Lush with Potential

Thick dark pens, rows of them lined up according to fine or broad stroke, to color, to permanence. Rulers, lots of them, and watercolors and colored pencils the likes of which my aunt used to ferry back and forth from Europe to delight me as a child. White paper, tracing paper, rough sketch paper bound up in books for one's pocket. Tools for the hands, making visible ways of seeing with eyes that are fresh and new, untrained and excited, quiet.

I remember watching Nick build his store of art supplies for his foray into the study of landscape architecture. I was envious of his haul, of the boxes that would arrive daily from Dick Blick, reminding me of my highschool years where I would buy paint tubes upon pens upon sketch books just simply to have them nearby. I was never an actual artist, my fear of muddling the page or of looking foolish thwarting any desire I had to create something beautiful and meaningful. So the supplies sat on the shelf until they dried up or were given away. I watched in those months as Nick's natural talent emerged, his careful hand and attention to detail producing draft upon draft of spaces rich with meaning and lush with potential.

This Fall I begin a program of making, in a sense, having been accepted to a Masters in Design Methods program that will take me every other weekend to Chicago. I'm nervous, having been on my back foot for the past few months doing work that is not my strong suit and looking to a future where I have to take the pen to the page to create in a way beyond words.

The months leading up to this program are also a study in stillness, of seeing, of quiet, of reflection and introspection and all of those things you don't get to do when you are caught up in family and life and clutter and the distance that can separate you from your true self. I have been given the gift of time and space to sort things out. I have been given the opportunity to peel back through some blank pages and search for the words written in invisible ink underneath. It's beautiful and weird and heartbreakingly thanks-giving at the same time. I am awash in tears at the generosity of it all.

Pausing

Today is one of those days that social media kicks your ass. Smiling faces of fathers beaming out of pictures with their children, grandchildren, exotic locales, dinner tables, weddings, you name it. I know there are a million stories behind those smiles, not all of them pleasant and certainly not all of them oft repeated in family conversations, but they are there, those fathers who still get to hug children and cook steaks and dance that awkward dad dance when they've had too much scotch.

After the great loss of 1987, I used to call my mom on Father's Day, just to be funny and say thanks for shoring up the ship on both sides. My mom was a helluva single mom, although calling her that seems weird given she had the means to raise children without financial panic. But digging deeper, I realize that being a single mom means much more than financial security. It was her going it alone, dealing with children who weren't easy to manage in a life too lonely sometimes. Single parenthood was more about relying on the network of friends who loved her dearly for moment of confiding and support. It was about being the rock for four kids who were navigating the terrain of being fatherless far earlier than they ever meant to be. She was dad and mom in one, Suz Hard as Nails. And a damn good both at that.

My children delight in their father, an amazing man whose gift for parenting is something he inherited from his own father and from whom I hope my son will learn. This is a day for recognizing that, rather than sitting afloat in the unanchored waters of a parentless life.

Tomorrow: back and forth

My little dude stood at the front of the room, two cinder blocks holding up a piece of plywood. I could see him breathe in and out a few times, rehearse in his mind the movement and then go to strike. Strike means putting his little paw through a board.

A board. Breaking a board.

I kissed these hands tonight. They are small, somewhat gamey and dirty...who knew they could be the delivery of such power.

D has been in martial arts for five years now. In that time, I have seen him grow from a kid who was unsteady and unsure about engaging to a force to be reckoned with on the mat. I love watching him work through the forms that require memory and patterning. I love watching him bring power and precision to something he loves. Mostly, I love that this is a space that has been a constant for him for five years. A great teacher/master/mentor, good friends who practice with him, work that his body and mind know well: all a part of this journey he's been on for five years. When you are approaching 10, 5 years is half of your lifetime.

Tomorrow he goes for his black belt. There have been essays to write, there have been pictures to take and forms to brush up on and patches to be sewn on. It's a beginning, not and end, but it feels like a huge mile marker in this little guy's life. It started in Kindergarten and we are here on the brink of middle school. So much has changed, but he remains the still amazing boy.

Good luck tomorrow, chico. We love you.

From Inside the Center

I began to write this post ages ago and then read a post from one of my favorite yoga writers. It's really the essence of everything I wanted to say in a single line:

And a constant feeling of being broken open from inside the center of the chest, to everything. Everything.  -Inside Owl

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Flat on my back, eyes closed, I'm summoning the courage to move my hands into position. Then, moving my feet in towards my sits bones, I pause again, playing into the nattering around the edges of something when that something needs to be done but the will isn't there.

Now I'm thinking about why I am pausing, what is holding me back from lifting, arching my back, leaning into my outstretched arms, moving into full Urdva Dhanurasana (Wheel pose).

Now I'm thinking about how this thinking is really an excuse to pause more.

Finally I push up, fearful, and feel the familiar pull of too much scar tissue, the shakiness in shoulders and legs, the arch of an unseasoned back. I push forward onto my hands and breathe through five inhalations and exhalations. Sometimes my teacher comes to brace my shoulders and pull me deeper into the pose. By tradition, I'm in it for two more and by the end I'm lying on the mat, nearly in tears.

I've been spending a lot of time wondering why I am so scared of the Wheel. Different theories, mostly about my physical nature, abound:  I don't trust my own strength; I fear that my arms will fail and I will fall on my head; I know the feeling of the scar tissue stretching freaks me out.

But in the great-grand scheme of things, this asana is an exposition on fragility, of evolving, of pushing out, of trusting oneself, of asking others for support and of finding the opening that leads you forward. It is opening your heart, being vulnerable. It is flexing your spine that has grown rigid and static. It's brilliant and scary. As I do it more, it doesn't necessarily get easier. In fact, it seems to get harder, in many ways, to hurdle the fear and push into it anyway.

But I breathe and go, breathe and go, breathe and go and then let myself take it in, this feeling of discomfort and fear that so clearly mirrors the interior of my mind.

To everything. Everything.

Motherless Day

For Denise, in particular.
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I am declaring a new National Holiday, Motherless Day.

It's a day where the legions of us motherless daughters will meet in a beautiful place to grieve. Tents will crop up with signs outside that say "Lost The Best Woman Ever", "Unresolved Shit", "Denial", "Guilt", "Sadness", "Struggling to Be the Woman She'd Want Me to Be", "Grief", "Will Never Be the Same". Inside there will be Listeners who know when to nod, when to hand over tissue, when to comment. Listeners are alumnae of the former year's camp who come back year after year because it's never over. Because nobody knows like another motherless daughter.

There will be special sessions on "Surviving that Fucking Hallmark Holiday" both for motherless daughters who have no children and have to suffer through a day of total reminder of every inch of loss and for daughters who themselves are mothers and have to plaster on the smile knowing that their own girls look to this day as a day to love someone who someday will be no more.

Screw the Avon walk. I want a Motherless Day.

At night we motherless daughters will make mad feasts of our mothers' finest foods. Comfort food like Velveeta and rotel or Chicken in Wine sauce or delicious tenderloin cooked to perfection and topped with a cold bernaise. We will tell stories of how we learned to cook at our mother's elbow, just as I taught my girl today, or how our mothers were lousy cooks but could order like champs. 

We will make the first toast to our lost mothers with their favorite mother's little helper: chablis, cheap scotch, valium... spanning the years of Halston dresses and power suits and jogging suits and nightgowns that we remember from our youth.

But most of all, we will wander this space of lostness, of being cast slightly adrift in the absence of that anchor that moored us. But we won't be alone.

It's a big tent. Come on in.

Sometimes you have to polish the duck

the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
-ts eliot

Tomorrow I start a new job. Well, in the tradition of my re-de-re life, it's actually starting a position partnering with my friend and long-time collaborator Joanna on a extending our community's vision of awesomeness for the kids' school, Summers-Knoll. 

The past few weeks have been equal parts mourning leaving my old job with wonderful friends and building excitement for what is to come. This new position stretches me in ways I need to be stretched and requires me to think through chain reactions in ways that I haven't since I was an executive director of a small and fragile nonprofit in Portland years ago.

Contrary to what you would think, I don't like change. Big words for a woman who used to pack what she could in her car and drive to a new city to start a new life. I am not sure if it's all of the moves that I have made, friends I have left in far-flung places, worry about what lies ahead, but change is sometimes hard for me. Change is good and change is hard but I both crave it and fear it in equal parts. It's working with the change, giving yourself time to understand it and all of the emotions that accompany it, is the key to surviving it.

So tonight I am pondering this starting again, thinking about how to dig in but not to rush in. Thinking about how not to get swept up in what is immediate when the need is there. I am reminded of a beautiful piece I read years ago when D was in a Montessori preschool. It's similar to the environment of learning that I enter tomorrow. Sometimes you just have to polish the duck.


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Sometimes You Just Have to Polish the Duck: Lessons for Grownups From a Montessori Classroom

I am continually taught important lessons by my son's Montessori education. Montessori puts a respectful, loving philosophy into practice. The Children's House classroom makes a place that embraces the Tightness of the child's intentions while shaping the child's ability to line up these intentions with action.

How distinct this approach is from what I experienced in my own childhood education. While a few of us might have been defined by the school as "good" or "smart," school was essentially a process that required distrusting and redirecting so that children might be kept "on task" or focused on what they "should" be doing, often ignoring what they would really like to do.

After experiencing a Montessori classroom, I have come to believe the opposite: the classroom structure (and, by extension, the structure of a home) can foster a child's practically innate desire to follow a path toward learning. This environment does not have to shoehorn all children into the same trajectory, but rather sets the stage for each small person to proceed as the way opens for him or her.

The deep trust I have in Montessori comes from experience. My son, Anson, had his first Montessori Children's House participation at age 4, weeks after relocating from California to Wisconsin. His transition to his new school in Wisconsin was at first difficult. He cried each morning before school for several weeks, begging us to let him stay home. I shed tears as well, once in front of his teacher as I mentioned how difficult the morning routine had become. Wisely, she advised us to change routines: what if we carpooled with another child to school? This suggestion transformed our mornings almost from the first day we started driving with a friend. I began to suspect that there might be something to this Montessorian emphasis on environment.

Anson did not outwardly grieve the transition from familiar California to unknown Wisconsin the way we did. My husband and I missed friends and longed for familiar places. After the carpool started, Anson appeared to pass blithely through the day. At school, however, he chose different activities than the other children. Many of the kids his age worked with number chains, created words with the movable alphabet, or traced the sandpaper letters. My son rarely did any of the things his first months in Children's House, at least not to my knowledge. Teachers told me he often watched other children engage in these activities, but he did not participate. Instead, day after day, Anson chose to practice something he learned as one of his first lessons in the school.

He took to the table a small tray containing a cotton cloth, clear shoe polish, and a wooden duck. Then he enacted a simple ritual. Lid removed from polish. Cloth dipped in polish. Polish applied on duck. Lid put on polish. Items replaced on tray. Tray returned to shelf.

"What did you do at school today?" I would ask, violating rule number one for how to start a conversation with your preschooler.

"I wandered around," he would tell me. "And I polished the duck."

The duck, his teacher informed me the second month of school, was well maintained. "Anson likes to polish wooden objects and repeats this often," his progress report duly noted. I silently calculated how much we were paying per month (with what kinds of financial sacrifices) to subsidize our son's wood-shining habit.

This gut reaction arose from the timework messages transmitted to me through my education about what children "should" be doing in school. I mistrusted Anson's desire to learn, longing for him to rush to the things that "kindergartners must know." As parents, we receive messages everywhere about what kinds of evidence our children should provide to demonstrate progress. I jumped to the conclusion that duck polishing was, if not what my son would do throughout his year in school, at least an indicator that he would not create the kind of output necessary to "be a success." In a culture that values product, the seeming passivity of observing others or polishing the duck is slightly suspect. Shouldn't a student immediately jump into producing something, the way I was expecting myself to be producing something in the job I had moved to Wisconsin to begin?

Fortunately, the school's director suggested I read more about the Montessori classroom. I learned that children entering this environment normalize, a term that I understand to mean the way kids figure out how to listen to the loving voice within that just a few years earlier urged them to sit up, walk, and speak those delicious first few words. To normalize, children must learn the structure of the Montessori classroom through participation. Polishing the duck was not just cloth on wood (although I imagine that the textures and smells provided daily comfort for Anson during the transition to all places new in Wisconsin). This task, included as part of the Montessori practical life curriculum, helped to teach the order, both internal to my son and external of him, necessary for working in other areas of the classroom. The repetition done at his choosing provided comfort and confidence during the process of learning to work in a Montessori classroom. One year later, as Anson draws maps, manipulates the addition board, and learns to write, his early period of duck polishing ritual has served him well.

How much better would all of us be if we learned to trust ourselves the way my son did during this time? I am sure that my first year at work would have been less traumatic if I had been given the opportunity to observe and gain readiness instead of pushing to replicate the output of the best years in my old, familiar workplace. We drive ourselves forward, always wanting evidence of achievement. I am guilty of demanding daily proof from myself that I am productive. Another report filed. Another flowerbed weeded. Another project begun.
Nonstop output is not only impossible, but our expectations that we work in this way exhaust us and set us up for failure. Big, "productive" accomplishments, whether learning to read or writing a novel, require a strong, healthy center that cannot be nurtured in the moment of rushing toward task completion. As my son demonstrated, rituals and routines, while not generating output, help create the environment for success and time for regeneration. The mindful pause, as Anson enacted when polish met wood, can help us prepare for future bursts of growth, and help us to rest after completing such growth. I try to remind myself that this step of regeneration is vital. Sometimes you just have to polish the duck.

DARCIE VANDEGRIFT is a Montessori parent and assistant professor of sociology at University of Wisconsin at Whitewater.

Posted by Kiddie Toes Montessori at 3:06 AM

What is Your Space Jam?

(for my lovely friend Nicole, who gets and gathers precious things, for whom I am so grateful on the cusp of a very special birthday)

I had a totally different post geared up for today, a whiny little post that whinged about being allergic to the dermabond used in my surgery (I am) and how medical issues make you feel like Sisyphus moving the rock up the hill (they do) and how there is something that feels really, really good about indulging in grousing (it does).

Weeks (months, years) have passed that have left me feeling unmoored, conflicted, vibrant in my skin yet uncomfortable in my skin. Simultaneously glittery and scattered, the glittery overriding the scattered until the scattered snuck in and grouted glittery's floor with stickiness. I've recognized the looming presence of things not dealt with and fought against things I haven't wanted to put aside. Treading water in this space has meant one thing to me: giving up one thing I love and appreciate for another.

I have a number of friends who are in this space at exactly this same time, this washy nebula of options and decisions and meaning making. We are all moving through the deciphering of importance and juggle, how to create something in our lives that compels us, makes a difference, brings us joy, lights up our brains with crazy chemicals, flutters our stomachs, makes us want to lean. in. hard.

And then I finally watched this video that has been floating around on the facebook. I don't know why I didn't watch it before and I don't know why I watched it today. All I know is that the arrow hit just the sweet spot in my heart and it all opened up. I have to make decisions to do something awesome. Yes, I have one wild and precious life. Too short to waste on things that are boring and easy.

Life is not dull, people.

What if there really were two paths?

I'd want to be on the one that leads to awesome.