Soul by Soul

Today I sat at the piano with my ten year old as he struggled to get through the measures of his next recital piece. There was a lot of negative self talk on his part. More than a little discouragement. And quite a lot of wanting to quit.

I sat with him, having given up on squeezing a run in. We’d gone from parsing sentences to reading about special relativity and Japanese-American internment camps to plowing through Twinkle’s reading lesson to answering math problems to forcing the twins through their vocabulary lessons to… but you don’t need the run down on our day.

And I had twenty free minutes and I wanted to pull off a mile run before my window of opportunity disappeared. Just one measly mile.

But instead, I sat on the piano bench as my son hunched over the keys, head in hand, and I told him Anne Lamott’s famous “bird by bird” story. For those of you unfamiliar with it:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report written on birds that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books about birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, "Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”

I went back up to the top of the page and slowed the music down for him. Note by note, I told him. Just play it note by note.

I couldn’t help but think of my un-run mile. My unwritten words. My unfolded laundry.

My own words came back to mock me. Run it step by step, Marian, I heard in my head. Write it word by word. Fold it item by item. If you can tell it to your kid, surely you can tell it to yourself.

But I finished the piano lesson, walked the dog (picking up my daughters from the friend’s house where they’d been playing), cooked curry for dinner, helped with clean up, fed my kids, listened to my husband share about his day…and the last few minutes of the day slipped seamlessly out underneath our front door.

And the words still rang in my head. Step by step. Word by word. Item by item. Accusing me: why can’t you get it done? How can you tell your son to persevere “bird by bird” if you can’t do it yourself?

But when I looked back over my day, I knew that there was a different choice that I had made. Instead of word by word or mile by mile, I’d chosen child by child, friend by friend, prayer by prayer.

I wanted to choose my writing and my running (I probably didn’t actually want to choose folding laundry, let’s be honest), but often this month I’ve had to choose what mattered more. I hope that soon I will again have more regular days with energy and time to set aside for the work that I love, but until then, if I have to choose:

I want to choose wrapping my arm around my crying child, praying for the grieving friend, texting words that bring encouragement and laughter, sitting beside my daughters as they do hard work (instead of berating them as I zip past them so that I can fit in the next thing), listening to my husband when it’s only Wednesday on an already long week, sitting in quiet with my Bible in prayer.

Yes, I still hear the berating accusations that ring in my head, calling me failure, lazy, inadequate. Instead, I want to say to myself: soul by soul, Marian. Child by child. Love by love.

Soul by soul. And that includes my own soul. Soul by soul. The miles and the words and laundry will wait. Soul by soul.