I’m driving my cute little bug to school on a beautiful spring morning and the only thought in my head is “in 12 hours this will be over.  I can do anything for 12 hours.”  I was thinking about the craziness of the day ahead, knowing there would be equipment to move, little issues to take care of, changes in class structure since my room is the stage and dealing with 75 really excited 3rd graders.

Yes, I know this isn’t rocket science and that I’m very fortunate not to have something really serious to stress out about.  It’s not really stress even, it’s just knowing how tired I’m going to be when this is all over.  I woke up thinking of things I needed to fix today and had a list going when I got to school.  Rehearsal this morning went really well and we were able to fix all of those little things in plenty of time.  Then, this afternoon, the unthinkable happened.  They had a great dress rehearsal in front of the school.  I knew then that something would happen tonight because, as the superstition goes, good rehearsal, bad performance.  And while it wasn’t a crash and burn by any means, things happened tonight that had not happened before.  It’s a good thing kids are cute!

But today did get me thinking.  I was literally counting the hours.  How many times do we do that?  Counting the hours until a big event, or for something to be over.  Counting the days, the weeks, the months, the years.  And then we sit back and realize we’ve used up another 12 hours of our lives and wonder if it was really what we wanted to do or was it just surviving the usual?  Were we paying so much attention to the big event that we forgot to pay attention to the little things that happened during those 12 hours?  Was the big event everything we hoped it would be after all that expectation?  What else could you have been doing that you really wanted to do instead of watching the clock?

I remember way back to my second year of teaching at a little parochial school and I had decided to do this little vaudeville style Christmas show.  We worked and worked on that thing, SO many props, on a little stage, trying to make enough room for the kids to move around on it.  I was so stressed.  And then came the evening of the show and at the end we sang “The Christmas Song” in a beautiful little tableau.  As it finished, the crowd of appreciative parents applauded loudly and I’ll never forget the look on my kids faces.  It took everything I had not to break down in tears, looking at the pride and wonderment on their faces.  And for awhile, every concert and program was like that.  And now, I count the hours.

Maybe it’s because I’ve done so many.  Maybe I’ve created a formula that works pretty well and I need to try something new.  Maybe it’s unrealistic to feel the same things I felt 25 years ago. Regardless, it became just another thing to mark off of the list of events for this year.  It made me wonder how many of us list makers just keep marking things off until there are no more lists to make.

My husband is not a list maker.  Oh sure, he puts things in his calendar, but he doesn’t write things down and mark it off like it’s just one more thing to do.  But then, he loves what he does.  Oh, not every single thing, but working with his bands and those students is what gets him up in the morning.  What would this world be like if everyone just stopped doing the things they tolerated, the things they made lists for and did whatever it was they were passionate about?  What a wonderful place this would be, full of happy people, doing what they loved to do.

And then I think about my kids.  The little girl who just sat on the floor when it was over this afternoon and cried because it was so wonderful.  The kids who didn’t think they could do it and they did.  The shy kids who only had that one line but they did it at the right time and they did it well.  The girl who filled in on a little solo at the last minute for someone who couldn’t make it.  The smiles, the squeals, the laughter, the excitement.  My job was to help them feel those things, to create an event that they might remember for years to come.  Something that is so routine to me but not to them.  And each year, I get to do it again for a new group of kids, maybe sparking the same passion I had for music when I was younger.

So here I sit, two hours after the event has ended and I’m tired.  However,  I have one more event next week and the opportunity to give kids another exciting life experience, and perhaps get them to feel a real passion for music.  And I’ll probably wake up that morning thinking “12 more hours.  I can do this”.