9/52

Do you ever look at kids and wonder how it is that they are a million times braver than you are as a fully grown adult?

All three of my boys do extracurricular activities that require lots of work and commitment and, most importantly, constant failure in front of other people.

I’m in complete awe of my teenager when he swims next to boys a foot taller than he is. He’ll lose a race, shake it off, and just use it as fuel to work harder the next time.

I’m amazed at my two younger ones who go to piano and cello lessons week after week and play for their teachers, quite often failing pretty spectacularly. And don't even get me started on how proud I am of them for the terrifying recitals they do twice a year.

Yes, my little people are brave and amazing and they MOST definitely didn’t get it from me. You see, I’m a product of lifelong debilitating anxiety, which has kept me on the fringes of SO many things I’ve really wanted to do over the years.

I think I would have really enjoyed competitive swimming and I wish my parents had been aware that swim team was a thing in 1986, though I probably would have been too nervous to actually race. I adored gymnastics and I was naturally good at it, but was too anxious to attend the special camps in which I was asked to participate, so I quit.

It's the story of my life. Always avoiding being put on the spot. Always quitting or being too nervous to try in the first place,  torn between being comfortable and taking risks -- yet, deep down, always really, really wanting to try. It’s the kids’ instrument lessons though that truly send me into the woulda coulda shoulda spiral of regret.

I was born into a house filled with music. My dad is a musician and a songwriter -- the real life “piano man” from the Billy Joel song, with a decades-long side hustle playing background music and Frank Sinatra requests at various places around town. He also composed lots of jingles for local businesses throughout the 80s and 90s. I relished hearing them on the radio and being able to tell others kids, "Hey! That's my dad!"

Early on, my mom insisted dad get a “real job" with benefits,  and so, when I was very young, he went back to school to be a music teacher.  Some of my earliest memories are of him using me as a guinea pig for lessons. I remember gleefully clapping out rhythms to silly things like  “Gum-drops, Loll-i-pops, Candy-Coated Peeeeeeanuts!”, learning the lines and spaces on the staff, do-re-mi hand signals, and playing little songs on the piano, sometimes with his hands over mine to help me find the right keys.

I spent long stretches of my childhood happily entertaining myself for hours at places like recording studios, music stores, dad’s music room at school, other kids’ piano lessons, and church music team rehearsals.

He taught me plenty of things on the piano whenever I asked (and sometimes when I didn’t.) I think it’s probably really hard to give your own child lessons of any kind--  especially when that child is incredibly stubborn and just wants to learn things on their own and make mistakes without an audience. Despite my pushback against any formal lessons, I always loved playing and managed okay on my own. He would just wander by every so often and show me how something should sound or how to get through parts I didn’t understand.  

Occasionally, a new music book would randomly appear in the piano bench and I would spend weeks trying to learn it cover to cover.  Some of my favorite times were on the weekends when we would go out together to the music store. There were several nearby and they all knew my dad by name. He would chat up the employees and I got to wander around touching all the instruments and perusing the piano books and sheet music. Almost always, he would let me pick out a fresh, new book to take home.

When I was about nine years old, there was a McDonald’s commercial that aired all the time during Saturday morning cartoons. In it, a little girl nervously fumbled through Fur Elise at her piano recital, and got to go out for a Happy Meal afterward. I was instantly entranced, not with the Happy Meal, but with the piece of music she was playing and I begged to go buy a copy.  My dad obliged and we picked out a fancy compilation book of classical pieces. I can still picture the shiny cover that had a Renoir painting on it of two little girls at a piano. Fur Elise was on page one. 
I came right home, ran to the piano and spent the rest of the day there.  It was my first taste of playing something I thought of as REAL music and I was hooked.

Dad would ask about once a year or so if I wanted to take lessons and I would emphatically refuse.The idea of sitting and playing in front of a teacher seemed to me an insurmountable social obstacle. And a recital? Forget it. Total deal breaker.

Tangled up in all that though there was this small, quiet part of me that wanted to shout from the rooftops, “But you should make me do it anyway. I really WANT to do this!” 

The one benefit of having felt this way a lot as a kid is that I recognize that small voice in my own children now, especially the oldest one who shares my anxious, overthinking tendencies. Something I’ve learned over the years is that there are those of us in this world who sometimes just really need another gentle soul to see us there struggling in our little circle of of comfort, drag us out, and then hold us there for awhile as we feel terribly out of sorts in that new place. We need someone to keep us from following the instinct to run away.... until finally, it starts to feel ok and then we can breathe again and move forward. With every tiny step out of that circle, we start to learn what amazing things we're capable of.

At fourteen or so, I finally got a tiny bit brave and acquiesced to trying lessons. I had just learned a new piece I was kind of proud of --  a Bach Two-Part Invention with what I thought at the time was some impressive two-handed action. Somehow, even with nerves going haywire and unsteady hands, I managed to play it for the teacher. She said my technique was good and then? She asked me to play some scales.  GAH. Scales? Other than the basic ones, I had never bothered with those sorts of boring details. At the end of the lesson, instead of more fun and interesting pieces to play, she sent me home with a book of scales and arpeggios. Deflated and discouraged, I never returned. (though I still practiced more than any kid I knew who actually took lessons!)

Fast-forward to a couple of years ago. My parents gave us their piano, the same brown Yamaha upright I had grown up playing, with its wonky D key and scuff marks where my brother and I constantly kicked it with our shoes wen we played as kids. I didn’t realize until it was in my house how very much I had missed being able to just sit at that piano and play. One by one, I started trying to get all of my old pieces back. Like old friends, the piano, the music, and I found each other again and picked up right where we had left off. It was like coming home.

At the same time, my youngest child started taking lessons, followed a year later by the middle one. Week after week, I sat in on their lessons and just observed and listened.

My seven-year-old hadn't even been taking lessons all that long when he could already put me to shame by effortlessly playing a bunch of scales I had never bothered to learn. The funny part is that, by being at the kids' lessons, I was actually starting to see the point of learning scales in the first place, along with plenty other little things I had never picked up along my very unorthodox piano journey.

The little voice began to creep back in…. “Just ask,” it whispered. “You know you want to do this!”

I started small, putting my toes in the water by occasionally asking their teacher little things here and there about pieces I was trying to learn at home. How do I play this part? How should this sound? What’s this squiggly symbol? What’s with these tiny notes above the bigger notes?

Just asking those questions at first felt like leaping off of a cliff backwards with my eyes closed. After all, I’m 41 years old and she teaches ten-year-olds who who know more than I do; but she has always been more than happy to answer any question I throw at her. (and trust me, it's a lot of questions) Much to my relief, she has never made me feel stupid or silly or like I'm wasting her time.

Knowing I have someone who can help and encourage me if I get stuck has made me feel like I can finally begin to revisit something that has always brought me so much happiness. I’ve dusted off my unfinished pieces and have steadily been making a list of new ones I want to learn. I recently started trying to learn a Mozart piece that, for me, is pretty ambitious.  I’ve had to ask more questions than usual and get some in-person demonstrations, stealing five minutes here or there from my kids’ weekly lessons.

I’m not sure I can adequately put into words just how daunting this seemingly small thing can be for someone with anxiety -- this putting yourself out there and asking for help. It’s not that I’m too proud to ask. Far from that. It’s finding the courage to even physically make the words come out of my mouth.  “Can you please show me how to do this? I need your help.”

I have more and more questions with every new piece I pick up and, the fact is, I can’t keep stealing from my kids’ lesson time, so the obvious next step is taking lessons myself. It's a huge mental hurdle, but I’m almost there. I’m trying to listen to the small voice more lately instead of the louder, anxious one that is always telling me I can’t do things.

The trick, I think, is learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and nervous and to trust that it will pass. This is all new for me because it’s a feeling I’ve spent my entire life avoiding at all costs... and the costs were often steep because they were usually things I really wanted and gave up on.

I doubt I will ever be as brave as my kids, but I can at least show them it’s never too late to give something a try, or face a fear, or ask for help.  I’m glad, even this “late in the game”, to have found some inspiration and encouragement to hang with the uncomfortable feeling and ultimately make my comfort zone just a tiny bit wider, while learning how to do something that gives me immense joy.