Other People's Lessons

I have been thinking about lessons a lot lately. No more so than today. My older sister has been sick, and I have taken on the weekly task of driving our niece Emma to her violin lesson.

When I have listened to Emma at her lessons these past few weeks, I have been in awe. Yes, she sounds nothing like the four year-old girl who first picked up a quarter midget sized violin twelve years ago and, thanks to Mr. Suzuki, learned how to bow with coarse strokes and the aid of memorized nursery rhymes. Not only do the sounds that come out of her violin these days sound like music, it is obvious that the music is deeply felt. The music she makes is sublime.

The other week, Emma confessed to me, “I don’t always like to practice. But I love my lessons.” All I can think of, as a way to explain this passion, is that during her lessons Emma’s teacher engages her in ways that help her develop her awareness. Her teacher, Holly, will ask her questions like: How does that sound to you? What do you think the fingering for that arpeggio should be? Do you think you’re putting too much pressure on the strings? What do you think you need to practice on this week? Mixed in with tips for improvement, she’ll make comments like, That sounds much better than it did two weeks ago, or I can tell you’ve been practicing that.

When trying to respond to such thoughtful questions, Emma seems to search for the right words to describe the subtle qualities she’s noticed in her own playing. She’ll say things like “It feels awkward when I do it that way,” or “I can get it right when I go slow, but not when I bring it up tempo.” And, in an ongoing discussion with her teacher, or with herself, she hits on adjustments to try.

In observing Emma’s Wednesday afternoon one-on-one today, I saw the lesson in all lessons; to look at the result you just got and ask: What do I want to do more of or less of next time? How can I make this better? How can I make my experience easier? How can I acknowledge my mastery in this instance and chart out a new learning objective? For Emma, this might be about moving from Schubert to Mendelssohn to Bruck.

I loved sitting in on Emma’s violin lesson today. It felt good to think of progress, in any pursuit, as the natural outcome of practice with conscious awareness and support.

Remembering that anybody’s lesson is everybody’s lesson is no small thing.

The L Word

My sister Barb is in the hospital. A chronic cough led to a chest x-ray, which led to other tests, which led to hours of Googling on surgeons and oncologists, which led to rapidly scheduled surgery at a large medical center.

In a most amazing fashion, she had the top two lobes of her right lung removed through a tube. I could not attempt to accurately describe the procedure. I can only re-affirm my amazement and report that everything was done without her ribs being cracked to open her chest. The procedure appears to have been successful. Our family is waiting for more conclusive lab results from which a treatment plan will be devised, but so far, we are encouraged.

So many aspects of her treatment and diagnosis have been incredible. Cliché as it sounds, the expression “through the miracle of modern science” seems appropriate.

Barbara was wheeled into surgery at 11:45. She was taken to recovery just before 3:00. At 4:00. She was brought to a private room in ICU and at 5:00, her husband and I were allowed to see her. She was groggy, as would be expected, and coughed reflexively to clear her windpipe, but she was able to speak a few words to us.

“Did you call cousin Richard, Betty and John, the drapery guy?” she asked me as she tried to will herself to prevail over her postoperative stupor.

Ever the household manager, she started to bark out, or perhaps more aptly described, quietly cough out, follow-up instructions as if she wasn’t thoroughly and completely wired to her hospital bed and monitored by a thousand hair-trigger interfaces. After nodding our heads to show her that we had received her instructions, Jim and I turned to the door to go back to the family lounge and let her rest for a while. Not three feet from her bed, she called out to us, in a very uncharacteristic demonstration of affection.

“I love you.”

Jim looked at me and smiled. “Must be the morphine.”

We both chuckled at this in the moment. But as I thought about it, I wondered why. Why is it so hard to say I love you? Why is it so hard to hear, to believe?

Often, when John professes his affection to me, I’ll ponder the authenticity or timing of his remark. Oh yeah, I’ll think, it’s easy to say the L word in the throes of passion or when you’ve just received an unexpected gift. I am quick to discount the sentiment on the possibility that the expression is coming on cue.

So, whether opiates or a high degree of personal vulnerability stood behind my sister’s hospital bed exclamation, I had to admit it was wonderful to hear “I love you” anyway. Perhaps mouthing these words was easier for Barb because she could claim not being able to recall saying them later. Yet, I had to consider that the ease or challenge involved in owning an emotion makes that feeling no more or less true.

Under any circumstance, saying “I love you” is no small thing.

College Town

The Bay area has always been a favorite place to visit. When I was eleven, the highlight of my trip was a walk along Fisherman’s Wharf. During my thirties and forties, I always included a day in Muir Woods where I’d indulge my tree-hugging yearnings. And yes, I have been to Golden Gate Park and City Lights Bookstore, checked out exhibits at SFMOMA (the modern art museum) and walked the labyrinth outside of Grace Cathedral at the top of Nob Hill.

On more recent trips, I have also tried to include an afternoon in Berkeley. It always seems to be sunnier on the East Bay. There’s a convenient BART station downtown, too. But neither the sunshine nor the easy public transportation constitute my reasons for making this a favorite stop.

To me, Berkeley is the quintessential college town.

I love wandering into Pegasus Books on Shattuck and peering into the little cafes on Center Street, just off the main entrance to the campus. Within a few blocks, there must be thirty different ethnic restaurants serving up different versions of macaroni. (Udon or vermicelli, you make the call.) I love that the main drag feels like it’s been frozen in time. (A Berkelite gets keys duplicated at Berkeley Hardware, not at Home Depot.) And the street people --

I have to laugh when I see the street people in Berkeley. Like a brazen cartoon cockroach that dons a pair of sunglasses when the lights of its tenement get switched on, the attitude of people living on the streets here is “in your face,” like it’s a matter of choice to live on the streets. Today, during my stroll down Shattuck, I saw a bearded man with his black mutt of a dog. Looking to be around twenty-five, he was still in his bed roll, camped out near a parking meter where he spent the previous night. He had two hand-lettered signs displayed. One read, “Too lazy to get a job.” The other said “Too ugly to prostitute.”

Beyond the particular quirks of local history, the small stores that sell tie-dyed everything, and the illusion that sunshine and good weather can cast, which makes it easy to believe that if cars don’t get old here maybe we won’t either, being in such a college town evokes a special kind of nostalgia in me.

I grabbed a croissant and bottled water from the small cafeteria at the Haas School of Business complex then sat in a nearby sculpture garden trying to soak up as much of the college scene as I could, and I contemplated this.

In many ways, it’s great to be 55, to have most of my angst about “fitting in” behind me. But amid the innocent-looking, golden student athletes, the backpack carrying hordes, unconscious to their good fortune of being here now, and the growing numbers of young Asian scholars, progeny of tiger moms from around the globe, it’s hard not to wish I was back in my twenties. It can be nice to think you have more life ahead of you than behind you and to look at making mistakes as the natural course of things.

Almost at the very moment I became aware of this thought, I recognized my suspect logic. You don’t have to be twenty-something to be fearless about your choices. The real issue isn’t about youth or time. It’s about living with a sense of freedom.

As I headed back to the BART station, I felt light. I decided to make a conscious effort to let go of worry and give myself more freedom to make mistakes – and that’s no small thing.

Wash, Rinse -- and Home Cycle

The other day John and I went over to the new building. I am not sure what to call it. It’s not a house. It’s a 2-flat. It’s not very new. It was built around 1910, I think. And, technically, it’s not even ours. But, since the seller and contractor that’s rehabbing the place has allowed us to specify certain finishing touches and since both of us feel very committed to making a home together there, something neither of us would have imagined a year ago, it is our new building.

John has employed a range of excuses to go to our soon to be Whipple Street address, surreptitiously to deliver things like granite samples for the workmen, but mostly because he has liked to see the progress the workers seem to make every day. And my head has been entertaining various space-planning scenarios and the happy challenge of combining two households into one.

Life has been a whirlwind since we saw the building about a month ago. I think we both understood we were on course to live together some day, but did not expect our recent walk-throughs with Teresa, our agent, would result in anything beyond a good education on the market. But when we saw this very Chicago style brown brick two-flat being transformed into a duplexed owners’ unit with beautiful 3-bedroom apartment on the top floor (Did someone say rental income?), we couldn’t not move forward.

And I can sense both John’s and my heart are quietly glowing about totally different things that home represents to us.

I think John is excited about having a place to hook up his amp and play his guitar REALLY LOUD. I suppose he also relishes the thought that his current landlord can’t admonish him for leaving his boots in the hallway or smoking a rare cigarette within 20 yards of the premises. Yes, I also have the feeling that HOME is where no one else can tell you what you can and can’t do. But one of the things I am most excited about, relative to my move to Whipple, is that I will have my very own washer and dryer in our unit.

Isn’t that funny? That of the many things I can get excited about – a back porch where we can have martinis while we barbecue, or getting to choose paint colors, or having the space to actually have a piano – that a new top loader would be the feature that transports me?

Of course, there’s a practical side to this new situation. Not having to pack up four loads of laundry every couple weeks then drive to a Laundromat in order to have clean clothes has a lot of appeal. The idea of doing a load without a lot of planning, or being able to leave clothes in the washer all night if you don’t want to wait until the spin cycle has been completed -- these kinds of little things feel so liberating.

It’s funny how small things can affect your sense of freedom so much; like being able to complete a work assignment from home, or discovering a time-saving short-cut to a common errand destination, or being able to wash your underwear while wearing your last clean pair.

Watching over your wash, rinse, and spin cycles from the comfort of your own couch is no small thing.

Loose Pants

Last month, I decided to go to a nutritionist. I wanted to re-launch a program for losing some of the weight that seemed to settle around my middle overnight a couple years ago.

My doctor ran blood work on me. We came up with a strategy for boosting my thyroid and balancing my hormones, and I was referred to the practice’s nutritionist for further diet and lifestyle coaching. Shana, the nutritionist, and I decided I should go on a modified cleanse. I say “modified” because I agreed to a two-week version of a program some people do for 28 days.

After reviewing my general eating habits, which already did not include caffeine, processed foods, or much sugar, I went on a plan based on the theory of elimination. By eliminating many kinds of foods, the theory goes, I should be able to clear my digestive system of toxins and re-boot my metabolism. If I wouldn’t directly lose weight because of the cleanse (and often weight-loss doesn’t occur because protein supplements that are recommended to take during the program have hearty calorie counts), I could get rid of things that cause bloating or poor digestion.

I didn’t want to sound boastful, but after the first week, I was ready to crow, “This is easy.” I readily said “no’ to cocktails and wine, pork and pasta. The second week was harder as I had to give up all kinds of meat and dairy proteins, even nuts, and pretty much stick with fruits, vegetables, and olive oil. Sure enough, considering all the small gastronomical indulgences I didn’t allow myself for the two weeks, I was disappointed at only having lost about a pound. But at the end of the fourteen days, I did find that my pants fit a little looser on me.

And boy did that feel good!

What’s so great about the feeling of loose-fitting pants? I had to wonder. Being able to breathe easily and move around comfortably in your clothes is a fabulous feeling. Clothes can seem like a second skin and, aside from using clothes to make a statement about your personality, feeling comfortable in what you wear is related to feeling comfortable with how you present yourself to the world.

Loose-fitting pants feels like a victory of discipline over sloth. Since there are so many temptations in life, so many poor choices you can make, it’s nice to think you chose the high-road more often than not. But there’s more to this…

Zipping up in a pair of loose-fitting pants is a pure demonstration that you are not lying to yourself. While concern over money is always a good excuse not to buy new clothes every time scale readings jump a little, when I have tried to squeeze into something that was obviously too small, it was like making my current self fit into an old conception of myself. A Cleopatra, Queen of De-NIAL syndrome, I suppose, it is awful to tell yourself one thing, like “I can fit into these jeans just fine,” when inside you’re telling yourself, “Liar, Liar, (tight) pants on fire.”

I still want to lose a few pounds – for real – and I know I will have to administer appropriate doses of discipline, patience, and celebration.

But the joy of not having the waistband of my pants imprint red marks around my middle is no small thing.