Colorado Suzuki Institute Day 1

I'm sitting in the Denver airport on the way to teach for the week at the Colorado Suzuki Institute. I'm excited. I have such good memories from this place. I did my books five, six, and seven teacher training here with Doris Harrel. What a blessing that was. If you are out there reading, Doris, I'm assuming it was you who recommended me to the folks here. Thanks. I won't let you down. I'm sorry you are not here. I miss you.

During those years I had many students coming out here--Lauren, Aidan and Lena, Cassy, and Katelyn an Kelsey. Kids get older, move away, things change and I haven't had kids out here for a few years. It was fun to show off those kids-working so hard!

Then came the visits with my own children and Bill. Calvin was so little and over-stimulated by the hotel and the elevators, the pool and all the PIANOS. Preparing him to play The Happy Farmer on the honors recital almost gave me a nervous breakdown. Having your own kid perform in front of your teaching mentors and peers is not for the faint of heart.

The kids loved it. And they grow!  Anytime you focus on something for a whole week you grow. The kids grow, the parents grow, and the teacher grows.

As a parent, I know how high my hopes are for my kids at these camps. It costs a lot to travel and attend them. You want the kids to have a positive musical experience, but you also want some tangible growth and learning to go on.

So that is my promise to the kids out here: we will have fun, but we're also gonna get some work done this week. See you this afternoon at the orientation. I can't wait to meet y'all!

www.marionlake.com

We are back from Montana.  Glacier National Park to be exact.  The four Kotrbas plus my mom stayed five nights at the Izaak Walton Inn.  We had an awesome time.  It was 45 degrees and raining all week but we went forth anyway.  Wednesday was a hike to Marion Lake, 2.5 miles one way and gaining 2200 feet or so.  This was an aggressive hike for us to take with Mary, as she is still only six.  I think we actually would have made it but for a few small setbacks which I will try to capture with photos.  The first was the fact that we were the first hikers of the season so no one illuminated us to the fact that Montana had 200% snowfall this winter and the heavy snow coupled with high winds brought down an enormous amount of trees.  101 in our path to be exact.  We counted them on the way down.  One hundred and one to climb over or under or around.

The second obstacle was the rain and plummeting temperature. It started at 45 degrees at the car.  I don't know what it was at the top.  I packed each child three sweatshirts.  We layered them all.  Lucky for Calvin he had a good raincoat to put on top, a hand-me-down-from a student.  Note to self:  everyone needs a raincoat.  And wool socks.  And waterproof hiking boots.  And mittens.

The third obstacle was the snow.  After we lost and recovered the trail in the snow several times, there started to be little rushing rivers hidden under snow banks.  That got a little scary.  So we stopped.  Bill and I went on, we gave ourselves 20 minutes forward and 20 minutes to get back to the kids and my mom.  We didn't get to Marion Lake.   I think it was just around the next ski hill. . . . by the time we got back--Calvin, Mary and my mom were pretty cold and wet.

Mary cried.  The whole way through the frozen picnic.  The whole way down the mountain.  This ensured our safety from any bear activity. Through sobs, "Mama, as soon as we get back to Minnesota I'm gonna go to www.marionlake.com and see that lake we didn't get to see.   Sorry Mary, National Wilderness Area Lakes don't always have their own websites.  It is a hard lesson for this generation to learn.
She wouldn't even eat her cookies in her misery. This is of course the exact treatment that my sister and I received hiking as a family when we were young.  Except we had 40 pound packs.  Okay maybe not at six years old, but we were pretty little. . .  historical photos would show my dad carrying his pack, me, and my pack down the last leg of the trail.  These are the traditions we must uphold.

All is well that ends well.  This was the closest we got to the top.  Next time we will make it. There has to be something to go back for.

We had such a great trip.
It took a lot of courage for us to go back to the sacred place my kids spent our last memories with my dad two years ago, but that is another blog entry.

Congratulations Calvin!

Congratulations upon completion of Suzuki Piano Book Four, Calvin.

You showed up.  With all your music.  All the music inside you.  All thirteen pieces.  You made a couple uncharacteristic oops but that was probably nerves.  You choose good tempos and did the beautiful nuances that you planned.  I wouldn't trade a flawless performance for a flat one.  Not for the world.  Your grandaddy would be proud of you too.

Your teachers from school were there and even your principal made an appearance.   Of course many of the normal cast of characters were there, Grandpa and Grandma, Grandmommy, Auntie Ann, and Maggie.   For the record, Maggie took an oath of silence before the first note.  Two friends from school and a family from the studio balanced out the audience.

Your string players did a beautiful job and seemed to enjoy themselves.  They are good musicians and nice people.  The four trios were really fun and exciting listening.

A highlight was your jazz composition at the end. Calvin's Blues.

At these graduation recitals everyone always oohs and ahhs about memorizing so many pieces.  I know that is not the challenge for you.  With the exception of the repeats on the second movement of the Beethoven Sonatina you don't even think about the memory any more than I would think about speaking the English language.  It is just a language that you speak.  Your mother tongue.  The challenge for you is being there in the moment and listening again, even after you have listened 1000 times before.  To hear it fresh anew.  To show up.  You did it.

I am proud of your music, I am proud of your focus, but mostly I am proud of your heart.  Well done, kid.

Our Very Best Self

Tomorrow is Calvin's Book Four Graduation Recital.  He started working toward this one year ago.  Thirteen pieces. About an hour a day for 365 days.  It feels like a lot is at stake.  If he is nervous I can't tell.  Am I?  A little--but what is it that I want?  I want him to be his very best self.

What is our very best self?  What brings it out?

It isn't that I magically want Calvin to be some polished musician, some ultra focused kid, that he is not.  I don't need him to be better or different.  I want him to play at his ability level. I want him to be his very best self.

We want our children to have positive experiences.  We want them to perform at their ability level.  We want them to want to be good.  To meet their potential. So then comes the dance.  I've been trying to put the responsibility for being good back on his shoulders lately.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  Sometimes he steps up to the plate and sometimes he is thinking about Harry Potter, or the operating system on his computer, or heaven knows what else is going on in there.

If I have said it once, I have said it a million times.  You can't tell someone to focus.  I know you have to draw kids in, to ask them questions--how was the balance?  How were the dynamics?  Even more specific:  how was the climax on the B section?  Still I tell him: FOCUS! Were you there?

"Mama, it's hard to focus when you have been playing this music everyday for so long."

I can tell when I am bringing out the best in him versus when I am provoking him to frustration.  I am only half proud to say that to this day I have avoided profanity as well as violence.  But still the words come out.  The looks come out.  He knows my looks more than my words.  My heavy sighs speak loud and clear.  It wasn't good enough.  It wasn't his very best job.

I remember preparing for his Book One recital.  There were stuffed animals for every song.  He was so little.  Each animal had a favorite song. There was one animal--that thought Calvin could do no wrong--a puppy I think.  He pretended to slobber on him and kiss him and tell him in a sugary voice how wonderful he was.  When he went to play that puppy's song, the quality was wonderful--his very best job.  A light bulb went  off in my mind.

All the kids really want is our love.  That is the key to being our best self.

When my husband and I started getting back in touch after being friends in college, many years had past.  For ten years we had sent Christmas cards and had he had even visited me a few times as friends.  As we emailed and spent hours on the phone long distance--getting back in touch--I realized that he only saw the best in me.  He made me want to be my very best self.  And so I was.

Now I search for the way to be that light for my children.  To see the best in them.  To see them as their very best selves.  And they will want to be.  And they will be.

Good Luck Calvin, but mostly, I just love you.

Hope's Ferns

Yes, I know this is Lily of the Valley, not a fern.  There is a story.

We are going to Lime Springs, Iowa on Friday to bury my grandmother, Hope Souhrada.  She died last December, don't ask any questions.  It was a long winter in Iowa. So once again, six households are coming together to celebrate her life, and place her at last next to my grandfather John.  In the warm sunshine.

Perhaps my grief for her was overshadowed by the grief I am still working through for my father.  Or perhaps her grief was just a bit more spread out.  Sometimes I think there is a net sum of grief equal to the place the person held in our life and you can go through it fast or slow or now or later but sooner or later you go through it.  The grief of losing my grandma, or Mama as I called her started the frozen January 2010 day that we drove her down the lane of the little farm on highway 63 a mile North of Davis Corners to the (holding back on derogatory expletives) nursing home in Cresco.  Numbly we held a little service of blessing over the house which held the memories of 40 years for me and longer for her.  We all shared a story or two.  Four generations had wonderful memories there.  If you can grieve a place we are still working through that as well.  What a blessing that my children shared the playhouse that my grandpa made from the brooder shed--painting, roofing, and putting in new windows--when I was a child.

It took four households six months to work through the stuff in the house and out buildings.  Every time I drove there to help I grieved her, though she was still alive, but not living, in the nursing home.  The short hour long visits there not equal to the late night talks about life and faith and the children.

This spring all the starts I took from her garden were more beautiful than ever.  Hundreds of ferns.  She warned me about the ferns.  She said, "they will take over, you will be rounding them up."  Never.  She made me take the transplants from around the Lily of the Valley. The ferns were noxious there and she worried they would drive out her favorite flowers.  Invasive she said.  Having a fern fetish I was glad for the little fronds.  For the last ten years, since we built our house, I have taken ferns each spring from the North side of her house.  And peonies. And roses.  And volunteer pines trees.  Last spring I worried that I would be taking too much from the prospective new owners of the property.  I made sure that I didn't take too many ferns.  Turns out the new family is adding on to the house and the fern bed was destroyed.  I should have taken them all.

That is not to say that I am not delighted that a family with four small children moved into the farmhouse.  They needed more space and will make it their own and love it.  Their children will play in the brooder house--maybe their dad will put new windows in and paint and shingle it.   They are Mennonite, they will take care of the land.  I met them.  They happened to be visiting Hope in the nursing home once when I was there.  If there is such a thing as God moments, Calvin and Mary meeting the four sweet children that would take over the brooder house was one of them.  For me too. Maybe especially for me.

Back to the Lily of the Valley.  So as we grieve Hope, who died at 91, there is some small cosmic laughter.  This spring little shoots of Lily of the Valley that piggybacked on my fern transplants are taking a hold in my garden.  Everywhere. Invasive Lily of the Valley.  Mama is smiling down at me from heaven.  Her flowers are resurrected in my garden.

The Slippery Slope of Screen Time

Over the years I have had two studio families who chose not to have a television in their home.  One from Austin and one from Minnesota.  I am sure you will not be surprised to hear that their grown children are out in the world doing amazing things.  Along the way they were also wonderful musicians, scholars, and the most creative and cool kids I have known.

Here at the Kotrba house, we have tried to dabble in the world of electronic media as well as the world of non-electronic media.  I am proud that Calvin did not know there was network television until he was seven years old.  Until then we just had some VHS tapes that he could watch while I was in the shower or on Saturday mornings.  Along the way certain temptations arose.  Reader Rabbit.  What could be wrong with a three year old learning to read using reader rabbit and the "Leap Pad?"  Not that much I guess.  Except that it is a slippery slope.  Now, even more than ten years ago, our children are growing up in the world of the web.  We don't even buy software anymore.  Mary gets a little computer time every morning: PBSkids or sometimes Webkinz.  A few minutes can turn into a couple hours very easily when mom is on the phone or trying to get some work done.  She is learning to read, right?

Calvin started having some homework that required web research.  His temptations are not video games but our browser history will show links to the subway systems of every major city in the world, and every car dealership and dozens of map quest locations.  Computer tutorials ahoy. He loves to pick a topic and delve into it, future researcher, right?

But, he started slithering to the web more and more.  I would come down in the morning and he would be one my computer.  After school, "I just want to check something. . . "  All good stuff.  All research. . .

Then came netflix.  A couple months ago we got netflix.  Both kids can only watch the boob tube (as we used to call it) on the weekend as it is.  Now they just have more Saturday morning selection.  Bill naively put a couple Disney pre-teen series in the instant view queue.  I swear by Saturday afternoon both kids were acting like Disney teens--arguing and talking in one-liners.  That was only two hours worth.  Now we have to take away a freedom that was given.

Not to mention that Bill and I got sucked into the show Lost.  Good grief, there are seven seasons with 25 episodes a season, we are only to season three.  After this, I am never starting a series again. Take away my netflix freedom, please!  Life is too short--but I kinda need to know if they ever get rescued--I am so ashamed.  If you watched it don't you dare tell me. . .

So I am circling back to non-media.  But I don't want to be the bad guy.  Several times I mention that I am frustrated with the slithering to the dining room computer.  What can we do about this, I ask.  My mom mentions the Today Show suggests one day a week with no media.  I am dreaming about seven days a week but I don't know how to get there without mutiny.   I talk to the kids a little more about all the cool things there are to do in the house and yard.  Ask them if they want to be more creative or more plugged in.  Remind them that the stuff they are doing on the web and what they are watching on the weekends is not bad--it is just what they are NOT doing while they are having screen time.  They are not playing together.  They are not reading.  They are not riding their bikes. They are not playing music.  They are not playing a board game.  They are not making tea parties for their dolls.  They are not continuing the legacy of Playmobil town.

So I ask them the question.  What are the summer media rules going to be.

They said it.  Calvin and Mary made the rule. No computer during the week.  Web and t.v. only on the weekends.  My heart leaped.  I have done some small thing right that they would take pride in less screen time. Calvin can still type the Household Post on his non-web, non-game computer, and send it on my lap-top daily.  Creative writing is okay. And, they can check their email once a day for 15 minutes.  Staring now.  The dirty little secret is that most of the time we are gone or doing something on the weekends anyway.  Tra la la.  I win.  They win.

This morning Mary didn't even ask about PBSkids.org.   She dressed up as a fairy and made a tea party for everyone in her doll world.  Huge mess.  I am going to pay for this. . . but I think it is a bargain.

Congratulations Kris!

Easter Butterflies Released!

Congratulations Pastor Kris--upon the official call to be Lead Pastor of our Easter Lutheran Church.  I never voted in a formal congregational meeting before tonight, but I wouldn't have missed the chance to cast my vote for you!  It was very moving to me that we had a huge turn out and all feeling the same as me, they didn't want to miss showing their support for you.   There are many reasons for this--one is that YOU show up to support everyone around YOU.  The rest of the reasons are the work of the Holy Spirit--but it is hard to separate those reasons from each other--as I believe the Holy Spirit takes one kind gesture from you and radiates it like the waves of a pebble dropped into a lake.  The circles just keep going.

I was also moved by your words tonight, about God remaining the same, even as leadership changes.  The church is not about the pastor or the building or even the people, it is about God's love.  God's love shines through you so brightly!  May His face continue to shine upon you, and grant you peace, especially tonight, sleep well my friend.