lead, I will follow. Mary bought me a key chain for Christmas a year ago, it has those words from the theme song of the Gilmore Girls show. Mary and I watch this show when we have a chance. The characters are unrealistically snarky, (read: life is not a sitcom, we are not a comedy act) but it is a show about a mother and daughter and a grandma and their relationships.

A while ago my mom commented~ your kids are just like you and Bill. Mary is doing her bullet journal and sewing and Calvin likes trains. Both kids like piano and traveling.

I guess we do have a lot of interests in common, but Bill and I would say that actually the kids are not like us, they are better than us. We are often inspired by them and motivated to be more of our our best selves. I think eventually all parents learn from their children. At least that is the plan. The hope.

A few years ago, well. . . 2014 to be exact. . . I purchased a book titled The Life Changing Art of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. The spark of joy book. This scratched a big itch. There are several old blog entries about it. The problem for us OCD sparkers is that we really want to spark it all. Our own stuff. Our pets' stuff. Our neighbor's stuff. Most of all. . . our kids' stuff.

Calvin is no saint, but to be completely honest back then it was Mary's stuff that haunted me. Trinkets. Hundreds of Trinkets. Books. Doll clothes. Little collectables. Craft supplies. Objects of nature. Birthday gifts from twelve girls. Every year. Actually probably thousands of trinkets. Candy wrapper collections. Sacred papers. Stuffed animals adopted from every corner of the world. And their babies. You KNOW what they say about rabbits.

I blamed myself. After all, as her mother I bought her most of this stuff and the rest just multiplied and became part of the early childhood museum that was the overstuffed hopelessly cluttered 12 foot by 12 foot stacked to the ceiling twilight zone called Mary's room.

Ms. Kondo is very firm. You can't spark other people's stuff. Not even in the middle of the night when you know there is no way in God's green earth she will miss some of this stuff if you silently slip it into a black hefty big and stealthily heave it curbside. I would never do that. Just saying. I never did that. I swear.

Kondo recommends just setting the example. So, Mom and Dad's room, just across the hall became an oasis of calm tidiness, almost mimicking a Marriott Courtyard without even a pen on the nightstand.

The transformation didn't happen overnight. I would say it was a slow and steady wins the race kind of change. First her desk started looking functional. Trinkets started making their way toward the garbage bin. Games were sorted. Collections were culled. I can't exactly pinpoint the moment of lift. I think it was when the dandelion fuzzy collection met its maker.

Now, at 15, Mary's room has nothing under the bed. Clothes hanging freely in the closet. Books are on the shelves. Only the top 200 stuffed rabbits made the cut. They are settled in sweet hanging planters on the wall. Baby quilts came down. Travel souvenirs went up. Little by little she grew up and cleaned her room. She made it her own place.

Having a messy room is not necessarily a character flaw. My point is that no amount of nagging and trying to help or pestering ever made a difference. Eventually she just drank the spark of joy Kool-Aid. Marie Kondo was right. We set the example. She followed.

How many other things in life are just like this. We can pester the daylights out of the kids, but eventually they just end up following our lead. In their own time and space.

Our best parenting technique may well turn out to be just being our own very best selves.
Where you lead, I will follow.

It won't be long until we are following them. Maybe even by eighteen. This is what we wanted.

This blog? A long-winded way of saying most things turn out okay. Give them a little time.
God bless. . .

The Aspiration to Speak Love

After the Advancing SPTG Recital Selfie

The Girls Performed Mozart and Bach

Minnesota Winter Survival

My Parent Party Treats

Mary's First High School Jazz Concert

A House for A Cheetah

A Throw Back, Complete with Keyboard, Vocal Mic and Tambourine, Taken at a Club in Steamboat Springs

Posing for Publicity

Summer Practice Partners

Last weekend was my parent party. We had a good turnout. We get our drinks and visit and then get our desserts and find our way to the living room. This year we watched a piece of Calvin's Italy audition. (The Italy festival, unfortunately has been cancelled due to the virus in China.) Still Calvin got a lovely video. Here is a link to his own YouTube channel and video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuuxGkdw8Jk. Then we watched a snippet of his Book One recital complete with side long glances at me after purposeful mistakes. That little four year old face. It's a long and winding road, folks. After the videos the parents went around the circle and shared highs and lows. This year the highs and lows took two and a half hours. There was a lot of pride and also a few tender tears. There was honesty.

We all need to vent. We vent to our inner circle. Some vent to Facebook. I vent to my mother and my husband. We need a safe place to let it all hang out. Yet, there is a dance to it all. When someone vents to me, it could be my child or a friend or a studio parent, it comes with the responsibility of discernment on my part. Is this something I need to help fix? Or is this just a necessary release of feelings.

When we are hurting we need someone to listen and be with us. Darling, I love you and I'm here for you. Our presence can be a gift to the other person. A hopeful blessing. Now and then there might be some actual words or actions needed to be of service.

There is another facet to this which I confess I have been guilty of once or twice in the past. That is, when perhaps we share too much and perhaps with the wrong audience and it crosses the line and becomes gossip.  I see this on social media when piano teachers vent about their students to other teachers. Another form of this which unfortunately is in my Souhrada DNA is the propensity to ruminate on the unjust or just plane irritating thing another has done to us. We can go through it over and over in our mind for days, months, and even years.

Reflecting on this, I made "Speak Love" one of my ten aspirations. It's number four if you are following. Speak love means many things. Firstly it means to only speak lovingly about other people. It has the more important side note of actually seeing the best in other people. Actively looking for the God given light in each and every person we come across. That can and will take me a lifetime to achieve.

It doesn't mean I never get to share my hurt feelings or frustrations. It just means being mindful about it and knowing when enough is enough. Learning not to ruminate. We talk about popping that bubble. Being the boss of your thoughts.

Where there is no wood, the fire goes out; and where there is no talebearer, strife ceases. Proverbs 26:20. 

And this is a quote in my notebook, unfortunately without reference. It's not mine.

Words. You may notice that when we speak quickly, without thinking, or rush to get our ideas across, our worlds don't carry the same power as when we speak slowly and confidently, allowing those receiving our words time and space to take them in. When we carefully listen to others before we speak our words have more integrity, and when we take time to center ourselves before speaking, we truly begin to harness the power of speech. Then our words can be intelligent messages of healing and light, transmitting deep and positive feelings to these who receive them. 

Good grief and good luck. Still, it's a worthy aspiration. When I'm in a hurry it takes everything I've got to listen to the long version of the story (remember I have two verbal children) before snapping in. I guess aspiration number two, to listen, and this one, to speak love, are soulmates.

Everyday is a new chance to practice.

Lord,
Guide the words of my mouth. Help them to speak love at all times. That seems impossible, yet it's worth a try. Help me speak only the best about others, to always speak their name with love. Foster that circle of seeing the best and speaking the best. Help me to not ruminate. And help me discern when my loved ones need a listening ear or when they need active help. 
Amen

Focusing on the Moments or a Moment on Focus

We have been home two weeks. This morning the sun poked through the bleak midwinter. Shout out to Mary who persevered and made it through midterms and finals and lessons and recital preparation and driving practice since we have been home. Shout out to Calvin who had a four hour recording session in the U of I concert hall. And shout out to Bill who as always, takes the storms of life and turns them into gentle breezes taking pictures along the way.

Looking back on eleven years of trips to Hawaii, we have only missed two years, it's easy to watch the kids grow up through the camera lens and of course the sun does its work on the faces of the adults as well.

Our children have all these different stage. I've said before that I loved all the stages. The trick is, you never get to say goodbye to that kid before they become the next one. It's not my idea, it's universal, but you never know the last time someone sits on your lap or builds a sand castle or plays in a Playmobil town in your basement.

I don't know why thinking about memories is such a mixed bag. It was so cold and bleak I tried to conjure up the image of my mom and I walking along the beach in the sun, just two weeks ago. Instead of warming my heart, it squeezed it and a little tear came out.

Everyone says the secret of life is just being in the moment. Really being there.
Breathing in and breathing out in real time.

How do you remind yourself of this?

I always remind my studio parents that you can't make a child focus by telling them to focus.
Telling them to focus actually takes their focus away from the task. We have to draw them in.

We have to draw ourselves into the moments of life. We have to look through the camera lens in real time. Focus the lens. Focus the moment.

Calvin attributes his ability to test well in subjects to his growing up at the piano. Not everyone walking down the street can sit and really focus on something for an extended amount of time. Mary attributes her ability to finish complicated projects to piano practice. Developing focus is a lifetime growth thing. We are all on that path, myself included.

Caroline Fraser always says, the student was focused because the teacher was focused.

Well, it's a busy weekend and I don't have all the answers. I'm going to talk a little about focus at my parent party tomorrow. And a little about just being in the moment.

I'll try to be in the moments as I go through the recital at MacPhail today, a date with Bill, the parent party tomorrow and the social times that go with it all.

Blessings to you my faithful readers. This is my eleventh year of blogging.
I'm glad I can share a few of these moments and a few of my inner thought with you.

Sara