Fingering

One of the things I never seemed to grasp during the piano lessons of my youth was the importance of fingering. I wasn't a good sight reader as a result, scales were iffy--if they came out well, it was purely chance and were just as likely to be muddled up the next time around. Somehow adhering to those little numbers above the notes seemed entirely too constricting.

When I was preparing to leave on my mission, the one thing about which I worried most was the rules. Missionaries have rules for everything, from when to get up to when to go to bed and everything to do in between. I thought that all the rules would be very claustrophobic. Imagine my surprise when I found that the rules, once I embraced them, made my life easy. There was a whole list of things I didn't need to waste brain space deciding because I had already decided to obey all of the rules. Upon my return from the mission and the release from the proscriptive rules, I was completely at sea. There was an innumerable list of things I suddenly had to decide and the rules were ironically one of the parts of mission life I most missed.

I'm taking piano lessons again along with my three oldest children. It is my attempt to use my brain, to dust off skills I once learned and refine them so that I can be of more service and to set an example that even Mommy has to practice the piano every day. I have always said that piano practice orders my children's minds. I suppose my own mind needs some ordering these days. One of the things that I sought out when choosing a piano teacher for my children, was a teacher whose methods were very theory heavy. I feel like my lack of theory hampered the sticking power of all those piano lessons I had as a youth. So, naturally, when I decided to take lessons again myself, it was the theory I was seeking. My teacher makes me learn scales and chords and progressions and plenty of theory and then she finds lovely pieces that I enjoy playing and that use the skills she's teaching me. And top on her list of necessary skills is fingering. Finally I get it. When I follow those pesky little numbers, my fingers are where I need them to be when the song requires them. I find comfort in the fingering and find the scales and arpeggios in my pieces soothing to play and not painful drudgery.

By the same token, I find myself looking for patterns in the scriptures, ways to order my home and family, our choices and lives so that we have what we need when we need it and the tricky passages of life don't trip us up disastrously. As I search for these, one of my favorite scripture passages is in the Book of Mormon. 2 Nephi 25:26 talks about the things we do to teach our children the way Home: We talk, rejoice, preach, prophesy and write of our Savior. I am slowly learning to fall back on this pattern when things don't seem to be working, to schedule our family life and set up our house rules with these guidelines in mind. Another pattern comes from the Doctrine and Covenants. D&C 88:119 talks of order. I love this verse; I aspire to it. My sister gave me this fabulous wall hanging of it for Christmas. It reminds me that I am seeking for a house of prayer, fasting, faith, learning, glory, order, a house of God. Order is part of that equation, but it is NOT first on the list. So, maybe if my family is doing a decent job of the prayer, faith and learning, we will be better able to lean into the order and glory? That's my hope and the plan to all my organization. This passage also reminds me, because it was originally written about building temples, sacred houses to the Lord here on earth, that my home is sacred. As the place where my family begins and ends, sallies forth and retreats to daily, it IS sacred. It doesn't just become sacred if it is spotless, it is sacred in its purpose. When we follow the rules, patterns, the fingering the Lord has set out for us, we enhance the sanctity of our home, our lives and focus ourselves more on the Savior, more on Home.

All of this takes far more planning, organization, practice than come naturally to me. I still don't take easily to fingering, even though it finally makes sense. But at least now that I finally see why, I can see the value in seeking out the patterns and learning to follow them and the safety, whether musically or eternally, in doing so.

Getting Old

Christmas came down today. Since I was already being held prisoner by the HVAC repairman, I figured I might as well be productive instead of fuming while I waited. Usually, when I take down the Little People nativity I have to do a fair amount of sorting and searching. Because this is the nativity my little ones can play with, things tend to get confused. But, this year there were no Clone Troopers guarding the manger. The farmer's cows had not replaced the camel and no reindeer were in with the sheep and donkey. The angel remained atop the roof. The only wandering that happened was that M seemed to think the wisemen (with their crowns; they are 3 Kings, you know) needed to visit the castle, otherwise known as the ceramic church from Grandma's village, but even these visits nearly always resulted in the wisemen returning to their places aside the baby Jesus. My babies are growing up. Christmas is quickly leaving the phase of trying to protect the decorations and the children from each other and entering the era of expectation where the children have memories and plans of how things should go each year. We are quickly leaving the land of big and cheap presents and entering the land of expensive and tiny presents with the wish lists that would break Bill Gates (and I suppose it's also a sign of the times that when searching for the thing to "break" I couldn't say "bank" because too many of those have already been broken of late and instead I had to come up with some independently rich and seemingly unbreakable entrepeneur, what a world we live in!).

I don't know how I feel about this. Christmas is a complicated holiday. There are so many commercial expectations, past traditions to live up to, Joneses to keep up with. And all that is a dangerous aside from the Savior we are to be revering and celebrating in the first place. I suppose this aging of Christmas is just a snapshot of the aging of my family. M is a Sunbeam now; I have no children in nursery. CE will be in YW in less than a month and is having a difficult time processing, let alone following her grandmother's sage advice to be the age she is instead of wishing to be older, sooner. And that is sage advice for the aging of my family: to enjoy the ages we are instead of longing too fervently for the future or being overly wistful of what has past.

My kids asked a lot this year about Santa. They've heard rumors, read allusions in their chapter books. I don't want to dash illusions or trample magic so I merely say "believing is a choice." Believing is always a choice. And still I do find myself somewhat wistful for the recent past when questions seemed limited to when and why and not if. Getting older is a mine field and there are no clone troopers to guide our way.