Little Stories Make Up a Life

FIREFIGHTING

A student's family passed down a firefighting costume to Lazarus, complete with jacket, refelctive stripes, whistle,  walkie talkie, pants, helmet, and axe.  For a couple of days he donned the get up and we raided the recycling bin for paper and cardboard.  Once I managed to get something lit in our soggy environment with semi-functional matches, he got to use our garden hose and put it out. One day we also went for a walk to look at the neighborhood firehouse  (Station 12). 

Last Friday,  the girls and I were at the park and we heard sirens screaming up and stopping and went to investigate.   A regular firetruck, the city haz-mat firetruck, and the fire chief truck were all parked up the hill in front of our elementary school.  School is completely online these days, but there are usually a few staff cars parked there during school hours.  After the firefighters came out of the building,  one of them saw us standing on the sidewalk peering at the trucks,  and he came over and greeted us.  He chatted with the kids and also let us know that the school staff had smelled something odd in the school and had asked the fire department to check it out.  Fortunately,  it turned out to be nothing.

AIRPLANE

Monday I got a text from my brother that he would be taking off from the Renton Municipal Airport (just down the hill from us) on Tuesday evening at 6 pm in a six-seater jet.  But I didn't notice it until I was between lessons on Tuesday.  I finished teaching at 5:30 so I dashed out, loaded up the kids and got ready to careen down for a viewing.  After I got everyone strapped in (no small undertaking), we learned that the pilot was late coming in from Moses Lake, so I grabbed snacks and blankets, too.  I found a viewing spot on a rise just west of the runways and waited.  Jeff and Linda were waiting around, too.  They were in an even better viewing spot at the south end of the runway in a sort of hidden parking lot.  We GPS'ed it and pulled up next to them.  Rolled down the cars' windows and chatted for a bit.  Eventually Jeff's plane landed and Linda drive him up to the loading site.  We waited and waited and waited.  Then, I got texts from Jeff. 

"Engines turning on"

"Linda headed your way"

"Second engine turning on"

"Checking the flight clearances "

"Running the system test... Stall protection"

"ROLLING"

"I think we're going to take off to the south!!"

"At end of runway"

"Pilot discussion..."

"Takeoff"

We were out of the car, wrapped in blankets, when the little swanky minivan with wings and two jet engines flew over us into the cold, cloudy night on its way to California; it's cargo was three pilots and a lone passenger.

It's just possible that afterward  some kids were whining about being taken out on this adventure away from the cartoons they had been watching.   And it's also possible I told them they could call each other up in 30 years and say, Remember that time crazy old mom dashed us out to see Uncle Jeff take off?  Instead of, Remember that time we sat huddled up in blankets watching cartoons for the millionth time?  I know which one would make a better memory...

LEARNING CURVE

I have worked for many years with a particular student, whom we'll give the unisex name Jordan and  pronoun "they" for this story.  Because the story is really about me, but falls flat without them.

Jordan doesn't have a lot of parental help in their practice and never has.  And shouldn't at their age now.  So I have always tried to be very explicit about how precisely to practice to make the most progress.  It has been agonizingly slow going,  and some skills have just never improved despite being the focus of lesson after lesson.  I have always written out these precise practice directions and goals at the weekly lesson, and Jordan has dutifully checked off the complete list day after day, week after week.   But obviously there has long been a disconnect between what happens in the lesson and at home.   

In August I asked Jordan (yet again!) about their goals and hopes for their violin playing.  I asked if Jordan felt lessons were necessary for reaching their goals.  I asked if Jordan was feeling pressure to continue from me, from their parents, or from their own sense of what they "should" be doing.  I offered to talk with Jordan's parents to help them quit lessons if that was what they wanted.  No, Jordan wanted to keep studying.   

Jordan has long learned other pieces on their own outside of lessons and enjoys doing this.  Did they want a change of repertoire?  No.  They were happy with what they'd been doing in lessons.  But we were still at a stalemate.  I just cannot see measurable progress.

In November I finally asked Jordan to make a recording of a normal practice and send it to me.  I have been aware of this as a helpful exploration for teachers feeling stuck with a student for probably 14 years.  I have never asked for it, because... well, I guess because families might be inconvenienced, and I wasn't sure if I could speak with true authority to what I heard. 

I was honestly stunned by what I heard on the 45 minute practice recording.  Jordan spent about 15 minutes actually playing the violin.  The rest of the time was spent chatting with others in the room.  And of the 15 minutes, most of the things on the practice list were touched, but not with one bit of investment in the outcome. I sat listening to this recording, bored to tears, wondering when the practice was actually going to start.  And then the recording was over.

What I learned was that I had spent so much time detailing the quickest way from A to B that Jordan didn't feel the need to own the process themselves. 

After I listened to that practice, I thanked Jordan for sharing their practice with me - I realize it could be a VERY vulnerable thing, and told them I was so excited about what I had learned and about how to help them move forward.   This is all true.  I was not gritting my teeth behind the scenes or trying to sugarcoat the trurh - I was honestly glad to know what the problem was and curious about how to solve it.

Next lesson I told Jordan I would NOT be creating a practice list, but that Jordan would need to create their own list and email it to me the following day. I would use that list as the template for our following lesson. And in that first lesson I went really, really deep on about two items, in a way I had not ever thought Jordan was up to doing, going out on a limb with the hope that Jordan needed to have more depth and learning asked of them than I had before.  I just quickly mentioned the rest of the items at the end of our time together. It took Jordan a few days and a few reminders to actually send me the list.  I was pretty disappointed about how undetailed it was and wondered how much Jordan had even taken in.  

But would you know it? At the next lesson I saw a huge leap in progress that I had not seen from Jordan in years.

I am often giving my students a specific practice process which may seem counterintuitive to them, and I have to ask them to trust the process anyway, because I have seen it produce fruit many times before.  But I learned I need to trust the student more.  And not in the way I typically have.  If I help the student to find their own reasons for playing the violin, I have to trust that they have a way of tapping into that and carrying it out.  Is this another lesson I am learning from unschooling?

MILDEW AND THE BENEFITS OF REARRANGEING

I have rearranged our furniture on many, many occasions in our little cabin during our three years of life here.  I always felt a little off kilter when my mom rearranged the furniture when I was a kid, but as an adult it feels like an intriguing puzzle, and as a bonus, the change in how spaces are used usually spurs my kids to new creativity in their play.  Jared said I should just keep reareanging for that reason alone!  Today I swapped our two sofas. The exterior walls of our house are not well insulated and take on condensation regularly.   Therefore, I had discovered some nasty mold growing behind our upholstered Scandinavian sleeper sofa, and realized it would not do to keep it under the windows any longer.  Our leather love seat has a slightly angled profile and airflow underneath, making it a less disgusting option under the window.

Sometimes when I can't sleep at night I make a puzzle out of moving our family into various houses and organizing the rooms.  If the houses happen to be large, I often wind up perplexed how to use all the rooms. 

Of Mice and Men

We were deep in the woods in a fairly remote campground, our site far enough from the others we could not see or hear any neighbors.  It was late at night in August on the Olympic Penninsula, cool, very dank, and dark.  We were late to bed and almost ready when I heard the noise.  My ears perked up immediately.

Wait,  let me quote from my travel journal:

"August 18, 2020

...Returned to our campsite at 10 pm, 2 kids asleep in the car, ready to brush teeth and fall asleep.  While brushing teeth, I hear the sound of a rodent in Jared's engine, which has been parked for 30 hours.  Kick the fender.  Run the car for a few minutes.  Still there.  (I remember Katie Athow telling us when she parked for too long, rats chewed up wires in her engine.  This, it turns out, is a known problem.)  We are super far from anywhere - 40 miles from the nearest gas station. We have to get that rodent out!  Open the hood - shine the camping lantern.  See the gray mouse crawling around.  Not even a native animal... Jared leaves to drive up the gravel road to the main road and back...

After 15 minutes of driving on gravel roads and the engine temperature up to normal, we look and listen some more and are hopeful we've smoked the little bigger out.  CANNOT afford to get towed out here!

So we went to bed later than planned..."

This December, we opened the trunk of the Honda, parked on the street near the south end of our property, to find a ten pound bag of rice chewed open and spilled, along with some chewed up felt from the trunk padding. 

I knew who had been in my car.  The house just south of us has a rat colony in the attic - in the late summer evenings when we had been eating dinner on the back patio, I had seen a mother rat returning to many tiny, adorable babies poking their nose out of that attic vent, and when I had gone to put scraps in our compost bin, a cute little nose poked through a knot hole in the fence at me.

Of course I cleaned up the car.  And while I was in there sweeping out the trunk (vacuum cleaners both currently out of commission), a little pointy nose poked up in the crack between the floor of trunk and the hybrid battery case. I yelled something along the lines of: There you are you little stinker!  Which was overheard by my 2 year old who was concerned about getting in her carseat afterward for fear of meeting the rat.  Anyway, cleaning finished, I went for a drive around the neighborhood in the hopes of evicting the stowaway.

Then I did a massive reorganization of our little driveway so I could park the Honda on it behind the Aveo.  This would put the car on the north end of the property,  several yards further from the colony. It involved moving the mobile driveway garden of last summer,  moving the city garbage, recycle, and compost bins, cleaning up toddler debris from the front steps,  and sweeping...

Rats gone.

Last weekend we drove the hour up to Snoqualmie Pass to play in the snow.  We had a trunk full of complete snow gear sets, snow shoes,  sleds, and spare clothes.  When we got back, it was dark and cold, and for a variety of reasons, I didn't really want to unpack it all just then, and I left it for the morning.  

When I came to unpack the trunk the following day, someone had chewed a hole through a cloth bag and a cloth diaper.  The saga continues...

New Year, New Venture

Neither Jared nor I are promoters.  And Jared, especially, functions best as the guy behind the scenes that holds everything together and never needs to be seen.  This is an amazing trait and true blessing to many.  It is also a liability when you are self-employed.  For a long time, I've known that Jared would be happier with more opportunities to use all his career skills, which are many and truly awesome.  But we didn't know how to get there. 

A couple months ago I reached out to several people to find out if hiring some advertising help would be good.  I interviewed a couple of people.  It just didn't seem like a go, no matter how much I wanted it to be.  Every person I talked to who is self-employed in our field is making their best connections personally.  

I used to work for someone who is totally charismatic that way.  It sort of seems like he walks into a room and people are begging him to take them on as cello students.  (I realize that is not exactly how it works, but he has a way with people that makes them excited for what he has. )  I need someone like that to run our business.  But right now, I can't get around the fact that I have to be that person.

...so the Monday after Christmas, I said to Jared: At the end of today, tell me what Dalcroze classes you want to start: what ages/levels, length of class, how many people you can take in each class, and I will make it happen.  He dutifully came up with a list, and I spent Tuesday writing up the flier, his bio, a fee structure, and a registration form and collecting applicable photos from our disorganized archives.  I knew I needed some internet magic to turn it into something visually appealing and to have all the registration work online, and that I needed it done by the end of the month, aka Thursday.  I started contacting people with only a prayer and no idea how to make it a reality.  And would you know that my very own sister is a highly experienced mailchimp user and before I even knew what was happening, she had set me up with a free account and had collected all my materials and spent several hours doing the internet magic I needed??  And once I took over, she still helped me through more technical challenges and all the weird stuff that happened when we tried to add the pay online component. I couldn't have guessed that exactly the help I needed was so close or so friendly!!! An amazing lifesaver that I hope to be able to repay some day.

Then I spent several days where every free moment was contacting people personally to tell them about Jared 's new classes and sending them the materials to share.  I was in personal contact via email,  private, message, and text with several hundred people across the Americas.  It was exhausting,  but I also had the chance to reconnect with many wonderful people from previous segments of my life and find out more about what they are up to these days.

And then the registrations came in.  Totally filled the younger two classes, and got enough to run the older two.  Classes started online on January 11th.

I have gotten a couple of *really nice* notes from parents saying how much their kids love Dr. J and the activities.  Jared is suddenly much busier planning classes and practicing the piano,  so we are making (positive) adjustments at home with how we handle the family work load. 

These classes run for eight weeks, so we are talking about what is next and how to make this be just the start of something wonderful.  This seems like a really good step in the direction of improving both our finances and mental health (neither of which are an A+) and providing something really interesting, useful, and fun to people which is not widely available.