It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

The Naked Self

Listening to music sung by a friend this morning started me thinking about creativity.  As children, unless we’re squashed mentally and emotionally, creativity comes naturally.  It’s like running around naked.  Rocks are jewels, the world is a canvas, every rhyming word is fodder for a song, and shirts, pants, and underwear are optional.

Yet, as we grow older, fall from Eden, and find the shame in our nakedness, we also begin to clothe our creativity.  We cover it in structure, form, criticism, and conformity.  Think back through adulthood – when was the last time you (independent of a small child) broke out that cool box of 64 Crayolas?  You know, the one with the sharpener in the back.  When did you last make up a song to hum to yourself, even though you can’t carry a tune?  When did you last grab a pencil and paper and just scrawl whatever your hand wanted – words, pictures, doodles, obscene cartoons?

Creativity gets compartmentalized, assigned to art class, music lessons, writing seminars, or the theater.  In our adult world, we assume that creativity is given only to “artists.”  How often have you said, “I’m just not creative,” or “I wish I were a creative person so that I could do that.”?  I know I’ve heard it more times than I can count.  Yet, assuming that creativity is limited only to those we classify as artists or eccentrics is akin to deciding that only movie stars, nude models, and strippers have bodies.

I don’t think it is a coincidence, this simultaneous constriction and repression of our creative and physical selves.  Creativity is a nakedness of the soul.  We can filter how we present ourselves in our everyday lives, put on social costumes, but when we are truly creative, we can no longer hide the things that distinguish us from others.  When we create and share our creations, we are totally exposed – everything that we are is out there for the world to see and to judge.

That’s where the damage lies in this concealment and conformity that we impose upon our creative souls and upon our bodies.  We fear judgment and we clothe ourselves in it.  And, in doing so, we teach the next generation to loathe both their bodies and their individuality.  Think back – when have you heard these: “Put on some clothes; you’re too old to run around the house in your underwear.”  “That’s a pretty picture, but the sky is blue, not orange.” How many of us have been taught to color inside the lines, or grew up listening to the adults in our lives criticize their own bodies and those of others?

My own upbringing was wonderfully supportive of creativity.  I had more paints, crayons, and modeling clay than any 50 children could want.  Music lessons, journals, easels, you name it.  Comfort with one’s own body was another story.  Most of my ancestors hail from the British Isles.  When your spiritual ancestors are Knox and Calvin, appreciation of the human form isn’t exactly hard-wired into the familial structure.

As I reached adulthood, I made a few abortive attempts to become comfortable in my body, but those quickly fell victim to a combination of insecurity, fashion magazines, and motherhood.  I learned to clothe my body in ways that expressed whoever I was being at the time – to hide any bulges, knobby knees, to minimize my linebacker shoulders.  And, as I reached adulthood, as I fell into the roles of professional and mother, I put away my creativity.  Any outbursts of crafting were carefully and appropriately directed toward projects for the home or my children.  Grownups don’t draw and paint – unless they are artists.  They don’t play instruments – unless they are musicians.  They don’t write – unless they are authors.  Grownups don’t reveal their souls or their bodies.  They wrap themselves in convention, in small talk, in business suits, in politics, in book clubs.

In 2008, in the downslope of my 30s, I realized something.  I can’t be a grownup.  Covering up and burying the parts of myself that make me unique was killing me.  I broke out a journal.  I began to write and then to blog.  I got my easel and oil paints down from the attic. And, about the time I began this blog and first submitted essays for national consumption, I began to run.  I decided to enjoy my body.  To clothe it in ways that make me happy.  And the more I learned to appreciate my body and to become comfortable in it, the more my creative side thrived.

Self-revelation is terrifying and exhilarating.  And yet, I can’t help wondering if we make too big a deal about it.  What are we hiding, exactly?  When we refuse to paint because “I’m not artistic,” or we decline to sing along for fear that someone will hear us and judge, when we agonize in a dressing room and finally put that gorgeous bikini back on the rack, what are we saying about our humanity?  What are we telling ourselves and the world about our gifts, our potential?  And how much are we denying others permission to share of themselves?

One of my proudest moments as a mother came a couple of weeks ago.  I have a 13 year old daughter.  My family history is not rife with examples of secure, confident, healthy adolescence.  I had assumed anxiety, body issues, and insecurity to be part of the territory.  So, it was with great joy one evening during family banter that I heard these words come out of my daughter’s mouth.  “I like my body.”

I wanted to bronze that sentence and give it to her and to every other person on the planet as a gift.  When we like our bodies, when we like ourselves, when we like the creative impulses, the quirks, and the out-of-the-box-ness that make us unique, we are capable of greatness.

We all have the same number of chromosomes. And within those chromosomes we have an amazing array of unique genetic coding.  We are all alike, and we are all absolutely unique.

Nakedness, of body or of soul, takes tremendous courage.  And yet, perhaps, if more of us practiced revealing ourselves, sharing ourselves, less courage would be needed.

So, here you go, I’ll take the plunge.  Not perfect, not a celebrity, not an artist, not “special” – just human.

Shame Yields Right-of-Way to Joy

I live in fear of the misunderstanding -- not the big, relationship-rending miscommunications but the small gaffes, the simple ‘oops, I got that wrong’ moments.  This sort of minor awkwardness has never been something I’ve been able to brush off; instead, my fear of “getting it wrong” is occasionally paralyzing.

What if the party wasn’t today?  What if I’m at the wrong house?  What if I pronounce his/her name wrong?  What if I’m standing in the wrong place?  What if I was the one who was supposed to call?  What if I wasn’t supposed to call?

This circling rat’s nest of anxieties has a simple name.  Shame.

Shame is the feeling that dogs me at 3A.M. following an embarrassing miscommunication (often one so minor that I’m the only person who notices.)  Shame is the heat that floods my face, creeping up from my chest and paralyzing my legs when I realize my error.

We all experience shame in one place or another.  For some, those feelings may center around work.  For others, parenting, or sex.  We all have the things that trigger shame, that we try to work around, to avoid, to pretend don’t bother us.

But, we aren’t perfect.  And so, the stuff we try to protect against pops up anyway.

I’ve written before about Brené Brown’s work.  Brené is a ‘shame researcher’ whose books The Gifts of Imperfection and the one I’m currently reading/listening to, I Thought it Was Just Me (but it wasn’t), address the issues of perfectionism and its counterpart, shame.  As Brené says, she researches the things that get in the way of joy.

And, boy does shame get in the way of joy, but guess what – joy can get in the way of shame, too.

Recently I had one of those dreaded miscommunication moments.  It was so minor as to be a blip in time – a matter of my misinterpreting something someone had said to me.  Yet, once I realized what had happened and how I’d misunderstood it, that familiar tail-chasing, self-name-calling cycle started.  I had forgotten something the other person had told me, and that had led to my not catching the meaning of the conversation later.  No big deal, right?

Well, of course, me being me, not only was I ashamed for misunderstanding, but I fell into the self-centered trap of being appalled at my own self-centeredness.  (That one can chase itself in a circle for days.)  About the time I was using self talk like You stupid bitch, why can’t you get out of your own stupid head long enough to remember something for someone else.  I ran across something so beautiful that it completely broke the cycle of shame and self-negation.

I found this on both Facebook and Twitter, shared by Brené Brown and Quiet author Susan Cain on each of their pages.  This was posted recently on the Atlantic’s website – a flashmob, performing (appropriately enough) “Ode to Joy.”  The sight of all these people, risking vulnerability, putting themselves out there, risking ‘standing in the wrong place’ just to make something beautiful completely changed my mindset.

If you let it in, joy is the antidote to shame.  In the meantime, watch…

 

 

Last Day Lessons

Today is the last day of school for my kids.  At the closing ceremonies today, Caitlin will stand with her class and sit down as an 8^th grader; Aidan will stand with his and take his seat as part of the new 5^th grade; Sierra will hand a red rose to her 8^th grade buddy, just as her buddy welcomed her at the beginning of the year, and will sit down as a second grader to watch “the buddies” leave the school the same way they entered in 1^st grade – under an arch of flowers.

There is a beautiful symmetry to the closing ceremonies, tradition and predictability.  The ceremony doesn’t so much provide false security and safety as it supports and embraces all that has been learned and all that is still unknown.

May troubles be less

And blessings be more,

And nothing but happiness come to your door.

And may you have luck

Wherever you go

Your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow.

 

May wind be at your back

And sun be overhead

May friends be at your side

Wherever you are led.

 

We sing this song at closing every year – parents, kids, faculty, and staff.  The words blend farewell, see-you-later, and I’ll-always-be-here.  And for all the well-wishing in the song, there remains a sense of journeying into the unknown where there will be troubles (hopefully less) mixed with the blessings (hopefully more), that the wind will blow and that friends will be needed. 

As the kids step away from school today, they won’t stop learning.  None of us will.  Yet, despite the work of teachers, parents, and peers, some lessons must be learned alone.  Here are some of the things I want (and try) to teach my kids, but that I know they have to learn on their own.

• Everything is a choice.  Every choice has a consequence.  Whether you do a thing or leave it undone, you will have to live with the result.
• Use your words.  When you speak from your heart, it has a greater impact than you can possibly realize.
• People who are “mean” are often hurting.  Sometimes if you can find their hurt, they can no longer hurt you.
• Someday you will be most grateful for the teacher you complain about most today.
• Don’t be so quick to brush off that kid who annoys the crap out of you.  You two may someday have more in common than you will with the person who is your “best friend” today.
• The “weirdoes” often become the most interesting adults.
• Everyone has pieces that connect – the punk and the cheerleader, the cowboy and the Goth, the bookworm and the skater – underneath the clothes, hair, and accessories, we have common stories, pains, and desires.  (The Breakfast Club should be mandatory viewing for all 14 year olds.)
• No one can fix your argument with your friend – no one but the two of you.
• Yes, you’re right.  You absolutely will not remember that homework assignment 20 years from now.  However, the discipline muscles that you trained in completing it well and on time will support you throughout your life.
• Yes, you’re right again.  It’s not fair.  Life is neither fair nor easy, but it’s that way for everyone.  So, do you think maybe that means it really is fair after all?
• When someone rejects you or says something cruel, they aren’t exposing your shortcomings, they are revealing their own insecurities or capacities.
• Sometimes you get the most out of the lessons or activities that “suck.”
• Yes, pushups really are important.
• You don’t know yet who you are or what you really like.  You won’t know for years, if ever.  So try everything and learn what you can from it before rejecting it.
• You are your only reliable mirror.  No one else can show you your true self.  Not your classmates, your teachers, your siblings, not even your dad and me.
• You don’t find yourself when you are doing the safe, easy things that you know well.  You find out who you are when things are hard, scary, or just plain crappy.
• The only feet you can stand on and still balance are your own.

Putting on Your Game Face

When things get tough or scary, it’s easy to forget what we are doing, and even why.  It’s pretty simple to say “Why bother?  This is just too hard,” and, in my case at least, then go eat something loaded with sugar, butter, flour, and chocolate.  It’s easier to turn on the TV, surf the internet, to read a book, or to just goof off than it is to really work at getting past the uncomfortable stuff.

I’ve said it before.  When I really need lessons, (ok, so that’s most of the time) all I have to do is look at my kids and their peers.

Last night was the school’s Spring Strings’ Concert.  In the Winter Concert, all grades (2-8) perform something.  The venue is larger, the focus is dispersed across the student body, and the pieces played are typically familiar and cozy. 

Everything grows in the spring: plants, kids, and musicianship. For the Spring Concert, the kids have to step up.  Only the strings players in grades 4-8 perform, the venue is smaller, the pieces are eclectic, and the 8^th graders perform their solos.  And, the audience is a bit more critical; parents and grandparents have learned to expect significant growth between winter and spring, and I think the kids realize it. 

Change and development occur under pressure, and it’s illustrative for me to watch how these kids respond to that pressure.  As anyone who’s read this blog should know by now, our school is not heavily populated with passive, docile, blindly obedient kids.  I don’t think it is a coincidence that a curriculum that emphasizes active, engaged learning is going to wind up with a population of active, curious, and questioning students. While these traits will probably benefit the kids in the long run, they make preparation for any sort of focused activity such as a play, concert, or game nerve-wracking for the adults involved.  Rehearsals and practices tend to involve a lot of talking, giggling, forgetting (of everything), and general goofing off.  For weeks.  You can almost measure the time until performance by the lines beneath the teacher or coach’s eyes and the set of his or her shoulders.

Yet, if you ask the kids how things are going, the response is typically, “Fine.”  Though, children who are a bit more sensitive to adult aura will generally add that they wish that their classmates would quit goofing around because it’s upsetting the teacher or coach – not because they think it will impact the performance.

The kids know something that the adults forget.  They know the difference between practice and the real thing.  They know that practice is for building the skills they need, for getting a little bit better each time, for failing, and doing it over.  They don’t express it in words, but I think that they know that when the chips are down: when the curtain pulls back, when the whistle blows, when the conductor lifts her bow – they will be ready. 

The kids have learned to play through the pains of learning.  While their approach can be maddening to watch, I can’t help but think that they may have it right.  They know the difference between the small, daily obstacles and failures, and the big moments where results count.  I’ve watched six years of plays, concerts, and games with this school, and I’ve noticed the same thing every time.  No matter how wound up and scattered they seem right before the performance starts, regardless of the running, shoving, joking, clowning around, as soon as they take their places on the field of battle, whether it be stage or court, something changes.

The kids put on their game faces.  The most distractable, goofy, chatterbox of a class clown will metamorphose as soon as he or she picks up a bow, takes a mark on stage, or gets in position for the tip off.  At the beginning of this year, we spent most of our Saturdays in a gymnasium in Fair Oaks, watching basketball.  During Friday’s concert, I recognized the expressions on several of the girls’ faces as they took up their instruments.  Even though their hands held bows instead of a ball, their expression said the same thing.  “Ok, it’s game-on.  I’m taking this to the net, and nothing is getting in my way.”

As adults, we sometimes lose track of the fact that one can have fun and even make mistakes while still holding an underlying seriousness of purpose.  We get so caught up in our small failures, that we forget how to put on our game faces when it really counts.  I wonder sometimes if this is an area where we need to quit trying to teach our children and instead to listen to them.  Does giving yourself an ulcer during preparations or berating yourself for moments of weakness or failure to make the right choice (every single time) really contribute to the end result?  Do stress and anxiety actually indicate greater meaning and purpose, or do they just prevent us from seeing the fun in the process?

I don’t know the answer, but I wonder.  What would happen if we learned to shrug off the smaller failures, to go play, and to come back with our game faces on, saying to ourselves, “This is what I’m going to do.  Nothing is going to get in my way.”

 

 

Gift of the Small Things

I’ve managed to banish false modesty just far enough to admit that I am possessed of at least my fair share of creative gifts.  I can write, paint, draw (sometimes), cook, and sew.  However, at least two major creative arts lie outside my sphere.  I’ve long since come to terms with my lack of musical ability.  I appreciate music, I can play the notes on the page (on one instrument – the flute), but I lack the ear, voice, and vision to create from music.  As much as I regret my singing voice, I’ve learned to accept that in music, I get to be the audience.  Others create.  Photography, however, is another matter entirely.

Photography is a visual art.  It should be right up my alley.  Ah, yes, we’ll get back to the dreaded “should” in a bit.  Yet, as I’m sure readers of this blog have realized, while I can paint pictures with brush and with word, the simple act of framing the moment I see in a lens and pushing a button is beyond me.  No matter what I see with my eyes and appreciate with my heart about a scene, my photos rarely, if ever do it justice.  They never seem to penetrate the depths of the moment.  All of the elements are there, but something is missing.  In writing, one of the rules is “show, don’t tell.”  My photos tell.

Now, I have several friends and family members who are gifted photographers – some to the extent of professionalism.  But, one friend’s pictures make me downright jealous.  Her blog, Facebook page, and Twitter feed are filled with beautiful, arty photos that capture the joy and delicacy inherent in the details of a scene or the small moments of life.  “This is what life is supposed to be,” her photos say as they trace the sunset-colored veining of a dragonfly’s wing or tease the impish glee from a child’s glowing smile.

‘Well, crap,’ I think, looking at her latest posts. ‘We’re good friends; our kids play together; we live less than two miles from each other.  How come my life doesn’t look like that?”  As I scan through sparkling shots of kayaks on open water, cherubic faces of happy children, and glowing, velvet, layers of color, I think of my bathroom sink, smeared with streaks of my makeup and flecks of my husband’s beard.  I focus on the slime growing in the container that I’m pretending isn’t in the back of my refrigerator, the piles of laundry – clean and dirty – taking over my bedroom floor.  I hear two of my three cherubic children screaming at each other in the backyard and keep my ears peeled for the sounds of violence or the stray obscenity.

Now, I know Robyn well enough to know that her life isn’t completely captured in her photos either.  I know her well enough to know her own struggles, lapses, and untidinesses.  In fact, those are the things that I like best about her.  Her openness about not only the triumphs and joys, but also the frustrations and failures, of her own life make me more willing to be real myself.

Yesterday morning was one of those glorious spring days that isn’t pastel-perfect but is instead layered with the exact proportions of shadow and light to fill one’s heart with a sense of miracle.  I ran just over 2.5 miles of my 3 mile loop, allowing myself a cool-down walk through the nature trail at the back of our local park.   I thought of my iPhone in my pocket and contemplated taking pictures, but I had just been looking and some of Robyn’s photos and knew how much the inadequacies of my own pictures would frustrate me.  ‘I wish I were like her,’ I thought, resting my hand on the trunk of a tree and studying the contrast between the umber edges of the bark and its silvery surface.  I closed my eyes, letting the sun warm my back, as my hand rested against the solidity of the tree, and was reminded of the warmth and solidity of my husband.  I walked a few feet further, picked a sprig of rosemary from a bush bursting with purple flowers, and brought the sprig to my nose, thinking of Sierra bringing me rosemary bouquets.  The willow beneath which Aidan and I gathered branches last year for his shelter-project had filled out with delicate, green leaves.  I touched the petals of a rock-rose, and my mind walked through my parents’ garden.  Strands of horse-tail reminded me of long ago trail rides, and the brief moments of respite before remounting my unreliable, bucking, yet beloved mare.  Flowers popped from a tree, and I wanted to show them to Caitlin, far away from me on her own adventure this week.

As I passed through the tunnel beneath the road, I realized that I had been taking photos in my own way.  Capturing the pearls of white-flowered fairy rings nestling in the darker blades of grass, framing a twisted palm frond glowing in the sun against the black asphalt of the street, picking the highlights off of a stick, fallen onto the bark mulch beneath a redwood.  The gift of my friend’s photos, and the gift I found in myself, is the gift of the small moments.  When we pause to frame and snap those details, we are capturing the essence of our lives.  Think back to the biggest events of your life.  What do you remember, truly?  Do you really feel, deep within you, the entire event or day?  Or do you smell the scent of a grandmother’s perfume, or do you recall the feel of your lover’s cheek beneath your hand, or do you hear a laugh, carried on the wind?

Photo credit: Robyn Beaufoy, 2012

Vulnerability -- For the Long Term

Caitlin is traveling with friends this week, and the trip involves a flight.  If there is one phobia that I haven’t quite managed to shake, it’s flying.  I love to travel, but you don’t want to be the person stuck next to me in a plan – I gasp and grab the armrests a lot.  Suffice it to say that while I trust the family taking my daughter and I’m so grateful to them for providing her with this adventure, my maternal anxiety is in overdrive today.  Caitlin doesn’t know that.  I’m not a big fan of letting my neuroses impact my children’s experiences.  I was texting a friend last night about my struggles with letting my daughter “spread her wings” despite my personal discomfort.  “Seems like adulthood is all about doing the hard thing for the long-term benefit,” I commented.

For me, “the hard thing” usually involves letting go of control.  (See ‘fear of flying’ – above. I’d probably be fine if I were the pilot.)  I’ve come to realize, though, that most of the time, my desire to control the circumstances around me has less to do with fear of what those circumstances may produce than fear of what will be revealed about me in those circumstances.

I intermittently follow Brené Brown’s blog at www.ordinarycourage.com.  Brown is a research professor whose work focuses a lot on the value of vulnerability and the trap of its opposite, perfectionism.  In an article for CNN, Brown writes, “Perfectionism is a 20-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it's the thing that's really preventing us from being seen and taking flight.”

I don’t know about you, but I have spent most of my life listening to the voices in my head that give a running commentary about how any thought, word, action, or inaction of mine will be perceived by others – the voices that say “that’s not good enough.”  Yet, all of the cool things, the magical things that have happened in my life have come from allowing myself to be vulnerable, to take risks – including the risk of looking like a screw-up or of being rejected.  It is only when I manage to turn off those voices, that the real me gets a chance to spread her wings and be heard.  (There’s a reason I write with the doors shut.)

But, the hard part is that vulnerability isn’t always rewarded.  Sometimes you will lose something precious.  Sometimes you will be misunderstood.  Sometimes you will, in fact, be rejected for the person you are.  And, it’s hard to keep plugging forward in the face of those losses, to convince yourself that it’s better to risk rejection as yourself than to be accepted for someone that you aren’t.

My son is a perfectionist.  His teacher, my husband, and I have spent most of Aidan’s academic career working on convincing him to take risks with his work, and to accept that the occasional mistake doesn’t necessitate starting over or giving up entirely.  Yesterday morning’s “book report” kerfluffle was emblematic.  When I asked, “How did your book report go on Friday?” I hadn’t expected him to burst into tears and bury his face in his hands.  It turned out that when I had nixed his original idea for the report (which involved copying a section of the book word-for-word), he got stuck and couldn’t figure a way out, but was too ashamed to ask for help. 

Shame is the evil cousin of perfectionism.

Aidan didn’t see his original idea as plagiarism.  To him, the part of the book that he wanted to present had already been written, so it was obviously “right.”  He struggles with the concept of doing anything original or creative to showcase what he got from the book because he’s afraid that what he produces will be “wrong.”

The lesson that I hope someday to get Aidan to see, and the lesson that I hope Caitlin will continue to integrate, is that we are so much more real when we keep ourselves moving forward in the face of our imperfections – our humanity. 

One last anecdote on the beauty of vulnerability:

I’ve written before about my friend, the singer Vatrena King.  Vatrena has one of the most truly lovely voices I have ever heard, but more importantly, she possesses a quiet, generous soul and iron strength.  In December, she held a concert that she and her friend and manager, Poppy Peach, had been planning and working toward for months.  A week or two before the concert, I interviewed Vatrena for our local paper, and she told me the history of one of the songs she would perform.  “It Is Well With My Soul” was written in the 1800s by a gentleman who had lost his family under tragic circumstances, yet, in the face of that loss, he wrote a song of acceptance and strength.

As fate would have it, Vatrena was hit by a nasty respiratory virus on the day of the concert.  Now, we’ve all heard of diva singers cancelling concerts for the merest throat tickle “to preserve their voices” – or, more likely, to preserve their sense of self.  Vatrena, however, though she could barely speak, powered through her concert with joy and humor.  She even joked at one point that while she is normally a soprano, she was having fun seeing what life is like as a tenor.

No, Vatrena’s voice that night wasn’t up to its usual standard, but her performance showcased something far more beautiful – love.  Her love for her friends, family, and fans in the hall that night shone in every note she sang.  She was willing to risk the vulnerability of an imperfect performance in order to be real and to show her gratitude to the people she loves.  And, that vulnerability created something far more powerful than perfection ever could.  Listen:

 

Epiphany

Wikipedia has two entries for the word “epiphany” – epiphany (feeling) and Epiphany (the holiday.)  Deriving from the Greek epiphaneia, meaning ‘manifestation, striking appearance,’ epiphany encompasses that feeling of the “aha!” moment, the often fleeting instant when everything clicks.  In Christian tradition, Epiphany falls on January 6 and celebrates the revelation of Jesus to the Gentiles as the Christ, primarily through the visit of the Magi or “Wise Men.”

Maybe it’s the time of year, but my brain can’t help combining these thoughts into my own definition of epiphany – the visitation of wisdom.  To call me an intuitive thinker might be an understatement; my brain has a hard time tracing a thought from point A to point B in any sort of stepwise fashion – it tends to be easily distracted by shiny objects.  As such, I often rely overmuch on moments of epiphany as admittedly lazy intellectual shortcuts.  It’s easier for me to look for the flash of insight than to work my way stepwise through a problem.  Sometimes this approach works, giving me the perfect spark of creativity or a brilliant moment of clarity.  Often, though, it leads down a path of false conclusions.

As in almost everything else, it comes down to balance, leaving room for the moments of epiphany – the “Aha!” bursts of creativity and insight – yet still doing the work to verify the conclusion.  And, as in so many things, I’m beginning to learn this lesson from my children.

Waldorf parents often find ourselves in a perpetual state of justification – justifying paying private school tuition despite cutting every other corner of the family budget (a particularly difficult justification in a city like Davis with a renowned public school system), justifying why our 7 year olds can’t yet read, justifying the weird aversion to television and video games, justifying school festivals layered with incomprehensible overtones of both Paganism and Christianity.  Much of the time, these conversations hinge around the points that draw most parents to Waldorf education, the pieces from the beginning.

Nurturing, creative, appreciation for the arts, peaceful, wholesome, low-tech, age-appropriate – these terms and many more are thrown about when the parents of young Waldorf students gather.  Waldorf education is hugely attractive to parents who worry about their children being “taught to the test,” to parents who have read horror stories about over-scheduled, over-stressed children since the line on the stick turned pink, to parents who fear the influence of a fast-paced, “violent” culture on their sheltered darlings, to parents who bemoan the loss of arts classes in traditional schooling.

Don’t get me wrong, these pieces are all a part of Waldorf education, and for the most part, pieces of what our family appreciates and part of our justification for the seeming insanity of our family budget.  But, I listen to these phrases, hear sentences like: “Well, I’m glad they’ve had that creative foundation in the lower grades, but I don’t think it’s necessary as they get older” and I shake my head.  Something is missing. 

Maybe it’s the pastel-walled classrooms or the assignments that look way too fun and involve far too many colored pencils to be intellectual that make people see this curriculum as something designed for  young children, as something artsy and light, but hardly rigorous.  After all, if the upper grades students aren’t bringing home 6 hours of homework a night, they can’t possibly be learning anything, can they?

I think part of the problem most people have in understanding the Waldorf curriculum is that it is an education formed of interwoven ideas and principles, a complex model that doesn’t mesh with our modern “Insert Tab A into Slot B”  or educational menu thinking.  When Waldorf teachers talk about the curriculum being child-driven, this isn’t some sort of airy-fairy “let the kids do whatever they want and they’ll educate themselves” system.  The curriculum is child-driven only in that it has been crafted to link so inextricably to the physical, mental, and emotional development of the child that everything becomes part of the education.  Waldorf students don’t have a lot of homework because, if it is being done right, they are always in the classroom – or, rather, the classroom is always in them.

Believe it or not, I haven’t strayed that far from my original theme.  I’m coming back to epiphany.  Most epiphanies can only be accurately assessed from behind.  After time passes, we are able to review the evidence, to see if that flash was indeed truth or if it was fool’s gold.  When our children are in the lower grades, most Waldorf parents get only flashes of the whole picture – a form drawing here, the magic of the Michaelmas pageant, classroom songs sung around the house or in the garden.  It isn’t until our children are almost graduated, until our bank accounts are nearly depleted, that we see the pattern, the threads connecting every aspect of their education.

“Art,” “Creativity,” “sweet puppet plays” – I’ve heard the parts for years, and shook my head.  Nope, I thought.  That’s not it.  You aren’t getting it.  There’s more.

Two nights ago, our school held its annual Winter Concert.  Only grades 2-8 perform, but for the last few years, I’ve made it something of a crusade to invite the parents of pre-school – 1^st graders to the concert.  “It’s so good to see what your kids are working towards,” I say.  But, as the words leave my mouth, I know they are incomplete.  I know that the other parents will hear me and think that I am saying – “Look, someday your child will play an instrument like that.” or “Someday your kid will be able to sing a round in multi-part harmonies.”  But, these are parts.

Friday night, I listened and watched as Caitlin and the other 6^th-8^th graders played holiday carols as the audience filed into their seats.  A random observer dropped into the hall would never have guessed the degree of year-round grumbling about practice or the missed notes at home or emanating from the strings room at school.  Someone listening to a recording would picture a far more mature orchestra. 

On my left, my son and his best friend chatted before the performance started.  I listened to their conversation and something clicked.  “No, I don’t want to be James Marshall anymore,” said Aidan in response to a comment from his buddy.

“How come?”

“He wasn’t in the Bear Flag Revolt, and I really want to re-inact that.”

“He wasn’t?  Oh yeah, you’re right.”

The conversation then drifted to John Sutter, and early California.  I believe passports were mentioned.  School had just ended for winter break, yet these two 4^th graders were planning the details of the roles they will assume for their class trip to Sutter’s fort in February.  They were out of school, but school was not out of them.

The Winter Concert always makes me cry – odd, since I’m hardly the type to be overwhelmed by the Hallmark moment.  But, this year, I saw something different.  Yes, the 2^nd graders earnestly singing “O Tannenbaum” in German were adorable in their shiny black, white, and red outfits, but as I watched each class perform, something began to unfold.  As expected, the performances grew slightly more complex for each class.  3^rd and 4^th grade both performed pieces reflective of their curriculum, 5^th and 6^th grade joined in singing more complex choral pieces than the lower grades can manage.  And, then near the end – came two performances that blew me away.  ‘This.  This is why,’ my mind said.

I’ve written about Caitlin’s class before.  They haven’t been labeled an ‘easy’ class by even the most doting of parents.  Intelligent, active (very active), strong-willed, enthusiastic – this class has historically been shy on one leadership quality.  Discipline.  This state began to change last year.  Over the course of the year, the parents watched in no little awe as their teacher began to challenge them, force them to work together, and generally began to make them view discipline as something coming from within rather than imposed from outside.  Dr. Rick Tan has shown these kids, through his own example, the balance of brilliant creativity and disciplined work.  Friday night, it all came together as the class performed a piece written and composed by Dr. Tan, “Winter Angels.”

In Waldorf education, there is a philosophy that while not every child will excel at everything, all children are good at something.  As the 7^th grade performed “Winter Angels” this philosophy shone.  Some sang, some played the instrumental part, and some danced.  Yes, danced – a choreographed, beautifully timed performance.  These pre-teen and teenaged boys and girls worked together to perform not goofily or with shuffling embarrassment, but in a coordinated and professional manner I would never have guessed possible several years ago.  I always knew they had the talent, the creativity, and the pizzazz, but discipline?

As I wiped my cheeks after watching my oldest child and her class take their bows, the 8^th grade took the stage.  Their piece was listed in the program simply as “Mystery Song.”  (Caitlin later told me that the 8^th graders had developed this piece independently even of their teacher.)  Dressed in white shirts, blue jeans, and an assortment of geek-chic hats and glasses, with flags jammed nonchalantly in front pockets, the 8^th grade took the stage with their bodies proclaiming louder than any words – “We are teens.  We have come into our own.  Watch.”

K’naan’s “Wavin’ Flag” began in the background. And the 8^th grade came into its own.  “When I get older/ I will be stronger/ They’ll call me freedom.  Just like a waving flag.” Singing, dancing, clapping overhead, drumming on plastic buckets, these kids showcased unity, discipline, and the raw power of youth.  ‘Here we are,’ they said.  ‘This is who we are.  This is what you have produced.’  These teens held an audience of parents, grandparents, and younger siblings captive, and they knew it.  They owned the stage, and in that moment, they owned us.

“Give me freedom/Give me fire/Give me reason/Take me higher.”

Fittingly, it took the 8^th grade, in a very non-Waldorfy (as my family likes to say) performance, to give that epiphany.  This, this is what it is all about – that balance of creativity and discipline that produces a moment of absolute confidence and power at an age where most kids feel lacking in both.

Winter Traditions -- Light and Song

In the Catholic faith, Advent encompasses the 4 weeks before Christmas.  A candle is lit each of the 4 Sundays; traditionally, there are 3 purple candles and 1 pink.  As a child in plaid jumper and navy knee socks, I was told that Advent was a solemn time of waiting, a time to repent and reflect (not quite as severe as Lent, but not party time, either).  The purple candles symbolized the sorrow of waiting; the pink candle, lit on the 3^rd Sunday represented the joy of the approach of the Christ child.  This all seemed to fit for me – Advent was a time to be good, because Santa knows, and there was definitely something purple in the waiting – waiting for Christmas baking, waiting for grandparents, waiting for Santa, waiting for snow, waiting for Christmas carols, waiting to decorate the tree, waiting to open presents.  Advent was definitely a time of waiting.

As I grew older, Advent came to seem less of a period of waiting, and more of a countdown from Thanksgiving.  Light the candle – 1 week closer.  Tick.  Next candle.  Tick.  Pink candle.  Tick.  Last candle, andohmigodIhaven’tdonemostofmyshoppingyet.  BOOM.

It wasn’t until my children started school (yes, this is one of those posts) that I began to understand the place of light in winter.  In the lower grades, the children make beautiful paper lanterns and attend a Lantern Walk to celebrate Martinmas.  As the fall air begins to bite, the line of lanterns woven through the dark is threaded with song. 

After Thanksgiving, in the first week of Advent, the school offers an Advent (or Winter) spiral to the children in the lower grades.  In a quiet room, a spiral of pine boughs is laid on the floor, punctuated with luminarias.  One at a time, the children enter the spiral, carrying a white candle in a red apple.  The child lights his or her candle from the pillar at the center of the spiral, then bends to light one of the candles along the spiral on the way out. 

This year, the Winter spiral was only offered for the children up through fourth grade.  As my son and his classmates each took their turn in the spiral, I could see why.  Something changed in their faces.  Unlike the few younger siblings that walked the spiral during this session, the fourth graders that exited the spiral were not the same as those who had entered.  While the younger children glowed with a round innocence even after their candles were extinguished, as the fourth graders blew out their candles at the mouth of the spiral, they blew out something else.  Fourth grade marks the transition from little kid to big.  The unquestioning faith of childhood has begun to fall by the wayside, shadows creep into the corners.

The first light of advent is the light of stones,

Stones that live in crystals in seashells and in bones

The second light of advent is the light of plants,

Plants that reach up to the sun, and in the breezes, dance

The third light of advent is the light of beasts,

The light of hope that we may see in greatest and in least

The fourth light of advent is the light of man,

The light of love, the light of thought, to give and to understand

This is the Advent verse my children recite at school.  To me, there is something deeper here, in this marking of points of nature, than just a lighting of candles to mark time.   The verse grounds the moment with the outside world.  It is easy in winter to experience a hibernation of the soul, to direct our thoughts and feelings inward, to protect ourselves from the outer darkness and to protect others from any darkness of ours that might ‘contaminate’ a season of joy.  Yet, as the kids light their candles with a verse, they are connected: to the stones, the plants, the beasts, and to each other.

Singing fills our house (and car, and yard, and grocery store) this time of year.  The English translation of the Swedish Santa Lucia song, the school Advent song, the dreidel song, “Channukah, Oh Channukah,” and a random assortment of Christmas carols (in English, German, French, and Spanish) float through our lives this time of year.  These winter songs have all been adopted by my children, regardless of festival or religion.

Light.  Song. 

The part of my brain that has studied other traditions, the part that remembers history books, or dusty lessons in comparative studies can trace the links between European pagan and modern Christian festivals without bursting any neurons.  However, it wasn’t until my children began coming home from school with songs and verses of light that the point of all of those Solstice candles connected with me on a visceral level.

Robyn Beaufoy, a good friend, wrote a piece in the school newsletter about Advent celebrations.  In this essay, she writes “Writer Annie B. Bond reminds us that ‘Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Christmas, Yule, Diwali, and the celebration of Buddha’s enlightenment all take place in December, the darkest time of the year.’ Despite these different leanings, our common searching for Light in the darkness of Winter unites us.”

When Caitlin was in 5^th grade, the mother of one of Aidan’s friends came in and talked to the class about Diwali, the Indian festival of lights.  As the class began their studies of world civilizations that year, they began to link the commonality of festivals.  In 3^rd grade, one of the other mothers had come into the classroom to teach the students about Channukah.  At the school, the 2^nd graders each year enact the Swedish festival of Santa Lucia.  The oldest girl in the class wears a crown of candles on her head, and the children distribute breads or cookies to everyone in the school – while carrying candles and singing, of course.

Winter has been especially dark the past few years.  When the economy began to flag, we first noticed the inadequacy of my paychecks in winter.  Within the last couple of years, we’ve been forced to tell the children, “Well, you know, Santa’s having a rough time, too.  There are an awful lot of kids out there who don’t have any toys at all, and he needs to take care of them.”  Two years ago, the last of my living grandparents, my maternal grandmother, passed away on Christmas Day. 

Yet, with each shadow, there is a spot of light.  Grandma lived a long and full life, yet her last years had been grey and shadowed with frailty and forgetfulness.  She was ready to move on.  Our economic challenges have forced the focus of Christmas away from elaborate lists and mountains of packages.  Though the bank account is not nearly so bleak this year, I have yet to begin or even fret about any Christmas shopping.  I’d rather inhale the Christmas tree and snuggle on the couch with my family.  There will be presents, but hopefully, they will bring joy, not stress.

Darkness comes.  In each of our lives, there are periods of long, black cold.  We all have our times of sorrowful or solemn waiting.  Rarely do we get to choose when that long Advent of the soul will strike.  But we have a choice.  We can approach these times with the joylessness of time marked, or we can hold moments of that darkness, be present in them, turn them over, and light a candle to move on.

The fourth light of advent is the light of man,

The light of love, the light of thought, to give and to understand

 

 

More Crossover -- Vatrena King

This is the week in which I direct you toward the work of others.  It's not that I'm at a loss for words myself; they just all happen to be directed article-ward this week.  Today's featured blogger/artist is the mother of one of Aidan's close friends, the bookkeeper at our school, and once upon a time, she used to be on a little TV show  called -- Ally McBeal.  Vatrena appeared regularly as one of the backup singers in the bar frequented by Ally and her friends.

But, we are all more than one thing, and Vatrena King is so much more than this one role.  The first time I heard her sing, she was emcee-ing an event for the school.  We were new that year, and I was blown away by this woman's voice.  As someone who "couldn't carry a tune with a forklift" to quote a good friend, I'm always in awe of those who can sing.  And Vatrena can! 

You don't meet Vatrena and think 'Music Celebrity.'  Mini-vans, kids, scrambling to keep socks on feet and lunches packed -- her life isn't that different from mine (other than the voice, figure, and melanin differentials).  We've even had long talks about goats.  Yep, this former L.A. studio singer lives on  a hill in Winters with her sons and an assortment of chickens and yes, goats.

How does one path lead to another?  Well, that's a short story long.  (you knew I'd get to the blog link sooner or later.)

If you haven't clicked over to any of these links -- I know, your mouse is broken, the cat needs to be fed, and you sprained your right index finger -- then check out this video below.  This song never fails to make a bad day better for me, and it reminds me that life is a journey -- sometimes the dips in the road are as important as the destination.  Enjoy! 

Inch by Inch

Inch by inch, row by row, someone bless these seeds I sow,

Someone warm them from below, till the rain comes tumblin’ down…

--“Garden Song” by David Mallett

 

There was no rain last night, just warm dusky skies that filled the leaves of the mulberry trees.  But as the last chords faded, I thought how perfect a metaphor this song was for raising children, and how perfect as the original song for a school that has grown over a quarter century from seedlings planted in the living room of a private home, to a school of over 200 students in preschool through eighth grade.

Back-to-School Night is always one of our family’s favorite events of the school year.  It’s a chance for the kids to run rampant through their play fields – no one timing their mile or waiting with a bell to call them back to class.  It’s an opportunity for parents and teachers to catch up with each other after the long void of summer, to eat and chat as laughter rings through the dusk.  It’s the first unofficial strings performance of the year, a casual prelude to the Winter Concert.  The agenda is generally informal, with a few announcements, pleas for volunteers, and some fiddle tunes.

   
Aidan (right) playing cello in public for the 1st time.                            DWS fiddlers.  Almond House in background.

Last night was different.  Last night we heard stories.  Those stories were a sort of genesis tale, showing us the roots of the educational fruit our families reap – showing us where we come from, and where we owe it to those who came before us to go.  For the 25^th Anniversary of Davis Waldorf School, several of the founding parents and teachers of the school took the microphone.

They told us of opening the school in the living room of a private home when arrangements to set up house in Davis as a school fell through.  We heard about the donation of the land where our school now sits, at the northwest corner of North Davis Farms, and the trepidation surrounding building on that land without knowing how the capital would be raised.

But, I think the best line was when our administrator, Kelly Brewer, quoted one of the founding teachers, Clifford Monks.  When the school was preparing to move to a permanent site, Mr. Monks stated, “To build a school is to build a community.”

3rd grade classroom last year.  Rammed earth wall in background.

It’s a Hallmark card sort of idea: quaint, but out of place in a world of scheduled play and “virtual communities.”  And, yet, to look around the school last night: at the tables of parents, grandparents, children, teachers, and friends spilling across the lawn; at the Almond house, a farmhouse donated to the school in the early years; at the rammed-earth classrooms, architectural phenomena in 1992, that have housed 19 years of children; at the new kindergarten wing, completed just in time for school last year; and at all of the faces, so familiar, faces that have pulled weeds, moved fences, painted, cleaned, driven on innumerable field trips, baked, crafted, and worked, worked, worked to make something magical for our children – well, I buy it.

It’s hard to see growth when you’re in the middle.  Children sprout up by magic for family that see them only on holidays; to parents who feed, clothe, and nag, those same children often seem to be in a constant state of regression.  Sometimes the only things seeming to grow in a garden are the weeds.  Progress often feels like “one step forward, two steps back.”  For parents who have stretched budgets to cover private school, sometimes the requests for volunteers overwhelm – ‘You want me to do another thing? –Is this really necessary?  -- Can’t someone else do it? – Are all of our committees, meetings, and projects really getting anywhere?

Our eighth graders are nomads this fall; the portable building housing the eighth grade classroom caught fire on Labor Day.  Classes started one day later.  Until their new classroom arrives, the peripatetic eighth grade has divided their lesson time between the rooms of classes away on field trips and our new multi-purpose room, intended as a dedicated space for music and eurythmy classes, plays, and special events.  It would be easy to become frustrated or bitter – new buildings, a new basketball court, and no eighth grade classroom?  But, this is temporary.  A brand new room will be arriving soon, and besides, we know where we came from – we began in a living room.

Epilogue:

I’m not much of one for meditation or signs – I have trouble getting my brain to shut up even at my most peaceful, and my cynicism tends to take over in moments that are meant to be profound.  But, this week, I sat through a guided mediation at a fall equinox event.  The group leader gave us images of walking along a forest path, looking at the brilliantly colored leaves, the flowing stream.  “Bend down and pick up a leaf,” she said.  “Look at your leaf; what color is it?”  Mine was scarlet.  “There is a message on it; just for you.  What does it say?”

My leaf said, “Wait.” 

It’s hard to see progress from the middle.  In any endeavor: a work of art, raising children, building a school, planting a garden, sometimes all we can do is wait.  Wait, and trust that our seeds are being kept safe and warm until the rain.  Wait, and trust that we are moving forward – inch by inch.

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, because who can resist either John Denver or Muppets...

 

Letting Mama Bear Hibernate

For all that popular culture and literature like to extol the protective instincts of the “Mama Bear,” the mother who will move Heaven and Hell for her child, I think my greatest parenting joy comes from the moments when I can let my maternal bear hibernate in her cave and watch my children fight their own battles – whether their foes come from without or from within.

No one ever told me how vividly the memories of my own school days would stick to my brain, and to my soul.  As a kid, I assumed that adults had their brains wiped somewhere in their 20s.  That was the only logical explanation for the obtuse refusal of the grownups to fix or to even understand the social catastrophes of my life.  Nothing else could explain why my parents seemed so insouciant about the fact that everyone hated me, that so-and-so had stolen my best friend, and that it was obvious that the whole class was laughing at me.  And nothing but a mind-wipe could possibly render parents clueless enough to suggest that their socially awkward daughter stand up for a classmate who was truly being bullied.

I was committed to evading the amnesia of adulthood.  I would remember my childhood so that I could make sure that my kids never had to deal with pain, discomfort, humiliation, or unpopularity.  I would have the magic words to fix everything for them, to make schoolwork easy and classmates congenial.

Ok, so I’m not sure where I was planning to get the magic wand, but plans forged in adolescence aren’t always heavy on concrete details.  Still, it was with a jolt of betrayal toward the 13-year-old within, that I heard the adult line come out of my own mouth when my kids began to come home with the same litany of complaints and angst.

Did I immediately telephone the teacher that my daughter accused of “favoring the popular kids?”  No.  Ignoring the ‘how-could-you’s’ of my interior teenager, I found myself commenting that teachers tended to focus on the students who put forth the best work as examples and on the students who need the most help, and that if she wanted the teacher’s attention, perhaps she could do more to make her work shine.  “Way to be supportive, Mom.”

When my kids complained that some children were teasing another child, did I call the school demanding intervention?  No.  I said to my own children, “Well, where were you?  Did you tell them that they were being mean?”  My comment quoting the maxim “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is that good men stand by and do nothing,” was met with eyerolls.

Those are the days when I question my non-interference policy, and I wonder if my children’s lives wouldn’t really be a bit easier if I were the sort of mom who regulated their social and academic interactions, who leapt to their defense rather than saying, “Well, maybe we should talk about ways you could handle that next time.”

I actually broke down and polled Caitlin and Aidan one day during a period of grammar school unrest (historians and sociologists should spend more time in elementary schools if they want to understand social upheaval).  “Would you prefer for me to talk to your teachers or to other parents when you’re having problems with other kids or in class, or do you want me and Dad to stay the heck out of it?”

“Stay the heck out of it!”  The response was horrified and unanimous.

Ok, good enough for me.  And yet, the Mama Bear sometimes growls in the back of her cave, lumbering toward the entrance.

Two things happened this week, small things, but enough to shove her back into hibernation for a while:

Sierra came home from school commenting that a couple of the boys from her class were teasing a friend of hers in aftercare.  “They told him he wasn’t saying his words right,” she said indignantly.  I steeled myself for the ‘teachable moment’ conversation, wondering if I was going to have to break my rule and intervene in the class social dynamic.   Before I could breathe, Sierra went on, “I told him that he should just ignore them and not play with them or talk around them if they were going to be mean.”

Oh.  “And did you say anything to them,” I asked.  Bigger and tougher kids than my 40 lb sprite have bowed to peer pressure before now. 

“I told them that people say their words their own way and that they shouldn’t pick on people about how they talk.”

Ok, then.  Loyalties and friendships of six-year-olds shift like clouds blown across the sky, so I’m not really worried that any of the parties involved will be scarred for life, or that some irretrievable social order is being set in 1^st grade.  But, Sierra wasn’t just telling me a story; she was telling me loud-and-clear that she could fight her own battles.

 

The second episode is a little more convoluted, and a little more subtle.  As referenced earlier, Caitlin struggles with the concepts of work and achievement.  Bright, creative, and reasonably talented in art, music, and academics, she’s used to things coming easily.  She’s never really had to struggle to achieve an acceptable level of competence, and being forced to put effort, discipline, or practice into a project annoys her.  Actually, it infuriates her.

As she  teachers (and parents) have begun to expect higher levels of effort in schoolwork, music, etc., Caitlin’s mature front has started to crack and we’ve seen some signs of adolescent victimhood.  Just as I was beginning to wonder if she really would find her own way out of this, and was considering breaking my only 2-week-old pact to not bug her about her work as long as she promised to put full effort into it, she made a comment that changed everything.  “Where is the poem book?  I’ve decided to memorize ‘If’.”  I’ll leave it to you to determine the connection.  Enjoy…

  

 

Keeping Time

We’re haunted by a clock.

It’s impossible to have any literary sensibility and not be fascinated by the narrative potential of a clock.  A clock with a door, and a pendulum, even better.  Even the means by which the clock returned to our family had thriller-mystery overtones.   Let’s face it, there’s something inherently sinister about clocks and clock-makers.  A woman goes alone to pick up the family clock from being repaired and…

Is she kidnapped?  Has the shop been ransacked?  Is the wizened clock-maker dead?  Does he pass her a cryptic message with a bloody hand?

What if there is no shop with a creaking door and timepieces whirring, ticking, and chiming beneath dim eves?  What if the clock-man has retired, he tinkers with his last remaining projects, one at a time in his garage?  What if he asks the woman to meet him in a shopping center parking lot – years after she had nearly forgotten the place of the clock in her life?  Does the plot change?  Will she be stuffed into a van by masked men with machine guns?  Are there Tsarist jewels hidden within the workings?  Drugs?  Code?  Computer chips?

“Oh my God, you’re going to be killed!”  My sister’s response when I told her that I was meeting a man in a white Toyota Tundra in a strip mall parking lot to pick up our grandparents’ clock was a classic blend of horror and amusement.  We like our drama.  The suspense scenarios at least mitigated her irritation that I had told no one that the clock had been gone for years.

This isn’t an heirloom grandfather clock, hand carved by a distant ancestor fleeing an oppressive regime or while whiling away the darkness of winter in a pioneer cabin.  Our clock stands about 20 high, and while the carving is intricate and the Roman numeraled face appropriately yellow with age, as far as I know, my grandparents found it in an antique shop.  Still, at an estimated age of 120-130 years, it is one of the oldest possessions of our modern, wandering family.  We have no ancestral abode; any jewelry dates back a scant couple of generations; I think there may be a family Bible – somewhere.  More importantly, though, for my sister and I, the ticking pendulum and baritone chimes are key notes in the soundtrack of our childhood.

Further back than my memory, the clock sat at the wall end of the peninsula dividing the working kitchen from Grandma and Grandpa’s breakfast nook.  Seeming to grow from the counter and wall, it was less of an ornament than a fixture.  I think some part of my larval brain perceived the clock as an organ of the house, the heart perhaps, though the metaphor may be too obvious.  Still, so long as we heard the tick of the clock, the half-hour bong in the void of night, Steph and I knew, lying on the impossibly hard mattress of the sewing-room pull-out bed, that morning would come, that Grandpa would make pancakes (with beer) and that Grandma would let us make hot chocolate, stirring the powder into the milk with the tiniest of whisks.

The clock would count down the seconds of cold dark, of unfamiliar creaks, of the Akita’s rustling pace as he did sentry duty along the hardwood hallway, of a sister who stole the covers with knees and elbows.  The clock anchored our dreamships as we were cast ashore into the disorientation of a room that was not our own.  It told us that our parents were just down the hall, squashed into one of the twin beds of Dad’s old room.  It told us that our grandparents would welcome us into the soft bed of their oddly shell-pink and silver bedroom for cuddles and stories of Robin Hood, Maid Marian and their ‘beer-busts and barbeques’ after being chased by the Sheriff of Nottingham on his Raleigh bicycle.

Those stories are gone now, lingering ghost-like, only in our heads.  Steph and I never recount them, fearing perhaps that we’ve remembered them differently, and that our opposing memories might counteract each other, vaporizing the past.  Inherited – a dusty word, crumbling with the desiccated lines of loss.  I inherited the clock.

“Do you remember how it works?”  The clock man, benevolent, middle-aged, and not in the least sinister, smiled at me patiently.

Works?  It’s a clock.  It always ran.  Until it stopped.  It was always there, to be visited, to reassure me, to tell me that the world was safe.  Until it wasn’t.  This is the difference between childhood and adulthood, the realization that clocks, families, and lives require maintenance; that the permanent is ephemeral; and that we have to hold the key and know how to hang the pendulum.  “I never knew,” I fumbled with the pieces of the explanation.  “It wasn’t working when I inherited it.”

I didn’t try to tell him – this kind stranger in the daylight of asphalt and white sidewalk – that the ticking of the clock had stopped coincident with the faltering of my grandmother’s own heartbeat.  I didn’t tell him that when she died, claimed finally by the fluids left behind by a faltering heart, I inherited a broken clock, its pendulum wrapped in a paper towel.  I didn’t tell him that every month my clock was in his shop, through the three remaining years of my grandfather’s life, and the nearly six years since, that I have felt my failure as the guardian of the uncounted seconds.

I didn’t tell him as my hand closed around the cool butterfly wings of the brass key, that I wasn’t ready to be the person who made the clock work, that I didn’t know the stories, that I never collected the tall-tales nor the real life memories of our war hero grandfather in his last year.  My sister listened, she sat by and listened in those last weeks before his blood cells completed their conquest, as Grandpa talked of the things he never spoke of in life, of the triumphs and horrors of a war he’d spent 60 years forgetting.  I didn’t go to hear the stories of a dying man, because my grandfather wasn’t dying.  I was just getting the clock repaired so that he could come and visit it.  He could show me how to use it.  He would beat the leukemia like he’d defeated every other enemy.

The clock just chimed eight.  The kids watched as I placed it on our piano yesterday, hung the pendulum, and wound the hands to the correct time, pausing every half-hour for the whirr and bong.  My grandfather’s picture sits next to the clock.  I like to see him on the piano, to imagine him thumping the time into the heads of my less than enthusiastic musicians.  “You’re rushing again,” I hear as my fingers depress the keys of his old flute.  “Here’s the beat.”  4/4 time pounded into my skull.  Time is the place where reality meets imagination.

“If the clock were bigger,” said my son this morning, “and we owned this house, we could attach it to the wall and make a door, and a tunnel down below the house, and my room could be down there.”  His sister had come into the office around 6:30 because she and her “Little One” wanted “to watch the clock.”

Three faces watched yesterday as I closed the etched glass door of the clock’s case.  They filed out of the room as I returned to the computer.  The pendulum ticked away the seconds on my article’s deadline, chiding my clicks over to Facebook.  Before the next 30 minute chime, my oldest daughter knocked on the door.  “I really feel like baking something.  I don’t know why.  I just feel like baking.”

Two girls in terry-cloth jogging shorts jostle at their grandmother’s elbow.  “Always level the flour with the back of the knife.  Like this.”  A white cloud blows into the canister.  “You only need half the sugar.”  The picture shifts and the grandfather hands over the whisk.  “Put your back into it.”  “Fold the whites in gently.  You want the pancakes to be fluffy.”  “The secret is beating the whites separately.  That and the beer.”  The clock ticks away the revolutions of the whisk.  Another scene: the kitchen is hot in the July afternoon.  “Isn’t it ready yet?”  The girl has been stirring for hours.  She thinks that if they just throw in the nuts and shredded coconut that the frosting might be thick enough.  “It will get there,” says her grandmother.  “You won’t think that it will, but it always boils.  Just keep stirring.”   The girl knows, this has been her job, every year since she could see over the stove top, stirring the frosting for her dad’s German Chocolate birthday cake.

My children baked amicably together for four hours on the day the clock returned to our house.  Bowls and pans were put into the dishwasher. Cello practice went off without a hitch; Caitlin conquered Vivaldi and Aidan played the first measures of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with gusto.  I can’t see any lumps, but they have hard heads, my kids.  As far as I can tell, there are no packets of cocaine, no thumb drives stuck to the underside of the clock, no gems hidden in the mechanism.  But, something else came home with that clock.  We are haunted by some combined spirit of time, memory, loss, and love.   I have been given the key, and ready or not, I am the one who knows how the clock works.

My youngest came into the office a few minutes after her sister, past the noise of intent debate from the kitchen.  “Sissy wants to know what kind of cake Grandpa wants for his birthday?” 

I grinned at the clock.  Sorry Grandma, but I know a secret.  “Grandpa doesn’t really like cake.  Why don’t you guys make him a pie?”

Circling Round

                                    Make new friends, but keep the old,

                                    One is silver and the other’s gold.

                                    A circle’s round; it has no end,

                                    That’s how long you’re going to be my friend.

 

Kindergarteners and parents circled the summer garden, hands joined and singing.  As we circled, the teachers tapped shoulders, and motioned for some to join them outside the circle.  We joined their chain, and coiled along behind.  As the last repetition drew to a close, the feet stopped.  Two circles had formed.  The inner circle held the younger children, now the “big kindergarteners,” who would remain in the sunlit rooms for another year, mentoring the 41/2 year olds who will seem so small in September.  The outer circle was formed by the children and parents who were moving on – to first grade, or to other schools.  Their year had come full circle.

“Good-bye, Sierra.  Good-bye, Sierra.  Good-bye, Sierra.  It’s time to say good-bye.”  The children sang and laughed, as one-by-one their friends were summoned to the teachers with their ritual dismissal song.  One-by-one, they hugged Teacher Karina and Teacher Kelly, accepted their small gifts and returned to the circle.  One-by-one, Little Ones (don’t call them dolls), the treasured small friends of the kindergarten, were placed in pouches, and also dismissed by name.  The Little Ones who had come for the first-years will return to Little-Land to spend the summer with Fairy Mother.  However, for the older children, their Little Ones will accompany them home, to support them in their new adventures.  Petal, Sierra’s Little One, had already gotten a head start on summer break and , like Stevenson’s “lazy little shadow,” “ had stayed at home behind [her] and was fast asleep in bed.” 

Nearly two years ago, Sierra was the smallest and youngest member of the Climbing Rose kindergarten.  Barely 41/2, she squeaked into the age cut-off.  A brand new kindergartener with a brand new teacher.  Yesterday, I cried as she walked with deceptive demureness toward her teachers then took a flying leap, anchoring herself to Karina’s lap.  My last kindergartener is now a first-grader, and her teacher, the teacher who has nurtured her with humor, discipline, and boundless love will be moving on to her own blessings.  Teacher Karina and Teacher Kelly will remain part of our circle, friends of gold, but Sierra has moved to the outer circle, on to the grades, to a teacher as yet unknown. 

In September, first graders are welcomed into the grades, the heart of the Waldorf curriculum, with the “rose ceremony.”  As they are greeted by the teacher who will carry them through the lower grades, each child is presented with a red rose by his or her “eighth-grade” buddy.  The eighth-graders, many of whom are Waldorf ‘lifers,’ will partner with their first graders throughout the year, leading by example, showing them the ways of the school, and giving them someone ‘cool’ to admire.  And, at the end of the year, the circle of the rose will be completed.

“That’s Bay’s class.  And Curtis’s class.”  Sierra, sitting on my thigh (and incidentally squashing my sciatic against the wood seat of the too-short chair), whispered as the seventh-grade recited their verse.  Something caught in my chest as they were dismissed, to “sit down as eighth graders.”

“Sissy’s class!”

I feel my destiny
My destiny finds me
I feel my star
My star finds me
I feel my goals in life
My goals in life are finding me
My soul and the great world are one

The sixth-grade’s song was familiar from their class play; their teacher had set to music one of Rudolph Steiner’s verses.  Yet, familiarity doesn’t prevent tears.  Sierra’s hair got very wet as I watched her sister’s class, suddenly no longer round-cheeked children, sing with the mingled poise and acute self-consciousness of adolescence and “sit down as seventh graders.”  It’s coming, the end of that circle, more quickly than I could wish.

“Zoe’s class!”  No, Sierra doesn’t have a sibling in fifth grade.  Her brother has a classmate with a sister in fifth (now sixth.)  But it went this way through the grades.  As the now fifth grade stood for the last time as fourth graders, Sierra proclaimed, “Tyson’s class.  Oh, and Nicole.  And Carpenter.  I know lots of people in that class."  By the time she said, “Aid-y’s class!” I was starting to get it.  The circle is a spiral, or maybe a Mobius strip. The close of her time in kindergarten isn’t kicking my child into an unknown world.  She is joining a larger circle, a circle in which she already sees herself as a link.  “I know everybody,” she said.  Not everybody, but she has found connections to each of the grades, and in doing so, has begun to picture herself in their place.  In the rhythm of the curriculum, the children find both predictability and adventure.  Last night, as we lingered around a picnic table with two other families, Caitlin explained her hatred of cauliflower, stemming oddly from a fifth grade botany lesson.  Tyson, the now-fifth-grade brother of one of Aidan’s best friends, broke his customary quiet to say, “I’m studying botany next year!” They make the connections, find the links, and draw upon each other to move from one point in the circle to the next.

Sierra’s hair was soaked by the time my son and his friends – when did they all get so tall and sturdy looking?—sat down “as fourth graders.”  They had completed their verse and song (in Hebrew!) with word and note perfection. And with grins and a surreptitious fist-pump or two, that class owned their new role.  They know exactly who and what they are.  Uncertainty and self-consciousness will come to them in a year or two as adolescence begins to shine its spotlight, but for now, they are nine years old and invincible.

“That’s Joey’s brother,” Sierra pointed at one of the eighth graders – the brother of one of Caitlin’s classmates and son of Caitlin’s teacher.  Each member of the graduating class was called up by full name.  Their years in the school were announced.  From the lifer with ten years behind her to Ricky (Joey’s brother) who joined the school this year, each has made his or her mark upon the school and has earned the right to stand before their younger peers as testament to the completion of the cycle.

And, then, the first graders were asked to join their buddies.  Sierra remained silent as the class she knows best – many of whom were the ‘big’ kindergarteners when she started school, and with whom she played and laughed – stepped forward to stand before their eighth graders.  I wish I had the words to the verse that the first-graders recited, but it began something like this: “When we were much smaller and you seemed so much taller…”  The first grade told in verse the tale of their year, from their first moments in that September rose ceremony.  And as they finished, each first grader turned and presented an eighth grader with a red rose. 

Scarlet roses clutched in their chubby hands, first graders enter their classroom for the first time beneath an arch of flowers held aloft by their parents.  They process beneath the stems and petals, are greeted with a handshake by their new teacher, and enter the classroom of chalk and wonder for the first time. 

Scarlet roses clutched in elegant and strong hands – hands that have learned to knit, to cook, to play recorder and string; hands that have drawn runes and written of the fall of Rome; hands that have joined in song, and dance – eighth graders depart their school beneath an arch of sunflowers lifted to a (finally!) summer sky by teachers and parents who must now stretch to raise the stems above the teenaged heads.  They bid farewell with a handshake to their first graders and to the school as they leave for a world of new wonders.

Epilogue:

Sierra was quiet as she watched her friends hand their roses to their buddies.  “Next year, that will be you; are you ready?” I whispered.  She shook her head.

As I pulled the covers to her chin last night, Sierra asked, “Will I get a rose tomorrow?”

“No, not tomorrow.  In September.  In three months.”

“I’m ready, Mommy.”

“I know you are.”

In September, Mike and I will watch as Sierra receives her rose and greets her teacher for the first time.  She doesn’t know who her “buddy” will be, but it’s a good bet that that eighth-grader will be known to her.  As spring morphs to summer, she will return that rose to the one who has shown her the way.  And, in that following fall, Caitlin will offer a rose to a child who seems impossibly small.  And the circle will continue.

Rap, River, and Rainbow

The calendar reminds me that we approach the season of chaos.  I’ve written before about the rhythm of the school year, particularly that of the Waldorf schools.  Though I’m not inherently a particularly structured person and my thoughts tend to jump from A to Q to 42, parenting has taught me to appreciate the value of structure and the discipline a framework provides.

Each of my children’s classes has had events or moments that bookended this school year.  The kindergarten began the year with their capes and swords of light, preparing to face the dragons of development.   They will close out the last week of school with a trip to the river, braving the chilly water and sailing wooden boats they have made with their own hands.  The third grade’s year has a more subtle rhythm: that of the season and of the harvest as they have tended their garden, learned to cook the food they have grown, watched the shearing of sheep, and learned to card and spin the wool.  (You haven’t lived until you’ve heard a 9 year old very seriously discuss fiber crimp while petting a sheep.)  But, even for them, the end of the year is a celebration, proof of their accomplishments – today, according to rumor, they will make cake and ice cream in cooking class.  And the sixth grade?  The sixth grade has completed the cycle with perfect symmetry.

In September, it was a rough and tumble class, pulsing with a fire of their own, that journeyed to Mt. Lassen to study geology.  In the fall, they were at the beginning of the metamorphosis of puberty, fluctuating wildly from child to teen at a moment’s notice.  Though they were a great and polite group of kids in the fall, there was, at times, an almost feral energy that mirrored the rugged mountains and geologic turbulence of the volcano.

We have just returned from another camping trip, closing the year with a visit to Cache Creek Canyon Regional Park.  Like the rounder hills of the Coastal Range, the children have matured.  Some of their rough edges have been worn away; the drama of their evolution has quieted.  Like the landscape, they are anything but static, yet rather than eruptions of steam, we saw the trickling cascades of miniature rock falls.  Meals and activities ran smoothly, even in the face of Wednesday’s rainstorm and subsequent flooding of a tent.  Changing the direction of the day was no longer (as Caitlin would say) like “herding cats with bagpipes.”

Were they perfect angels?  Don’t be silly; they’re 12 year olds.  There is still a wide range of maturity within the class and within each of the kids.  A few experiments in pyrotechnics still needed to be curtailed.  Two pairs of stray and sodden socks went unclaimed.  It was occasionally necessary to point out that rocks thrown into the river should be directed away from one’s classmates.  But something has shifted.

As a class, they have learned (thank you, Dr. Tan) to accept order as a natural part of things rather than a burden imposed by authority.  Their energy is (for now, at least) directed toward meeting challenges rather than resisting structure.  This will probably shift back in a year or two; eighth graders study rebellions for a reason.

Yet, on this trip, rather than whining about assignments, we saw focused work and rehearsals for their Talent program and “Zodiac Rap.”  Well, mostly focused – there were a few comments of “we don’t rap.”  But the talent performances were as engaging and as varied as the kids and showcased their uniqueness.   We saw a dance routine performed by a group of friends that almost always seems to function as a unit.  We were treated to an engaging storytelling set by a future Garrison Keillor or David Sedaris.  We saw a magic show accomplished with poise and panache despite an initial flub or two – and all the more impressive because of it.  A budding novelist gave a synopsis of her work-in-progress and displayed her fabulous illustrations to the delight of her classmates.  Forget American Idol: the song and acoustic guitar performance by one of the girls would put most of those wanna-bes to shame.  She even impressed the professional singer/songwriter that was the camp host.  And, of course, near and dear to my heart was the vocal/flute duet of “Rainbow Connection” sung by Caitlin and played by one of her friends.  Though they weren’t note perfect, I loved their performance for its sheer bravery: the flautist in question has only been playing for a year and I know for a fact that the music for the piece was only downloaded for her a couple of weeks ago, and to see my introvert daughter stand and sing solo in front of her class was a delight. 

They were all about bravery this trip, these kids.  Not the ‘I dare you’ sort of bravado, but a quieter ‘I can do this’ acceptance of challenge.  Tents were set up with minimal adult involvement.  Raps were written according to assignment and performed with a day of prep.  Even the least athletic joined in a volleyball game.  And currents were swum.

Our campground had an amenity one doesn’t expect in Yolo County – a beach, a real, sandy beach.  Bracketed by rapids above and below, our section of Cache Creek had a shallow, quiet bend near the beach, a moderate current one could cross to still water on the other bank, and a more intense current just downriver from the upper rapids.  Much of the trip was spent testing their strength, skill, and courage against the current.  A few of the stronger swimmers tried the crossing first, at the lower, slower current, adjusting their trajectory for the river’s flow.  Once the whole class had made the crossing, and a couple of the adults showed that even grownups could do it, they were off to a new challenge, swimming the slightly faster waters and even riding the current back to the slower waters.

The waters came from above as well as below.  On the second day of the trip, we were treated to a five hour deluge that resulted in one total failure of tent, and one failure of ground cloth (mine).  Yet, despite the clothing and sleeping bags spread on rocks and cars to dry, despite the hours in the tents in the morning, we heard few complaints, and if anyone said, “I want to go home,” they were well out of adult earshot.

Around 3:30, a rainbow arced over the hills to the east of us.  I yelled to my daughter, “Hey, Caitlin a rainbow!”  She looked up, shrugged, and focused her eyes on the net.  The child who said, “I can’t play volleyball.  I can’t do sports with balls.  I always get a bloody nose,” was ready to serve.  And, maybe, that was the real magic.

Spring Fever

You can barely see them, jutting from the naked branches of the trees.  Tiny buds with nearly microscopic filaments, the first scouts of spring.  Soon the trees will explode into bursts of lace and perfume.  Spring is short here in the Central Valley.  February teases us with days of pastel sun and fresh bloom before plunging us back into the last deluges of grey.  The clouds of pink and white are ephemeral, soon dashed to the ground by storms and replaced with sedate leaves.

Those early petals and first sparks of February sun invade my mind each year, burrowing into my body and igniting a cascade of restless energy that builds inside me.  This time of year, I can sympathize with the kids who linger at recess and stare out of windows, dreaming of puddles, new grass, and tree houses.  I can sympathize with teens, squirming with prickly hormones, dreaming of fast cars and hot dates.

Spring is dangerous, deceptive in its pretty dress of virginal lace and flower.  The gentle colors and soft winds belie the Siren song blown on the winds, calling us into the wild.  An NPR piece leads with the statement that, “Almost no musical work has had such a powerful influence or evoked as much controversy as Igor Stravinsky's ballet score “The Rite of Spring”.”  Stravinsky knew what he was about.  Spring is not gentle or kind; it fills humanity with the darkness of creativity.  It pulls us into primal places where sense has no meaning or purpose.

We associate spring with new life. Our modern symbols include fluffy ducks and chicks, pastel eggs dotted with cartoon stickers, and plush bunnies.  These safe, plasticized trinkets seek to tame the fear of spring’s wilderness.  We prefer to forget that life is born of fire, passion, and pain.  Even in the Christian tradition of sacrifice and rebirth that is Easter, we focus on the rolling away of the stone, rather than upon the darkness of Christ’s Passion, where ‘passion’ means suffering.

To create – life or art -- is to break something: to break boundaries, to break rules, to break the barriers of propriety that we set upon ourselves and to delve into the wilderness of desire and madness.  The new shoot or bloom destroys its hard casing, abandons protection to grow.  In the mayhem of spring, nature calls to us to do the same – to cast aside our safe shells, to expand, to thrust ourselves fully into the ephemeral splendor of our lives, to call upon the wild power stirring within us.

Summer will come soon, bringing the lassitude of long, hot days, of shady leaves and sedate afternoons.  The heat will drain the restless energy from us, and we will be sensible once again.  But for now, the recklessness that is spring begins to stir.  Can you feel it?

Solstice Shift -- Thoughts on the Davis Waldorf School Winter Concert

It happened again this year.  The metamorphosis occurs in a flash of light against pressed, white cotton, the dull gleam of black polyester, the light-swallowing glow of velvet, and sometimes denim.  They change in a quickening of mahogany and sinew, of nickel, brass, and uplifted voices.  Before the houselights dim, they are familiar, our children – boisterous larval forms of potential.

Something changes: not as they poke, giggle, and shuffle onto stage, not even perhaps in the glare of the footlights, as they wave with varying degrees of enthusiasm at smiling parents, or grin in self-conscious tolerance at the yells of a younger sibling, and as they correct each other with grins while taking their marks.  Something changes: at the uplifted finger of teacher, raised bow of conductor.  For the older children, we see it as they wrestled battered rental instruments into submission before their music stands.  The instruments change, too, in the borrowed glow of the stage.  My daughter’s rental cello, chipped and scratched by the erosion of years of students, with its colored tapes to mark finger position, and iffy bridge, gleamed against her black trousers.  With the older children, it changes with the first strike of a tuning note.

They shuffle in their seat as the prelude plays, yell to their friends as families wander in staggering herds to upright seats.  They slouch, slide, and sulk, tucking aggravating shirttails into submission and finger-combing hair mussed by contraband ball caps.  They giggle, whisper, and finger-shoot each other, run in packs to bathroom and drinking fountain.  Even the 7^th and 8^th graders playing the carols as the theater fills do not take this seriously.  They’ve been at this long enough to recognize an audience, and they don’t have one yet; they are background.  Then, the teacher hosting the evening takes his mike, low voice – the one that always has a grin behind it – carrying the room.  Restless grownups settle down, poising cameras and shooting one last whisper to a friend.  The first piece is introduced, and it’s on.

The same junior-high students whose pleasant holiday tunes accompanied the filling of the hall transform as their instructor raises her bow.  Around the semi-circle, bows meet strings, and in the breath before the first notes of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” sound, faces change.  The shift is in their faces; it is there, too, in the crook of elbow, arch of finger, but mainly in the face.  In the moment of performance, they are no longer children – no longer the rough, proto-people.  Idiosyncratic touches: Santa hats, ties, skater-inspired modifications to concert attire, Beatles haircuts, and varying posture slide into the union of purpose.  They are not children, they are performers, and in their faces, we glimpse the outlines of the people they will present to the world.

Something in this transformation is, I think, unique to their schooling.  The arts inform and infuse the daily curriculum of a Waldorf school.  Kindergarteners create “people-plays” from the stories teacher tells.  First graders begin playing wooden flutes in class, a year before they will perform on stage.  Lessons are acted as well as absorbed.  Complex songs and rounds are learned from early childhood on, and by fourth or fifth grade, Waldorf students argue as knowledgeably and casually about multi-part harmony as other kids do about movies and video games.  By the time they take the stage with their classmates in second grade, the performance grows from the child. 

I think this is the difference with this winter concert.  I remember the Christmas programs of my own youth, of the roles into which we had been jammed around Thanksgiving break, roles that fitted about as well as the polyester angel costumes and that, like the costumes, itched in all the wrong places.  It is this memory of awkward hesitation that cringes when my son refuses to tell me what his class will perform, or my daughter announces a few weeks before the concert that she finally has the music for the piece her class will play.  How can I help Aidan memorize his songs?  How will Caitlin be ready in time; she’s not the most devoted cellist.  Each year, I fret, bound by the shadows of my own stage frights, the memories of tolerant faces of pained grownups as instruments squeaked and lines were forgotten.  Each year, I forget what, by now, I know.  Aidan doesn’t need my help learning a song.  Caitlin will play whether she has the music for a year or a week.  This is what they do.  The words, the music, the performance comes from them; it flows outward, fitting each child.  They will have their share of rough rehearsals, of missed lines or missed notes.  They will display varying degrees of talent and enthusiasm, but, from earnest second grader through veteran teen, each will claim a spot on the stage without fear or irony.

The second grade teacher will kneel before her class, finger conducting and mouthing the words, but she will not carry the song.  Even for the younger children, when they open their mouths, the shuffling, muted shoves, and nose-wiping fade to the back.  They sing.  At the opposite end of the spectrum, the junior-high teachers needn’t worry about pranks or rebellion.  By sixth grade, art has become part of their physiology.  Whether they can carry a tune, regardless of level of home practice or private lesson, each face on stage says the same thing.  “Here I am.  This is what I do.”  And this is the gift that I hope my kids will take into the world: the ability to step onto the stage of humanity and to say, “Here I am.  This is what I do.”

Moving Parts

Today we move.  Move forward, move back.  When I was a child, the phrase “moving day” had a ring of triumph, of excitement tinged with the fear of the unknown.  Today, the phrases that run through my head come from the books I have read to my own children in this house. 

“In the great green room…goodnight house…goodnight mouse.” Ok, so I won’t miss the mouse or his thousands of friends and family.

“In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines…”  Our lives have never been lived in straight lines, two or otherwise, but Madeline is stuck in my head.  What would Madeline do, if forced to leave that house?  The girl who “was not afraid of mice [who] loved winter, snow, and ice” would probably see the opportunities for new adventure.  When I raised the possibility of adventure to Caitlin (whom, by the way, I wanted to name Madeline) she said, “I’m like Lucy Ann (a character in Enid Blyton’s Adventure series).  I don’t really like adventures while I’m in them.”

That’s the thing with adventures, even fictional ones.  When the characters, even those who dream of daring exploits, find themselves in the midst of said exploit, all they really want is to return home.  “And the ceiling was hung with vines, and the walls became the world all around, and an ocean tumbled by with a private boat for Max.”  Yet, though Max was made king of all the wild things, what he wanted in the end was to be “where somebody loved him best.”  And in the end, his boat returned him to his room where “supper was waiting for him.  And it was still hot.”

‘I want to go home’ has been a mantra of mine for decades – when stressed, embarrassed, worried, or frightened, I hear my mouth say “I want to go home.”  On occasion, I have said this while standing in my own shower or lying in my own bed.  Home.  This house has been home for twelve years, and yet, it hasn’t.  This town, this region has never been ours.  We have no close neighbors, all of the interactive portions of our lives: work, school, shopping, friends, family happen elsewhere.  In a sense, by moving to Davis, I do feel as though I am returning home.

I was raised in Merced.  But, I grew up in Davis.  Twenty-two years ago this month, I spread my comforter across my dorm bed, and unpacked my belongings for the first time under a roof that did not belong to my parents.  I paid my first phone bill in Davis; got in my first car accident; wrote my first checks; bounced my first checks; had my first kiss; failed my first exam; fell in love for the first time; had my heart broken for the first time; took my first drinks; had my first sexual experiences; bought my first groceries; filed my first taxes; marched in my first rallies.  And, in Davis, for the first time, I found myself.

That was two decades ago.  Davis has changed; I have changed.  We have both expanded.  We both have a few more sags and wrinkles.  We have evolved.  I haven’t yet decided if I feel as though I am a warrior returning home after an adventure, or if I am an adult child crawling back home after failure.  Can I choose both?

As my thoughts turn away from this house, and toward our new home, the lines that run through my head come from a deeper past, a past that is pre-children, nearly pre-adulthood.  “Homeward bound/ I wish I was/ Homeward Bound.” 

Note: Quotes in this essay are from Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown, Madeline, by Ludwig Bemelmans, Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak, and song lyrics performed by Simon and Garfunkel.  All of my books and CD’s are packed, and so I quote from memory, accepting all responsibility for any errors.

Syncope

In music, syncope is a break in the rhythm, discordant notes that interrupt the monotony and provide interest or surprise.  These notes or phrases are musical non-sequiters.  Syncopation creates the underpinnings of musical forms such as jazz or rock.  In the right proportions, syncopation renders a musical composition more pleasing; it adds depth and emotion.  In excess, syncopation creates cacophony.  Ours has been a syncopated summer.

In the kids’ Waldorf schooling, we learn of the rhythms inherent to life: the rhythm of the day, of the seasons, of the year, of the growth of a child, animal, or plant.  As I’ve written before, we come to miss the consciousness of this rhythm during the summer.  At the beginning of summer, the break from structure is a rhythmic exhalation of its own – the release from schedule gives the sense of promise and possibility, the sense that anything can happen.  This sense is exhilarating at first – watch the kids on the playground in the last week of school, the energy and excitement that bursts from them.  However, like all freedoms, the freedom of summer soon overwhelms with unknowns.  How soon do your children begin to ask, “What are we going to do this summer?  Where are we going?”

This has been the summer of the great unknown.  Our rhythm, while seemingly chaotic, has possessed for years a monotony all its own.  Summer has been no exception: mom and dad work specific days; the kids attend camps, visit grandparents, watch too much TV, and complain about being bored.  Somewhere in August, we eke out a family road trip.

No summer camps.

Our older children decided that they really didn’t want to attend camp, to face a routine different from school, to build relationships with strangers, this year.  Perhaps sensing the oncoming storm, this May they were in hunker-down mode.  Even Aidan the outgoing and Caitlin the adventurous sought comfort in the familiar, the known.  Our bank account thanked them.  Though, as we face a more extreme end-of-summer-TV-detox than usual (thanks, Grandma!), I can’t help wondering if I should have pushed.

Bye-bye home.

In the last weeks of June, we received notice that the inevitable had come to pass.  Our home was foreclosed upon, and we spent from June through July searching for a rental.  Today is Monday, we move on Wednesday.  As of right now, we are officially squatters in the only home our children have ever known.

The sensible question to ask here, and the one, oddly, that no one has asked (at least not to our faces) is, “If you knew that you were in danger of losing your home, why are your kids in private school?”  Perhaps other people have simply been too kind, but rest assured, we have asked ourselves this question.  I think the answer lies in the meaning of home.  For many years, our home has been a house, a shelter, but despite our best efforts, not really a place of rest, solace, or community.  It is an old house, isolated, and requiring more maintenance, improvement, and care than we have time, energy, or money.  Every weed that springs through the gravel, every mouse that scurries across the counter reminds us of our failures.  Pulling into the driveway has been like pulling up to a giant billboard painted with the words, “YOU CAN’T DO THIS.”  On the other hand, Davis Waldorf School has provided our children, and by extension us, with the opportunity to say, “I can do this.  I can climb a tree, plant a garden, knit a hat, play an instrument, carve a pumpkin, and tie my shoes.  I can interact with other parents.  I can arrange playdates.  I can decorate for an auction.  I can participate in the school board.” As the responses to my pathetic ‘can anyone help us move’ e-mail have flooded in, I see how bleak our lives would have been if we had made the practical choice of moving the kids to the local school and trying to save the house.  The trauma for the children would have been greater, removing them from friends and a rhythm they call home to a vast unknown, and we may still have lost the house.  Regardless, our melody would have shifted to a dirge.  The comment made by almost all of our friends has been, “we’re so sorry for your situation, but we are so glad you are going to be close to us.”  Physical distance is real; ask anyone who has ever tried to maintain a long-distance relationship.  Proximity matters.  By moving to Davis, we are moving closer to the core of our lives.  We are gaining proximity to our friends and to ourselves.  We are going home.

Pop goes the hand!

My personal rhythm cracked this summer along with my fifth metacarpal on my left hand.  Lifting a horse’s hind leg in a maneuver performed thousands of times, I struggled with my reluctant patient, and my little finger was yanked sideways.  As two working hands are something of a requirement for a large animal veterinarian, I have been off work since mid-July.  I define my rhythm and myself through my work – the inevitable result of a life spent meeting goals and checking off boxes.  This summer I have learned to re-define success.  I miss my clients, my patients, and my co-workers, and I wonder what I have lost by being away.  I also wonder, a bit, if my nerve will suffer at all from this event.  Will I cringe the first time a horse moves suddenly?  Will I be less willing to take the chances that are a daily part of my job?  Working with horses is like flying a plane, doing surgery, or even driving a car – self-doubt is not an asset.

The greatest personal jolt this summer has been a positive one, and has come about through my writing.  (Ha!  You expected a cute little one-liner to break up the paragraphs there, didn’t you?  Wouldn’t be syncope if it was too predictable.)  I have spent the past year writing for this blog and for Blogcritics.org, and submitting pieces to web and print literary magazines.   And, collecting rejection letters for these same pieces.  When the final notices on the foreclosure were posted (yes, on our door), I told my husband, “I have to write about this.  It’s the only way I can deal with it.”  I wrote an essay and submitted it to a couple of publications.  To my shock, it was accepted – by Salon.com.  The publication of this essay in Salon led to a series for The Folsom Telegraph, and a couple of other writing opportunities have begun to poke their heads out of holes.

We move in two days.  School begins in just over a week.  Our lives will shift back into a breathing rhythm, but I hope, and I will work to ensure, that this rhythm is one of live, active breaths, not the snoring of a monotonous slumber.  I have learned to appreciate the value of the gasp, the interest of syncope.

Runners, Pipers, and Tambourines

Bagpipes as a Zen moment?  What can I say?  I’m Scottish. 

The soft skirl of the pipes drifted around the corner of the hillside.  The first hill had been a pain.  The incline did not challenge my body, but my patience had been sorely tried.  Foolishly, I had begun the race in the group with the posted pace for a 10 minute mile.  I knew I could keep the pace for at least 3 miles, though I was uncertain about the entire 6.  As a road race newbie, I hadn’t realized that this group would also include every person who planned to run at least a little.  A block or so past the start, the crush had thinned a bit, and my feet had found a rhythm.  Just as I began to feel that maybe this crazy endeavor was doable, the mob screeched to a halt.  Like gawkers at an accident scene, the masses ahead had hit the first hill and apparently said to themselves, “Oh, this is too steep.  Maybe I’ll just walk this one.”

Needless to say, by the time I crested the hill, I was ready to bite someone.  Then the moment arrived.  The first notes wafted down just as I heard someone say, “Bagpipes?  Really?”

Yes, really.  Silhouetted on an emerald knoll, a group of kilt-clad pipers played against the mist.  Perfect.  Wrong tartan, but that was forgivable.  My grandfather was a McIntosh.  The clan motto is “Touch not the cat bot a glove.”  Basically, mess with us at your peril.  A stretch of asphalt opened before me and my feet found their cadence.

Back in May as I descended from the endorphin rush of my first 5K race, the 6 mile Wharf  to Wharf (Santa Cruz to Capitola) seemed quite reasonable.  ‘Two and a half months to train.  No problem.’  Therein lays the danger of accomplishment.  The human brain is never satisfied.  I caught myself yesterday afternoon seriously contemplating a brochure for a half-marathon in October.  Endorphins are insidious creatures.  What I had failed to foresee in the balm of May was the effect of summer on my will to exercise, or really on my will to do anything.  My physiology functions best from 65-80 F.  I had also been unable to predict the case of shingles that made the notion of a sports bra unbearable for a full week before the race.  Yet, here I was.  6 miles.  The brochure stated quite sternly that runners must keep to a 15 minute/mile pace and that the course would be closed within 90 minutes.  I envisioned myself dragging at the rear of a pack of thousands, calling my husband for a ride somewhere around mile 3, the pointing and mocking onlookers.  I was dragged to the starting line by two factors.  I had told the children that the weekend camping trip was so that mommy could run a race, and I didn’t want them to see me backing out of a goal.  Also, my mother had told me that I should rest the shingles and scratch the race.  39 years, and my mother still hasn’t learned that the best way to get me to do something is to tell me I shouldn’t.  Sorry mom.

Another hill, another corner.  Passing a folk guitarist, a glimpse of the sea.  A Kiss tribute band played on my left, my feet grinned.  Pulling up a long slope I saw my favorite group of the run.  10-15 tie-dye clad musicians lined up behind a sign that read “Sons of the Beach.”  As I passed, a tambourine and soap bubble infused version of “Rawhide” followed me.  Ah, Santa Cruz.

Balloon arches marked each mile.  The first split time depressed me so badly that my feet almost halted there and then.  ‘19minutes, seriously??’  I told my feet that we had started at least 5minutes back and had been held up in traffic.  ‘Get with it.’  The legs heard and obeyed.  The second mile took just over 10 minutes.  At each rainbow arch, my body responded to the called time as to a challenge.  With each mile my pace increased. 

Onlookers lined the roadway.  Far from the jeering phantoms of my insecure imaginings, these people projected lifesaving goodwill.  Generous with their cheers and encouragement, they gave the impression that each of us had our own personal pep squad.  Some held out hoses or sprinklers for those of us longing for a shower.  One lovely man offered a tray of strawberries and orange segments.  The crisp sweetness of that kind orange carried me a full mile.  One mother and her two children held out their hands to ‘high five’ each of us as we passed.  Just past a percussion group, a lone man stood and banged with a mallet on the back of a skillet which rang sweetly across a slough. 

‘Come on,’ called Capitola.  ‘Come see me again.’ 

‘You can do it,’ Santa Cruz pushed me from behind.  ‘You started here.’

Start there, I did.  Certain places weave in and out of our lives like thin gold threads.  From early trips to the beach and Boardwalk with our grandparents through my college years and into those of my sister, Santa Cruz and Capitola have flickered in and out of my life.  Indirectly, my current adult life has its roots along that bay.  Had I missed a party in Santa Cruz 20 years ago, I would not have met my husband 5 years later.  Strange but true.  After all, it is all Dave’s fault.

Saturday had been spent dragging the kids from one old haunt to the next.  Plugging up the hill to the UC Santa Cruz campus, I demanded of the backseat, “Do you want to see where Aunt Steph went to college?”

As we entered the grounds, their enthusiasm turned to confusion.  “Where’s the college?”  “This is it.”  “This doesn’t look like a school; it looks like a forest.”  I grinned to hear them echo my first impressions.  20 years ago, my roommate and I circled the campus endlessly ‘looking for the college.’  It had seemed impossible that the random collection of buildings that sporadically dotted the forest was indeed a university.

Our next stop was Natural Bridges State Beach.  Flashes of the essence of Santa Cruz drifted past:  surfers floating like black seals on the waves, the requisite amateur-painted VW van, the skateboarder towed by a large, enthusiastic dog, the smells of brine, kelp, fog, and fish.  On the beach, the kids caught a connection to home.  “Come on, Aidan.”  Caitlin dragged her brother to a specific vantage point along the shore.  “Look!  See it?  See the rock; it’s the one from the painting.”  They knew the story, knew that mom had painted the scene in oils from a photograph sent by a college friend.  However, this was the first time they realized that mom painted actual places, and that they were visiting a place that had hung on the living room wall longer than their own lives.  Ghosts of my past walked the sands where my children frolicked.  Past and future joined near a crashing, grey surf beneath the spiraling wings of pelicans.

As we parked near the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, a more distant past floated through my memory.  The Boardwalk rang with the excitement of childhood.  Screams and laughter danced above the rumble of surf and roar of rollercoasters.  Grease, salt spray, and tanning lotion ran under the sweetness of cotton candy.  Clutching the hands of my children, I became the child.  My grandparents appeared at every corner.  Glancing at the waves, I heard my grandmother’s mantra as my sister and I ran toward the surf, “Don’t go in past your knees!”  We stopped for lunch and my husband’s jaw dropped as his calorie-conscious wife ordered deep-fried artichoke hearts and a linguica sandwich with grilled onions.  As the crisp grease and metallic artichoke melted onto my tongue, my grandfather’s grin appeared.  My children had a bag of plastic sand toys wedged under the table; the cups of neighboring beer drinkers evoked the memory of hops-scented sand castles.  Grandpa had always saved his beer cup for us to use as a sandcastle mold.  The first tower or two smelled faintly of beer and the paper had a tendency to disintegrate after a couple of trips to the ocean for water, but it was a tradition.  As we draped our bright beach towels over our patch of pillowy sand, I felt the rough edge of brown and white striped terry-cloth.  Grandma line-dried her laundry, and her towels had all of the pliability of coarse-grain sandpaper.  As we emerged from the waves, sunburned, salt-scoured, and sand-crusted, Steph and I stood with meek trepidation as Grandma rubbed us down with the agonizing vigor of love.  We were well into our teens before we managed to convince her that a) we could towel ourselves, and b) that we would really rather not change out of our bathing suits in the middle of the beach with only a towel tented around us.  I resisted the temptation to similarly torture my children.

On the beach, the kids proved themselves as individual as their nicknames – neither clones of each other, nor of my childhood.  Sierra, our “marmot” played happily on the sand, shunning the waves, like a good little land mammal.  Aidan, the “alligator” was happiest in the shallows.  An overly strong wave would cause him to tug at my hand with shouts of “Back!  Back!”  And Caitlin?  Caitlin stood as far into the surf as I would permit.  Two or more weak waves caused her to raise an eyebrow at the sea and ask sardonically, “C’mon, Poseidon.  Is that all you’ve got?”  (She’s re-reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.) “Do you really think it’s a good idea to taunt Poseidon while we’re standing in the ocean?”  “Moommm, I’m an otter.  I’m a creature of the sea.”  And so she is.

Aidan’s hand tucked into mine as we stood in line for the Giant Dipper, reminding me of the mingled excitement and guilt as I held Grandpa’s hand in the same line 30 years ago.  The thrill of riding a “really big, grownup rollercoaster” tangled with the fear that Grandma was right.  Maybe he really was too old for “those rides.”  What if he did hurt his knees or back or heart?  As Aidan’s face went still as the lap bar engaged, the old fears seized me from behind.  What if he was too young?  He was just barely over the height limit; what if it wasn’t safe for him?  What if he was scared?  I screamed with laughter around the dips and turns darting glances at my son’s white face.  The glory of risk-taking fought for supremacy with my need for a guarantee of security.  There are no guarantees; I abandoned myself to the last swooping turns.

Buckled into the car, the first bite of my caramel apple caught my teeth and dripped down my wrist.  In the back seat, the kids shared a bag of cotton candy.  30 years ago, the traditional treat “for the way home” invariably produced the need for at least one stop in response to my sister’s agonized cries of “I’m stickyyyyyy!”  From the back seat, a voice asked, “Mom, do you have any wet wipes?”  “Nope, they’re all in the back.  Do you want a napkin?”  “No, that’s okay.”

Feet flew the 6^th mile past the coast and into Capitola.  A man with a wig like a giant tribble skin ran on my right; I passed a woman with a tank top that read, “Never tutu old.”  She wore a red lace tutu.  I sprinted down the hill with the long galloping strides of my childhood.  My own children and patient husband waited just beyond the finish as I ran from the past into my future.