The conference was wonderful. Exciting. Inspiring.
Overwhelming. I seem to be using that word a lot these days.
I’m thankful for the manuscript critique I got, and I feel like I have some concrete ideas about what needs work and how to proceed. Even though (I admit) I was hoping I didn’t have so much work left to do.
I’m thankful to get to hear and meet keynote speakers who were full of insight, and encouragement, and wisdom. They made me want to do and be better.
I’m thankful to have gotten to spend a day with people who are writing and illustrating and creating for children, and, by extension, their families. It is amazing to think of the kind of love and energy and work that goes into a book.
I drove home literally buzzing with ideas and plans, faces and conversations. I got home to my family and received the best round of bear-hugs ever. Pretty much immediately after that, though, a question smacked me between the eyes: When, exactly, are you going to do all this? Because I’m willing to do the work, but I don’t know how it’s going to be anything but impossibly slow. And done in stolen moments—while laundry is piling up, and dinner needs to be made, and people I love need me.
I’ve been giving myself pep talks: No. You will NOT collapse into a quivering heap of despair. I keep telling myself to trust the work and know that it will produce something.
While I haven’t yet collapsed, I’ll admit that things have been up and down since then. They are the usual kinds of ups and downs, swinging from loving how I get to spend my days to frustration with a schedule that seems to constantly demand. How do I clear the time and space to do this work? Do I have the right to even try?
Trust the work.
Every week I send families home from violin lessons with assignments about what to work on and how to do it. I don't tell them how to make that work in their busy lives. I offer suggestions, sometimes, but ultimately it is for them to figure out. My best advice is, “Do some work every day if you can, and work out from there.” I encourage them to trust the work.
I feel like I can do that because I’ve experienced the results of that kind of work, myself. I remember how hard it was to chart my own progress on violin. Most of it was slow, over the course of months and years. But looking back I could see: every etude book, every exercise, all the metronome work and the hours spent on scales, did in fact increase my technique, give me more tools to communicate and express myself. Keeping at it really does make a difference.
By Wednesday, I felt like a wreck. I was convinced everything was suffering: It seemed like either the house was in chaos because I took some time to write, or else I was so busy taking care of everybody and every thing that there was no room for writing. I was caught in a spiral of frustration.
In the middle of all that, I sat down to read Youngest a book. And oh, I love it when a book speaks right into your life. In Crossing the New Bridge, by Emily Arnold McCully (Putnam Juvenile, 1994) the old bridge into town collapses. The mayor and townspeople call on the Jubilatti family to build a replacement, and the mayor believes all his problems are solved. His plans for a triumphal march across the new bridge are crushed, however, when an old woman reminds him of the town’s tradition: the first person to cross the new bridge must be the happiest person in town. If anybody else crosses first, they will all be cursed. The mayor searches all over, looking for the happiest person, but everybody he encounters, although each seems like s/he should be happy, has a complaint. It finally becomes clear that the happiest people in town are the Jubilattis, themselves, because they love their work and do it well.
Love the work.
I know this well, but I forget more often than I’d like to admit. I looked around me again on Wednesday, and saw Oldest, still glowing from a 95 on his math test. He really is learning how to work, and he’s seeing results. Middle was in my office writing with gusto. She recently googled ‘writing prompts for 4th graders’ and is in love with the list she found. She wants to write every day. Youngest was down in the basement, completely absorbed in painting. She has announced to the family that she is an artist.
There are plenty of things my kids have to do every day that they dislike, but there is also work they do--maybe work they were born to do--that they know how to lose themselves in. This has to be one of the great joys in life. How can I not join them? Doesn’t everyone say it’s all in the journey?
Maybe I haven’t fully found my voice yet. That’s a painful thing to admit. Trusting that there is a voice to find, and having joy in the process—these are both fuel and comfort. Seeing my children looking for their own voices, helping them, watching them discover ways to develop them—these things spur me on. We are indeed fellow travelers.
Sometimes I am able to step back from a day I thought I didn’t know how to live and see that it is chugging along just fine, anyway. How good to get the chance to jump back in and join it mid-swing, trusting and loving the work.
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