By the Time We Notice

Room One

There are moments in our lives that don't seem particularly important while we're living them.

In fact, they often look exactly like every other Tuesday.

No dramatic music. No life-changing announcement. No feeling that we should stop and pay attention because this is the moment we'll still be thinking about twenty years from now.

Then, somehow, enough time passes.

One morning you're making coffee, driving to the grocery store, or listening to a familiar song, and a memory appears so unexpectedly that you almost stop what you're doing. It isn't the biggest moment of your life that comes back to you. It's something wonderfully ordinary and, for reasons you can't quite explain, you suddenly understand it in a way you never could have when it was happening.

The older I get, the more those moments seem to find me. They arrive without an invitation, quietly asking me to look at my own life with older eyes. Not to remember it differently, but to understand it differently. A conversation I thought I'd forgotten suddenly carries a lesson I wasn't ready to hear at the time. An ordinary afternoon quietly reveals itself to have been anything but ordinary. A passing comment, a familiar room, or a shared laugh returns years later wearing an entirely different meaning. I've started to wonder if some of the most important moments in our lives aren't the ones that announce themselves. Maybe they're the ones we only recognize by the time we notice.

When I was growing up, there was a rhythm to our evenings that I never questioned. Dinner would end, the dishes would eventually be washed, and somehow my parents would find themselves sitting at the kitchen table talking. Sometimes they were discussing their day. Sometimes they were figuring out how to solve a problem. Other times they were simply telling stories that wandered from one subject to another the way good conversations often do.

I always assumed I wasn't part of those conversations. I was usually somewhere nearby, reading a book, watching television, working on homework, or wandering through the house the way kids do when they have no particular place they need to be. If you had asked me then what I was paying attention to, I probably would have pointed to whatever happened to be in front of me. Looking back now, I don't think that was true at all.

I was listening, just not in the obvious way children listen when adults are trying to teach them something. There were no formal lessons taking place around that kitchen table. My parents weren't trying to explain life or deliver carefully prepared advice. They were simply living it, one conversation at a time. They talked about work, about family, about neighbors, about things that seemed important and things that probably weren't. Every now and then my mom would tell another story about a time she had been paid less than a man doing the same job or overlooked for an opportunity she had clearly earned. She never shared those stories to make us angry. She shared them because she wanted my sister and me to understand the world as it was while believing just as strongly that it could become something better.

Years passed, as they always do. School became college. College became work. Life gradually filled itself with rehearsals, students, deadlines, friendships, and all the wonderfully ordinary routines that make up adulthood. Those evenings around the kitchen table quietly slipped into the background of memory. I didn't forget them. I simply stopped thinking about them, the way we all do with the countless ordinary moments that seem complete simply because they're over.

Room Two

The first time it happened, I don't think I recognized it.

A student walked into the studio carrying far more than a saxophone case. Before we played a single note, we spent a few minutes talking about something that had happened at school that week. By the time we finally opened the lesson book, the conversation had quietly become just as important as anything we were about to play. It felt completely natural, so natural, in fact, that I never stopped to ask myself why.

Over the years, those conversations became part of the rhythm of the studio. Every afternoon began with the sound of voices in the hallway, a knock on the door, an instrument case carefully placed on the floor, and a few minutes spent catching up before the music began. Sometimes students wanted to celebrate something wonderful that had happened. Sometimes they needed to laugh about a mistake that seemed much funnier a week later than it had in the moment. Sometimes they simply needed someone to listen before they were ready to play. Looking back now, I think those first few minutes were teaching me every bit as much as the rest of the lesson.

For a long time, I believed being a good teacher meant having the right answers. Somewhere along the way, my students convinced me that good teaching often begins with asking the right questions instead. They taught me that listening is rarely passive. It's one of the most generous things we can offer another person because it quietly tells them, "You matter enough for me to stop what I'm doing and pay attention." At the time, I thought I was learning those lessons in my studio.

As I think about those afternoons now, I can't help smiling at the connection I completely missed while I was living it. Those conversations that seemed to appear so naturally in my studio hadn't appeared out of nowhere. I'd been surrounded by conversations like them my entire childhood. My parents had never sat me down to explain how to make room for another person. They had simply done it, night after night around the kitchen table, while I wandered through the house convinced I was paying attention to something else.

Looking back now, I don't think those evenings were preparing me to become a teacher. At least, not in the way I would have understood at the time. They were quietly teaching me how to pay attention to another person. Years later, standing in my own studio, I found myself doing many of the same things I had watched my parents do without ever realizing I was learning from them. I listened before I spoke. I asked another question instead of rushing toward an answer. I made room for someone else's story before turning the page and moving on to the lesson I had planned.

I don't remember which student it was, and in some ways I think that's fitting because this story doesn't belong to one lesson. It belongs to years of them. But I do remember the feeling. The lesson had ended, the instrument was packed away, and after the door closed behind them the room became quiet again. I stood there for a moment, absentmindedly straightening a music stand that didn't really need straightening, and a thought appeared so unexpectedly that I can still remember it all these years later.

I had done exactly what my parents used to do.

Not because they had told me to.

Because they had shown me.

It wasn't a lesson I remembered learning.

It was a lesson I had been living for years before I ever noticed it.

Room Three

It happens to me every once in a while.

I'll be in the middle of a conversation, answering a question or telling a story, and a sentence will come out of my mouth that feels strangely familiar. For just a second, it's almost as though I've borrowed someone else's voice. Then I'll stop, smile to myself, and realize exactly where I've heard it before.

It was my mom. Not because I'm trying to sound like her or because I've memorized anything she ever said. The words simply arrive, carrying years with them, as though they had been waiting patiently for exactly the right moment to remind me that some of the most important parts of ourselves are learned so gradually we never notice them becoming our own.

What's funny is that I don't remember hearing most of those things for the first time. I couldn't tell you what day she said them or what had started the conversation. They were never presented as great pieces of wisdom that I should write down for later. They were simply woven into ordinary life, spoken while dinner was being made, while driving somewhere, or while trying to solve whatever problem happened to be in front of us that day. At the time, they were just conversations. It took decades for me to understand they were also becoming part of my own vocabulary.

The more I thought about it, the more examples began finding me. Sometimes it was a familiar phrase. Sometimes it was the way I encouraged another person after they had been disappointed. Sometimes it was the instinct to make another cup of coffee before sitting down because that's what hospitality had always looked like in the homes I admired. Other times it was a habit I had sworn I'd never pick up, only to catch myself doing it on an ordinary Tuesday without the slightest idea when it had quietly become my own. None of those moments announced themselves. No one ever handed them to me and said, "You'll need this someday." They simply settled into my life so naturally that, by the time I noticed them, they already felt like part of who I had always been.

The older I get, the more I find myself wondering how much of who we are has been assembled this way. How much of my patience came from watching someone else offer it first? How many of the questions I ask today began with hearing someone else ask them years ago? How often have I extended kindness without realizing I was simply passing along something that had once been given to me? We spend so much of our lives trying to become ourselves that we rarely stop to consider how much of who we are has been quietly entrusted to us by other people. They don't usually shape us through grand speeches or unforgettable moments. More often, they shape us through ordinary Tuesdays that never seem important until years later.

A few days from now, I'll probably hear one of those familiar phrases come out of my own mouth again. This time I may not stop to think about where it came from. I'll simply keep talking, smiling at the conversation in front of me, completely unaware that somewhere behind my own voice, another one is still quietly echoing.

Room Four

Ever since I started thinking about all of this, I've caught myself slowing down in small ways.

Not enough that anyone else would notice. Just enough that I do.

I'll find myself lingering in a conversation for another minute instead of looking for a reason to wrap it up. I'll ask one more question before changing the subject. I'll notice the person behind the words a little more than I used to. None of those moments feel particularly significant while they're happening. In fact, most of them are so ordinary that, a week later, I probably couldn't tell you exactly what we talked about.

The conversations around my parents' kitchen table didn't become important because they were extraordinary. They became important because they happened over and over again until they quietly shaped the way I learned to move through the world. I doubt my parents ever imagined that decades later I'd still be thinking about those evenings. They weren't trying to create memories. They were simply living their lives together. They listened to one another. They disagreed sometimes. They laughed often. They made room for each other's stories, and somewhere nearby a little girl was listening.

Lately I've started noticing moments like that everywhere. A cashier who asks someone how their day is going and genuinely waits for the answer. A neighbor who stops to chat instead of waving from across the yard. A friend who asks one more question because they can tell the conversation isn't quite finished yet. Most of those moments will disappear almost as quickly as they arrive. They'll never be photographed. No one will write them down. By next week they'll probably feel like just another ordinary part of life.

Sometimes I catch myself smiling at those little moments now. Not because I think I've witnessed something extraordinary, but because I know better than I used to. I know how easily an ordinary conversation can become something we carry for years without ever realizing it. I know that because it happened to me. It happened while I was wandering through the house as a little girl, convinced I was paying attention to something else. It happened years later in my own life before I ever recognized it for what it was. Those moments didn't ask me to notice them. They simply waited until I had lived long enough to understand what they had quietly been giving me all along.

Tomorrow will probably look a lot like today. I'll make my coffee. I'll answer a few emails. I'll have conversations that seem completely ordinary while they're happening. I'll laugh with my wife about something small. I'll wave to a neighbor. I'll move through another Tuesday that, on the surface, won't look much different from all the Tuesdays that came before it.

The only difference is that I don't think I'll ever call it "just another Tuesday" again.

I'll keep asking one more question.

I'll keep listening a little longer.

Then I'll go on with the rest of my day.

Remember…

✨Be Kind. Do More Good. We Got This.

💫Until next time, lovelies, keep jibber jabbering about the stories and things that move you.