The Lull Between Learning and Mastery

Last year at this time, Grace was trying to learn to do a sit spin. She wanted to test in the worst way, but she couldn’t center her spin, balance over her spin, lift her foot high enough, pull her ankles in tight enough. During this time, Grace vacillated between determination and frustration. She worked that spin endlessly; always, I feared, toiling at the edge of giving up altogether and landing on “I can’t,” but never ultimately going there.

Last year at this time, Grace was skating on Thursday nights at Benson Arena, which might be the oldest rink in Omaha. One night before Junior Elite Club, Grace was practicing her scratch spins when suddenly she accomplished a beautiful one. Her face lit up and she looked across the ice toward me to see if I had been witness to her triumph. She did it again. And again. Those scratch spins weren’t all perfect; but there was this singular moment when, as if after considering long and hard the how’s and why’s, her body and mind decided to work with conception and form, memory and physics to accomplish the thing.

Tonight, Grace is skating at Benson again. I love this rink with its ancient concrete boards, the unusable fireplace in the lobby, and the stale smell of anti-freeze from the decrepit zamboni permeating the whole. And this year finds Grace in the midst of another lull. This year, she is wrestling with landing her flip and double loop jumps consistently. When she lands one, it’s huge and glorious and breathtaking…and rare. She lands a jump; falls four times; strokes or spins for a while; lands a jump; falls three times…and teeters once more at the verge. She must choose to go on and she must make that choice on faith, really. She’ll have to choose (she is, in fact, choosing) the work that mastery demands. But she’ll also have to choose to believe that her speed, torque, lift, and grace can carry her through these jumps and sustain her through their landings.

And there’s something I’m thinking I need to learn too. I need to learn to trust, lean in even, to the lulls: Grace’s and mine and my students’ as well. I need to learn to see them not as signs of failure, but as integral to learning processes. I need to learn patience if ever I am to teach it to Grace and to my students. Patience is not my strong suit, but perhaps I am just in a very (very, very) extended lull in my learning of it.