Thursday, August 28, 2008

Gracie's Scratch Spin

Quitting

"Quitting" may be an odd title for a post that is really about not quitting. Grace has never said she wants to quit figure skating. But she does sometimes say that she doesn't want to skate. When I ask her why she's feeling that way she wonders why other kids don't figure skate. There's no one else in her class or even in her school who does. She imagines what the other kids might be doing while she's at the rink...playing with one another, having parties, watching i.carly, playing computer games. For Grace, during those times when she wishes she weren't skating, much of her concern centers around the way skating makes her different from other kids and her sense that if she doesn't make the kids she likes the center of her world then they won't like her.

There's some conventional wisdom that circulates among the parents of skaters about quitting. The ubiquitous "they" say that kids should skate so long as they're having fun and when they stop having fun parents should let kids quit. I always wonder when I hear that how parents are to know whether the issue is that a child is no longer enjoying skating or whether there's something else going on altogether...something that quitting a sport wouldn't address and might even exacerbate.

Grace finds so much of her sense of self in the ways she is received and perceived by others. And she struggles to discern how being different from others might be a desirable, even admired quality by those very children she most fears will leave her if she skates this Wednesday evening.

And if I keep probing to learn more about her feelings on the days she wishes not to skate, I learn that she wants to learn to do an axel. That's her goal. Her coach says she needs to work on her backspin. She's not sure whether or how a backspin might help her do an axel. She wants to learn to do an axel. She doesn't know how to spin in the air. She's worried she won't be able to land on her left foot because another skater in her club whom she admires is struggling to land her axel. She knows because her coach has told her that she won't really start working on axels until she reaches the pre-preliminary level. She has three levels to go in Freeskate and she knows she won't move through these as quickly as she moved through prior levels.

You get the idea? Sometimes Grace doesn't feel like skating because she wants to skate better than she can right now. She wants to do an axel and she can't yet. And she isn't sure how the skills she's learning now connect with that which she currently most desires as a skater: to land an axel.

Mike and I often tell our kids that "Condons are not quitters." This comes up with regard to homework problems, playing the piano, the violin, the viola. It's come up with regard to hockey as well. And when Dan or Lucy have raised the possibility of quitting hockey there has always been something else going on: a bully on the team, bad coaching, insecurity with the other kids...
And whenever it comes up I am thrust into my own past, into all the ways I've quit and regretted quitting. And also into those couple of times I quit and quitting was absolutely the right choice, the only sane choice (like when I quit the theater because the life made me hurt so bad I thought I'd break apart and the pieces of me would fly off into the farthest reaches of the universe or when I quit my first marriage, finally and completely, to save my soul.

I don't know how we'll know when anyone of our kids has gotten to the point where quitting really is the right thing. And maybe "Condons are not quitters" doesn't quite capture the complexity of learning when and how quitting is an option. But I do know that in the lives of my children (and in my own life) the desire to quit almost, but not quite always has to do not with the thing we wish to quit, but with much more implicit fears and desires that can only be addressed if they are named. And quitting prevents their naming.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Zamboni Mechanics

Hey, check this out...all about zambonis:

http://www.igcema.org/forums/daily-grind/1879-notes-zamboni-mechanic.html

Long Time No Write

Well, it's been a long time since I've written and not because nothing has been going on. Grace skated a lot this summer. In fact, she probably skated too much which is to say that I signed her up for too much skating. Before and after our vacation in Minnesota (which was great by the way), Grace skated four days a week for a minimum of an hour and a half and most often two hours with an hour of off-ice class following.

Did she improve? You bet. In fact, at the end of the spring, she moved into Freeskate 1 and two weeks ago she passed Freeskate 3. She skated in a recent Kansas City competition, completing four events (compulsories, freeskate, spins, and jumps) and placed in all events with two seconds and two thirds. But by the end of the summer, she was tired rather than energized and I think it's my fault.

To her credit, Grace has decided that until Winterfest, her next big competition, she really wants to focus on skills development and testing. She wants to focus on spins and jumps and less on programs. I like that she's clear about it. And I feel more clear about making way for Grace to lead the way in her skating.

You might be amused to know that I, Zamboni Mama, am signed up for the fall Learn to Skate program. Partly, I'm thinking about it as good exercise. Partly, I'm thinking that Grace and I need some gentle separation and being on the ice will make it harder for her to continually check with me about her own skating and harder for me to watch her obsessively. And mostly, I'm thinking about how beautiful skating is, how much I have always wanted to learn, and how absolutely fascinated I am by the ways coaches work with skaters. I have this feeling that there's something lovely and composing about learning to skate...something that might translate from the rink to the college classroom.

More on that as time goes by. I'm off to center down before teaching my first class of the semester. I always read from a book of Quaker writings before class. When I forget, I'm not as good a teacher. Here's a snippet from a few days ago: "Blessed are the confused, for they may see the light. And beware of those who know all the answers, for they are wrong." -Reginald Reynolds