Pearls Before Breakfast

My sister-in-law Leslie found this mind-blowing (and Pulitzer Prize winning) Washington Post link and sent it to Jay yesterday. Jay is right in pointing out that the results might have been somewhat different if Joshua Bell had played during the afternoon rush instead of the morning. But, I bet they wouldn't have been dramatically different, being that most of us are always rushing off to somewhere for "something important" and losing the serendipitous moments that might have profoundly affected us, if we had bothered to notice.

Here's the deal in a nutshell if you don't want to read the article (although I highly recommend taking 10 minutes and giving it a look - and the video, too). One of the world's most remarkable and well-known violinists agreed to bring his Stradivarius and play incognito at a busy Washington, D.C. metro stop during morning rush hour basically to see how (if) people would respond. With rare exceptions, commuters rushed by without even taking notice. In short, we do not live in the moment. We do not stop and smell the roses. We have lost our sense of wonder...

But, being the mother of two children who still have that sense of wonder intact, one part of the article really "struck a chord" with me. Perhaps it's because it really does get to the core of how I try so hard to raise my kids, and because it makes me wonder (and hope), given the same set of circumstances as the moms in the metro that morning, what I would have done:

After "Chaconne," it is Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria," which surprised some music critics when it debuted in 1825: Schubert seldom showed religious feeling in his compositions, yet "Ave Maria" is a breathtaking work of adoration of the Virgin Mary. What was with the sudden piety? Schubert dryly answered: "I think this is due to the fact that I never forced devotion in myself and never compose hymns or prayers of that kind unless it overcomes me unawares; but then it is usually the right and true devotion." This musical prayer became among the most familiar and enduring religious pieces in history.

A couple of minutes into it, something revealing happens. A woman and her preschooler emerge from the escalator. The woman is walking briskly and, therefore, so is the child. She's got his hand.

"I had a time crunch," recalls Sheron Parker, an IT director for a federal agency. "I had an 8:30 training class, and first I had to rush Evvie off to his teacher, then rush back to work, then to the training facility in the basement."

Evvie is her son, Evan. Evan is 3.

You can see Evan clearly on the video. He's the cute black kid in the parka who keeps twisting around to look at Joshua Bell, as he is being propelled toward the door.

"There was a musician," Parker says, "and my son was intrigued. He wanted to pull over and listen, but I was rushed for time."

So Parker does what she has to do. She deftly moves her body between Evan's and Bell's, cutting off her son's line of sight. As they exit the arcade, Evan can still be seen craning to look. When Parker is told what she walked out on, she laughs.

"Evan is very smart!"

The poet Billy Collins once laughingly observed that all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry, because the lub-dub of the mother's heart is in iambic meter. Then, Collins said, life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music, too. (More about Billy Collins' Poetry 180 for kids.)

There was no ethnic or demographic pattern to distinguish the people who stayed to watch Bell, or the ones who gave money, from that vast majority who hurried on past, unheeding. Whites, blacks and Asians, young and old, men and women, were represented in all three groups. But the behavior of one demographic remained absolutely consistent. Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch. And every single time, a parent scooted the kid away.

I don't always know what the hell I'm doing as a mom, and I get frustrated alot when someone thinks it's "princess dance" time when I say it's dinner time or when I think it's time to go to the store and someone thinks it's time to dig up rocks in the driveway... Sometimes I don't want to respond when that same someone calls out, "Mama, come see what I found!" I get angry when paint splatters end up on new clothes and when fingernails get caked with dirt. But, I hope that for as often and as long as I can, I stop with them to look at flowers, listen to street musicians and pay $1 for balloon hats at the farmer's market. (Don't worry, I'm not about to break into "I Hope You Dance...")

Another great book on the same sort of topic: A Sense of Wonder by Rachel Carson.