The Same Old Routine

Coronamnesia. I don't think it's a real word. And I don't think I'm the only one to use it. But it's a real thing. Our memories are dependent on repetition and rhythm and routine, and major upheaval--getting too far from normal for too long--makes it harder to remember things.

But I do remember some things from this strange time of pandemic upheaval. Like that the last time I wrote here, I wrote about the cello. I will say more about that, but right now I'm thinking about the piano.

I also remember that back at the beginning of 2020, I wrote about the determination to write more regularly. Which did not happen. The erratic state of my blog is a reflection of the erratic state of life.

Because someone recently reminded me that I have a blog, which got me to thinking about all this, I've also been thinking about a little index card that I noticed one time in the windowsill above Grandmother's oven. Just a little white card with the words written in blue ink in her handwriting:

Thank God for the same old routine.

I don't remember my age or situation when I first noticed it, but it stuck with me because it struck me as odd that she would have that written out for herself to see. We were brought up to count our blessings, but I had never thought of "the same old routine" as a blessing to consider.

Wow, do I see that differently now. For many reasons, experiences over many years have made sense of those words and why she might write them out to remember.

"The same old routine" feels like a faraway dream to me right now. Since writing "now I begin" back in January of 2020, the pandemic broke out, changing all kinds of routines and rhythms for all of us. Additionally, we went real estate hunting, found a place, renovated "the chateau" (a condominium, but I dislike that word as a descriptor for my living space, and our complex has a French name, so I'm calling it a chateau), packed up our things and sold our lovely house, and moved into the chateau, which is lovely in ways of its own. Then within a month of that move, I learned that I would have to find a new office space for my practice. That was another upheaval. It also had a lovely outcome, but it was very stressful when I had no idea where I'd go but had to get out in a short amount of time.

And this year has had its share of smaller disruptions of rhythm, both sweet and somewhat bitter. The vaccines meant that Zoom piano lessons turned into children physically present in my living room again, which was wonderful. I began taking cello lessons, which was great fun. Resulting shoulder/arm pain led to stopping the lessons and starting a month of physical therapy to remedy the pain and, we hope, make playing cello possible again.

But I still don't know about that, because just a week after ending the PT sessions, I had foot surgery which left me largely dependent on husband, friends, and family for about a month. The following month included more mobility and physical therapy for the foot. I'm still not back to normal, but I'm starting to be able go for short walks and do some of the yoga-like exercise that was part of my same old routine before the surgery.

And now on the horizon, sailing steadily toward us, is the big ship of moving back to Croatia. I haven't written about that on my blog before, just another indication of how strange this time of life is! We've seen this ship coming for some time, but that doesn't diminish the size of it nor the amount it will disrupt and change the same old routine--what little there is of that.

I've begun a sort of rhythm in that each week I've been seeing fewer and fewer clients and going through more and more boxes. I trust both my clients and I will make this adjustment okay.

Support for that trust came to me yesterday in the form of a metronome. I'm about to get a metronome for one of my piano students and begin the process of teaching her to use it. And as I was looking at my own cute little one, a passage came back to me from my DMin thesis that gave me hope, in a week when I've had multiple moments of feeling close to overwhelm level. A few years ago, applying these ideas to a life of disciplined prayer, I wrote:

A common friend of many musicians is the metronome. A metronome helps measure time, providing a steady tempo for a musician to match. People are not born with perfect rhythm; they learn it from their environment and from practice. As a piano teacher, I have worked with many students who struggle with rhythm and who have never used a metronome. Initially, they tend to struggle mightily to stay with the metronome. It requires will, persistence, and generally significant encouragement. Most go through a period of resisting and complaining about how hard it is to keep themselves in tempo. Those who stick with the process, however, wind up realizing (and often saying) that the metronome has become a good friend. It actually helps their playing improve and helps them achieve their goals of making meaningful music. Its difficult discipline eventually frees them, allowing them to feel more clearly and confidently the spirit of the music.

And in the thesis I connected this with a wonderful passage about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a musician himself, who wrote to a friend in Letters from Prison:

What I mean is that God wants us to love him eternally with our whole hearts [. . . . ] to provide a kind of cantus firmus to which the other melodies of life provide the counterpoint . . . . I wanted to tell you to have a good, clear cantus firmus; that is the only way to a full and perfect sound and can't come adrift or get out of tune, while remaining a distinct whole in its own right. Only a polyphony of this kind can give life a wholeness and at the same time assure us that nothing calamitous can happen as long as the cantus firmus is kept going.

Over many years of making music, and quite a few years of working as a counselor, helping people with mood disorders and people without diagnosable disorders who nonetheless struggle with moods because of temporary situations, I've come to realize the importance of actual metronomes and metaphorical ones.

And I know the value of conductors who keep a steady beat that can keep dozens or even hundreds of performers together so that what could degenerate into cacophony instead sounds beautiful or powerful.

With clients I sometimes talk about finding and creating anchors, small morning and evening practices they can make a part of each day, even if the rest of the day feels completely out of their control.

And perhaps as with the conductor, the value of staying connected to even one or two people who have a steadying effect can make all the difference between cacophony and harmony.

Especially staying connected to the Divine Conductor makes a difference. "Nothing calamitous can happen" if we do that. Bonhoeffer wrote that from prison in the midst of a savage war, and he wound up a martyr. Somehow that helps me believe I can handle what lies before me.

It's been hitting me that I need more rhythm, more anchors, more "metronome work" in my life, even if it was only yesterday the metronome itself spoke to me about this.

So I've found a way to make tomorrow a true retreat day, at a church with a beautiful nave and empty space where I can do some much-needed praying and planning. And I'm determined to work out a flexible but firm enough "rule of life" to get me through these next few months and into the new life beyond.

There's something comforting about the sound of an old-fashioned metronome. (I can't say the same for the digital ones I've used, whose sounds tend to annoy me.) The steady, resonant tick tock continues no matter how many times you get off the beat and have to start over.

And there's something comforting about looking forward to tomorrow and knowing that even with all the change, plenty of practices from my past can be reinserted into my life and carried forward. My life may be changing, but the God I pray to and the friends who love me aren't changing. The park I've walked in is still there. I can create a new rhythm with what is possible.

The old-fashioned metronomes, like old-fashioned clocks, have to be wound anew every so often, which for me is also a comforting thing, reminding me of my beloved piano teacher who occasionally had to stop her metronome and wind it during one of our lessons.

I'm ready to wind my metronome and use it more consistently. I hope writing in here will become more a part of my rhythm, even in the change-filled days ahead. I'm not ready to commit to that yet, but it's up for consideration.

I thank God for the same old routine, for this period of minimal routine, and for the new routines to come.

And I smile in the hope that Fr. Lanteri would be happy along with me. Nunc coepi. Now I begin. (Again.)

Normal

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Yesterday I was talking with a sort of mentor who has listened to me over the past couple of years, and I asked what advice he would have for me going forward, since I'm not sure how much more our lives will intersect.

His response: "I think you will regret it someday if you don't start writing. Writing something. Your blog, a book, whatever. I think you'll be sorry if you don't do more of that, get yourself back into it."

So, because I respect his thinking, nearly half a year after I wrote about the possibility and the power of always beginning anew, here I am on my blog, beginning anew.

I had started a post sometime in the time between January and now, to share the poem below as a way of expressing what this year so far has been like. After the January New Year's post, a good chunk of my free time was spent helping a special person in my life by proofing and editing their master's thesis. Once that was done, the free time was spent traveling to visit friends out of town as well as hosting a friend from out of town. Oh, and both a personal retreat and a group retreat. A pretty full month.

By the end of February it was becoming clear that life was about to be hit by the novel coronavirus, and March ushered in the reality of that with all its unsettling dynamics. I was closely watching the news coming from Italy, with daily death counts and pictures of coffins the stuff of surreality. We had beloved people in Bergamo, the hot spot, who became ill with flu symptoms.

Normal life here began closing down. I stocked up on groceries. Started seeing my clients through a screen. Learned that someone I had had lunch with the first week of March, had been exposed to people who had tested positive, so I stayed in for over two weeks straight just to be careful.

Photo by Andrew Buchanan on Unsplash

Then one Sunday morning I woke and found a text message, "Croatia had an earthquake." It was March 22, and until I could get more details later that morning, I had no idea if people we knew were okay or not. We were so thankful to learn that as bad as it was, it could have been much worse. Then that same week two different friends in Croatia were hospitalized with serious problems.

March was an apocalyptic sort of time for everyone. Writers have been using that word to refer to the pandemic, not so much as an "end of time" word, but in the literal sense that an apocalypse is an unveiling of reality, pulling away the props and curtains we have in place in what we think of as normal life. We've been able to see serious cracks and crevices and crooked places as the veil has been pulled away. It's been a painful time in many ways.

In early April a very dear friend died. I'm sure I'll write more about that later.

Then near the end of May began the events that led up to the ongoing protests and all the difficult and painful realities and the accompanying emotions intertwined with that part of our country's story.

All to say that even though I had thought I'd be writing more in 2020, it was as if my mind went into survival mode. All my energy was needed to just keep taking the hits, as it were, and keep up the necessary functioning, working with clients and occasionally teaching for our class at church (via Zoom), learning to teach piano through a screen, helping a group tasked with making decisions about when and how our church might return to some kind of meeting in person. (We have not yet.)

The early days of the pandemic often took me back to Croatia, to the early days of the war in 1991. It was uncanny how many emotional memories I had during March. Of course a virus spreading around the world was very different from a war starting, but I repeatedly had intuitive flashes, my body and mind making connections back almost 30 years to those feelings of uncertainty, fear of the unknown, the hope that maybe it wouldn't be as bad as some predicted, the hard realization of how bad it could really be. The way time slowed down. The sense of isolation. Small things like the grocery store shelves emptying. Much bigger things like the wondering who would survive and who would be lost. Weeping at scenes of death coming through the media.

One night I sat at the piano and wept as I realized that it could be many months, possibly a couple of years, before I would sing in a chorus again. Certainly not the greatest suffering of the situation, but it represented so much more than what might seem to some a simple hobby.

Since the third grade, I have kept some kind of journal. It started in a little green diary with a lock and key and has gone on to fill bound books of various sizes and shapes, with rarely a week between writings, and sometimes daily writing for significant periods of time.

But for the years that I lived in Croatia, I have nothing in writing beyond letters and occasional notes in a planner that I've found in my desk there. I did no journaling for three full years.

I think the past few months have been something like those three years. The mind can only do so much, and my mind hasn't had the energy or ability to put things in writing.

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity," said William Wordsworth. My dear English teacher used to emphasize the importance of the "recollected in tranquillity" part of that process; one's best writing doesn't tend to come completely spontaneously, but requires some distance for reflection and a sort of absorption and assimilation. And sometimes writing at all seems to require some distance.

Perhaps I'll share one day a poem I did actually compose in those early days, before the virus had clearly arrived in our area. But for now I will share a poem by someone else. I've shared this poem with many of my clients over the years, people struggling when life events have taken them so far from what they had called normal before. I don't recall where I came across it, but since then I've learned more about its author and just love it all the more for the life behind the words.

We've all lost some of our Normal since I last wrote on this blog. I hope that anyone reading this has been able to hold on to enough Normal to keep you anchored in the midst of all the change. And I hope you'll find some courage and strength in this poem, especially when you consider the writer, whose life you can learn more about via the link at the end.

About Normal

Right now,
I don’t know what Normal is
Anymore.
That’s because Normal has been changing
So much,
So often,
Lately.
For a long while of lately.
I’d like Normal to be
Okayness.
Good health…
Emotional health,
Medical health,
Spiritual health.
I’d like Normal to be
Like that.
For now though,
I know that Normal won’t be normal
For a little while…
But somehow,
Sometime,
Even if things are not Normal,
They’ll be okay.
That’s because I believe
In the great scheme of things,
And Life.

May 2001

From the book Hope through Heartsongs, written by Mattie J.T. Stepanek, a 10-year-old “poet and peacemaker” who died from a rare form of muscular dystrophy. He started writing poems when he was five to allow his mom to “see what was inside of him” and he continued to write up until his death at age 13.

https://www.daily-journal.com/opinion/the-faith-of-mattie-stepanek/article_cbb29c1d-4af3-5ee1-89b6-5dc782705ccd.html

Height and Depth and Length and Letters and Love

Today I remember Mr. Wright, Ray A. Wright, my high school English teacher and friend for many years, who died on this day in 2002.

I've shared some of his poetry here before. Tonight I got out the stack of letters from him, most written when I was in college and he was at Ole Miss working on a doctorate. I hadn't looked at them in years but knew where they were and just decided to read a couple.

What a beautiful thing, that he took the time to sit and write these words to me. And took the time to read the words I wrote to him. These letters, because of their very words and because of the connection they represented, helped me through some hard times, and I imagine they will in years ahead, too.

I remember thinking how neat--that's probably the word I would have used then, even though I remember chiding myself for using that word too much!--how neat it was that his address had a 26 in it. 26 was my favorite number, the one I got on my club jersey, connecting back to high school stories, happy memories. So it was a happy coincidence that I enjoyed each time a letter came.

(And he would have gently chided me for writing that awkward sentence up there with the dashes. And then might have said, "Well, you've proven you know the rules, so you're allowed to break them. But that really is rather awkward!")

I wish I had copies of what I had written to him, what he was responding to. I wonder what music had recently brought me to tears. It happened a lot. Still does. But it would be sweet to know what he was referring to.

When I was blessed with the opportunity to sing the Prayers of Kierkegaard many years later, I know that brought tears to my eyes, for sure.

I am so thankful for the length of time this friendship stretched throughout my life, from ninth grade for a little over twenty years. And I would say it definitely made up in depth what it lacked in length. And with the memories and the letters accompanying me through the rest of my life, and with the faith we share and the goodness of the Father in heaven who "didst save us," the height and depth and length of this relationship become part of the eternal goodness of God.

During the time of his final battle with cancer, pain, and a coma, my chorus was preparing to perform Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna. I sang it with Mr. Wright in mind, and it always comes to mind this time of year, just as he always comes to mind when I hear or sing that music.

His life's light shined into my little life. May light perpetual shine upon him.

It's Not Over Till It's Over (But It's Almost Over)

Today I took the 25% cotton paper and my 200-plus pages of thesis on a flash-drive to the FedEx Office shop, trusting that tomorrow I will receive back from them four printed copies.

It has been quite a saga.

At some point a few months ago, I came across a little book on spiritual growth, written originally in the 1400's, I think. It had a good section on sloth, with the admonition to "begin, bravely and quietly with one" small task, rather than letting yourself be overcome with the sense of exhaustion and discouragment that comes when you think too much on how big the task seems. Those words helped me get through that final chapter that I struggled with so much.

At one point, I bought myself a special mug, sort of as a mascot to encourage me to keep going, keep going. The mug says someting about changing the world, which sounds grandiose, but somehow it helped me just as a reminder that it really is through the little things each of us does that the world is changed. And I have to believe that this thesis will do something, somewhere, at some point, to change someone's world.

And of course, I had to remind myself repeatedly to simplify. Sometimes that meant redoing a sentence so it wasn't so long and complex. At one point it meant just not writing an entire chapter I had hoped to include.

My counseling office became a second home for quite a lot of weekends. It's going to look strange when I finally get all the stacks of books and papers off the shelves.

My carrel at the library has been a less-frequented hangout, but an important one when I needed books, or when the heating and air conditioning at my office was too extreme.

Several months back, while working on this, I decided to do an art therapy online course. One of the assignments involved making a picture, and then (gasp! she hadn't told us this on the front end) cutting out parts of that picture and using them to create a new picture. It nearly killed me to cut up the first picture that I had so lovingly done. But I did it, and this is what I came up with next.

And that turned out to be a wonderful help as I found myself more able to make changes, cutting and rewriting, in that final chapter that took so much work. I had gotten to a point of feeling really stuck with it, and it was the art that helped me get un-stuck and moving forward again.

And now, even though I can hardly believe it, I have done all I can do. It is at the printer's, and I am simply waiting (and hoping nothing goes wrong with this part of the process!)

It has been so much a part of my life for so long now, it is strange to think of not having to think of it anymore. And of being able to focus on other parts of life. I guess I will "begin, bravely and quietly, with one"....as I just did in writing on my blog, something that's been neglected for several years.

Maybe tomorrow I'll actually get the impatiens planted.....