Beginner in Three Acts

On How I’m Embracing Imperfection

Jun 20, 2026

Beginner: noun / /bɪˈɡɪn.ər / a person who is starting to do something or learn something

ACT 1: PIANO1

“I want to take piano lessons!” Ethan exclaims. He is jumping up and down on his nugget. Nick and I let the comment pass like a melody. But the chorus returns a couple days later. And a few days after that. We take him seriously.

“You’ll need to commit to a year of piano lessons,” we tell him. “We’re happy to buy a keyboard, but it’s definitely an investment.”

He promises, and we order a keyboard. Anne decides she doesn’t want to be left out. The large box arrives over spring break, just as I secure lessons for the kids with Ms. Hannah. Nick sets the keyboard up in our upstairs loft, and the kids and I crescendo up the stairs. Nick wipes sweat from his forehead, and I sit down on the assembled bench. Instinctively my hands curl on the keys on middle C. Muscle memory takes over, and I play a C scale and arpeggio. My fingers move up 5 keys to play the G scale and arpeggio.

“I didn’t know you played piano!” Nick exclaims, his eyes a treble clef of surprise.

“I took piano for three years in elementary school,” I tell him. Memories of riding my bike to Mrs. Gahmen’s house for my weekly lesson play in my mind. I’d park my Schwinn in her driveway, walk down the stairs, and we’d work. My brother, sister, and I would have back-to-back-to-back lessons and alternate times to practice. I’d memorized scales and pieces for competitions. I’d played duets. I hadn’t considered taking lessons myself, but later that night I pull out my phone to text Ms. Hannah. Can I sign up for lessons too?

Piano music dances around my wood floors each day now. The sound carries throughout my entire house. Sometimes the kids practice while I’m preparing dinner, and the sound makes me smile. Other times I sit next to them to help read new songs and remind them where keys are found or how many beats in a quarter, half, and full note. Ethan quickly memorizes “Ode to Joy”, and Anne beams when she begins to play white keys instead of only black keys.

Each day I sit on the bench and curl my fingers onto the keys. I warm up with scales and work through exercises in my red children’s book. Ms. Hannah believes in playing music that excites us, and I select “Shake it Off” and “The Fate of Ophelia” as my first two songs outside my workbook. Ethan and Anne watch me painstakingly label each note, isolate the right hand, isolate the left hand, and play both hands together at a snail’s pace. I get to remind them that discipline is important and fun and that no one is good at something immediately. My brain is fully focused on the practice at hand, and I’m not thinking about meal planning or cleaning out my closet. Thirty minutes pass when I think it’s been fifteen.

At my lesson two weeks ago, I keep misplaying the third line in a song in my book. Ms. Hannah stops me to explain the melody scheme.

“See how the notes are similar in these three lines? But different in the line you’re having more trouble with?” she asks, and I nod my head. “The third line is a B melody scheme whereas the first two and last lines are an A melody scheme.” Her explanation immediately makes me think of rhyme schemes in poetry.

“Do you read poetry by chance?” I inquire. A smile crosses her lips, and her long strawberry blond hair moves when she shakes her head yes.

“I believe art inspires art,” she tells me.

ACT II: WATERCOLORS

“Let’s paint together, Mama,” Anne says to me. I glance at the clock and back to her pleading brown eyes.

“Let’s do it!” I reply. “We have an hour until we get Ethan from the bus.” We both love our Mama-Anne time, especially knowing it will come to an end when she starts kindergarten in the fall.

“Yay! I’ll get your special books,” Anne declares. Her headband slips onto the crown of her forehead like a tiara, and her honey-turning-sandy-hair swishes on her shoulders when she returns holding my Emily Lex watercolor books, paint palette, and two paintbrushes.

I set us up in the playroom — white ceramic plates, little dishes of water, paper towel for blotting any mistakes — and afternoon light pools, warms our feet. Anne flips open my garden book, selects a pot of geraniums, immediately dips her brush into the water and then the hardened maroon. I choose a stack of books with a trailing fern from my spring book and study the example page. Emily Lex shows how to blend navy and light blue, how to cast a shadow at the corner of the book by mixing black and brown and lots of water.

The paints aren’t usable as is, squares of dried pigment within a binder. I learn to add variable amounts of water to create different shades of the same color, to mute a color by adding a small amount of its opposite color on the color wheel, to paint white by actually painting grey, to let the colors blend while wet. I learn there aren’t mistakes in watercolors, the nature of its imperfections make the finished product whimsical, interesting, beautiful.

When I dip my brush in the water, the emerald square, and then mix it on a white, ceramic plate I think of nothing except the color of the Caribbean Sea. I keep dipping and mixing, add a dab of aqua and more green.

My paintings won’t win awards or be selected to hang at the Birmingham Museum of Art. But, my lips curl upwards when I finish all the paintings in my first book. I choose a frame from Homegoods and can’t wait to put my own creativity on our gallery wall, next to Ethan’s rainbow and Anne’s family portrait.

ACT III: BALLROOM DANCE

“I’m feeling nervous,” I admit. My stomach dances with butterflies, and I smooth down my coral dress.

“Me too,” Nick replies. He pulls into a parking spot in front of our dance studio. The sun begins its descent to the horizon. “I know we’ve been taking lessons for over a year, but this feels so different.”

***

Nick and I started a twice-a-month date night a few years ago after reading Habits of the Household. We love cooking and going out to eat, but we wanted to do something active, something new together. We scaled walls rock climbing, knocked down pins at a bowling alley, and then tried a ballroom class.

In 45 minutes, we learn how to hold our bodies and arms, how to lead and follow. We dance the simple box step to a slow song and the one-step swing to a faster song. After the lesson ends we are in shock at how quickly the time flew. On our way out we sign up for five more lessons. We loved connecting over movement and our hands in one another’s.

Over the next 18 months we spend nearly every other Thursday at the dance studio. We learn East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing, Foxtrot, Rumba. We add Waltz, Salsa, and Tango to our roster. Nick still works hard to find the beat, and I still try to let him lead. Our cheeks throb from smiling by the end of each class. We joke and laugh with our instructors, Jackie and Fabian, and they tell us our happiness and enjoyment of one another is evident.

Our dance studio hosts every-other-Friday night dance parties. Jackie and Fabian have been inviting us for six months. It’s such a wonderful chance to practice your dancing. It’s so fun. Finally, we find a free Friday on our family calendar and book a babysitter. At our last class before the dance party, we do a dry run of what to expect. Jackie plays a song, and we have to identify which style of dance matches the song and execute the steps. We are moderately successful. By the end of the class, we are flushed with exertion and pride. We are dancing!

***

I look in the front window of the studio, couples I’ve never met sit in the chairs changing into dance shoes. Others practice steps in front of the big, wall-to-wall mirrors.

“Ok, I’m ready,” I tell Nick. We open our car doors and walk inside. Light sparkles around the room, refracting from the disco ball hanging in the center of the ceiling. Lights twinkle around the mirrors on the front and back wall. Jackie and Fabian come up to us and give big hugs. “We’re so glad you came!” They say, and we believe them.

I could tell you we remember every step or that we pick the right style of dance for each song, but that’s not important. I could pretend our skillset is middle of the pack, but our mouths gape open watching another couple glide around the floor in a way I only dream of (we learn they’ve been dancing for 14 years). We amaze at the eclectic collection of people. Some are in their 30s, and there’s a gentleman in his 80s. There’s a chocolate maker and physician. Singles mingle amidst couples married for decades.

Being the least skilled in the room isn’t the point. (Even though we are.) Being the most skilled isn’t the point either.

Nick offers me his hand, and I take it. I don’t once think of my kids’ bedtime or the errands that need running. We smile and laugh. We sweat and vow to bring water bottles next time. We quick-quick-slow, slow-quick-quick, and cha cha cha. We do the whip and birdcage, we underarm turn. We keep showing up — for lessons, for dance parties, for our marriage — and dream about dancing together for decades to come.