Future Perfect

Grace has a new pair of skates. Grace has gotten her first pair of truly new skates. Always before we have purchased used skates, but this time round, Grace has gotten a pair of brand new skates. And because her feet have grown so much, she has also gotten new blades.

Breaking in new skates is no fun (even when they're new-used skates, but even more so, I think, when they're new, new skates). So for the last few weeks, we've been in the throes of adjusting and tweaking and Grace has had to go out on the ice even when her feet and ankles hurt so that the necessary adjustments to their fit can be made.

Grace had been skating in her new boots for about a week when Jason determined that the blades needed to be moved. He marked the boots to show how he wanted the blades shifted; I picked Grace up from school early one day last week and drove her to the Winning Edge in Omaha for the adjustment. The next morning, Grace had another lesson with Jason.

I watched from the lobby as Grace took the ice. Jason watched her skate for about three minutes before he motioned to me to come rink-side. "That left blade is perfect," he pronounced, "but the right blade isn't there yet. I'm going to get a screwdriver." Having borrowed the tool from Terry, one of the rink's workers, Jason set to work. He sat Grace down and took her foot in his lap and looked at the blade. Carefully, he loosened the screws holding the front of her blade in place and shifted the blade back and forth, pausing to consider its positioning as he manipulated it until he was satisfied. I'm pretty sure he didn't move that blade further than an eighth of an inch. He tightened the screws, patted Grace on the back, and said, "okay, let's go." I have to admit, I was a little nervous. I don't even want to think about how much those boots and blades cost. And an 1/8 of an inch? There was probably a part of me that was thinking, "this is like fixing a comma and thinking the writer will now be transformed."

I learn a lot about teaching and about coaching by watching Jason work with Grace. In some ways, as a parent, their work together is hard to watch. Together, they focus on what appear to be minutiae. Jason guides Grace in working the an edge in the entrance to a jump or a spin over and over and over again. Or a landing position. Or the reach and stretch of an arm. It's slow, hard work. There's not a lot of drama. And if what you imagine is some sudden, spectacular, epiphanic accomplishment, I've learned, you're likely to be disappointed. No, Jason is not coaching for the "A" to be awarded at the end of a session or a season; he's not coaching for a first place finish at the next competition. I think (and this is what I'm learning about teaching by watching Jason work with Grace) that he is coaching to open up a range of possibilities for Grace as a skater in process, a skater with a future though no one, not even Grace or Jason, can predict what that future might be. And Jason, I think, is uninterested in predicting an ideal future for Grace and teaching toward that singular possibility. He is teaching in service opening up the future to multiple possibilities.

I observed, I believe, in Jason's shifting of a blade an 1/8 of an inch an example of a teacher working in future perfect. When teachers engage the future perfect, we are imagining ourselves forward in time with a student and asking ourselves, "if we move this way, if we change this thing, what will this student be working on with me or with some other teacher/writer two weeks from now? a year from now? five years from now?" The move is not a culminating one; not a finish, but an articulation of possibilities, of potentialities.

Serious skaters tend to stay with coaches for a long time. Hence the admonitions Mike and I received against changing coaches and moving Grace to Jason. It may be that writing teachers and tutors, unlike figure skating coaches, don't have the luxury of years. But I'm not convinced we need to know the future or have certainty about what our relationship with a writer will be in order to teach the way Jason teaches skating to Grace. I'm not sure that this kind of future-perfect-mind requires certainty that there will be a "we" or a "together" weeks or months or years from now. The operative question in future-perfect-mind is what might be possible for this student if we do this thing now, and not whether the teacher will be present when possibilities are realized or not. This is a new way, for me at least, of thinking about student-centered teaching.

Teaching with future-perfect-mind might also shift how we conceive of teaching at the outside edges of students' ability in what Lev Vygotsky called "the zone of proximal development" (the learning space between what students already know and what they might be able to learn or do given a teacher or coach's conceptual (or, in the case of skating, physical) scaffolding and support). When Jason works with Grace, he engages her in the acquisition of a kind of grammar of the body that is specific to figure skating. These are the rules of motion, of movement -- of physics and muscle and mind -- that constitute the athleticism and aesthetics of the sport. But it would be a mistake, I think, to believe that acquisition of, fluency in this body-grammar is all there is to skating. The grammar is the structure that makes that which we have never seen before not just imaginable, but possible. Skaters, like writers, who inspire our awe do not merely perform this grammar to perfection; they press on its limits, extending the possibilities for what might be expressed, what meaning may be made in and through it.

So when Jason engages in future-perfect-mind as he works with Grace, he teaches not with the conviction that Grace will be the next Yu-Na Kim. Not only is that highly unlikely, it's not particularly desirable. The point is not to use the body-grammar of skating to replicate what others have already accomplished, but to use that grammar to discern what this skater will have done when she has done all she wants and is capable of doing. He's teaching with an openness to the graceness of Grace, to possibility, to potential, to a host of futures, some of which may include skating.

That's cool. At least I think so. And as a final note (not sure if I've said this aloud or written it already on the blog), changing coaches is the best thing we ever did for Grace.

Tidbits

Here's a story about Lucy:

So Lucy had a tournament last weekend in Sioux Center, Iowa with her Squirts team (co-ed). Lucy's coach has moved her back to play on a defensive line. Now, Lucy is a girl who likes to get her ice time. The team had won every game in the tournament. They're playing in the last game and things are shaping up nicely to take home first place. They're in the last few minutes of the game when Lucy's good friend, Kean, takes a rather pointless penalty. Kean is a fantastic player, but he does have a tendency to take bad penalties. The coach sends out Lucy's line absent Lucy (for reasons that surpasseth understanding, in my opinion). In any case, Lucy is PISSED. She fumes on the bench. She fumes through the end of the game and the celebration of taking home the tournament championship. She marches into the locker room; marches up to Kean; and dumps a full bottle of cold water over his head; marches straight back out again.

Beware the ire of Lucy.

Still waiting to see what if anything Coach will say...

Kairos

Kairos is time in between, not measured by the clock but time of indeterminate duration. Kairos is time in which something special is happening.

We must be in time-in-between. Grace's surgery was accomplished on a Tuesday and the following Thursday, Lucy, our crazy, energetic, driven hockey player, was diagnosed with mono. A few days later, I found myself in the emergency room with my Mom (who has relapsing/remitting Multiple Sclerosis) because she was in excruciating pain. It seems that Mom is in the midst of an exacerbation of her illness.

Time is moving differently. Or perhaps it is the case that Mike and I are moving differently through time. We are torn between what have become more visibly competing needs. I watch Lucy constantly and want always to be where she is. I want to hold on to her, protect her, make her well. But the nature of mono is such that one can only watch and wait. There is no speeding it on its way. Multiple Sclerosis is much the same, but worse. You can't fix it, mend it, undo its effects. Mitigation is all that remains. And worry. Too much worry.

Something special is happening. We are being forced to slow down and to say no to work, to practices, to opportunities we might have thoughtlessly agreed to just a few weeks ago.

Yesterday, I eeked out a few hours to spend with Dan, who has been left to his own devices far too frequently as Mike and I have turned our attention to Grace, Lucy, and my Mom. Dan is thirteen now and has found himself a crew of friends who live close enough to one another to gather at one another's homes after school. He is finding a new degree of independence, working out for himself a new relationship with Mike and me; one characterized more explicitly on the tension between responsibility and freedom than dependence and permission. And I worry. Will Dan's love of sport, his love of learning, his imagination and motivation be enough to carry him through this time of limit-testing? Have we given him a strong enough moral foundation to enable good choices as he moves into a world in which the range of choices available to him proliferates? I believe in him, have faith, and yet I doubt myself and worry.

And Lucy rests, demanding little yet needing so much that we are challenged to give: time, stillness, presence. When she sleeps I find myself snuggling in close to her like I did when she napped as a baby. I watch her face as her dreams animate even her still body, try to feel her breath on my cheek just to be sure.

And Grace dances along merrily. Her need is not so much to slow down as to focus, to attend, to be sharp.

The universe has given us this time-in-between. I know there must be some richness here, some beauty, some gift. But I'm afraid my fear, my insecurity, my worry is obscuring my perception for all I can think is that I want this to be over. I want my children and my mother well again and I'm afraid -- no, I know -- I haven't the ability to make it so.

Ecstasy and Agony

Sunday, Grace went to the Ice Box to skate. We arrived at the rink especially early because Grace wanted to work on her axel before her lesson with Jason. She looked at me before she went on the ice and said, "I know I can do it, Mom. Just watch." It's never wise to doubt Grace when she makes such claims, but I'll admit I wasn't so sure.

The Ice Box is a funny rink. It's located on the State Fairgrounds and in the summer during the fair serves as the horse ring. When the ice is laid down again in the fall, the rink is still full of flies in search of horses to annoy. As the building cools under the onslaught of the refrigeration system, the flies grow slow. They buzz gracelessly about the heads of skaters and their parents, who watch from the sidelines.

I took my seat close by the boards and watched Grace work. She warmed up, working her edges, stroking and doing crossovers. She tried out a few spins and then began working on the axel walk through. She jumped and fell, jumped and fell, jumped and fell. I walked to the rink lobby to stretch my legs, turned and walked back toward the ice just as Grace landed a jump on one foot. I gasped; Grace turned to me and grinned. She jumped again. And landed on one foot again. She stepped off the ice and gave me an enormous hug. "I'm going to show Jason," she said. "Wait," I cautioned. "He's still giving a lesson." Grace nodded. "I'll work on all my jumps."

Back on the ice, Grace meandered, unfocused now that her goal had been accomplished. Head down, she twirled a bit, got in the way of a few other skaters, then started to backstroke in preparation for a jump. Time seemed to slow down. Sometimes you can just tell when a skater is going to fall -- even if you know very little about the technique she ought to be employing. Grace tried for a lutz and her feet tangled. I watched her go down. She rose from the ice slowly, holding her hand, and skated toward me, her face a mask of shock and pain. As she came close, she held her hand out and it was covered with blood. Through the gore I could see her thumb, torn down the middle by a very deep gash: a to-the-bone slice.

I turned to the Club representative acting as Ice Monitor; she'd been sitting in the stands watching her daughter skate. "I need help," I said. She sat. "I NEED HELP RIGHT NOW." By then I was moving with Grace out into the lobby and the changing area. Grace sat quietly holding her hand as the blood drenched the sleeves of her skating dress. I turned and the Ice Monitor was moving in what seemed like slow motion toward me. "I need help," I said again. "I need a first-aid kit now." I ran to the ice and called to Jason. I ran past the ice monitor to the first aid kit in the skate room. A box of band aids and an old dusty eye-wash kit. I ran to the bathroom and got paper towels. I ran back to Grace. Jason told me to get wet towels. I ran back to the bathroom. Grace sat. Quietly. Holding her hand. Jason had taken her skates off for her. Someone said, "You have time. You don't have to race to the hospital." Someone else said, "Go to St. Elizabeth's. If you go to Bryant and there's a huge crisis, you'll have to wait forever."

Somehow, I got Grace's skates and guards into her Zuca bag and shepherded her out to the car. I'm sure we talked on the way to the Hospital, but I can't remember what we said. I called Mike to tell him where we were and what had happened. We agreed that he would stay to watch Dan's football game and cheer him on. There seemed little reason for both of us to sit in the Emergency Room. Lucy was at a birthday party and well taken care of for the moment.

At last, we were able to see a doctor. Grace's wound had exposed the joint cavity in her thumb and sliced into tendon. The doctor numbed her hand, carefully cleaned the cut, then sutured the edges closed. He had X-rays taken to make sure she hadn't broken her hand and those came back negative. "Well, Mom," he said finally. I always find it funny when doctors and teachers refer to me as Mom. "She's sliced into that tendon. We've got a new hand doctor in town. He's great. You'll need to get Grace in to see him tomorrow..." and on and on... "increased risk of infection..." "growth plate..." "could be quite serious..." "can't tell the extent of the damage..."

I took Grace to see Dr. Cullen the next morning. Dr. Cullen, I figure, is from Philadelphia. Maybe upstate New York. Definitely not the midwest. He wasted no time on niceties. "A serious injury. No way to tell how bad until surgery. Must do surgery quickly to prevent infection. How about tomorrow morning."

That night, Grace's friend and her Mom invited Grace and me over for dinner. They had gifts for Grace, to carry her through surgery: a toy monkey, a pair of pajamas, a snuggy blanket, and peace sign shirt from Justice for Girls, Grace's favorite store. They talked with Grace about the surgery, reassured her, and reassured me too. On the way home, Grace said, "it's a terrible tragedy when children die, isn't it?" "Yes," I said. "What will happen if I don't wake up, Mama?" Grace asked. "You'll wake up, Grace," I said. "I promise. And when you wake up, I will be right there with you." "I saw God the other day," Grace said (she's been listening to my Victor Wooten cd). "Really," she affirmed. "I saw God." In the darkness, I cried. I didn't have the words to comfort, to lift the fear away for her. But Grace had them somehow for herself.

The surgery is over now. Grace never lost her composure, never lost her faith. She woke up woozy and a bit dizzy, but quickly recovered. Dr. Cullen came out to speak with us. "Bad gash on that tendon. Surgery went fine though. Cast for three months. See you in two weeks." And he was off to the next case.

Six hours later Grace was dancing around the house, practicing her axel walk-through in our upstairs hallway. Mike and I looked at each other. "When do you think she should skate?" I asked. "FRIDAY," Mike said. "Sunday," I said.

I think we will follow Grace. She just seems to know somehow.

Zen and the Art of Grace

The weather has turned here in Nebraska; the sky today is a bright, light blue and the air is cool and clear. The leaves are turning just about their edges and those that have fallen early blow easily across streets, forming loose piles against curbs and fences.

Two weekends ago, Grace and I traveled to St. Joseph, Missouri for her first competition of the 2009 - 2010 season. We were both excited not only because of the competition, but also because we've finally made rink friends -- not casual acquaintances, but friends who feel like kindred spirits, as Anne of Green Gables would say. We all stayed in the same hotel, ate meals together, and played in-between events.

On the way to St. Joe's, Grace and I talked about her goals for the competition. I asked her to name three goals for the weekend. Grace's response was, "I want to take first place; that's my goal, my only goal." Sigh. I asked her if she thought she could control what place she takes in any competition. Finally, she admitted that maybe she couldn't control what other skaters do on the ice or how judges perceive her performance or those of other skaters. We talked about goals she could make for which she could control the outcome. Finally, Grace said she'd like to skate to the best of her ability, skate two clean programs, and skate with joy and to give joy to the audience. I thought those were pretty great goals and that the conversation was over.

There was a pause...and then Grace said, "Mom, I think I'm going to just get lost out there on the ice." "What do you mean?" I queried. I was worried. Was Grace so nervous, so stressed about skating that she feared forgetting her program? "Mom," she drawled, "getting lost is like when you go for it. But when you get lost you are going with so much joy and you have no idea what the future holds."

In Japan, there is this concept called wabi sabi. Maybe loosely translated the term signifies transience, imperfect beauty, an aesthetic that not only accounts for the unfinished, the temporary, the flawed, but celebrates these qualities in the everyday.

Life with Grace (with grace) might be wabi sabi; while she didn't skate perfectly clean programs, falling once in each, she did skate beautifully, with joy and courage. She took second in the long program. And she showed her coach and me a little glimpse what getting lost might look like when a child who is both tough and tender is nurtured, supported, and taken seriously as a skater.

More soon!

After a Long Silence

I haven't written about skating for ages. In part I've been silent because I've been so busy. But more than this, I've been silent because I didn't know what to say exactly. I'll give the update in brief and then begin to blog from where we are rather than dwelling in the past.

Grace had a disastrous winter and spring. At school, she struggled to find joy in learning in a classroom where enjoyment was read as a sign of disrespect and disobedience (for crying out loud! Maybe I need to write an entry just on this experience!). At the rink, she struggled to find the kind of everyday discipline that skating demands. After a very rough Winter Fest competition, Grace wrestled with herself on and off the ice. She worked and worked and worked, but seemed to gain little ground. She felt herself to be increasingly alienated from other children at her school and blamed skating, which, she felt, took her away from after-school play and made her different from a crew of popular girls with whom she hoped to be friends. We were driving to Omaha (fifty miles or so) four times a week and something had to shift: either Grace needed a breakthrough or she needed to quit.

After several months of soul-searching and agonizing, Mike and I made the decision to make a coaching change. We wanted a coach who would come to Lincoln during the winter when the Lincoln rink is open. And we wanted a coach who would take Grace's dreams of being a competitive skater seriously, who would push her to skate in her "zone of proximal development," at the outside edges of her ability, and who would give her the kind of coaching support she needs to stay at that outside edge. We made the change in late May and it was PAINFUL, but oddly not so much for Grace. I felt terrible (excited for Grace, but unbelievably guilty about what might be perceived as betraying the old coach); Grace seemed to feel exhilarated.

Grace has been working with Jason, then, for three months. She has a new compulsory program, and new freeskate program, and a new attitude. It's not all sunlight and roses. Grace is skating five times a week, still in Omaha because the Lincoln rink hasn't opened yet (it opens this weekend). She and I have been getting up at 5:00 AM or so to get to the rink for morning skates because ice time has been so limited even in Omaha. BUT...

The changes in Grace's skating are pretty incredible. In my next post, I'll describe them more and put up some before and after videos. She'll be competing this weekend in St. Joseph, MO for the first time as Jason's skater. We're not sure what to expect; it seems even more important than usual, given these dramatic changes, for Grace to really focus her competition goals around skating a clean program and having fun rather than winning or placing. And truthfully, whatever she does this weekend, she's a different and much, much stronger skater now.

More soon...

Preparing for Competition

Winterfest is coming up this week. Gracie is skating her first ever artistic program on Thursday afternoon and her short and long programs on Friday. She's skating at High Beginner level for the first time.

For weeks prior to yesterday she hadn't gotten through any of her programs without falling on nearly every jump and spin. She would run through a program, fall, work a section until it was perfect, run the program, fall...For weeks I've been thinking about whether or how to prep my strong-minded competitive girl for a disastrous competition. I'm still gnawing on that.

But, yesterday Grace practiced for an hour at the Ice Box with energy, focus, and drive. She did fall a couple of times, but she skated aggressively and with an artistry that had been absent for what seemed like months. She looked to be pulling it all together.

There's something about timing, I realize, in all of this. I don't understand the phenomenon very well, but I begin to see the importance of Grace not peaking too soon. When I am watching Grace work with Roxanne leading up to a competition I'm worrying all the time: will this program be choreographed in time? will Grace know the program and be secure in every element (or any element) in time? I worry that she'll be so disappointed if she falls or accounts her performance a failure. How will I help her through? How can I prepare her without undermining her confidence? And then somehow her elements, her speed, her artistry, and her attitude begin to come together and she's skating, as she did yesterday, programs that begin to sing.

I don't know how she'll do this week. But I do have a better sense of what she's capable of doing when preparedness and determination begin to coincide.