The Last Student Driver

16-year-old Quinn has her driver's permit and has been going out for regular practice in anticipation of her first outing with an official driving instructor. She's our youngest, and our last one to learn how to drive.

Our oldest still doesn't have a license yet. She got dinged on her test for not turning to look behind her at one point, so she needs to take the test again this summer. Our middle daughter has a license, and I must say it is handy to have another driver in the house. All three kids are good drivers. They don't take risks, they're careful, they work hard to follow all the rules, and even though they lack experience they are doing well so far.

But teaching the kids to drive...  Nothing quite prepared me for how it would feel to be in a car with one of my kids behind the wheel.

Which is funny, because I remember distinctly as a teenager feeling I would do a much better job with teaching my own kids one day than my parents were doing with me. I was insulted by how often my mom tapped the phantom brake on the passenger side of the car when I was doing my driving practice. My parents' nervousness felt like an undeserved lack of confidence. Surely I would be more relaxed when it came time for me to teach my children to drive.

I was so wrong. I am a jumble of nerves when I'm not in control of the car. In fact, I've noticed that there are times if I pay too much attention to how my husband is operating the car it makes me nervous, even though he's an excellent driver and there is nothing to worry about. There's just something disconcerting about paying close enough attention that you feel the slight differences in reaction time and judgement as the car is moving. When I'm in the car instructing the kids, I have to pay attention to every choice and action, and they're invariably a little different from what I would do, and my anxiety level rises.

I've spent a lot of time with each of my kids in the parking lot of the Chuck E Cheese's near our house. We've been around and around that lot, using the turn signals, stopping at signs, parking in empty spaces. That's all fine. When they move out onto the actual streets, that's when Ian takes over.

My husband is a really patient and calm driving instructor. He taught my sister-in-law from India how to drive by taking her on long boring roads here in Wisconsin so she could get the hang of everything without the distractions of the streets in New York City. He's good about finding routes for the kids so they can practice all right turns one day, easy left turns the next. If he's nervous at all, he doesn't show it. (Of course, he's lived in a war zone twice, so the bar is different for him.)

The best bit of advice I think I've given my kids as drivers is to be predictable. When I drove with Aden and Mona to New York a couple of years ago, Mona did a lot of the driving in both Indiana and Pennsylvania. She started off a little erratic, and I understood her confusion about what to do with people merging onto the freeway near her. I explained that in most cases, it made sense to remember that it was the job of the people merging to adjust to her, not the other way around. If she suddenly slowed down to adjust to them, it disrupted the flow and made things potentially more dangerous. She got the hang of that philosophy in Indiana, which was good, because by the time we hit the winding mountain roads covered with trucks in Pennsylvania, there were some precarious driving moments that she handled very well. My anxiety level was through the roof, but I was still proud of her.

Other advice I've given them: Start any kind of turns early when traveling at high speeds so they will actually happen at the right time. Use the "two second rule" to keep a safe distance behind the car ahead of you. And something my Uncle Joe told me when he went out driving with me on my permit once was to kind of center your view of the steering wheel down the middle of the road or lane to position the car correctly in that space.

It's strange adjusting to how some driving techniques have changed since I first learned. For instance, keeping your hands at "ten and two" is no longer considered safe because if the air bag were to deploy it would break your arms. Now kids are taught to keep their hands low, more like "eight and four" which I remember being strictly forbidden when I was in driver's ed. I was a bit alarmed when I realized Mona had been taught it was okay to leave one foot on the brake and the other on the accelerator. I made her learn how to use a single foot for both pedals instead, because riding the brake is bad, and even just lightly tapping it can cause the brake lights to turn on which could cause confusion.

Thinking back on my own days of learning to drive with my parents, two moments stand out.

The first is the time I was backing out of our driveway and hit a tree. That sounds dramatic (which is how my mortified self thought of it in the moment), but I really only tapped the tree. The house where I grew up has a shared driveway, and requires some tricky maneuvering. I slowly backed up, not really by using the accelerator but more by letting go of the brake, and bumped our enormous green 1972 Monte Carlo (we used to refer to it as "the limo" it was so long) into the oak next to the house. My dad and I both got out to inspect the tree and found a small fresh gouge mark in it. I felt horrible until my dad pointed out an identical (less fresh) gouge mark a few inches over and said, "I did the same thing last week."

The second is the time we took a trip out East and I ended up for some reason driving us on the New York Throughway. When you first learn to drive, you are hyper aware of all the rules and speed limits, and all of those things went out the window on the New York Throughway. The average speed people were doing was about 95mph. (Not hyperbole.) My mom was in the front seat with me telling me to slow down, since the speed limit was only 55. My dad (who was from New York) was in the back seat with my brothers telling me to speed up. That was... nerve wracking.

So far, aside from Mona navigating the PA roads better than I expected, the only memorable driving moment with my kids was when we sent Mona up alone to retrieve her sister from UW Stout, four hours away. There was a crazy bit of texting between Aden and her father about a storm system up there. Aden was worried and kept saying, "It looks bad" and her dad kept checking the radar maps and saying, "It should be fine." Then Aden said there were tornado warnings and they were all in the basement of the dorm. And finally Mona, having arrived, piped up to say, "You all worry too much. I'm here, let me in, I need to use the bathroom,"

Anyway, so far Quinn is doing well with driving. And I'm sure one day I'll be able to relax a bit with one of my kids behind the wheel. It's just disconcerting when in my mind it's so easy for any of them to be babies again to me, or age seven, or twelve. How did they all get so grown up? It all went so fast.

This is why I needed a baby-sized dog. And I don't have to worry about her ever wanting the keys to the car.

Loss

I recently lost everything that was on my laptop.

I know I should have backed things up properly. I know about the Cloud. I even bought an external drive for storage this summer when I upgraded my machine, but I just never found the time to use it. I don't have a good excuse, but that's not really relevant right now. A small object fell on my keyboard in exactly the wrong way, which required replacing what was inside my computer. My last laptop was already wiped of all information. More than 20 years of notes and writing and projects and memories are gone. It's a lot to get my head around.

I would have guessed I'd be more physically upset about it. I'm sad, but I haven't cried. I'm also not letting myself think about it too much for fear of being overwhelmed. I'll have moments in the middle of the night where I'll remember some random item (like a recording of my brother's laugh that I used to click on when I need cheering up, notes on various instruments I built, bookmarks to sites I'll never find again...) and I feel that loss.

But loss is a strange thing. There are many types of it. And our predictions of what it will be like don't always match the reality when it happens.

The death of my grandparents, the death of my dad... Those are obvious forms of loss that I still feel every day. Not with the kind of crippling intensity that I did when those losses were fresh, but they are still hard. That shouldn't surprise anyone.

There are other losses, though, where my reactions do surprise me. The other day one of my daughters asked about a situation that caused a schism in my extended family about twenty years ago. As I was describing it, I began choking up. There are people whom I loved dearly that I always expected to be a part of my children's lives who chose not to be, and for reasons I still don't quite understand. People cut me and my family off, and that loss still hurts, even though I try regularly to let it go.

Sometimes I mourn a bit the losses I see unfolding in front of me that won't really be felt until later. The kids still living at home with us are teenagers, which means they are absorbed in their own private issues, and don't feel any pressing need to spend time with their parents. I'm acutely aware of how the number of days where they live with us are dwindling. They don't realize this time is special, because for them it's all they know. But every evening that goes by where they don't want to talk, or every concert I perform that they don't attend, I wonder if they will regret not being present for when I'm no longer around. But that's true for all of us all the time. If anything terrible happens to anyone in this house tomorrow, I'll wonder why I spent time writing this post tonight rather than be with them. That vague anticipatory sense of loss is something I wish I could dismiss, but I don't know how.

I often think about a friend of mine who while on a trip far from home found out from her parents that their house had burned down. Everything she had with her in the car was now everything she had period. The concept took my breath away when she told me. My mind went to childhood mementos like my stuffed toy dog Tippy, and fun things from my friends, and photos, and my favorite books and records, and my instruments. But she said it wasn't that bad. There was freedom in being released from objects.

Losing everything on my laptop was like a virtual house fire. A lot is gone that I wish I still had, but there is an unexpected sense of relief about some of it.

I tend to cling to a lot of things, both on my computer and in real life, primarily because I don't like losing memories. Small reminders keep things in my mind in a way that keeps them alive. It can look like hoarding, since I still have physical files of notes on my former students' lessons, and research I did in college, and articles from my dad, etc. etc. etc. I feel like as long as things don't pile up to the point where our lives are in danger, it's okay.

On my laptop, I liked the fact that memory hoarding was so compact, and all of it at my fingertips. I should have protected it better.

But I've also thought about so-called "death cleaning," and how people will have to deal with all of my stuff one day. I've seen how hard it's been on my husband this past year dealing with his mother's house and all of her belongings. It's got me asking who am I keeping things for? I don't want my kids burdened with old Christmas cards and notes I passed in seventh grade and a pile of Solo/Ensemble medals. Very little of it is of interest to anyone but me, and when I'm gone, it will be meaningless. I can picture poor sentimental Aden tortured by the idea of throwing out things I loved simply because I loved them. She doesn't need that guilt. I figure a few years from now when all the kids have moved away, I can start chipping at the contents of the house and worry about it then.

It occurred to me there is a role for "death-cleaning" for the contents of my computer as well. I wrote a lot of stories that I didn't ever intend for others to read, but I liked having them. I don't have to worry about them anymore. Maybe it's good that a whole lot of memories have been cut loose and I'm not responsible for them. There was a lot on my laptop that I won't remember having been there, so that loss is mysterious, but not necessarily painful.

There are projects that I am of mixed mind about. I had this idea about writing a letter to my kids each year on their birthdays, telling them what they were like, sharing stories and thoughts personalized to them. That was hard to keep up with, so although I did print out letters the first few years, I simply had running notes for each of them beyond that, and I always intended to find a quiet weekend at the cottage to buckle down and turn those into more letters. All of those are gone now, and it's kind of okay. That's not looming in the back of my mind as something I need to do anymore. I'll do something simpler one day to replace it. But I don't have to feel guilt that I'm not working on it.

Sort of like when I told the kids certain things got "lost in the move" when we bought the new house. There are opportunities for things to go sometimes. I'm trying to look at the data loss that way where I can.

The hard things are the writing projects I'm still interested in. Luckily my latest two novels I was able to retrieve drafts of from friends and family who were test readers and still had digital copies. I don't have to retype hundreds of thousands of words from printouts, so that's good.

But my sequel to my repair guide is gone. That hurts. Because I don't know if I have the energy to rewrite it.

Rewriting something that's been lost is a particular kind of pain. When I wrote my first novel, Almost There, I was doing it in a program called AppleWorks that was apparently notorious for not saving things. I would actively stop and save my work every few minutes, only to discover later none of the changes took. I remember losing essentially all of Chapter 10, and being dazed and upset by it, only to have to dive back in at some point and try to write it all again. 

There are few things I find more fun than getting into the flow of a first draft. It's enjoyable to simply write, and let the ideas come, and revel in finding the right words.

There are few things worse than trying to recapture that. Writing something again has no flow. It's all second guessing, and feeling sure whatever I wrote the first time was better. I'm positive that the new chapter that replaced the lost one from Almost There is superior to the original. That doesn't mean I don't still believe there were particular phrases and sentences that I would have loved to have kept.

I don't really want to rewrite the repair guide sequel. I liked what I had down. I'm frozen at my keyboard when I try to redo any of it. Maybe that's a project I can let go, then, and not worry about? I haven't decided.

I also had a collection of emails between me and Ian when he was deployed in Iraq that I had hoped to put together as a memoir, primarily for our kids. That's been a project I've felt guilty for not pursuing for many years. Maybe I can let that go? (Since it was essentially "lost in the fire?")

Thankfully I did have my photos backed up on an external drive, because my last computer didn't have enough memory for all of them. I've lost photos between July and New Years, and some of those I can probably copy off of Facebook. I don't have the video clip of me and Quinn meeting our new dog for the first time, but ultimately who cares? I have the dog. (Who is curled up at my side and reminds me to live in the present as much as possible. Domino's a good dog, and good for me.)

Do I wish I hadn't lost everything off my laptop? Of course. But it's also not a bad reminder that nothing lasts. I can't hold onto all of it forever, even if I hadn't lost it. Someone, someday, was going to wipe it all away anyhow.

Maybe this is a good time to look forward and not back.

In the meantime, I'm no longer worried about backing up my computer. There's nothing there! And that's sort of freeing.

Back To Bed

"Back to bed" is a phrase I think evokes the idea of giving up. That things are going so wrong there is no point in going on with the day and simply going back to bed would make more sense so one could reset and start over later. There's been a lot during pandemic days where time and purpose became battered to the point of feeling like we should all just go "back to bed."

But I never hear it that way. For me, there are few pleasures in life greater than getting to go back to bed.

When you think you have to get up, or you need do something very early, but then it turns out there's time to crawl back under the covers and steal a little more sleep before your day must begin. I love that.

I have trouble sleeping many nights, and it's usually not until morning that I find it easier to rest, which never seems fair when I have to get up to keep to some kind of schedule. An alarm going off and interrupting real sleep is an unpleasant way to start the day.

But between my children growing up, and the pandemic shutting everything down, I don't think I've set my alarm for the morning more than a couple of times in the past three years. Quinn doesn't need me before school unless her bus doesn't show. The pool where I swim only recently re-opened, but as long as I'm in it by 9:00 I can make it to work on time after swimming. (That's one of the perks of running your own business: Setting the hours. My parents' art gallery didn't open until 11:00 because they were not early-risers either, so my 10:30 start time almost seems ambitious.)

I am not wired to be up before 8:00. I can do it. I did it for decades while raising children and I kept my alarm set for hours that are always still dark, but it's painful. For me, it physically hurts to wake up too early. During the kids' elementary school years I wanted a snow day as much as they ever did. Because sometimes that meant going back to bed!

Back to bed is the best.

One of the things I really love about our new dog, Domino, is that she also likes to go back to bed. The first week we had her, I was concerned because she needed to get up very early for a walk, and then wanted to play in the living room when we got inside again. I started resigning myself to returning to a phase similar to when my kids were small and I would have to be someone who would get up and stay up, but no. After the dog was settled into her new home, she started sleeping in, and then when given the option after her first walk of crawling back under the covers? She jumps at it. Domino has a lot of energy, and when she's wound up she wants to bounce and prance and play, but almost any time that I can crawl back in bed, she'll happily join me. She burrows deep under the covers and snuggles up. It's perfect.

I admire people who can get up early and accomplish a lot before noon. But nobody ever accuses me of not doing enough things, so I don't lament not being an early bird. I do wish I had more opportunity to go back to bed on an average day, though. It's like an unexpected bonus, a surprise gift, a stolen stretch of dazed calm. It's a welcome time-out in a busy day. I've had a few chances to go back to bed over this winter break, and it's made the vacation that much better.

Looking back on 2022 this New Year's Eve, "back to bed" is a good summary to me. There were parts that were frustrating or disappointing because that's life, but overall? There were more unexpected bonuses and moments of joy than anyone deserves. I got to go to Venice with my mom. I got a new dog that loves me. I got to improve our house with a new deck. I got to spend time with my husband and kids. I got to make music. I got to put instruments I made in the hands of people who were excited to play them. I made new friends. I had time with family at the cottage. I put out an ABC book. My back problem appears to be gone. Stitch Fix finally sent me some decent concert clothes. I feel more calm.

The pandemic damaged my sense of time in that 2020 was a slow blur, 2021 was disjointed, but 2022 unfolded in a way that felt more welcome and familiar. Like going back to bed.

I'm looking forward to 2023. I hope you are, too.

Korinthian Violins A B C

My new book is out! I mostly made it as a cute little gift to have in my shop, but copies are available on Amazon if anyone wants one. (And if you like it, please give it a good review!) It's a tiny paperback for $15.

For anyone who simply wants to see it, here it is! Enjoy. (And I'll type the text in case it isn't readable in the images.)

This book is dedicated to Robyn Sullivan and Carol Kraco. Both spent many years contributing their time and talents to make Korinthian Violins the place it is. They have moved on to new adventures and they are missed. We hope this book reminds them of fun days in the shop they helped run for so long.

Welcome to Korinthian Violins! We are a small violin store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, only a couple of blocks from Lake Michigan. We think our shop is special, and we want to show you the reasons why from A to Z. (And if you are reading this in our store, see how many of these things you can spot in real life!)

A is for Armadillo. This cute little sculpture has been posing in our store practically since we opened in 2008. He was made by Detroit artist Dick Cruger.

B is for Box of Crayons. I liked this broken violin body and found a new way to use it. Sometimes repurposing things makes the world a little more interesting.

C is for Clock. This large music clock on the back wall was the first thing I made for our store. Do you know what all the music symbols on it are? (If not, find a musician to ask!)

D is for Drum. This drum came from West Africa and used to be in my parents' art gallery in Michigan until my dad passed it on to me for my music store.

E is for Escher Lizards. This floor puzzle is based on designs by M. C. Escher. Repeated interlocking patterns like these lizards are called "tessellations."

F is for Fancy Floors. Our building is over 100 years old, and still has the original tiled floors, which I think are beautiful even with the cracks.

G is for Gifts. We have lots of fun gifts, many of which were made by me, or people I know.

H is for Halloween! Korinthian Violins won a neighborhood association award for our Halloween window display in 2020, which included this Cell-O-Lantern.

I is for Intersection. Korinthian Violins is at the intersection of Rusk and Delaware Avenues.

J is for Jar of Tips. Bow tips! Sometimes people put money in the jar, which always makes me laugh since the jar is a joke.

K is for Korinthia! I love having my own violin store! People are often surprised that it's my name on the window.

L is for Lamp. We find lots of things to do with broken instruments. This cello lamp can be found in our teaching studio.

M is for Mold-A-Rama. Our family collects figures from Mold-A-Rama machines around the country. We have our own machine that makes a corythosaurus dinosaur.

N is for Novels. I like to write books! Just because people know you for doing one thing doesn't mean you can't do other things, too.

O is for Open. I like that when the case on our front door is open it means the store is open to visitors.

P is for Peeps Violin. Our family enjoys entering the Peeps art competition at the Racine Art Museum every spring. I have also had on display a Peeps orchestra, and a Peep-A-Rama machine.

Q is in Bow-Quet. We find many ways to recycle things at Korinthian Violins, like these broken bows.

R is for Rubik's Cube. I love having my very own cubes for my collection! We offer free cube solving at Korinthian Violins.

S is for Sparkle Cello. No, it doesn't play, but it's very pretty, especially in the sunlight inside our front window.

T is for Toy Box. Cellos are fragile, and many got broken when our store used to rent them, so we found some of the broken ones new uses, like this one for toys.

U is for Ukulele. I thought it would be fun to play ukulele during slow days, but our store is very busy, so it just keeps me company on my bench.

V is for Viometer. I use this tool to help measure new players to see what size violin they might need.

W is for Walking Sundae. A business in our space once sold walking sundaes and the sign is still on our side window. (That's a treat that looks like a sundae, but is made from less-melty things such as pudding and cake.)

X is for Xylophone. We have a couple of xylophones in our store, but my favorite is this one made from bamboo.

Y is for Yellow Stand. And its friends! We love having colorful stands for sale, and we put them all in rainbow order in the window every June for Pride.

Z is for Zebra. Because Z is always for zebra. Our zebra's name is Buzz, and you can hunt for him in a different spot every time you visit. (Searching for a buzz is very common in violin shops.)

Thank you for spending time with the A B Cs of Korinthian Violins! If you want to know more about our store, please visit us on our website at: korinthianviolins.com. (And much love to my husband, Ian Weisser, for being the other half of Korinthian Violins, and for showing me how to format this book.)

Halloween 2022

There is only one costume to document this year, but it's a doozy. Please take a moment to admire Mona as a Birdhouse:

I miss making costumes. That stopped abruptly in 2020 (along with most things), but now that Halloween events are back, Mona was inspired to make herself something cool this year. After weeks of holing up in her room with lots of cardboard and paint, she emerged in time for Trick-Or-Treat as a Birdhouse, and I am in awe.

As were most people. Mona didn't collect candy, but she did walk around the neighborhood with me and our dog dressed as a pumpkin leading the way. She couldn't see well, but she could hear one person after another say, "Oh, how cute, that dog's a pumpkin, and OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT!!!!" Several people declared the Birdhouse their favorite costume ever.

Here is Domino the pumpkin:

And here are some details from Mona's costume, along with her doing last minute work on it before Trick-Or-Treat. I love the sewing she did on the wing tips. The feet were actually some claw-gloves she found at Target that she modified into shoes.

Our area gets a lot of Trick-Or-Treaters, and there's always one neighbor who goes out in his roller skates and juggles in the street to entertain everyone. We had fun meeting up with people on our block that I feel like we haven't seen in forever.

We then drove over to the violin store, because the street behind it is a spectacular Halloween extravaganza. Many hundreds of people got to admire Mona's costume over there. Apparently in the minute and a half I ducked inside the store to turn on our Cell-O-Lantern in the window, several little princess girls gave Mona a hug.

Bay View really goes all out for Halloween, and after a couple of Covid ruined years everything was up and going again, including the block that does a whole Nightmare Before Christmas decorating event, and the house that raises money for charity that this year chose the movie Beetlejuice for its theme. I don't have many decoration photos, but I will share this inside joke that was my favorite. There is a man in Milwaukee who looks like Wolverine from the X-Men who strides around shirtless (sometimes with a little dog) and he's referred to as the "Milverine." Milverine sightings are always fun. Someone put up a zombie version of the Milverine and it's excellent:

I'll take a moment here to note that this fall was one of the prettiest I can remember. Warm and pleasant, beautiful leaves.

I'm still considering what I want to do with Halloween going forward. I'm pleased Mona still wants to make a costume, but when she moves on to someplace new, all we'll have left is to hand out candy. I have ideas for how to decorate our house that could be exciting, but no real time to do that soon.

But at least this year we got to experience a truly great costume. Mona's amazing.