It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

8th Grade Lessons

Since winter break dissolved into the new year, our lives have been very 8th-grade-centric.  With the start of basketball season started, and Saturdays have taken place in a gym in Fair Oaks.  Fiction writing, play practice, a snow trip, a dance, the yearbook, raffle ticket sales – events fly at us like confetti shot from a cannon with “The Final Year” emblazoned on the barrel.
Perhaps inevitably, I’ve spent an awful lot of time over the past two months with this class, beginning with teaching a couple of fiction lessons, culminating most recently in a field trip and carpools to various events.  I was supposed to help teach these adolescents how to write pretend lives, but instead they reminded me how to live.
This refresher course on loving, laughing, learning, and letting go has come at a good time for me, so I thought I’d pass it along.  Here you go – life lessons brought to you by the Davis Waldorf School eighth grade.
1.    Be yourself (Unless you can speak in a bad British accent; then do that.  Always)—Adolescents are magpies or sheep, mimics driven by imitation and peer pressure, right?  What if I showed you a group of teenagers who know that they come in all shapes and sizes, who know that one person’s quirk is also that person’s strength, who wear brightly colored skinny jeans, or vests and ties, who push the corners and seams of the dress code to find their own style?  What if I showed you teenaged boys waltzing together or holding hands with giant grins?  What if I showed you a quiet girl doing a Cockney accent in the back of a minivan on the way to a ball?
2.    If plan A won’t work, move to plan B, or, ditch the plan and grab a sled.  On the second morning of the snow trip, the planned sculpture contest unraveled as the perfect snow packing conditions of the day before shifted into crumbly powder.  The kids barely paused.  The teams of three flowed apart, grabbed shovels and began to “build snow caves.”  When this plan proved improbable due to a lack of snow depth and the aforementioned crumbling factor, the cave diggers became toboggan run designers.  When the run turned out to be more of a toboggan crawl, they shrugged, grabbed sleds, and headed up the mountain.
3.    Take the shot that counts.  From basketball to music, from tests to plays, these kids know that the score isn’t counted in practice, rehearsal, or study period.  They may miss a layup or free-throw in practice with a shrug or a grin, flub lines or goof off during dress rehearsal, but when it’s game time, they’ll make the 3-pointer or go down trying, and they’ll be encore-worthy perfect when the curtain goes up.
4.    Acknowledge the awkwardness.  A couple of weekends ago, we held a “fiction party” for the 8th grade at my house.  Even as I was buying pizza and chips, I had the maternal jitters.  “Do you think they’ll have fun, or is this just stupid,” I asked Caitlin more than once.  I worried that the kids would feel obligated to come, and that it would be a wasted Sunday afternoon for them.  Sure enough, as they arrived, our tiny kitchen filled with hovering teenagers.  My mind spun circles generating “fix-it” plans, but my internal writer said, “This is a fiction party; let’s see how the scene plays out.”
Finally, one girl gave a nervous giggle.  “Well, this is awkward.”
As anyone who knows this class could have predicted, this was the cue for everyone to laugh and grab pizza and soda.  Before long, the mood had shifted from freaky ‘what are we all doing here anyway’ awkwardness to a party.  (See below.)
5.    Life is a party.  If it isn’t, you’re probably doing it wrong.  I’ve yet to see a work day, school day, game, or event that this class didn’t turn into a party.  They spend a lot of time together; they know each other’s quirks; and every gathering is really just an excuse to enjoy that bond.  I’m reasonably certain you could line them up at the DMV and after about ten minutes, the lobby would look like a dance club.
6.    You don’t always have to like each other, but families support one another.  This class isn’t a class.  They are a family.  Like siblings, they bicker and badger, but they always, always have each other’s backs.  One weekend, the boys and girls basketball teams had games in close time proximity.  Many of the girls showed up early to support the boys, and the boys stuck around to cheer and advise the girls.  It was as though an entire coaching squad had manifested in one section of the bleachers.  No matter how annoying they find each other’s quirks, they cheered every play by every player.
During the final day of the basketball tournament, the girls battled for third place and lost.  They had given it everything they had – one girl even playing with a fever – but it wasn’t enough.  These are 13 and 14 year old girls.  They could have sulked, gone home to cry, and no one would have blamed them.  Instead, two hours later, the loudest voices from the stands came from those girls, chanting in unison and cheering their male classmates to the tournament championship.
7.    Sometimes common sense is overrated. You don’t know it won’t work unless you try.  Every adult standing on the hill cringed.  It was like one of those nightmares that happen in slow motion.  You know how it will end, but you can’t move fast enough to stop it. 
Two boys, one snow tube, one hill.  What could go wrong?  Well, nothing, unless, the boys in question decide that the best way down the hill is not the middle of the run; after all, that’s already been done, but rather along the edge of the hill, right where it tips into trees, bushes, and a mild precipice.  Yeah, that should work.
The run ended as any of the adults could have predicted.  I had just enough time to think, “At least we made them wear helmets” before the tube slid off the edge and two rather surprised teens became tangled in the bare branches of a tree.
This sort of experimentation may not seem like a great life lesson – or even conducive to long life – but I’ve watched those same boys transform cans of spray paint, an old bedstead, a saw, and raw energy into props for a spooky Halloween garden.  Hang around them long enough and you will hear “What if we…”  It’s hard not to wonder what could happen in the world if more people said those words and then followed through.
8.    Be a surprise.  They only think they know you.  We all carry our own surprises and inconsistencies, yet we cling to the notion that we “know” those close to us.  Watching this class, though, I’ve seen: the least athletic kid go for and make a layup in basketball; one of the most pop-culture-engaged kids express the most conservative views; quiet girls belt out songs that would make your average American Idol contestant green with envy; and my practical daughter don an evil grin along with a party dress, while wondering if she can confuse the boys.
9.    Stand up for what you believe.  No one else is going to do it for you.  Civics is embedded in the 8th grade curriculum, and this class has taken the lessons to heart.  Their teacher commented to me that he’s been able to get through more material with them in previous years, but this year they want to debate and discuss everything – and he’s glad to see them do it.
During the “fiction party” at our house, I imitated a fly on the wall, tucked behind a bookcase, while they discussed the occupation of one of the characters in the show we were screening.  (She’s a high-level courtesan.)  I weighed the merits of jumping in with some pompous adult wisdom, but decided to watch the debate unfold.  Several of the kids were morally shocked, others argued that there was nothing wrong with her profession within the social context of the series, and a couple of mildly misogynistic comments were shot down as quickly as they appeared.
In the end, my input wouldn’t have mattered.  It didn’t matter who was right or wrong; what mattered is that they could work out how to express and defend their opinions against the toughest audience in the world – their peers.
10.    You’re going to have to say goodbye.  Spend as much time together as possible.  The last times are piling up.  They’ve had their last snow trip together as a class; the curtain has come down on their last play; they’ve played their last basketball games together as teams.  There are still plenty of landmarks, big and small, to come over the next few months, but time is rolling them inexorably toward June.  These kids are tight, but after graduation, it won’t be the same.  They’ll move on to different Junior High and High School campuses for ninth grade.  They’ll form new bonds of friendship and conflict.  Time and distance will float them gradually apart.
Faced with separation, adults often prepare emotionally for the inevitable by clinging to the past, or, more commonly, by distancing ourselves in advance.  We seem sometimes to view wholehearted involvement in ephemeral relationships as a wasted investment.
This class of 2013 has shown something different in this last half of their final year together.  They are facing the end in their own way, with class, style, and a sense that they are “all in.”
The gym was being mopped, clusters of parents stood chatting while younger siblings practiced dribbling and half-hearted shots at a hoop far above their heads.  The trophy had been awarded, medals ringed the necks of the boys’ team, and the players hugged, mugged for photos, laughed, passed the trophy around, and basked – girls and boys alike – in being part of school history.  The boys won it, but for the girls, it seemed like their victory, too – the first championship trophy earned by a team from the school. 
Finally, a weary voice raised above the buzz.  We turned to see the senior referee with the microphone.  “We need to clear out the gym.”
It was time to go home.

 

 

Why I run

“May the wind be at your back,” a friend posted to my Facebook wall when I commented on my half-marathon for the weekend.  As I passed our kids’ school, somewhere around mile 9, in the pelting rain, the allusion to a song sung at the closing of each school year seemed cruelly ironic.

May troubles be less

And blessings be more

And nothing but happiness come to your door.

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.

The wind, rather than being at my back, had been slapping me in the face with pelting rain for the past mile or two, so likewise, the sun was decidedly not overhead.  As for friends, well, my family was sick, and most folks with any sense were inside, probably with books, blankets, and hot chocolate.  But, as I passed the red walls of the schoolyard, and turned down a side-street and blessedly out of the wind, I realized that my blessings are indeed more, and that this run was reinforcing my awareness of them.

“You can’t run away from trouble.  There ain’t no place that far.” – Uncle Remus

You can’t run from your past – from your actions, choices, or emotions.  But, you can run to understand your past, and to understand that like each stride, every choice you’ve already made is done.  Yesterday’s race took me from downtown Davis onto the university campus, past the dorm I lived in my freshman year – where I had my first kiss, my first broken heart, my first D on a test, and where, years after my residence there, I would meet my husband at a party in my old room.

The girl who lived in that room is gone.  Her choices are made, her tests are taken.  She packed up her boxes at the end of the year and left the room to a full generation’s worth of new freshmen.  Yet, without her choices, without her pains, joys, and growth, the woman that I am would never have passed her dorm on a rainy Saturday 24 years later.

We ran past the apartments where I lived my junior and senior years of college.  In that apartment, I learned to co-exist in a group other than my family, I experienced rejection and acceptance, I lost my virginity, and gained confidence.  I don’t live there anymore.  I am not that young woman either.  She looked at the future and saw a blank slate of dreams and terrifying facelessness.  I see the faces of loved ones in every leaf and raindrop, and I know that reality and dreams are equally ephemeral.

We ran through Village Homes, where several friends live, past the lawn of the commons where the children of friends have had their 8^th grade graduation ceremonies.  My brain read the street signs, straight from Middle Earth, “Bombadil” “Oakenshield.”  I’ve never been able to stand Tolkien, but my husband and kids are Lord of the Rings fanatics.  But, even evenings spent watching the movies, or listening to my kids debate the finer points of the stories are, in a way, gone.  More are likely to come, as I am likely to take more strides on many more runs.  But, each footprint, each laugh, each argument lies behind us.

I run to get stronger.

Down a slope, up a hill.  Every mile I run is a mile I couldn’t have managed five years ago.  Every drive of my legs is a step further than I once thought I could take.

As a confirmed nerd, I never really connected physical fitness with mental or emotional strength.  After all, jocks are dumb, right?  Insensitive.  I’ll admit it; I bought the stereotypes for longer than I care to acknowledge. I married a former jock, who is quite literally a genius (and more sensitive than he would willingly admit.)  I’ve known plenty of fit, astute people.  But I didn’t get it.  Didn’t get that there could be a coordination between the body and the brain, or the heart.

Mens sana en corpore sano, said the Romans.  A sound mind in a sound body. 

When I run faster or farther than I have before, when I sprint a steeper hill, or run into a bitter north wind without walking, I remember that I can do more than I thought.  If I can run one mile, I can run two.

If I can face losing a pet, I can accept the loss of a friend.  If I can handle a tiff with my husband, I can take my children yelling “I hate you!”  If I can brave a run before dawn, I can call an intimidating source for an interview.  If I can run three miles in ten minutes less than I could a few years ago, I can meet my deadlines.  If I can lace up my running shoes and hit the pavement when my body wants to crawl back under the covers, I can create something beautiful even when my mind wants to crawl into a drink or a pint of ice cream. If I can cross the overpass above the freeway that sent me into panic attacks a year ago, I can handle professional scrutiny or brave sending my work out for rejection. If I can run past aching muscles, I can work, live, love, and laugh through an aching heart.

There’s no such thing as a bad run.

It may feel like I’m slogging through oatmeal.  I may have gotten cramps or a migraine two miles in and had to walk for the day.  I may not have met my goal for time or distance.  I may be bored.  I may hate every minute.  The endorphins may have gone to find another home that day.  But, even the “bad” runs, the off days, the days when I want to indulge my inner self (who is a 400 lb, borderline-alcoholic recluse with some serious control issues), even those runs make me stronger.  I didn’t stay on the couch.  I built some muscle fiber, some aerobic capacity, burned some calories, remodeled some bone, saw some trees, birds, and sky.  Not meeting my goal doesn’t negate the value of the run.

I may not like every experience of a given day, week, month, or year.  I may wish that any or all of it could be different, that the problems would magically resolve.  I don’t like loss, rejection, failure, chaos, or stress any more than I like sore muscles, blisters, stitches in my side, nausea, aching knees, or sciatica.  But, just as the latter things are the inevitable accompaniments to the benefits of running, the former pains go hand-in-hand with the joys of life.  Sore legs remind me that I am building muscle.  Sorrow, anger, and even regret remind me that I am building strength.

I run to feel better about myself.

Yep, I’m vain.  I am a stronger, braver, kinder, more patient person when I feel good about myself.  And, though it may be shallow, I feel better when I look better.  I read a gem online a while ago.  It was one of those pithy eCards on someone’s page.  “I don’t exercise to be healthy.  I exercise to look sexy as f—k. Naked.”

Yep, you’d better believe I repeat that one to myself when the running gets hard.  It may be lofty to exercise for one’s health, or mental balance, or as an example to one’s children, but when you hit that last couple of miles, and everything burns, and you really only want to either vomit or die – whichever the body is willing to do first – loftiness is of little use.  When things really get tough, the world narrows down to a very tight core.  We call it selfishness, and maybe it is.  But, it is the place of survival, a place of hardness and resolve.  In that place, yeah, you’d better believe it – I tell myself that I exercise to look sexy as f—k.  Naked.

If the base goals help us to get past the bottom, to come out again into the light and into a higher purpose, well, why not?  We are animals, and for survival we need food, water, air, and sex.  Philosophy comes once those needs are met.

Mount Everest

That is the answer to so many things in our house.  The translation is “because I can” or “because it’s there.”  I run because I can.  I have legs, and my legs are strong.  My health is good.  My joints are decent.  I run because I am blessed with a body that is capable of running – maybe not fast, maybe not beautifully, maybe not far.  I will never be an elite athlete, but I can.

I run to know who I am.

Ultimately, this is the answer, the one that is hard to explain when friends and family give me incredulous looks as I babble excitedly about signing up for a new race, or how I’m looking forward to my weekend long run.  They want to know why something uncomfortable, taxing, and that most folks regard as a chore is fun to me.

Here is my answer.  In each breath, in each stride, with each slap of my shoe on the ground, I am me.  I exist in that moment.  Every other stride, every other word, every other choice is behind me.  The things I fear, the things I hope for, the next stride haven’t happened yet.  I don’t know if I will finish the race. I don’t know if I will publish a book or an article.  I don’t know if my children will succeed.  I don’t know how I will live.  But, I know the stride that I take in that moment.  When I run, I am not accountable to anyone other than me. I can’t be anywhere other than in my body.  I can’t be anyone other than myself.

When I run, I know what I can do.  I know where I am.  When I run, I know myself.

 

 

 

Turn Loose

“Now if it starts to go to pot out there, just turn loose.  Turn loose of everything.  You’ll be fine.”  That was the sum of my pre-solo sail advice from my grandfather.  Turn loose of everything, and then regroup, that and, as he and my dad glanced over their shoulders at the empty gravel parking lot, “I guess you’d better wear a life jacket in case your mother gets back.”

I was ten.  The boat in question was an El Toro, a two-man (or one girl) dinghy.  The body of water was a man-made lake on the outskirts of Merced.  Lake Yosemite must create its own weather, for even on stagnant August days, winds can whip white caps in the middle of the lake.  My mother had driven Grandma to Mass, taking my little sister with her.  As the oldest daughter in a boy-deprived family, I got to stay “with the men.”  I had sailed before, but always with an adult crammed alongside the centre-board.  However, Dad and Grandpa, apparently tired of the boom-induced cranial lumps from my unpredictable jibes, had seized upon the absence of female interference to teach me to solo.

Shivering under the 90 degree sun in a damp bathing suit and clammy “Mae West” life preserver, I slid into the stern.  Lake water lapped at the bottoms of my thighs as I clutched the tiller and sheet.  “Ok, I’m ready.”  My knuckles were white.

“Turn loose.”  Over 30 years later it amazes me that Grandpa Bligh could give that advice with a straight face.  Ask anyone who knows me well to describe me in three adjectives, and chances are, “stubborn” will be one of them.  I am not good at letting go.  Ropes, people, relationships, ideas, jobs, paragraphs, clutter, bad habits – I hold on.  I come by my tenacity honestly.  He who said, “turn loose” was the master of pig-headedness.  Yet, he knew what all too often eludes me still.  Sometimes, it will all go to pot out there, and the only thing to do is to turn loose, to let go of everything, and to hope that once the waters still, you can regroup, pick up, and begin the voyage again.

“Why didn’t you let go?”  My riding instructor stared at me as I handed over the once white cotton lead rope of my sister’s horse.  Mud caked my boots and splattered my jeans, shirt, and hair.  The calluses along the palms of my hands flared red, soon to blister.  My legs felt like jelly and my shoulders as though giants had been tearing at my arms.  Waterskiing through a muddy pasture behind a runaway horse will do that to you.  Suzie shook her head in disgust.  “Come on, Chris, you know better than that.  The gate was locked.  She couldn’t have got away.  You’re gonna get hurt doing stuff like that.  You should have let go.”

I was older in that February pasture than I had been on the summer lake, 15 or 16, but no wiser.  I did know better: if you are holding something you can’t control, let go.  I knew the rule, but had not integrated the wisdom.  When Noel, my sister’s Morgan, pulled away from me in hopes of rejoining her pasture mates in their wind-whipped freedom, I clung to the rope, stubbornness telling me that my 100 lb body could stop a 1200 lb force of nature.  Logic, reason, and common sense died beneath the wheels of the tank that is my fear of loss and failure.

I’m not good at letting go.  Hold on a little longer.  Try something different.  Try one more time.  Say the right thing.  Just keep going.  Don’t give up. 

The last one is the kicker – no one wants to be a quitter, no one wants to give up if there is a chance, just a chance that it might work.  But, the reality, the one that my Grandfather, veteran of war and widowhood, and Suzie, with two divorces behind her, knew, is that sometimes it won’t work.  Sometimes the forces pushing against us or pulling us in our wake are more powerful than we.  Sometimes it is broken and can’t be fixed.  Sometimes it will go to hell, and then it is time to let go.

A few years ago, I went on a call to vaccinate a group of semi-feral ponies.  The stallion had recently encountered some barbed-wire, and while his lacerations looked superficial from a distance, I wanted a closer look.  He wore a halter, but no lead.  “You’re going to have a hard time catching him,” said the owner.

I looked at the pony, the halter and the size of the pasture.  “No problem.  I’ll go out there by myself, and once I have him by the halter, you can bring me the rope.”  Bull-shitting through a situation is a professional specialty.

Sure enough, the pony was curious enough to come say ‘hello.’  I scritched his neck, and slid my hand down, grabbing the halter.  Just as I called, “Ok…” my patient pulled away.  No problem – he was only about double my body weight.  I centered myself and jerked on the halter.  “Whoa.”  He stopped, then pulled again.  Same response from me.  Now, this is where I went wrong – in my head this was a horse.  For a normal horse, one or two failed attempts at misbehavior is usually enough to correct the behavior.  Not so for a pony stallion – ponies are short, and have much to prove.  He jerked back a third time, and took off running.

Enclosed pasture --  no problem, right?   After all, I learned my lesson 25 years ago, didn’t I?  Sadly, not so much.  My fingers remained clenched around the cheek piece of the halter, and unable to hold my ground, my feet trotted along with the pony.  As he broke into a canter, my brain finally returned from the sandy beaches of denial, looked at my feet which had turned into cartoon wheels and the speeding ground below, and said, “This looks bad.  Maybe you should let go.”  Oops.  The brain had apparently left its knowledge of physics beneath a palm tree.  My four-legged partner and I had been travelling at his speed, not mine.  As my fingers released the halter, my body fell victim to inertia.  My feet, unable to sustain their free-wheeling momentum alone, slowed, but my upper body continued to travel at pony-speed.  Like Wile E. Coyote plunging from a cliff, I had a split-second of “Uh-oh” before the ground rushed toward my face.

Back in the office, as I held an ice-pack to my knee (in a last ditch effort to ‘save face’ I had broken my fall with my left patella) and tried to make an incident report sound logical (How will you avoid this incident in the future?  Turn loose of the damn pony.), my technician Mel and a client stared at me and shook their heads.  “Why didn’t you just let go?”

The only answer I can give is that some of us need more lessons than others.  For some, through faith, reason, or emotional balance, letting go seems to come fairly easily.  The rest of us need the rope burns, the bruises, the heartache, and the spectacular failures to learn the balance between giving up and accepting the inevitable.  The house has been gone from us since September.  I have finally stopped planning projects or trying to drive too far up I-5.  The practice where I worked closed a week and a half ago.  I still run through cases in my head in the evenings, thinking, “When I get to work, I need to…”  “Kill your darlings,” goes the writing advice.  I am editing the first draft of the novel now, and bleeding just a little as I force the ink across any paragraph that doesn’t work, doesn’t contribute, or is trying to get away.

More things exist outside of my control than within it. 

“God grant me the serenity

 to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference...”  Reinhold Niebuhr

And God grant me the ability to turn loose when it all goes to pot.  Oh, and can I have a life jacket, please? 

Beauty, Grace, and Style

Purpose filled each countenance as they marched from the amphitheater, banners of their respective city-states floating jewels in the spring sun.  Sparta, Athens, Corinth, Delphi, and
Thebes:  each citizen knew why he or she had come – to participate, to offer one’s best effort to the gods.  The discus offered on an outstretched hand to the sky, javelin pointed toward the heavens, the intricate dance in the wrestler’s circle, the perfect form of a runner, the attempt at flight in the long jump: the elements of the pentathlon were as much art as sport, offerings of the best efforts of humanity.

Once upon a time, in an almost mythic past, athletics were art – examples of beauty, grace, and style offered to one’s deity of choice rather than efforts of extremism offered to the almighty dollar.  Considering that, with weekly examples of athletes behaving badly rampaging through the media, even the notion of sportsmanship seems quaint, it may be laughably naïve to plead a return to a standard of art in athletics.  Yet, our societal impulses regarding competition seem in dire need of an overhaul.  At one end of the spectrum, we have athletes justifying the use of illegal drugs because superhuman feats of strength and speed are expected of them.  Somehow, public demand for spectacle trumps ethics.  On this side, too, lies the hypercompetitive, cutthroat realm of youth sports.  We’ve all heard the horror stories: high-schoolers (or is it down to junior high now?) doping with steroids or cheating on exams to maintain eligibility, parents screaming abuse at coaches, referees, and kids, fights between adults on Little League playing fields.  At the opposite pole, we have trophies for 10^th place, medals for “participation”, elaborate graduations from pre-school and kindergarten, certificates for “best smile.”

What lessons are being taught to our future adults?  From my perspective, it seems that kids learn that money, power, and glory belong only to the strong, fast, and sneaky, and that for the rest of us, just showing up is good enough.  I’ll grant that some of the ideals of the ancient inhabitants of the Hellenic peninsula were less than, well, ideal.  Abandoning one’s infant to the elements for physical weakness has to be the ultimate example of horrific jock parenting.  But, bear with me for a minute, the point will come.

 Now, go back to the first paragraph, return to the sunlit hills and ancient oaks and pines.  Look closely at the athletes marching behind the banners of their city-states.  The faces are still slightly round, features not fully formed, faint hints of what they will become; most of the bodies are under 5 feet tall, some are lanky and awkward, some delicate and lithe, some plump.  None of the bodies are draped in linen, nor, for that matter, nude.  Jewel toned T-shirts are the uniforms donned by these warriors, these proud Hellenes-for-a-day.  Welcome to the Waldorf Schools Pentathlon for Northern California.

In the Waldorf curriculum, fifth grade academics focus on ancient civilizations.  Beginning in Mesopotamia, the children journey over the year throughout India, Persia, Egypt, and conclude their expedition in ancient Greece.  This journey trains the body even as the mind learns.  Games class in fifth grade is devoted to pentathlon training.  At Davis Waldorf School, our much-beloved games teacher Brian Wolfe worked tirelessly and thoroughly with the fifth grade, teaching them technique and form for each event, training their muscles and minds.  This coaching was thorough to the point that when Caitlin came home the afternoon prior to the event, she very seriously informed about her nutritional needs for the evening.  My daughter, who normally guards all school-related information with CIA approved security, went on to tell me exactly where they were going to go once they arrived at the host school in the morning, and what would happen at each point during the day.

In the Waldorf pentathlon, the children are assigned to city-states based on temperament.  Thus competitive kids compete against those of like mind, the more mellow against their peers.  The maternal cameras instinctively picked the kids from “our class” out of the T-shirted multitudes of each city-state.  On each of the familiar faces that day, I saw the same expression of resolve.  These kids were here to participate, and each intended to give it his or her best.  Watching one of Caitlin’s often flighty classmates take her position for the discus, I stopped mid-sentence, mid-breath.  Holding her disc aloft, the girl dropped to one knee in a position taken straight from Greek art.  “She’s beautiful; she could be on an urn,” I whispered to her mother.

“I know;she told me, ‘Mom, I know I’m not going to throw it the farthest, so I’m going to go for beauty, grace, and style.’”  That was the effort that each of our kids showed that day.  They may not have all been the fastest, the strongest, or the biggest, but they all went for beauty, grace, and style.  These attributes manifested in the perfectly positioned arms and upright heads of the runners, in the angle of the javelins, the extension of arm with disc, and they showed in smaller things, things unrelated to technique.  Beauty, grace, and style were present when one of Caitlin’s classmates fell at the beginning of his long race.  Not tripped, fell.  Total face plant.  Grace, you ask.  Yes.  Grace when he regained his footing and ran, catching all but the first two runners by the finish, though all had at least a 50 yard lead.  Beauty, grace, and style were shown by a boy, from another school, who stopped during his race to check a fallen runner.  Beauty grace and style came to the fore as the kids cheered each other on and wrapped consoling arms around the shoulders of those whose muscles had failed them.  I saw nothing but beauty, grace, and extraordinary style as I watched Caitlin run her quarter mile with perfect form, dead last, but never once faltering in her effort to catch the runners in front.

When the laurels were awarded to each city-state, wreaths were bestowed for first, second, and third place in each event, and two wreaths were given for beauty, grace, and style in that event.  From DWS, some of our kids placed in some events, some won laurels for beauty, grace, and style, but all of them left the temple of the gods standing straighter, shining in the sun, and knowing that they had accomplished what they came for.  For them, the winners were not only the big, strong and fast, and just showing up wasn’t nearly good enough.  They strived to please the gods.

Side note:  As a proud mom, I have to mention that Caitlin received a laurel for beauty, grace, and style in the 40 yard dash. 

Words, Words, Words...

Last week was occupied with words. I'm going to attempt to write a post that adequately describes my fabulous experience at the Tomales Bay Writers' Workshops, but in the meantime, here are two book reviews that I originally posted on Blog Critics. The first is a review of a book of collected poems. Poetry exposes itself to the interpretation of the audience. More than any other written form, the poem turns itself inside out, deriving meaning and value through the reading rather than the writing. Through the specific, the personal, poetry seeks the universal. A successful poem pulls the reader from his own experience into the personal truth of the poet and then expels the reader into the universe to become part of a greater truth. The successful poet, therefore, must write from the intensely personal space of self without a consciousness of that self. In his New and Selected Poems/ 1975-2005, Robert Ronnow’s greatest successes in the achievement of the universal lie in his most specific details. In “Sub-atomic Particles,” he says it himself: “Mustache, cowboy hat/ horse whisperer, gulag master/ Odysseus, King Lear/ salvation in the details.” Much of Ronnow’s work finds “salvation in the details.” Reading through New and Selected Poems/ 1975-2005 one gets a sense of the evolution of Ronnow as an artist and as a man. His early poems, while specific and vivid in their imagery, are undermined by the sense that the creator of those pieces is a young man very conscious of himself and his place in the world. The sense of outside influence is also more perceptible early in the book. Stanzas from the first poem “Janie Huzzie Bows” practically scream e.e. cummings. everybody looks. Janie Huzzie’s dressed in white. naturally the crowd glowers i pipe up winking in every direction i slither away mostly virtuously. The consciousness of self intrudes upon the more sensual passages in Ronnow’s poetry as well. While his language is frank and earthy, certain passages left me with the sense, not of a celebration of the sexual act, but with the sense of a man bragging of conquest. Though in “The Canopy of Stars,” Ronnow confesses that “Women are not inspired to love me”, he then comments that “This /must be an oversight on the creator’s part./ Even in my beard I’m built handsomely as other men.” The juxtaposition of this commentary on loneliness against the next poem “Absolutely Mustard” in which he “remember[s] passionate nights with some of the women/ I’ve known” jars. Though both poems reveal the writer’s solitude of the time, the sense that the poet feels somehow entitled to the company of multiple women carries through both poems. Yet, the salvation is in the details. “Absolutely Smooth Mustard” begins with the delightful lines “There is absolutely nothing to do. Some people/ fall in love. I go have a cheese sandwich./ with mustard…” The banality of the cheese sandwich as an alternative to love is taken over the top into absurdity as the throwaway “with mustard” is tacked onto the third line. Ronnow reserves his most lyrical and compelling lines for his descriptions of nature. In these stanzas, he paints with a fine brush, expanding the poems into the universal with minute details. The crows have been in conference, again. A jay, blue, pokes a hole through reality. There I find the sumacs fruiting and the male sex organs of the Queen Anne’s lace. These lines from “Under-sky sleeping, bone keeping” ground the reader in place. The specific sense of place – senses of place, rather, the stanzas are rich with sound and texture – allows the reader to feel with the poet that “…these mountains/ are my grave. A good grave/ to go to.” Details ground the poems in the universal when Ronnow strays into the realm of the general. His explorations of death, love, and politics have the feel of someone striving toward a larger truth, but falling into the trap of general proselytizing. In “The Rwandan dead” the specific wrenching details of the “Rwandan dead/ bobbing naked at the base of waterfall…” are lost in subsequent lines that proclaim “…Peace/ is a great blessing. Fools/ worship war.” He resumes contact with the specific and saves the poem with the stanza The Rwandan dead had dalliances and alliances. It is the indignity of their exposure and the decay of their former lives. How disposable, mere mulch, fertilizer for wild vegetation. I preferred his exploration of the human condition through the descriptions of the canyon dwelling Anasazi in “Blackbrush.” fish canyons then, shallower, dinosaur swamps now, dry, rock gardens. Explain the human history with water: did the Anasazi visit neighbors along the canyon rims and deep within… Explaining the human history with water takes a detail seemingly specific to an indigenous, desert-dwelling people, and expands into the much larger reliance of history on basic human needs. Ultimately, New and Selected Poems/ 1975-2005 deepens and grows more interestingly rich as it progresses, and one is left with the feeling that Ronnow’s development as both a poet and a man is ongoing. May this be said of all of us. The second review is of Pop, a young adult novel by one of my favorite kids authors, Gordon Korman. Bodies collide on a green field. Even in a still photograph, the impact is audible; the mind fills in the shock waves. Marketers have used it for decades – the primal lure of the full body impact of dueling males – American football. The compulsive lure of combat appeals to something deep within even the most passive or intellectual. Despite mounting evidence pointing toward the long-term physical and mental damage caused by football injuries, despite the voices that decry the violence and culture of machismo, the popularity of football is undeniable. What drives us to support a sport so destructive of its participants? What drives players to overcome the pain of impact, to ignore the possibility of an infirm future? How does the culture of combat affect the boys and young men whose worth becomes synonymous with a game? In his new young adult novel, Pop, Gordan Korman explores the culture of football from within the framework of a small town high school team. Wrapped in the story of a young man’s transition into a new town and new football team lies the darker tale of a middle aged athlete’s decline into premature dementia and the toll his past takes upon his family. If Marcus Jordan had to move to a new town in the dead of summer, at least he was moving to a high school with a first class football team. However, he hadn’t counted on the insular team’s reluctance to accept a newcomer even to tryouts or on the outright hostility of Troy Popovich, the starring quarterback. Marcus’ transition into his new home is further complicated by the advances of Troy’s on-and-off girlfriend Alyssa and by his hard hitting practice sessions with an enigmatic middle-aged man named Charlie. Charlie may be the most incredible athlete Marcus has ever known, yet there is something odd about a grown man who runs away from a broken windshield, and who can never show up when he is expected. Marcus soon discovers that Charlie is Charlie Popovich, former NFL linebacker and Troy’s father. The disparate jigsaw pieces of the puzzle that is Charlie fall into place as Marcus begins to realize the extent of the damage Charlie sustained during his football career. In his depiction of the three athletes: Marcus, Charlie, and Troy, Korman unravels the dangers, fears, and lure of football. Charlie, “The King of Pop,” pays for his fearless career on the gridiron with the loss of his present. Unable to distinguish between his past as a high school prankster and his present as a middle-aged father, Charlie hangs in the limbo of Alzheimer’s. Gifted with a brilliant throwing arm, but hampered by a fear of contact, Marcus must confront his demons in order to pursue his football dreams. Will Charlie’s lessons in accepting and even loving the “pop” override the evidence of damage caused by the sport they both love? In many ways, Troy, though a minor character, has the most compelling story. His conflicts between his love for his father and the sport and his loathing for and fear of what his father has become drive Troy’s actions. Having grown up with Gordon Korman’s lighthearted MacDonald Hall series, I found myself drawn in and taken aback by Pop. While the voice is vintage Korman: casual with a hint of smart-aleck, the characters of Pop are confronted with the very real consequences of their actions in a way that his early characters never were. Wisps of Korman’s early creations mingle in the characters of Pop. The pranks played by Marcus and Charlie evoked memories of Bruno and Boots, Alyssa’s voice could be that of a post-adolescent Cathy. Like those of us who remember Gordon Korman’s early books, and like Korman himself, his characters have grown up and entered the real world. The plot of Pop never lags. Korman transitions from one entertaining or tense twist to the next without letting up. A fast, compelling read, Pop kept even this non football fan engrossed from start to finish. Pop is suggested for ages 12 and up. While the book contained nothing that I would be uncomfortable having my 10 year old daughter read, its focus on high school sports and adolescent dilemmas would likely be beyond the interest of a younger child. Personally, I look forward to handing Pop to my son when he is a few years older. Pre-teen and teenage boys seem to be largely overlooked by the marketers of young adult fiction; Pop fills this gap with gusto. Both of these books were enjoyable in very different ways. Stay tuned for more words!

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.