crickets

Crickets tonight

as I sit on the couch

yesterday it was a bird call

as I walked back from ultimate frisbee

what tomorrow?

a deer

or rabbit

or squirrel

or two big furry scary raccoons 

making their way to our front steps

ravaging the Cape Cod Chip bag 

and the other bags

on the steps

I slam the door once

to scare them

then again

those bold buggers

come up closer to the door

and I keep it closed

scared

scared of furry raccoons?

They do look squeezable

but I watch them from inside

take a photo through the window

to show the kids

Connor who later says,

Why did you walk away?

or the kids' buddy who points and says,

Hey, look at the paw prints!

because he's right, there they are, those little raccoon prints

going up our front stairs, all the way up to the door.

But now I've cleared the steps

so no raccoons tonight 

to scare me or

keep me company

just me

and the crickets

learning how to be alone

how to be together

letting out our sounds in the ways 

we know.

Meditation

 August 19, 2020

I used to pick a word,

peace

calm

fearless

joy

light.

A ten minute timer and breathing and the word.

And when the thoughts came as they always did

I imagined them as a meditation teacher at Advaita told me,

like clouds passing by,

not judging them or myself,

trying to let them float by instead.

Headspace

gives more guidance

visualizing a sliver of light in the middle of the chest

its expanding out, even beyond the body

counting breaths

1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2

you can count higher 

but counting just one-two calms me

one for the inhale

two for the exhale

one for the inhale

two for the exhale

counting even to ten

might make me feel like I need to reach a goal

so I stick to

one-two one-two one-two.

The woman's voice tells me that I don't need to look for 

joy

it's already there in me or in my brain

it will surface

and the sense of play is also already there in my brain, too,

ready for me when I want it.

Play.

I think -- even though I'm not supposed to think --

about ping pong and puzzles and Connect Four and biking.

I can play.

Peace or fearlessness or calm

or an expanding light

or play

or joy

They're all there.

And I'm here.

Just sit

Be quiet

Just begin,

I tell myself.

What If

August 17, 2020

What if I decided not to worry about things I should have said or done or thought or considered or worked on?  What if I decided that I didn't need to consider whether I had regrets?  What if I just moved forward rather than looking back?  Just this once, just for a while.

What if?

What if I decided that I did work hard enough at marriage and that I don't have to debate that point any more?  What if I decided that I wasn't a failure -- in my eyes or my children's or my husband's or my in-laws' or my family's or friends' or those of people I don't even know -- to get separated and maybe divorced?  What if I decided that I am doing everything right rather than waiting for assurance from someone else?  (I don't ask for the assurance, but not doing so is an act of restraint, hard-nosed determined restraint, when I talk with those closest to me.)

So let me try this now.

I was right to separate from my husband.  I have worked hard enough at my marriage over the last eighteen years (tomorrow, our actual eighteenth anniversary).  I am not a failure.  I am a success in finally emerging from this marriage with every truth that I need to say, not just to myself, but out loud to my husband and even to others.

This is the right thing to do.  I have faith that it is the right thing to do.  And as with right steps, good will follow.  There will be challenges, but the rewards will be great.  We moved our family to Italy for a year, confident that it was the right thing to do, knowing that we would encounter challenges both for ourselves and for our children.  And there were challenges: being the outsiders for a long while at their new school; not knowing the language; having only each other to play with for months; no outside space to play in each afternoon and weekend; an apartment in the city for four kids; missing people from home.  But not once did I think that we were doing the wrong thing, even amidst the fights of four siblings in our living room.

So I'm going to decide to have that kind of confidence, that kind of fearlessness.  

Good will follow.  As with Italy, the immediate good may not be obvious, but it's there, under the surface, taking root, growing in me, and maybe growing in my husband and kids, too.

This separation is the best thing for this moment in time.  I don't know what's next, but I know that my not living with my husband is ultimately good.  I will come out of this stronger and happier in ways I cannot know yet.  Our kids will come out of this stronger -- I can't guarantee happier, but I do think that there is potential there.  My husband will come through this ultimately stronger and maybe even happier.  Like me, he won't be able to blame his problems in life on a spouse, on someone else.  He'll have to figure out how to get what he needs in life to be happy.  I even believe that our relationship will be stronger and happier because of the steps we are taking now.

When I imagine that relationship, I struggle a bit.  

Sometimes I imagine us together again, happier, healthier, growing older together.  But that picture makes me feel like I'm getting smaller, pushing myself to the side of the frame, not keeping myself right in the center with my husband.  I imagine that I would be or we would be in the center together for a while, but over time, I would be closer to the margins, morphing into a self that is fluid, flexible, accommodating again.  

Other times I imagine us happily divorced, living in separate houses, the kids splitting time between our homes.  We help each other out with pick-ups and drop-offs, and we coordinate the kids' schedules amicably.  The six of us still do family dinner together every Sunday, at either house, with one of us cooking.  We do the kids' birthdays and holidays together, even if we're getting together with extended family.  We enjoy and respect each other, really value the other one, but don't depend on the other one for our emotional, physical, spiritual, social needs.  Eventually we both find other partners, and they are welcome at birthdays and holidays, too.  We co-exist with peace.

We are ourselves, and each of us shines with joy.  And our kids are happy.  And he can have the other women relationships he needs and the social life he needs, and I can feel grounded and secure in myself and not trapped, and grounded and secure and excited in perhaps another relationship.  We are friends, real friends, and we are happy for each other in our successes and compassionate towards each other during difficulties.

We are not married, but we support each other.

Could we have that joy and light and happy and stay together?

Perhaps.

But too much has passed now.  Too much light has gone out, too much joy diminished, too much trust lost.  I have worked hard enough.  I am open to communication, I am.  But I don't actually want to work to understand better, to make friends together, to forgive and let go.  

And I am going to allow myself this.

No regrets.  I was clear in my mind when I chose to separate, as clear as I have ever been about anything in my life -- having babies, moving to Italy for a year.  Some decisions I've made and been almost shocked that I'm doing them, that people believe me and my decisions become reality, e.g. moving to California with no job; getting married.  But I never doubted getting pregnant or moving to Italy; once I'd made these decisions, I never looked back.

No looking back at this moment either.

No need to look forward either.

This is a space I needed, and now I'm in it, a good space, a space to breathe.  

Stay here for a while.

Breathe.

See the light.

anniversary

 August 18, 2020

Today is our eighteenth anniversary.  I am at the beach for the week with the kids, and Daniel has asked to come down to see me and the kids, to deliver a gift, to make and eat dinner as a family.  I say yes.  He's supposed to arrive at 1pm, revised to 2:30pm, revised to 4pm.

A girlfriend with the day off sits by the ocean with me and we chat about various ted talks we like and the surf and my kids in the water.  I ask her the question that I have been holding in for weeks.

"How do I know if I am doing the right thing with this separation?"

Looking a little shocked, she asks why I am wondering this now.  And I tell her, "Because there were a lot of good times, because we have these four kids, because we've been together for eighteen years, and it's easier to imagine us together than apart."

I get teary.  Cry a little.

She asks a variation of her question again.

I say, "I have no regrets about separating in June.  It felt like the only thing left to do.  Even now I feel like it was the only thing I could do."

She says, "Well, you just answered your question."

Then she reminds me that I had told her a month before Daniel moved out that I would never split with him, that I would have to consider how to make our marriage work, maybe have an open marriage for the long haul.  And then, a month later, I was certain that I wanted him to move out.  

I tell her the other question that has been gnawing at me, "Have I worked hard enough at this marriage?  And I know that I'm the only one who can really answer that question, but I need to ask anyway."

I've known Tara for forty-three years.  She sits beside me on this beach and she nods her head yes.  Yes.

The tears come.  I tell her, "It's our eighteenth anniversary, and I didn't even know I was sad.  I've been having a good day and felt happy.  I don't know how all that just came out.  It just did."

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I fell in love with Daniel almost upon meeting him.  He opened the door of the house where a friend was living, and I felt instantly attracted to and intrigued by him.  I wanted to be near him.  My friend gave me a tour of the house, and my heart beat hard, and I wondered where in the house he had gone.  That afternoon, instead of sitting with tea and looking at my friend's Italy pictures from the summer, I agreed to go to a local pool with her and her housemates, Daniel included.  He lapped me, and I laughed.  That night we all made dinner and sat outside in the summer evening.  He served me eggplant that he had dyed with a fun color (orange?) just for me.  When we went dancing, he took my hand and led me over to the salad bar to teach me the steps to the dance.  Oh, he could dance.  Dance as in lead with actual steps of whichever dance was suitable for each song.  I was smitten.

But my friend was smitten, too.  They had dated for a month a while back, and she'd not yet gotten over him.  I knew this.  I knew this, and I still held on to my feelings for him.  

A month later when he was driving through California, we took a hike together, and the night after that we went for Ethiopian food and Ben and Jerry's and stayed up until 5am at my apartment.  A week later he told me that he loved me.  I said, "But you can't love me.  You don't even know me."

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We dated long-distance between New Mexico (him) and California (me) starting then, around Labor Day.  Flights back and forth, long phone calls, letters and letters, emails.  He met me in Boston to come to my family's for Thanksgiving.  I bought a ticket to visit him and his family in New Mexico right after Christmas.

By New Year's, we were engaged.

In the next eight months we argued about the number of invitations to be sent out, money, birth control, hobbies, love.  Once we were engaged, the bliss of those first four months was less bright; real life crept in as we planned a move East and I looked for a new job and he studied for the bar exam.  

He was romantic and funny and smart and clever.  We played with words and talked books and went to church and met each other's friends and kayaked and hiked and registered for china and kitchen dishes.  I took the GRE, but never completed an application for an MFA program.  I packed.  We planned our road trip across the country to Massachusetts.

I went to graduate school for the summer, and we saw each other every few weekends.  I graduated, went home to my parents, and got ready for the wedding the next weekend.

It was a fast, romantic, whirlwind courtship that ended in marriage within a year.  I loved his confidence and different way of looking at things and his letters and his expressiveness and smarts and reading and sureness in loving me and his adventurousness.  I loved that he could cook, that he cared about food, that he liked to do stuff like hike or play tennis.  I liked that he had direction, having just finished law school and preparing for bar exams in New Mexico and now Massachusetts.

We got married.

So now it's eighteen years ago today.  What do I remember from that wedding day?  I remember my aunt Margo looking directly at me when she read a passage from Philippians that I had chosen because I loved its saying something like, "Whatever is good, whatever is true....celebrate these things..."  I remember the priest's talking about our meeting at the Sheraton Commander Hotel and his mentioning a shared appreciation of Cicero.  I remember Daniel's telling me to "give [him] some lip" when I gave him my cheek after our vows.  I remember Daniel's locking his arm into mine rather than mine into his as we walked out.  I remember one of my parents looking really relieved after the ceremony and before the reception, saying, "That was really nice."

I remember looking around the reception for him whenever he wasn't with me, wanting him to be with me.

These are not the fondest memories.  I may have had a better time at my sister's wedding, when Daniel and I danced and laughed for hours.  But they are our wedding and the beginnings of our relationship.

Our anniversary is still something to acknowledge, even if celebrate may be too strong a word.  We have enjoyed a lot about each other and worked together on projects and enjoyed our kids tremendously.  We have had romantic days and silly days and fun days and hard talks and good talks and meaningful talks.

And now we're separated.

It's okay.

Eighteen years ago we made one decision, and this year we made another.  And we made so many small decisions over the years that got us to where we are now.  It's okay.

Multiple drafts

 August 12, 2020

In the past three weeks I have heard two writers whose books I liked a bunch -- The Dutch House and Untamed -- say that they wrote these books twice.  Ann Patchett said that she wrote The Dutch House and then got to the end, realized it was horrible, and started over.  The interviewer (Gretchen Rubin) asked her, “What was good in the book in that first draft?”  

“The best thing in the book,” said Patchett, “was that no one had to read such a horrible book.”

Then she rewrote the entire novel and got it published to rave reviews.

Today I heard Glennon Doyle talking about her book Untamed with Brene Brown.  Brene Brown admired the structure of the book, acknowledging the cleverness of the structure that was still somewhat untamed, matching the structure to the main idea.  Glennon Doyle told her something like this, “Actually, I wrote Untamed twice.  I wrote it once and thought that it was good enough. Then Elizabeth Gilbert read it. She pointed out that I was writing something untamed in a tame structure.  It wouldn’t fit.”  

She sat down and reworked the entire book.

I’m reading Waking Up White this week.  In the Acknowledgements at the end, Debby Irving thanks one person, who offered to read the book right before Irving sent it to the publisher.  She writes something like, “Two years and eighty-two one-hour phone calls later, the book was ready.”

I don’t know how many times I’ll need to rewrite my story.

That’s okay.

In the end, I’ll be able to laugh like these women, getting a kick out of the process no matter how many drafts it takes.

Anne Lamott reminds me that there is no end, that publishing a book is not the end-all, be-all, crowing triumph of writing that writers expect. I've changed my goal of publishing a book: my goal now is to write a book. Write it for myself. A whole book. One that I like and that I think is even better than good enough. (When I'm honest with myself, I know the difference between my work that is good enough and good.) I'll complete it, draft after draft after draft. I'll have a completed version and feel good that I did it, that I actually finished writing an entire book.

If I feel so motivated, I'll find a way to submit it to a publisher or a hundred publishers. And maybe something else will happen then. Maybe. But if it doesn't, that's okay. I will have fulfilled my dream to myself, to write a book.

In the past I've felt envious of people I know who have published books -- I've felt excited, thrilled, proud for them, yes, but truthfully, envious, too. A friend recently sent me a link to a memoir published by someone that graduated from college with us. Pangs of jealousy: The Austen Years. I looked it up, read part of it online.

Two weeks later a different friend dropped off a book for me for my week of beach vacation. (This friend routinely purchases books from independent sellers and lends them to me before she has even read them herself, her generosity and spirit astounding.) I ran downstairs to see what book she had left on the dining room table: The Austen Years. I couldn't believe it. She knows I like Austen, and she has encouraged me to write a book about my own experiences: hence her sharing The Austen Years. I laugh on the phone to her about this coincidence.

She says, "Will it be too hard for you to read?"

"I don't know," I tell her. "It looks good, so I'll probably read it. Or maybe it will get me to write."

I bring the book on the vacation. I haven't started it. But I've made a pact with myself: for every day that I do not read this book, this book that I'm 95% sure is solidly good and interesting and smart, I must write for at least one hour.

Getting the butt in the chair by any means necessary.

Declaring Itself

 July 30, 2020

Declaring Itself

I've got glass in my foot, some tiny shard from a measuring cup or drinking glass dropped on the tile floor at my parents' beach house.  I used to get frustrated when the kids spilled milk at dinner, dropped a plate as they cleared, let fall a bowl when baking.  And sometimes I still do.  But most of the time in the past few years, I've relaxed about spilled drinks and broken glasses and plates and umbrellas.  We break things.  We are tough on houses.  We're not a rambunctious crew, but nearly nightly there is a spilled drink; nearly every summer we destroy an item at the beach house -- a lamp, a table umbrella (that was Connor and I together this year), the finish on the sideboard in the dining room (think: slime).  Over the course of our year in an Italy apartment, we needed to get fixed or replace the following: a mirror that a child tried to pull off the wall to see whether there was a medicine cabinet; the ceiling where one child had thrown up slime, which took the paint off the ceiling with it when it fell back to the ground; a hallway light fixture (playing soccer in the house -- or was it football?); a few dishes and wine glasses.

So when Mary knocked over a measuring cup on Saturday morning and Sebastian knocked over a glass on Saturday evening, we talked about wearing shoes in the house to be careful. I'd gotten a shard of glass in my foot the week before when Sebastian broke a pane of glass in our back door at home, so the routine was fresh: sweep and vacuum, put the pieces in a paper bag rather than just the plastic trash bag. 

Having just extracted with tweezers the shard from the broken pane at home, I was feeling great.  Until I stepped on a new piece that Saturday evening.  It hurt.  A lot.  I have a high tolerance for pain (not proud to say that I drove almost thirty miles home from work as my appendix was rupturing a year ago -- not safe for me or for the other people on the road; I just couldn't see an alternative in my state).

I tried extracting the newest shard of glass with tweezers there on the front porch.  I soaked my foot in hot water and salt, just like the internet said to.  I didn't see the glass, but I felt pretty sure that I got it out.  For four days I hobbled around the house, hobbled on my walk each morning, hobbled down to the beach with my chair and books and iced tea.  Eventually I would feel better, I thought.  But feeling better and having less pain had to wait: these were four solo days at the beach house, three blocks from the beach, with hours upon hours to read and write and watch tv or movies and talk with girlfriends.  I figured that the foot would improve or I would go to the doctor once I returned home.

One day on the phone with a friend who's a doctor, I asked her what to do about the foot.

"Is it swollen?" she asked.

"Nope."

"Put some bacitracin on it before you go to sleep, and if something is really wrong, it will declare itself," she said.

"What do you mean, declare itself?" I asked.

"Something will happen so that you'll know that you're not okay. You'll see swelling or pus or something like that.  You won't be able to walk," she said.

I rubbed bacitracin on, wore shoes even around the house since that felt better, and convinced myself that it was getting better even though the pain persisted.  Three nights later when I went to sleep I looked at my foot: completely swollen. By the next morning, my toes couldn't touch the ground, raised up by the swollen ball of my foot.  As I overcompensated with my right leg, my right knee started hurting every time I walked on it.  I had waited long enough: I had gotten in lots of reading and visiting and relaxing and walking.  It was time to leave the beach a day early and go back home to a doctor.

I cleaned and packed, taking at least double the time as I limped and over-compensated and caused more damage to the left foot with the glass in it and the right leg that was trying to give the left foot a break.  I cried because it hurt and laughed because I was talking to my sister on the phone.  

When I finally got to Urgent Care hours later, they identified a definite infection and anesthesized the bottom of the foot, and dug in.  No glass found.  More scraped tissue now and a bigger incision, but no glass.  We think that you actually did already get the glass out, they told me. It's the infection that's causing all pain and swelling.

They started me on antibiotics.

I called my friend again for more advice: go to the ER?  go to a podiatrist?  just rest?  I had assured her those days before that everything was okay, that there was no swelling and I felt fine.  I was telling the truth.  Until it was no longer the truth.  I had had some pain, but the foot looked fine.  

Until it didn't.

My friend, "Well, it certainly declared itself eventually!"

I think now, Maybe everything is like this, declaring itself eventually, and we have to decide finally what to do with the declaration.  Sit with the pain or discomfort since it's tolerable for a while; let the pain settle under the skin until the declaration is huge and unavoidable.  Is this what I did with the pain in my marriage?  Maybe.  Maybe it had to sit that long.  Sit until the pain declared itself so powerfully that the only possible step was separation.

"Do the next right thing," I read somewhere, maybe in a Glennon Doyle book.  

That's what I've been saying since the end of April, just the next right thing.

I don't know the next step.  And when people ask, I tell them that I don't know.  I tell them that I am waiting, living, being, waiting until the next step declares itself.  Or more accurately, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to stop the thoughts of the what next what next what next -- divorce or get back together or keep the family together or live separately forever? It's hard to wait.

But I'm trying to trust that the next stone will appear above the water and I'll be able to step on it, feet freed from glass, simple and sure for that moment.

And really, I don't have to be sure that the stone or step is right.

If it's not, it will declare itself.

Loud Counting

"One and a two and a, one and a two and a, one and a two and a, one and a two and a."

Eight-year-old Hannah is counting loud and clear at the piano in our living room.  She is sitting with Shinichi, her piano teacher, a reserved yet talkative man, who, Hannah has told me, says that he has two rules that she must obey for playing piano: 1.  You must count when you play; 2. Don't look at your hands.

When Hannah's three older siblings hear Hannah, they look at me, and we share a smile, a little giggle, at how sweet, how carina, how cute her counting is.  Two of the kids have taken piano, and we have never heard them count, and certainly not count like this, with a loud clear confident voice.  I don't want Hannah to get self-conscious and not count, so I tell them, "Shhhhh, she is doing so well!  Don't laugh or tease her about it."  They comply, delighted to be part of this, I think, in the same way that they go along with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy for her.

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When I'm on Christmas vacation, I decide that I will try to learn piano again, for the second or third time in my life.  The first time I was in sixth grade, and those lessons lasted for three years.  I had that big red book, John Thompson's Modern Book for the Piano (okay, I'm not sure that it said Modern then, but when I google this book now, I see that this is the title now), and from 1984-1986, this series was my learning.  I plopped it up on the piano to practice whichever songs Mr. Hashim assigned me for the week.  I know I practiced because it was homework, and I completed homework; I couldn't imagine another option.  I likely practiced exactly what was assigned, made it good enough, and called it done (much like science homework for me through elementary, middle, high school, and college).   I remember practicing my scales and having a hard time keeping my fingers from not all flying up off the keys, as I tried to press down just one at a time.  While I pressed my index finger down, the middle finger, the ring finger, and the pinkie immediately reacted by going in the opposite direction: up.  

I walked up two flights of stairs in a stairwell to get to Mr. Hashim's office, what I guess we'd call now a studio.  I pictured him -- even then -- as smoking a cigar while I played, but even then I wasn't sure whether I was making that up.  My mom complained that we had to pay if we cancelled, but when he cancelled -- which he did when he was called to play the organ at the Bruins' games at the Boston Garden -- there was no penalty for him or bonus for us.  

On weekday mornings, I got up early and sat at the kitchen table while my mom made breakfast for my dad and he ate.  After he left at 6:30am, I ate Toaster Strudel, drizzling the frosting in squiggles, or a bowl of Cocoa Krispies or Captain Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch, or, if I was feeling like being healthy, Corn Flakes with a spoon of sugar.  I sat and watched her clean up the kitchen or do chores, and I played Wingo and other games in The Boston Herald that morning.  

One day she said to me, "You sit here every morning.  You have plenty of time.  You should be practicing piano."

I'd never considered that.  She hadn't made me take piano as she had the two oldest kids (I was number four of five kids); I asked to take lessons.  I wanted to learn.  I wanted to be able to move my hands along those keys and make sounds, make songs.  My oldest sister could play "Jingle Bells" and "Joy to the World", and even Debby Boone. ("You light up my life...you bring me whole...to carry on..." My mom used to tell me that I asked my kindergarten teacher, Miss Campbell to learn "You Light Up My Life" on the guitar, and I would teach the kids all the words.  And indeed, guitar-playing Miss Campbell, amidst the play that used to be kindergarten in the 1970s, used our circle music time to do just that that winter right as the blizzard of '78 hit.)  So I wanted to learn the piano, and I wanted to get better and be really good.  I just hadn't thought about practicing beyond my mandated homework.  Maybe I practiced more then, I don't really remember.  My younger brother picked out a short -- two lines -- song he liked from that red book, and I used to play that one a lot.  I still wonder which one it was.  If I got the John Thompson red books again -- perhaps books 1 and 2? -- I would know it when I played it.  I got to playing Christmas carols, too, eventually.  So I was fine, not great, but good enough.

When high school started, my mom said, "Choose one: soccer or piano.  You don't have time to do both."

She knew that I'd choose soccer: I'd been playing since I was five, I was trying out for the high school team, and not playing was never a consideration.  It was just what my sister Christine and I did every fall, every spring, and sometimes every winter and summer, too.

That was the end of Mr. Hashim, his possibly imagined cigar and smoke, and piano for me.

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Nine years later I was teaching and living at a private school.   I was an intern, teaching just two classes, at a day school with twenty boarders.  In the evenings, I could do whatever I wanted.    I decided that I wanted to try piano again.  I took my school keys, went down to the music building a couple evenings a week, and sat at the piano, starting over with my book, song by song, page by page.

I don't know for how many months I did this.  Likely I stopped when I started dating a boy and having plans more nights of the week.

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I married a guy who plays the piano.  I cannot even understand the papers he puts up to play on the piano.  Not having a piano is painful for him.  When we first bought a condo, we got a used piano (possibly for free, because most people will be happy for you to take their pianos because they don't want to pay to get rid of their piano -- moving a piano can easily cost $1000), paid to move it and get it via crane up to our second floor condo.  When his grandmother's piano became available, we got rid of our piano, paid to ship out his grandmother's piano from New Mexico, and again paid to have a crane hoist the New Mexico piano up to our condo.  And when we moved to our own house, the crane and movers came again, the  piano hanging in the air, in the sky, high up, wonderfully unreal.

His mom teaches piano, too.  And when she plays the piano in our living room, the sound is richer than I've ever heard in our house, a deep, resonant, full sound that stops me.  Daniel's playing is beautiful, yes, but likely I've just gotten used to it.  And yet.  Years ago, when I knocked on the door of his grandmother's house, to see a girlfriend who was living there, I could hear a piano back then, and then, too, years ago, I was awed, enjoying the sound before I knocked, before he came to the door, before I saw him and fell almost immediately in love with him.  And when I commented on his playing, asking what it was, he said something self-deprecating like, "Oh, I always play the same song, the same notes, just something I like."

So we have a piano.

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In December I start on page one of Hannah's book, this time not the John Thompson, but the Alfred Basic Piano Library Course, Part 1.  I know my G clef scale for the right hand pretty well: empty garbage before dad flips or every good boy deserves fudge for the lines on the scale: E G B D F.  And dface for the spaces between the lines: D F A C E.  The bass clef scale has always been harder for me to remember, so I'll have to relearn that.  But for now my goal over December break is to catch up with our eight-year-old.  Her teacher Shinichi has marked in pencil which songs she has done ("v. good" they say) and which ones she is working on ("practice").  Often Hannah sits with me, teaching me as Shinichi has taught her, insisting on my out loud and not looking down at my hands.

Once school starts up again, I have a hard time keeping up with Hannah's weekly progress -- grading and prepping and email and daily house and kid upkeep  don't take me back to the piano bench much.  But then COVID-19 arrives and spring break and extended quarantine, and there I am, back at the piano, practicing Hannah's songs by myself on the bench.

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The kids aren't home.  My husband is in the basement on his computer.  I sit at the piano, cautious, not wanting to make mistakes.  Usually I practice with Hannah, but today I'm on my own.  I hit the keys in the right order, in the wrong order, in an order I make up.  I don't like making mistakes, hitting the wrong keys -- it doesn't sound good, and I think, How annoying to hear this.  I play quietly, not wanting to draw attention to myself or bother others with my errors.

I'm by myself in the living room.  Mistakes don't matter.  I am not going to bother anyone.  I realize, I don't know why, that I can hit these keys as hard as I want.  I don't mean that I am going to abuse the piano and make noise banging away.  But when I hit a key with my finger, I can push it down hard, loud, confidently.  I can enjoy the feeling and the sound, whether it's right or wrong.  I can make mistakes big if I feel like it, and it doesn't matter.

I play loud now.  Hitting slow and loud the keys that make up the songs in Hannah's Alfred Basic Piano Library Course, Part 2.  I've made progress.  I love the slow and loud.  I love not being apologetic for mistakes.  I love not making myself small even if I am the worst piano player in the house, even if I grew up in a culture that disdained people's drawing attention to themselves, even if my loudness could be construed as showing off.  Showing off what, I think -- my learning piano?  hitting keys loud, both correct ones and incorrect ones?  I am going to play Hannah's songs and Mary's "Amazing Grace" and Sebastian's "Sonatina," too.  Loud and right and loud and wrong.  I am just going to play play play.  And I am going to be loud loud loud.

I play and play, and my husband comes upstairs and compliments my playing.  A kindness on his part.  "I didn't know it was you!  I thought you were one of the kids playing," he says.  "You sound good."

This is high praise for me: I am trying to catch those kids.

I get quiet again with him there.  I'm ready for him to go so I can play loud and confident again.  But he's never asked me to play quiet.  My errors don't bother him, and he's a musician, so he's not worried about my bringing attention to myself with my playing.  

It's me: it's me who has somehow understood somewhere somehow that I should be quiet.  When I was a kid sitting on the front porch, my parents gently chided me, "Careful: your voice carries.  I could hear it when I was walking down the street."

I don't fault them: they were right, and I certainly didn't need the neighborhood to hear me.  But it wasn't just the front porch voice carrying that shushed me.  Somewhere I learned not to disagree loudly, not to contradict, not to speak up.  I did learn how to keep people comfortable, how to make peace, how to avoid topics that made other people angry.  At work, in my marriage, in my family of origin.  

I don't feeling like I'm finding my voice now, but I do feel like I'm uncovering it.  I want to speak words the way I hit the keys that afternoon, slow and clear and confident and not worried about making mistakes.