Sometimes We Just Need to Relax

Oct 23, 2014 by Jeanette Hanscome

This is one of my favorite recent pictures of Nathan. I took it on a day when he was struggling to get into the part of his practice time that involved getting out his music.

“Just relax and enjoy it,” I finally told him.

When I saw him lying on his back without any sheet music in sight, my first thought was, I should at least insist that he sit up properly. But I stopped myself from running for his music stand and Jazz Band binder.

Don’t ruin the moment; he sounds great! He is having fun, and isn’t that what music is for? Obviously he can’t practice like this every day, but why not every once in a while?

Instead of relying on the notes, he played what he had memorized, which was quite a bit. He improvised, played favorite sections over and over again, and showed off how long he could hold a single note.

Mom and I praised him, I joked about him practicing to be a street musician in San Francisco and snapped pictures, and Dad compared him to Chris Bottie. Nathan went over his practice time without giving it a second thought and gave me the go-head to e-mail the above pictures to his band teacher. She loved it, pointing out that his kicked back position was a “jazzer thing.”

My son is doing a jazzer thing!

Whenever I look at this picture, I remember the day that I realized that Nathan has it in him to be a really good jazz trumpeter. Suddenly I stopped wishing that he’d chosen saxophone or clarinet or gotten more serious about the guitar and drums. Trumpet totally matched his personality. And who knows; he just might pick up the guitar and/or drums again later.

What a wonderful teaching moment on what can happen when we stop taking life so seriously. Sometimes we just need to let our kids (or ourselves, or our friends) relax. Our talents require practice, but what good are they if we can’t include time to just enjoy them? This is often when we discover how far we’ve come, and what we might be capable of.

How long has it been since you took time to relax and enjoy what you’re doing? How easy is it for you to allow others this luxury? What good things happen when you do?