presence required

It seems strange to return to my blog and realize just how long it has been since I have really written anything. Inspite of the many witty and insightful essays that are created in my head while loading the dishwasher, dusting the living room or laying awake late at night, I find that in reality those ideas are still locked inside my head or long lost. Meanwhile, this blog has become a venue for quick family news reports and jotting down notes rather than real thoughts and reflections on the "Soul of the Family." In many ways, the days have a similar feel to them. Crossing off items on a list, making new lists, quick updates to my husband on essential information and lots of promises to do things later.

Years ago, I attended a parenting workshop given by Montessorian, Patricia Oriti. She suggested we each try a little mental excercise to help us stay on course. "Close your eyes,"she instructed, "and envision your family unit just the way you would ideally like it to be." She confessed that her own vision of family life brought forth the image of a band. She and her husband and their two children were playing together...in a band. Slightly embarrassed, she admitted that none of them had any musical talent, but the point was that they were doing something that was fun and very much together.

Ha! I like the vision of us all cleaning the house together. Okay. Maybe that isn't the greatest vision. Honestly, I like Patricia's family band image. Pleasurable, together and yet generous and challenging. Now, how to get us to even closer to that place? I mean the house still has to be cleaned, Daddy still has to go to work with his crazy-erratic schedule, life must carry on.

I dread that I am losing that magical, fearless ability to live in the moment. Living in the present is that fantastic skill that little tots and teenagers come upon so naturally. It allows them to experience life in a way that we preoccupied, worried-about-the-future adults can no longer appreciate but rather regard with a patronizing pat on the head and a clucking of the tongue. Yes, I realize it is a sign of our maturity that we can avoid danger and negative outcomes because of our ability to look ahead. Our children's very lives depend on our prudence in knowing "what could happen if..."

However, is it necessary that the Present always succumb to the Future?

I have had a long career of playing and teaching the piano. Many a mother has come to me quite excitedly reporting that her three or four year old loves music, spends a lot of time playing the piano, seems to show some real ability and raw talent. And then the dreaded question, "Do you think we should sign him up for lessons now?" As if a love for music and hours joyfully spent at the piano have no value. The message seems to be that playing the piano is Not Important Work but studying the piano is Very Important Work. Indeed, nothing delights me more than when the parent of a student reports (usually with some degree of concern) that the child, having abandoned the assigned pieces went on to spend an hour or two creating their own music or basking in the pleasures of long ago learned, but beloved songs. Lost in the moment. Not concerned about what awaited them at the end of this moment.

The new edict is that this family band must make music together every day and get lost in that momentum of music making--at least from time to time. I am reminded of a public debate that I participated in as a part of a college history class. The British professor posted papers around campus that read: Your attendance is Required on Monday, this date, for a public debate... We tried to explain to him that the word "required" should be struck in favor of "requested." But, to no avail.

There may well have been a lesson to be learned from that history professor and his eccentric ways. Perhaps a pinned up scroll in my family room should read:

Your presence is Required here and now

{body, heart and mind}

in this very moment, in this very place.