Today I am Writing: On Caring for Little Souls

Today was Piano Recital Day.

We gathered in the room with the grand piano and the green plastic chairs at our local music store. The children entered in bursts of hodges and podges, trying out the piano, settling into their chairs.

When it was time to begin I stood before them, their little faces peering up at me with varying levels of excitement and fear.

"Who is excited to play?" I ask them. Hands, shoot up. "Who has got the nerves?" I ask. More hands.

"Let's welcome those nerves," I say, and we tell the nerves hello, that we're glad that they are here.

(It was this week during one of the lessons when the little one said, "I'm so scared..." and I looked into her soul-filled beauty eyes and thought "oh baby, oh, yes. I know. But at least in this place you can be safe." I got straight down into her small sweet face and I said with all the courage I have found in all of my years, "Do you know why your nerves were created?"  and then simply we talked, for quite a while. About being in danger, about how our nerves were made to help us remember to run away. And then we did the run-through hundreds of times, to help her nerves learn how to settle inside of her body, just here, with her.)

"Are we in danger?" I want to ask them, all. But instead I say, "Turn around in your chair!" We tell the people we're glad they're here too.

Then we stand to practice our bows, the serious ones, and "the ones you would do if I gave you no rules." I tell them (surprise!) that today they can choose.

And then they play and I watch them listen to each and every sound. I watch them stay calm in their moments of struggle, take time to breathe as they find their own way. I am proud, I am amazed, at every single moment. "This is victory," I think; "this is what victory looks like."

Afterward I ask them, "Was it your worst? your best? somewhere in the middle?" I ask them this after every song in every lesson. I ask them what they wanted to hear and did they hear it, what they wanted to do and did they do it? I ask them this so many times, they are not surprised to hear it again now.

Some of them say it was their worst, sparkles in their eyes for jokes. I laugh at them, I say "put your hands down!" Some of them look at me with confident side-ways smiles. "It was kind of in the middle" they tell me, their shoulders little shrugs of acknowledgement that this moment is not the one that defines what they know as their most-true-about-you. I ask if anyone needs a re-do, and they just wiggle their faces at me, already on the edges of their chairs. They know there will be another moment, another day.

Afterwards the children run free, most of them clearing the room in a matter of seconds, going to find some other interesting thing. Some of them come to me first; I look in their eyes and tell them what I saw in them. I tell the soul-filled beauty eyed one that I know how hard it is to do the scary thing, I tell her little nodding head that she was so so brave.

The parents hover a bit, they hug me, thank me. Many of them have tears. I thank them back, for trusting their children with me, these little musician-spirits encased inside of flesh and bone. I have some unveiled tears of my own.

And I think of those tears, and I wonder why they're there. I wonder why our hearts are overflowing and we do not even hardly have words.

And I think: It's because we did more than make music here today. Today, we cared for little souls.