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By Rev. Martha Hoverson Saturday, March 24, 2007

It's 3:15 p.m. and this mother hurries home, ready to drive an eager clarinetist to Starbird for a new box of reeds. It sounds like a simple enough errand. After all, we live nearby, and there is parking right in front of the store. But our belated winter leaves snow piled high along the curbs, narrowing already busy Forest Avenue.

I pull cash out of my purse and send him in, saying I will circle the block. I've spent a lot of time circling blocks, dropping off and picking up, waiting patiently or not so. By the time I come around again, 3:30 mothers deliver guitar students and violin students and even ballet dancers next door. I catch a glimpse of my son's hat with its whimsical braided tails, pull over and hope he jumps in before I create more chaos.

It's 4:49 p.m. Do you know where your children are? Mine are practicing. At the same time. One is playing the clarinet upstairs while the other is playing the piano downstairs. I know from experience that the clarinetist focuses so intently that he does not hear his sister at all. He tells me he gets into "the Zone."

She once played on her practice xylophone in the adjoining bedroom while he rehearsed in our upstairs den, and he never knew it. Our dog, Molly, also thinks this is a fine time for singing "Wroo Wroo!!"

The mother wonders if this might not be a good time to circle the block on foot?

My son is breaking in one of the new reeds, and as everyone who ever watched Lisa Simpson's school concert heartbreak knows, the reed makes a difference. I must admit that as much as I admire my son's effort and musicality, he's not sounding his best this afternoon. (Don't tell him I said that; he likes the one new reed he has tried.)

He is preparing for two concerts and one big audition, and we have the pleasure of hearing his music for many hours after school and in the evening. We hear Schubert and Mozart and "My hat it has three corners." We hear scales and scales and more scales. Tomorrow night he plays with the combined orchestras of Portland's high schools; in two weeks the youth ensembles at the University of Southern Maine have their spring concert; and the following week he will go with his father to audition in a land that seems to his mother far, far away.

In Isaiah 43, we read that God says, "Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."

The new reed, just as the possible new situation, requires time to be considered. What kind of adjustments will be needed? Some changes occur just by playing, but further refining will likely be required. A young horn player learns to use sandpaper first, polishing the reed lightly, with a sandpaper of fairly fine grain.

Sometimes I feel like the reed when I am learning to live with new circumstances, polished by the sandpaper of reality. The first phase of sanding makes things rough before they become smooth, polished. A great idea, a desirable possibility to someone that is a life-changing upheaval to another, feels rough against the skin of this mother's soul.

At first.

"I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?"

Three years ago I sent the first child off into the world of college, and I remember anticipation being far worse than reality. The planning and packing and preparing roughed me up enough that the tears of good-bye rinsed away the grit and I found myself ready to live in the new reality of our day-to-day existence as a family that enriched everyone, allowing new ways of connecting to flow.

"I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."

Yes, there are times we are injured by the reed-cutter the young musician learns to use next. Many a reed, I'm sure, has been damaged by inexperienced hands.

But these developmental phases in the life of a loving family, these new reeds to be used in a symphony of growth and change, need only the sandpaper, the polishing to get it just right for the needs of the moment.

It's 5:16 p.m. The clarinetist lays down his horn and hunts up his musician's black suit and bow tie for tomorrow night. The pianist, after a break, resumes her Mozart. Molly "Wroo, Wroo" and her silent brother, Sam, have an after-dinner treat and go outside. Time to get the macaroni and cheese out of the oven; further polishing of the mother must wait.

The Rev. Martha Hoverson lives and writes in Portland, while serving as the interim pastor at North Parish Congregational Church in Sanford. Her e-mail is