I have such a great view from the piano bench on Sunday mornings. I get to see faces I have come to know in different ways as they experience what they are seeing, hearing, and feeling before them. (Please don’t feel self-conscious…if it helps, David and I are up in front of you all the time!) Today I saw pride, nostalgia, amusement, tenderness, and joy. Some folks were celebrating their own children at the front of the room, while others may have been remembering rites of passage from their own history. There was laughter when our youth let their personalities and candor shine through their prepared words, and camaraderie and support as we watched a friend take a symbolic step forward. The whole service was not only a beautiful way to recognize transitions but a reminder that “growing up” isn’t just for children, and today’s piano selections reflected how we are always growing into new versions of ourselves as we learn and change.

Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game is such a wonderful song about the passage of time, using the metaphor of a carousel to paint the cycle of seasons we move through in our lives. This familiar imagery represents how quickly life moves as well as how it’s not always easy to notice change as we are living through it, since we are focused on what is presently happening the ride rather than the journey. Joni Mitchell gives the definitive performances of her song, but since readers likely already know her renditions of The Circle Game, I offer here a performance by the inspiring PS22 Chorus. While they have performed with renowned artists and reputable events/venues (including the White House, the Oscars, and on Sesame Street), it’s this choir’s unpretentious background as a music class at a public elementary school that will make you fall in love with their earnestness, sweet young voices, and love of music.

Dos Oruguitas (“Two Little Caterpillars”) accompanies the story of Abuela Alma Madrigal and her husband, Pedro, in the Disney film Encanto. Using the imagery of two caterpillars who must let go of one another in order to become butterflies, the song is about love, separation, transformation, and pain. The story asks us to recognize that growth can require courage, and is sometimes the result of grief and loss. But it also reminds us that love does not disappear when life changes; it comes into our lives in different forms. We love as children, as siblings, as partners, as parents, as elders, as friends, and as members of a community…and each new form of love asks us to grow.

“How Far I’ll Go,” from Disney’s Moana, comes from a very different kind of story, but also speaks powerfully to growth. The teenage Moana loves her home and her people, yet feels drawn toward the ocean and toward a calling she does not completely understand. The song gives musical form to the moments when we recognize that there is more than just our familiar world, when something inside us begins asking where we are meant to go, and when wonder what we are meant to learn and who we are meant to become. That question belongs to children and teens, but it also belongs to adults. There are many moments in life when we find ourselves like Moana, standing at the edge of what we know, wondering what lies beyond the horizon.

(It is worth noting that the music from Encanto and Moana are by the extraordinary Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also penned the Tony and Pulitzer-awarded Hamilton. Both movies are stunning – visually and musically, and in their deeply moving stories – and if you are not familiar with either one, these beautiful, beautiful films about heritage, family, and culture are worth checking out, whether you are very young, very old, or somewhere in-between.)