Changing

Last evening, I watched Grace skate for about an hour before her lesson with Roxanne. She's been learning more about jumping since her competition in Kansas City and last night she was working on loops and flips. Now some of the back-story of what I'm about to write is that after the KC competition, Grace decided she didn't want to focus on competitions. In short, though it's a more complicated tale than this, Grace doesn't like coming in second (or third). She likes to place first. When we talked with Roxanne about competing and what distinguishes a first place performance from a second or third place performance, here's what Roxanne said (as I understood her).

Thing One: You don't have any control over what other skaters do and how they do. Some skaters stay at the same level and compete at the same level for months and months. That means you may be skating a brand new program at a new and higher level than you have skated at before while another skater is skating her program for the fourth time at the same level. Your job is to skate as well as you can, to push your own limits, and to skate for the joy of skating.

Thing Two: You don't have control over what the judges choose to notice and reward. However, generally speaking, aggressive skaters do better than passive skaters. Skaters who jump higher, who spin faster and who achieve more turns per spin, who claim the ice with speed and grace are rewarded more highly for the same skills performed less aggressively.

Thing Three: Skaters need to learn how to feel and perform their music. Competing isn't just about completing each required element. Judges are looking at the performance as a whole as well. And that means they are looking at and judging how one takes the ice, the stretch of arms and legs, the point of toes, the arc of neck and arch of back, rhythm and pacing...not as isolated elements, but in a holistic sense for the ways in which, taken together, these aspects of performance are expressive of a point of view and tell a story that draws an audience in and holds them rapt if only for a few minutes.

Last week, Grace got into trouble at school for not paying attention and for not working very much. On Thursday evening, she and I lay together on my bed talking about what had happened. I told her a story about a time in fifth grade when I didn't try very hard and what the consequences of that failure had been for me. Grace was quiet for a bit and then she said, "Mommy, sometimes I don't have to try very hard to do okay. I can get by. But I do get bored sometimes." So we talked some more, both about figure skating and about school. And we agreed that maybe doing "okay" isn't really good enough for Grace. This is true for me a well and it's one of the pieces of common ground between me and my youngest daughter. Both of us are driven by passions we can barely name. When either one of us is striving for "okay," we get bored and often fail. And both of us respond similarly to failure. When we choose boredom (and it is a choice, I think) we are inclined to turn away from the work rather than leaning into it. And as we talked, I think we both agreed that while there's great risk in the spaces beyond "okay," it is in those spaces that our greatest joys are experienced along with the fulfillment of our passions. And this is true for both of us even when we fail after having risked much.

There are times for both Grace and I as learners when we are required by circumstance or by our teachers, coaches, or mentors to spend time learning things we find, shall I say, not-very-compelling. There are plenty of times when we feel that we are being pressed into rote learning in service of more interesting, exciting learning that may or may not come to us later on. And both Grace and I want to skip right to the good parts (and to the rewards that come from the good parts that never, we know, come from the boring old rote stuff).

There isn't, I find, a tidy ending to these sorts of conversations, either for parents or children, for teachers or students. One sees, instead, the conversation emerging as strands of new experience, new or renewed efforts, or as revisions of self-expressed-in-action.

I stood watching Grace last night, I thought I saw a luminous silver thread weaving through Grace's presence, pleasure, and labor, drawing in and holding close her dreams and desires to her performance of self and skater on the ice. I am not thinking here so much of a perfectly completed moment in her learning life, but a learning-in-action moment in which one can sense in the periphery of perception, the prior conversations ongoing in Grace's mind. Perhaps you can see it too?