In Favor of Being the Age That We Are

A micro-memoir, plus a collection of delights for July

Jul 31, 2023

I was always told, growing up, that I began learning how to play the piano at age three.

When my oldest daughter turned three, I wondered how on earth that could possibly be true. I watched her small frame toddling around the house, and thought, “Did I really begin to play this instrument when I could hardly reach the keys from the bench? When I was barely potty trained and still taking naps? When I was just beginning to learn my letters? Wait, WHAT?!”

Whether or not this was an exaggeration or a memory skewed in the shuffle of years gone by, for better or for worse, it proves a point: I was an annoyingly precocious kid with big first-born-daughter energy.

Me, age 3, circa 1997. Can we have a moment of silence for the hot pink 90’s sweatsuit and Bobbles? Bless. It.

There was the summer I asked my mom to give me long-division math problems to solve on the drives up to my grandparents’ cabin…just for fun. There was the time I spent an entire weekend making spreadsheets to see how much it would cost to own a cat for the entirety of its life…just for fun. Then there was the time I typed so many pages of notes for a one credit college phy-ed class (just for fun), I was unable to submit the assignment due to the file’s enormous size.1

(Why am I like this?!)

What I am saying is that I’ve never been very good at letting go and having actual fun. What I am saying is that I have always been very good at taking myself seriously, at treating every part of my life like an Olympic sport, at going big or going home.

Piano was always my thing. I talk about playing the piano in the same way my husband talks about his glory days pitching on the baseball field—stars in our eyes and memories a bit rose-tinted around the edges.

My mom was my first piano teacher and, to be honest, having the patience to teach a preschool-age child the basics of piano is pretty much as close to sainthood as you can get. After my mom had run out of patience or time (or the will to live), she enrolled me in lessons from a local piano teacher who instilled a sense of excellence.2

In high school, I took lessons from Dr. Kemper, who expanded my limited repertoire with Ravel, Bartók, and Rachmaninoff. Kemper equally intimidated me and inspired me, while managing to solidify my theory that all pianists own an outrageous number of cats.

If I look like I’m about to throw up in two out of three of these photos, it’s because I am.

Tyler (in the center picture) and I performed in duets and quartets together for probably close to ten years. We played this concerto written for two pianos and four hands, and it was the best thing any of us have ever played or ever will play.

I don’t regret any of my years playing piano, or any of the hours I spent practicing and performing. Those were some of the best moments of my childhood, and I look back on them with fondness. I still get teary-eyed whenever I hear Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. But I do wish I could go back in time and tell the child in the above pictures this:

Excellence is good, but so is rest. It is possible to be seen and loved without exception, to let go and play, to feel freedom to be the age that you are. You do not need to be a prodigy or a precocious mini-adult. You need to be a kid.

In twelve years of public education, I had many phenomenal teachers, but there were only a handful who went tremendously out of their way to see their students for who they really were. My eleventh grade English teacher, Mr. Brown, was one of them. I felt more at home in his classroom than I did most other places, and I will always, always be indebted to him for making his classroom a kind of sanctuary for me and many of my peers.3

Mr. Brown did not consider achievement or excellence a top priority for his students.4 He wanted us to love good stories, sure, but he wanted us to feel seen and known more than anything else. To me, this felt like coming up for air after being underwater for far too long. Many, many days before the homeroom bell, his daughter Libby and I would hang out in his classroom and talk. Usually, Mr. Brown would be getting ready for his classes, but sometimes he would be sitting on a stool, strumming his guitar and singing.5

The funny thing about Mr. Brown is that he had watched me grow up. His daughter Libby and I had been good friends since first grade, and their house was five minutes away from mine. Libby and I had identical sparkly stuffed bears which we played with under her stairs. I stayed at their house for countless sleepovers and movie nights. Libby and I sang Switchfoot songs6 in her bedroom and gathered around her dining room table for fondue or post-sleepover pancakes.

Needless to say, when I came into Mr. Brown’s classroom collapsing into myself under the weight of all the pressure, feeling as though I were only as good as my latest accomplishment, finally identifying the hard peach pit in my core as loneliness, he already knew.

At the end of that year—irony of ironies—he awarded me some sort of academic award. The day of the ceremony in the high school cafeteria, he stood at the podium and said so many kind words, most of which I do not remember. But I do remember him mentioning a line from Mary Poppins, something about being practically perfect in every way.

As much as those words may have sounded to others as though they were in reference to some outward performance, I knew as I walked up to the podium and accepted the certificate, he did not mean perfect at academics. He did not mean perfect at music. He did not mean perfect at behaving like an adult. He did not even mean perfect.

What he meant was this: You are seen and loved, just as you are.

I had a dozen piano competition trophies and ribbons crowding my bedroom bookshelf, a stack of academic certificates an inch thick in the back of some desk drawer, but that award from Mr. Brown meant more than all of them, combined.

When my oldest daughter turned three, it seemed as though some unopened box of Everybody’s Expectations got pried wide open, and the questions started pouring in.

Are you sending her to preschool?

What sports are you signing her up for?

Have you started swimming lessons yet?

Are you going to enroll her in piano lessons?

Listen, I love plans. I love plans so much that I plan out my planning and get stuck in some kind of planning-inception-scenario. But I’m trying not to have as many plans, these days—especially for my children. In fact, I’m trying to stick to just one and here it is: to make our home a safe place for our children to be exactly the age that they are, to invite my children to be children, and to make space for them to just be.

There is a parenting narrative and it goes something like this: Do all that you can, whenever you can, however you can, to ensure you raise the best, most accomplished human beings you can.7

That is a tired, old story with holes in the knees.

I’d rather be more like Mr. Brown. I’d rather ask my children how they’re doing on the inside, say no to the things that are not as important, break out the coloring pages and the crayons on the tough days, turn the music up, sing our hearts out. I’d rather make my home a kind of sanctuary. I’d rather give them permission to be the age that they are.

And that child part of myself that grew up believing precocious achievement was the only way to be seen and loved? I think I’m finally learning to give her permission, too.

life with littles

A snapshot of what the girls and I are doing together in our day-to-day:

We took our girls to South Dakota this month on a little road trip and it was exactly what you would expect a road trip with a 4-year-old and 2-year-old to be: rich in chaos, exhaustion, and fun family memories.

(As I type this, we are gearing up for one more 5 hour road trip this summer, followed by potty training the toddler and preparing homeschool kindergarten curriculum and celebrating my oldest’s fifth birthday and going to the MN State Fair. MAY THE LORD SUSTAIN US, AMEN).

Some highlights from our SD trip:

Badlands, Jewel Cave, hours at the pool, Sylvan Lake, petting zoos, waterslides, Wildlife Loop @ Custer, Mount Rushmore, and lots of hiking.

beautiful words

In no particular order, here are some words I read this month that resonated with me:

-David Gate’s poem, “You Got This” wrecked me in the best way. On an especially difficult day, this was the reminder I needed.

-Callie Feyen’s piece, “Finding Child’s Pose” was incredibly moving and laugh out loud hilarious. To have both in one essay takes some serious skills. This is one of my favorite essays I’ve read in quite a while.

-Molly Flinkman’s piece “MASH: Your Future Life Awaits” was a masterclass in being creative with form. She weaves past and present in such a whimsical, wise way. Also, I had totally forgotten about playing MASH with my friends until I read this!

books / podcasts / shows

A list of things playing in my ears, sitting on my nightstand, or streaming on my tv:

-When I say this episode of “If Books Could Kill” on Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages made me cringe and laugh out loud multiple times while walking the neighborhood, I REALLY MEAN IT. Michael Hobbes is always such a hoot, and while I would say this is not the most *edifying* listen, it’s pretty dang great IMO.

-Ummm can we talk about The Bear for a second?! This TV show on Hulu is about a chef who steps down from his position at the top of the culinary world to take over for his brother’s (dying/grungy/mediocre) sandwich shop. Joe and I absolutely devoured this show (as Stanley Tucci would say, “pun intended and achieved”). While it’s not a *relaxing* show, per se, it’s a really well-done story about the restaurant biz, family dynamics, trauma, reconciliation, addiction, love, and leadership.

-I finally finished Beth Moore’s memoir, All My Knotted Up Life. I took my time with this one, and it really blew me out of the water. Moore’s writing surprised me with her attention to detail, not to mention her strong voice and witty sense of humor. I appreciated her vulnerability in this book and her ability to hold onto her faith while simultaneously leaving the SBC. Beth Moore is gutsy (and hilarious).

-Stanley Tucci’s food memoir, Taste, was such a fantastic summer read. Through so many hilarious and heartwarming anecdotes, he weaves a story about what food is really about. If this book doesn’t make you immediately want to go purchase fresh tomatoes and quality pasta and try out one of his family’s recipes, I don’t know what to tell you.

feeding the fam

Here’s a rundown of some of the family favorites that showed up on our table this month:

-As promised, here is the recipe for Summer Chicken Salad with Hot Bacon Dressing from Half-Baked Harvest. (Bacon in the dressing?! Sign me up). I truly have never had such a delicious summer salad.

-These Baked BBQ Chicken Thighs from The Modern Proper are so good and not that difficult for a quick summer dinner. We whipped up a batch of these sweet potato fries to go with them, and they were *chef’s kiss*.

-One more fast, I-don’t-want-to-cook-dinner dinner: Poached eggs on avocado toast (bonus points if you have Trader Joes’ Everything But the Bagel Seasoning for the top)! We’ve been doing this on soccer nights and it really hits the spot.

the little things

A list of some little things I’ve been loving:

-My oldest daughter’s friend has these goggles and we desperately needed a new pair that wouldn’t become brittle in the chlorine and get snagged in her hair. I’m here to say, we caved and bought these and they are sooo much better than her old ones!

-Behold, the holy grail of mascaras. I’ve been using it for months now and I love it (when I wear makeup which is pretty much….3-4x a month, tops).

-I hopped on the reusable-water-balloon train and I am never looking back.

-We’ve started doing a lot of biking as a family, and let’s just say I now understand why there’s a whole separate kind of shorts called “bike shorts”. I finally invested in these and now I feel really cool when I go biking.

words I’ve written

Here are some of my own words put to paper this month:

-Issue 5 of Part-Time Poets comes out tomorrow! You can read Issue 4 here.

-ICYMI: Coffee and Crumbs’ Summer Collection is here, featuring so many gorgeous long-form essays, poems, and photo essays! This one is my whole heart on paper.

-I’m taking a break from publishing my monthly poetry collections here on Substack. I’m craving more time to dig deeper into my poems and workshop them a bit more, and perhaps even submit some to journals! In the meantime, you can find any new poems I’m not submitting on Instagram. I’ll link them in my following newsletters, also.

-No newsletter next month—I’m taking some time to rest and recharge (and potty train my toddler) this August. See y’all in September!

Thanks for reading, friends. Here’s to giving ourselves permission to play, to rest, to have fun, and to be the age that we are as we head into August.

If you are also the eldest daughter and/or an Enneagram One and/or just generally a recovering perfectionist/over-achiever…will you share with me one thing you want to do in August to be more childlike?

I’ll go first: water balloon fights in the backyard with my kids!

Krista