Letter to my children: On Practice

Dearest Beloveds,

Some of these letters are snapshots of your life and some of them are Momma pontifications. Today is a pontification I have been meaning to address for a bunch of while whiles.

Bean, I understand the reason you push back against writing. Dragon, I understand why you push back against piano. As I have told both of you, at your age I felt the same way. It was difficult because I wasn’t good at it. The only way it gets better is to put the time in every day. One day you will look up and you will be able to write easily and know where the notes are. This is why it is important to practice - which brings me to my time to pontificate.

I have two shining memories of realizing the value of practice. The first was in 9th grade when it suddenly occurred to me how much easier it was to do well on my math tests if I did the math homework. I remember the moment it happened. I walked out of the classroom, test clasped in my hand, noticed the mark, and stopped dead still in the hallway.

Oh my gosh, I didn’t study for this one at all and I did so well. Wait, does that mean the homework was really me studying? Wait, why do we do homework? The test was just like the homework! How can I have not noticed this before?

Again in college. the sun was glinting on the Redwood Creek (that led to the beautiful San Francisco Bay). We were in an 8 (rowing terminology - I hope one day you can understand this without translation). I was at 6 and we were moving through by pairs to work on our strength. I don’t know if the coach said something or if it was a realization from the wind but I had a total epiphany. Namely, if I wanted to go faster in a race I needed to pull the hardest I could each time we practiced. The race was not the time to pull till I passed out. I needed to pull hard all of the time in order to improve. The race was not really the point. The point was the practice effort, just as the point of the math test was the daily homework effort.

I thought practice meant something where you put in a half-assed effort, barely, and then crammed for the big event/test/competition/performance. That is not it at all. For me, practice is putting your all in every day so the big event is a breeze in comparison to the effort you have put in before. The excitement and nervousness associated with testing, performing, competing is enough of a rush without the dread of knowing you didn’t do the work to prepare properly.

Additionally, I have realized not being fully present to the practicing (at whatever level you are doing, and my goodness am I slower on the erg than I was in college) is in some ways a form of disrespect. It is disrespectful to myself and to the moment. As such, it is disrespectful to life.

Perhaps you can live a rich life without having these in your bones as truth. But, for your Momma, the idea that every moment is the final performance, is the race, is the test, is the now to savor, is the moment to push myself - I have found incredibly helpful and very powerful.

As we have spoken of before, tomorrow never comes, we just have now and now and now. And now.

I love you both now and now and now.