Practice Makes

I have it in my head that Lily ought to be--needs to be--having piano lessons, the fact that we are not currently in possession of a piano notwithstanding, and I keep having flashbacks to my own piano lessons, which began I was about Lily's age and continued on into my teenage years.

It is such a cliche that parents have to browbeat their kids into practicing their musical instruments, and while I may not have consistently practiced as much as I was supposed to, I actually loved playing the piano, practice and all. Sometimes when I am at my parents' house now, and nobody is paying attention, I will go into the living room and close the door and play scales, or even songs from some of the old sheet music in the piano bench. It's not quite like riding a bike, but my fingers still know pretty much what to do. With a little bit of practice...

The truth is, although I really do want Lily to have piano lessons, and suspect she would really like playing the piano, I actually want to play again, too. Although for the most part I am drawn to large scale, amorphous plans and dreams, most of the time I like to have one concrete sure thing going as a counterpoint, something with fleeting yet eminently satisfying results.

Now I suppose it's true that this blog is a sort of practicing: practicing writing. But not really, not in the way I mean. Exercising is not practicing; it is keeping muscles limber, building strength. It is what it is: there is no finished exercise. The blog is more like this: I am keeping my muscles limber, building strength, perhaps, sometimes with the goal of a finished piece, but I had no expectation of starting small and ending up big, setting forth a few faltering lines, ending up with the great American novel. More like exercise, I think. Maintenance.

And although it is true that like no essay or story is ever finished until the writer says so, on her own terms, and can always go back and, well, unfinish it whenever she wants to, a piece of music is never conquered either, not really. There is no universal standard of mastery. But when you learn a new piece, you start with symbols on a page. That's all: there is no music, yet. And once you understand the symbols, can read them, you start, slowly at first, then more competently, then more confidently, until at last, after real practice, you can play a song. Your version of a song, yes. But a song, from start to finish.

Maybe I am talking about writing, too, although I didn't think so when I started. But I would still like to play the piano again. I would still like to learn a new song. Songs.

Why New York?

The first in an occasional (or perhaps never to be repeated) series (I recognize that if this is a one-off, the word "series" is inaccurate) observation on why, after fifteen years, I still see those corny "I Love NY" t-shirts and think, "You know it, baby."

So today I'm on my way to pick up Lily at school and I'm walking up 32nd Street from the subway station trying to decide if I need yet another cup of coffee. At the end of the street I decide in the affirmative, and suddenly remember that there's a Dunkin' Donuts, like a comforting way-station to a Massachusetts native, one block south that I've walked by but never stopped in. I turn, and start the 20 second walk. As I walk, I look in the windows of the shops, which I've never actually done before on this particular block, because when I walk it, I always have Lily, and am preoccupied with her, or her massive amounts of stuff. I stop in front of a shop I have never noticed before, although I must have walked by it dozens of times.

It is a hat shop. It has an old fashioned name, something starting with a "B," I think, like Bartleby's Hats, although that isn't it at all. But you get the idea. And in the window are actual hats: not chic little knitted berets or baseball caps or ski-wear but real hats, wool and felt bowlers and houndstooth caps, hats with brims and structure, hats from straight out of a black-and-white movie. Although I can barely remember this, about as much as I can remember my father's brief foray into mustache-hood and my grandmother's fashion wigs, my father and my grandfather both had hats like these. JFK wore a hat like one of these. Men who were Men wore hats like these. Holden Caulfield had a hat like one of these, I am sure of it, to look older, more mature.

And as I stood there, looking in the window, I found myself thinking: Who wears hats like these today? How can this store, which somehow managed to give the impression it had been there for a hundred years (and maybe it has) stay in business?

And I kept standing there, staring in the window, and then I registered a man, an old man, wearing a sportcoat and leaning on a cane, trying on hats, considering them, and I somehow knew that he would buy one, although I had to keep walking then, if I wanted my coffee in time for school pick-up, which I did.

And as I walked back up the short block to Lily's school, which is in a building surrounded by Korean restaurants and delis, the ubiquitous Starbucks and CVS, I felt tremendously glad that this weird little hat shop, which I will never go in, never have need for, exists quite seemingly comfortably, right there on the corner of 31st and 5th. And that this little old man, who must have been 80, is walking around his neighborhood, maybe even this neighborhood, wearing an actual hat.

That's it. Thank you, NYC.

Another Golden Rule

This evening I had to run out to two stores to buy diaper cream and milk ( I know; very glamorous), and at the grocery store, my last stop, I found myself waiting in a short line by the fruit display. As I stood there mindlessly surveying the fruit, my eyes stopped on a box of yellow raspberries. Those are pretty, I thought. I've only had yellow raspberries a few times in my life, mostly on desserts at formal restaurants. Yet here was a big stack of boxes of them in my neighborhood grocery store right there by the cash register, and they weren't even expensive. Lily and Annika will like those, I thought, as they both love berries of all kinds, and I knew they'd never seen, let alone, eaten, the yellow variety. I placed a box on the conveyor next to my carton of milk.

When I got home, I put the milk in the fridge and left the box of berries on the counter, forgetting about it. Later, after dinner, Lily went in to get herself a glass of water and came out holding it. What are these? she asked. Can we eat them?

I thought you'd have them for breakfast, I said, but if you're still hungry, sure. You can eat them right now.

Lily opened the box and ate a few of the raspberries. Wow! These are delicious, she said. Come here, Annika. You've got to try these yellow raspberries. Annika came running over, and a few minutes later the raspberries were gone. They had alternated taking small handfuls and savored them, Lily providing running commentary, as usual, and Annika oohing and ahhing with enthusiasm. I hadn't even tried a berry; I was too busy watching them enjoy them.

Lily brought the empty container to me. You might have to get some more of these, Mama, she said. I guess you can see we really, really liked them. I took the container, smiling, and brought it into the kitchen to put in the recycling bin. Before I did, I glanced at the cover. Golden raspberries, that's right. I thought. They call them golden raspberries.

Of course they do. Raspberries in any color but red are highly unusual, hard-to-come-by, rare, and even the plain old red ones are pretty luxurious, as anyone who's ever spent an hour or two picking to take home a few meager boxes will testify. Why yellow, when golden works just as well, lends credence--enhances--their specialness?

And children are very good, exceptional, really, at noticing special things, new things, details. Lily notices whenever there is a sliver of a crescent moon, when I wear a sweater I haven't worn in ages. Annika notices when I am not wearing my glasses, when there are flowers in the house.

A lesson, in this, for me? Raspberries are delicious, yellow raspberries are special, golden raspberries, by virtue of the name alone, are golden. Crowns are golden, sunlight is golden, silence is golden: Gold is timeless, priceless. If you are standing in a line at a grocery store and you see some golden raspberries, I suggest you buy a box. They're not always so easy to find. And make sure you remember what they're called as you eat them.

Standing on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona

One of the most unexpected things that has happened to me since becoming a parent is the constant reassessment of my own parents' lives. Although I have been an adult for a long time now, I am realizing more and more how much I always saw them as existing in my own solar system. At times, oftentimes, they were each or both the sun, but the sun of my solar system: the givers of heat and light and life to me.

Do I exist this way for Lily? Will I for Annika? I'm not sure. Sometimes I see Lily watching me, head cocked slightly, observing me do something with a slightly worried expression in her eyes. This weekend I was listening to the radio and started singing along, enthusiastically, to an Eagles song I hadn't heard in a while, and I saw that look in her eyes as she assessed the situation. "I didn't know you knew this song," she said, a bit accusingly, or rather hurt, as though I'd been keeping something essential from her.

"Do you know this song?" I asked, surprised.

"No," she said. "I've never heard it before. But I didn't know you knew it." Oh, Lily.

I get this, now that I think about it. And much of the time, it feels good to be the sun. Important. It is scary as a small child and sometimes even as a grown-up, to imagine the people who anchor your world out there strolling around in someone else's solar system, doing things you don't know about, singing songs with unfamiliar lyrics. It can come as a shock to see someone you love make manifest an aspect, an angle, that reveals vast or even minuscule unknowns. I can remember moments like this from my own childhood: My father, murmuring a prayer in Hebrew at a second cousin's bar mitzvah, my mother, laughing with a friend on the patio, a different laugh than the laugh she laughed with us.

A glimpse, then, of these other selves. They are people. They exist when I am not around. They may exist differently when I am not around. And then, forgotten. On purpose and involuntarily both. Do we need to see the people we love the way we want to see them? Is it necessary for them to break out on occasion, chip away at this limiting shell, in order for us to see them at all?

It is true, on some level, that I am so connected now to these two girls that no matter where I am or who I'm with or what I'm doing they are there, too, at the outer edges of the solar system or right there too close to the sun. Look away; you can't. Thus, the conundrum. It's all tricks of light and angles. There is no other solar system once your children are born. They will have theirs, too, but yours will be encircled eventually. And this, I think, is what is supposed to be.

No More Sorting Crackers

Lists seem to be de rigeur for the New Year, so here's my contribution:

• made sandwich for Lily's back-to-school lunch tomorrow
• organized rarely used box of cake decorating tools, sprinkles and candles
• watched 15 minutes of the Sex and the City episode in which Carrie and Samantha ride cross-country on a train; have seen at least 5 times over the years, cleaned coffee pot as I watched
• sorted Annika's shoes into pairs
• put all the crackers in mostly empty boxes into one large Ziplock bag
• ate one Double Stuff Oreo from bag hidden on the top of the refrigerator
• polished my glasses
• glued broken piece of china tray back on

This is perhaps the most boring list ever compiled. What makes it interesting, to me at least, is that it is a list of the things I did after midnight in order to keep from sitting down to write. I was afraid to sit down and write, waited too long, had nothing to say, didn't feel like coming up with some device to make me do it coherently.

I need to immerse myself in a writing project, this is very clear to me. New Year's pledge, list of one item only: Make the time and space to do it. I know this is a writing project, technically speaking, but this is not what I mean. Back to some work. Back to the drawing board, in whatever way that happens. No more grouping crackers. Maybe I'll change the resolution to that. Seems less insurmountable.

If I remember...

...one Christmas present from this past holiday it will be the red cashmere robe my mother made for Lily by carefully making a pattern and cutting pieces from an old robe of my grandmother's that was riddled with moth holes. You see, my mother always wears a robe when she gets up, and Lily has put on her terry-cloth bathrobe many times in the morning to "look like Sands," whether my mom is around or not. So the robe itself was a thoughtful gift, but the fact that it was made by hand from a formerly beloved robe of my grandmother's that I remember her wearing--well, enough said. That's all.

New Snow

Spur of the moment New Year's excursion to Vermont with no computer, so missed two days. Sleigh ride behind a big black horse named Oatie, Lily's first ski class, sledding for all four girls--Lily, Annika and two friends, the children of old friends of mine--fondue by the fire, and lots and lots of snow.

But I wrote a lot in my head, which was something, I think. On the drive up, which took forever, it was snowing heavily in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The driving was slow, and out the windows in every direction all was white. It was beautiful, even from the highway, and reminded me of childhood winters and of how much I love the snow, love when it is falling in particular.

One of the reasons I love when it snows is that in a world in which we control so much, feel the desire to control so much, we cannot control the snow. It comes when it wants, as much or as little as it wants, and we are rendered servants to its master. The snow falls thickly, and our cars seem silly. Our ability to get where we want to on our own terms is erased by a blanket of white. We bundle up in our expensive "snow-proof" gear, and our feet get wet, our hands get cold. The snow is indomitable, firm, unmoved.

In a year that has so often made me feel overwhelmed and overburdened, cluttered and all mucked up, this snow--on New Year's Eve, the night before the fresh new year--felt clean and clear, clean as in the proverbial clean slate, clear in its flat, unaltered whiteness. It felt like the end of something and the beginning of something. And as we drove through it, I watched, and thought, and hoped.