Moving On

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.”  -Helen Keller

Tonight is my last night in my old, little brick house.  It's the first place I've lived beside my Florida childhood home, Vanderbilt dorm rooms or Spain.  It was my first year more "on my own" than I've been before... I paid bills, cooked my own meals and was schooled in the some less-than-ideal aspects of home rental.

I will not miss my noisy duplex neighbors nor the spiders, silverfish in my bed, birds in the attic and definitely not the mice.  I think I have written 100 songs about those mice, and I'm pretty sure that every chorus goes "I hate that mouse, I'm gonna kill that mouse."  Yes, it is violent -- I apologize for the PG-13 rating, but if you found mouse poop in nearly every kitchen drawer, all over your pantry, under your bed, on your bathroom sink, in the bins that stored your winter coats, belts and headbands... I think you might have negative feelings about the mice as well.

Even though I am glad to be rid of all of our "pets" and paper thin walls, I am feeling a bit nostalgic tonight.  This house has become very familiar over the past 11 months.  I feel like I "know" it.  There have also been great memories made in this house -- Late night chat with my roommates, friend gatherings, surviving my first year of law school by sitting at my desk in front of my huge picture window.  I'm going to miss my roommates as well.  One is moving to New York and the other is moving down the street.  I've lived with these girls for the past 2 years, and it will be weird not to.

I think it's weird that I'm feeling so nostalgic for a place that I've been eagerly desiring to leave far behind me for the past several months.  Now I almost want to hang on to a piece of it.  I get like that though... I confess... I'm a sentimental pack-rat.

Ah well, this will just be another good lesson in letting go and letting God.  New adventure (and beautiful new apartment), here I come!

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the life that is waiting for us."  -Joseph Campbell

I've Heard There Was a Secret Chord

"Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."  -Ludwig van Beethoven

When I was six-years-old, I started piano lessons.  My teacher -- Irena -- trained at the conservatory in Moscow in the Soviet Union and was an incredibly talented pianist.  I was trained not only how to play notes, but how to love and understand music.  I was trained in theory.  I was trained on the classics.  

It came almost naturally.  My wrists were straight, not floppy.  Memorization was easy.  I felt the waves of the music, and I guess it showed.  I won superior ratings at every competition I attended.

When I was ten-years-old, Irena decided to go back to school for her doctorate degree and only planned to retain four (out of her many) students.  I was one she wanted to keep.  She thought I could be a pianist, a great one.

I, however, declined because I knew -- by the grace of God at ten-years-old -- that I was not born to be a classical pianist.  I think after having worked so hard for four years at the piano and having been trained so well, I was a little overwhelmed by the time I was ten.  I quit piano cold and did not touch the beautiful baby grand in my parents' living room for two full years.  I probably didn't even go into the living room.

But one day when I was twelve I decided to sit at the piano.  The music I was learning when I quit two years earlier was sitting at the piano.  I looked at it with my fingers on the keys, and then I had one of the biggest surprises of my life -- I could not read the notes.  I couldn't read music!  From almost as early as I could remember, reading music was a part of daily life.  It was like reading letters.

Over the next years, I re-taught myself how to read music and could pluck out some basic songs.  After my freshman year of college, however, I wanted something more.  Perhaps after spending a year in Music City, U.S.A. I fully realized how silly it had been to cold-turkey-quit the piano when I was ten.  That summer, I was lucky enough -- through a connection from Irena -- to find a University of Miami professor to take me on as a student for the summer.  It was enough to reignite my deeper understand of music and my love for it.

I still don't practice piano as much as I should, but at least I have the tools to play for real again.  My next musical goal?  The guitar.

"The pause is as important as the note."  -Truman Fisher

We Are Family

"There is no cure for laziness but a large family helps."  -Herbert Prochnow

Family.  Mom, dad, brothers, sisters.  And grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.  Friends, those brothers and sisters God gives to us through chance encounters and common experience rather than blood.

Old Christmas picture that I love!  Snuggies galore!

I was lucky to recently spend a week with my family.  And, boy, do I have a great one!  My mom and dad are awesome, loving parents and my brother and sister bring so much joy to me and the world.  All four of my grandparents live within 45 minutes of my house and so do one uncle, one aunt and two cousins.  Thanks to technology, other family members are just a Face Time (Apple's version of Skype) click away.  I love spending time with my family, and I would like to share a little bit about a special celebration we had two weeks ago.  My grandfather (mother's father) turned 90 years old on May 23.  

Poppy W.

My "poppy" amazing.  He's a WWII veteran, he was climbing up on his roof to fix it until he was 80 years old, he still walks on treadmill every day, he used to "paint my face" when I was a little girl, he always jokes that his favorite color is lavender, he is the hands-down best cook in the family (my mom swears that his Polish cooking will be the best in Heaven), he grew up dirt poor in Scranton, PA, he comes from a family of seven children, and he worked his tail off to provide a good home for my grandmother, mother and uncles.  He loves beer, he can be gruff at times (but he still tries to pick out nice purses or other sweet gifts for my grandmother's birthday), he's got a great laugh, and our family says that he, my mother and I are triplets (my mother looks like my grandfather and I look like my mother).

He's also a world-class yodeler, at least in my mind, even though nowadays his vocal chords are a little rougher than usual.  Here's a sample:

I admire my grandfather so much.  He's the only one who could -- and still can -- get away with calling me Katie.  I hope and pray that he sticks around for a good many more years.  I at least would love for him to meet the man I am going to marry, and I hope that I can marry as good of a man as my grandfather has been.

“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained."  -Winston Churchill