Sunday, February 21, 2010

A Response to My Last Post

I put up my post, chronicling my worry and fear about whether I'm being a good enough Mom for Grace right now, and received this response from a friend via my Facebook page. I got all weepy as I read it at the rink while I watched Grace skate. She had a fantastic lesson today with Jason. When she's on, she's just breathtaking! And so is this response to my post. I have permission to share it with you! Thanks, Erica!

Hi Frankie,

As a fellow blogger, I just wanted to send you a private response to your blog about Grace and the upcoming competition.

Reading through your blog as a mom-person ... it seems to me you and Grace have a parallel experience going on. So I thought I would, as Chris Gallagher says, "risk complexity" and offer you some unsolicited advice ...

She hasn't been able to find the joy this week, but then, it seems neither have you ... so I'm just wondering if the "lesson" this week is about modeling joy in the face of disappointment or difficulty. The transition into a new skating class, with a higher calibre of girls, will require Grace to work through some stuff, and part of that may mean she needs the new hair and dress to embody the performance of a self she'll become (but may not be just yet). I know it's difficult in a sport, because there is an emphasis on outcomes (whereas in writing we can focus on the process), so here's my unsolicited advice:

Make time to discuss how beautiful her struggle is, how her passion is an embodied thing (the shaking), and how fortunate you are to witness that. (This will help you, too). Her name is, after all, Grace. Sometimes, we moms focus on protecting our kids from pain, forgetting that the pain of birthing a new self (in this case, a new skater) really is like labor. She might need you to be the "midwife of her ideas" (I knew I could work Socrates in here somehow), to model the love and language of love within the struggle (bell hooks).

Praise the difficulty, be thankful for it (in a karmic sort of way) because it means Grace is being prepared, honed, challenged in order to gain tools that will serve her well later, in ways you can't possibly imagine.

But most of all, don't forget you too are learning to be a new kind of skater mom. And I'm willing to bet this process is beautiful, Grace-ful, and affirming in the end.

There. I know I don't know you very well, but I wanted to send this to you because I have to watch my kid take it in the chops every time she competes in culinary competitions. My mom alarm always sounds, the "should have" or "should I?" voices start, and I forget to witness her beautiful struggle as only another woman and mother can.

Have a great day!

Erica

Preparing for Competition (A Mom’s Insecurity Rant)

Winterfest is fast approaching and with it stress and anxiety for both Grace and me. I woke up this morning thinking about all the things I’ve done wrong as the parent of a figure skater.

I bought Grace a beautiful new dress for her compulsory program. But what if the new dress elevates the importance of competition, increasing her sense of the pressure around Winterfest? Yesterday, Grace got highlights in her hair to show off the blue of her eyes that match the blue of her Free Skate dress. What if she starts to think that she always has to change how she looks to be good enough for skating?

Week before last, Grace seemed to be skating beautifully, with joy. She was coming off the ice vibrating with pleasure at what she can do. This past week, she has struggled. She’s been tired and slow, struggling with program elements that seemed to come easily the week before. What if I’ve emphasized the competition too much so that Grace’s attention has gotten locked on the possibility of failure instead of on the joy of skating her best in the moment in which she finds herself?

Grace has been skating a lot. She skated fourteen days in a row, had one day off, and is now in the middle of an eleven-day stretch that ends with the competition. In the moment, she wants to skate, but what if I’ve given in to desires that aren’t really good for her? Maybe I should have said “No. You have to take three days off before you can skate again.”

Grace likes to win. But this time I really don’t expect her to medal. She’s skating at a new level against girls her own age who are great skaters as well as against older skaters who’ve been at this level for a while. What if I’ve not done a good enough job of preparing her for skating for herself, to discover what she can do on that day instead of skating to win? What if she peaked too soon so that she can’t successfully skate for herself with joy?

On Fridays, Grace typically gets to the rink after school at about 4:30. She skates with Coach James, takes a little break, and then helps out with the Moylan Learn to Skate program. She helps the adult coaches corral the youngest kids, plays with them, and helps them accomplish skills their coaches are teaching. This past Friday, James couldn’t be at the rink. Coach Jason had a cancellation so Grace had a lesson with him instead.

Grace admires and respects Jason like no other adult in her life. When she makes Jason smile or accomplishes something on the ice that elicits his praise, she is in seventh heaven. When he criticizes her work, she takes it in and works incredibly hard to apply what he’s teaching to her skating. Grace wants to be the skater Jason is always proud of and when she has a rough day, when he calls her out for being sloppy or slow on the ice, she is devastated.

On Friday, Grace’s skating was loose and sloppy as it has been all week. Jason told her so in no uncertain terms. She came off the ice vibrating, but not with joy. She was trying to hold in her disappointment and her tears. She wanted nothing more than to leave the rink. We talked about how she was feeling until she had words to say what she wanted and needed. We decided together that the right thing for her at that moment was to go home and regroup. She went back out on the ice to talk with the LTS director about not staying to coach. Jason called her over and she tried to tell him why she was leaving, but got tongue-tied. I took her home, stopping for pizza on the way, and let her watch movies till bedtime.

Saturday, we got up early and drove to Fremont for her power skating class. She did okay. Not great, but okay. She practiced after class for an hour. I got frustrated because she was repeating elements badly over and over that I know she is capable of completing beautifully. She was skating in front of other skaters and just generally in lala land. So I chided her. By the end of the practice, she had run through her program once without falling on her sit spin and her compulsory program with some speed. She wasn’t great, but she was better. We drove home, stopping at the car dealership to pick up the used car Mike and I have purchased. We traded in Mike’s old Jaguar, which he loved, for a Honda Civic that gets 38 MPG. We need the car so I can drive Grace to Omaha for lessons without spending $200 a week on gas in addition to ice fees and coaching costs. It’s a worthwhile sacrifice, but a sacrifice nonetheless (for Mike, at least: I hated that Jag). Then I took Grace and Lucy to see the Lightning Thief and then to the salon for Grace’s highlights. Last night we lazed around and Grace enjoyed her new hairdo.

For me, Dan and Lucy’s hockey is easy. They are on teams. When their teams lose games, they lose with their team. They may be disappointed, but they never bear the responsibility alone. They play games nearly every week not once every six months. My greatest worries with hockey have to do with Dan and Lu getting enough ice time for practice and with Lucy being treated fairly as a girl playing with boys. But Mike is one of the highest rated hockey coaches in Nebraska and he played hockey as a kid. He knows how to watch out for our kids. Figure skating is a whole different ball of wax. When Grace is thriving, I’m elated with and for her; when she struggles, she’s a wreck and so am I. I have no idea how to be a good Mom to her in either moment and, again, the lists of do’s and don’ts for figure skating parents don’t help too much. Maybe I worry too much, but the reality is that Grace’s coaches have lots of other skaters. They care about Grace, but not any more than they care about any other skater. I’m Grace’s go-to adult and I need to figure this out so my daughter can continue to love her sport, to grow and thrive as a skater and as a person, secure in the certainty that there are no conditions, no caveats, no small print attached to my love for her.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Grace's First Stab at Non-Fiction Prose

Have you ever been so proud of yourself that it almost made you cry? I have! It all started at 5:30 A.M. My mom made me get up for skating. Of course, I was tired so I went back to sleep in the car. When we got to Omaha, it was 6:45 and I had to get up and get into the rink.

I got my skates on and went out to the ice. It was cold and almost dark in there. I wanted a jacket, but I didn't have one, so I skated in the cold rink with out a coat. When it was time for my lesson, I wanted so badly to do my axel that I almost screamed, but I didn't.

Then I started to work on my axel and I almost landed it. "Do a sow cow from a stand still Grace," my coach said. I thought, "I"m finally going to start my double sow cow!" I could hardly breathe! I did one but it wasn't a double. And that was the day I was really proud of myself for starting my double sow cow!

*Grace's spelling and punctuation intact. My favorite is "sow cow."

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Grace with Jason at the Ice Box

Backseat Driving

I am a lousy passenger. Riding in the passenger seat, I gasp, hold onto the dashboard, and liberally apply the imaginary passenger side brake. I’m a pain in the ass, basically, for whoever is driving.

The year Dan played goalie for his hockey team, I had to sit far away from all the other parents in the stands. I acted out Dan’s blocks from my seat, dodging and darting as if I was the one in goal. Even now that Dan and Lucy both play center, I sit by myself more than with the other parents. I can’t seem to help myself. I’m playing the game with my kids from the stands. It’s not that I’m mean or swear or engage in other bad-parent behaviors. No, it’s more that someone is likely to get whacked by a flailing arm as I fire off a shot with Dan or take one of those eleven year olds out on the boards with Lucy. And I’m sure I look like Severus Snape up there in the stands offering counter-curses; I keep up a running muttering monologue instructing my kids all the way through every game. I turn into a mother bear, suddenly separated from a cub she perceives to be in danger. The truth is that I am a lousy passenger.

Now, you might think, figure skating being a judged sport rather than a team and contact sport, that my lack of self-control as a skater-mom wouldn’t be an issue. At Grace’s last competition in St. Joe’s, MO, however, I skated Grace’s programs with her from start to finish from behind a glass barrier that, in better times, would protect hockey fans from flying pucks, but in this instance served to protect Grace from her crazy mother. At the end of the day, Jason informed me, in no uncertain terms, that at the next competition Grace and I would separate well before her skate and that I would be watching from the stands with all the other parents. Ouch. Now all those other moms and dads will bear witness to my lack of control, my inner insanity, my mama-bear soul.

As the day of Winterfest draws nearer, Grace is practicing her compulsory and freeskate programs and I’m practicing the fine art of letting go, trying to prepare myself mentally for turning my little one over to her coach, trusting that she’ll be cared for and care for herself in the manner to which I am accustomed.

I know Jason is right. And if I didn’t trust him, he wouldn’t be coaching Grace. I also know, whatever my own weaknesses, Grace has come hardwired with a spirit of steel when it comes to competition. She may feel nervous, but she has never suffered from the kind of stage fright that helped to implode my acting career. She seems absolutely convinced that she’s good enough to take that ice and win. Grace’s response to not winning is typically, “Huh. I don’t know why I didn’t get a medal. I thought I was great.” So, one thing I know for sure is that my emotional state during competitions is not about Grace and her needs, but about me. It’s not something Grace needs to work through, but something I need to take care of for her, so that she can accomplish what she needs and wants without me getting in her way.

Now what’s a mama-bear to do with that realization?

It’s a truism that babies don’t come with instruction manuals. With regard to kids in competitive sports, what pass for parenting instruction manuals, I find, simply do not serve. Typically these texts come in the form of lists of Do’s and Don’ts, but give absolutely no sense of how profoundly nuanced and complex the work of parenting young, competitive athletes can be. In part, parenting work for child-athletes is complex because, even within single families, the physical and psychological needs of child-athletes can be vastly different. And in part this work is complex because parents are not automatons. We come with histories that shape our conceptions of our selves as individuals, as mothers and fathers, and as members of communities, large and small. It’s easy for leagues and clubs and national athletic organizations to tell parents what to do in lists of marching orders. But so far as I can tell no one makes any kind of an effort to help us figure out how to obey those orders, particularly when the rules don’t seem to account for the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves. So far as I can tell those organizations make absolutely no effort to move beyond articulations of the obvious to speak or write with the recognition that the parents of child-athletes might be smart, loving folks who find themselves in unfamiliar territory and/or might need something more and better than lists of do’s and don’ts so broadly generalized as to be largely meaningless.

One thing I’m absolutely sure about is that I’m not paying Grace’s coaches to help me figure this out. Oddly, I was thrilled when Jason barked at me about staying too close to Grace at the St. Joe’s competition. The source of that somewhat testily delivered edict had everything to do with what’s best for Grace as a skater; and that is exactly what I pay Jason to know and do. If I’m doing something that impedes the success of one of my children, I want to be told clearly and directly. But now I need to figure out the how for myself, I guess. So, here's my list of things to learn by the last weekend in February (snort):

a) how to manage my own nervousness before her competition so that what I communicate to Grace is not fear, but love and pride and faith
b) how to let go of her with joy and trust when Jason says it’s time for her to prepare for her programs
c) how to watch her skate without projecting myself out onto the ice; how to stay present in the stands even as she practices presence on the ice

I’ve pretty much given up on any possibility of progressing along this learning curve for my hockey playing kids. There’s something about watching other children bashing my Dan and Lucy into the boards that defeats even my best intentions to stay calm and centered. But there’s still hope for me as a figure skating mom, I figure. At least I hope so.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Photos of Grace with Coach James and with Ryan Bradley

Grace with Ryan Bradley during the Skate with the Stars Clinic in Omaha

Grace with Coach James after skating for Haiti.

Disappointment

This morning I received a text from Grace’s coach, James. He wrote with a heads-up that he is donating half of all his earnings today to earthquake relief in Haiti. He said he wanted to talk with Grace about the ethics of skating and, in particular, about skating beyond self-interest, with integrity and generosity.

And speaking of Kairos again…

I really, truly, deeply love the Olympics (especially the winter Olympics) not only because I’m a sports fan, but because I’m moved by the spirit of the Games, by the principles of international cooperation and exchange they strive to enact, and by the hope I think the Olympic Games represent for world peace and understanding. I tend to be as cynical about expressions of patriotism as I am about expressions of piety, but I’ll admit that, for me, the Olympians who represent the United States should embody what I think of as the best of the American character. American Olympic athletes should, I think, enact a spirit of generosity, of sacrifice in service not merely of individual achievement, but of the collective good. American Olympians should be athletes who inspire young people not only to strive for excellence in their sports, but to be exceptional citizens of their communities, their Country, and of the world. American Olympians should, I believe, be filled with joy at the opportunity to play their sports at the highest levels, and I don’t begrudge these athletes the fame and wealth that attend success in their sports. But I do believe that athletes should feel blessed by rather than owed the opportunity to represent their Country as Olympians and should take seriously the responsibility to act as role models of what it means to possess the highest quality of character for the generations of young athletes who will follow in their footsteps.

So when I heard Evan Lysacek call this weekend’s National Championships “a practice event” (a claim I’m quite sure he would not have made had he come in first rather than second) and Johnny Weir avow that his goal had never been to be National champion (a claim I’m quite sure he, also, wouldn’t have made had he won), I was appalled. I find those two utterances to be shockingly self-absorbed, shallow, mean-spirited, and, ultimately, to be perfect examples of what it means to be not just a poor sport, but a bad sport. Lysacek and Weir now appear to me to be small and mean, appear to possess exceptionally withered characters particularly when one contrasts their behavior with that of Ryan Bradley, who expressed with deep humility his gratitude for the opportunity to skate, his love for his sport and its fans, and his respect for his fellow competitors (and who clearly desired and worked tremendously hard in an effort to earn both the National title and an Olympic berth, but came up short in scores if not in performance).

I should, if I am to be honest, make a couple of confessions, the first of which is that I am a fan of Ryan Bradley. I love Bradley’s skating. I admire his athleticism and I’m absolutely charmed by the quality of his performances. But even more than this and even before watching this weekend’s Championship, I have admired the quality of Bradley’s character. During a year in which Bradley was preparing to skate on the Grand Prix circuit, to compete in the U.S. National Championship, and for a berth on the U.S. Men’s Olympic team, he took the time to come to Omaha, Nebraska (Omaha, for crying out loud) to work with young skaters with big dreams, one of whom was my daughter, Grace. While Bradley was here in Omaha, I’m told, he continued his training schedule, working his own skating around clinic and private lesson times. Although he must have been tired and stressed at times, he was invariably warm, enthusiastic, and kind to the skaters with whom he worked. And Grace, I know, felt herself to be a better skater for her work with Ryan Bradley. He took the skating lives of the children with whom he worked seriously and offered them a meaningful opportunity to really learn from a great, competitive skater.

My second confession is that, while I love figure skating and have for years, I am unqualified to judge who should have won either the short or long programs at this weekend’s competition. I’ll admit that I tend to agree with Elvis Stoiko that the quad is underrated in the new scoring system. And I tend to think that the new system under-values the artistic quality of figure skating. However, I don’t understand the scoring system well enough to judge whether doubling two jumps is really worse than stepping out of a triple axel or whether landing two quads but doubling an axel is really worse than falling on a quad and bobbling a few other elements. I have strong convictions about what I like and don’t like, about performances I love and those I merely admire, but I’m really not qualified to judge.

So this is not a blog entry about how Ryan Bradley should have placed at this weekend’s National Championships. Instead, this is an entry about character, about the quality of character I believe should be required for the athletes who represent the United States at the Olympic Games, in particular.

Grace and I watched the men’s Long Program together yesterday afternoon. Grace was thrilled to see “her coach” perform and do so well. We screamed when he landed his first and then his second quad and both of us got teary as his program came to a conclusion. We thrilled to the performances of Adam Rippon and Armin Mahbanoozadeh. In fact, we celebrated all of the skaters’ performances and were absolutely awe-inspired by Jeremy Abbott. Grace left the room once the outcome was clear, but I stayed to watch the follow-up interviews with the leading skaters. I wish I hadn’t. For what I’m left with is a kind of sick, sad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Of course I wish Ryan Bradley had scored in the top three. But his missing the podium is not what drives this sadness I feel. What I’m sad about is my experience of a revelation about the lack of character in two of the three men who will represent the U.S. as the Men’s National Figure Skating Team. What I’m sick about is the failure of any of the commentators or interviewers to remark either on the graciousness of Bradley in defeat or on the arrogance of Lysacek and Weir, who seemed to expect their Olympic berths as their due, who were so shockingly disrespectful to their fellow competitors, and who, I really think, dishonored their country and their sport by their callow disregard for the integrity of the 2010 National Championships.

So, I’ll watch the men skate in the Olympics come February. Maybe Grace will watch with me. But when it comes to the athletes I’ll turn to when I want to talk with my children about the intimate relationship between the quality of one’s character and the value of athletic achievement, when I want to draw their attention to an athlete who might serve as a role model not only for athletic excellence, but also for good sportsmanship, I’ll point to Ryan Bradley as an exemplar. When I’m trying to reinforce the lessons Grace learns from Jason and James about integrity, generosity, and graciousness on and off the ice, I’ll remind her of Ryan Bradley. When Grace feels downhearted or frustrated about her skating, we’ll watch Ryan Bradley’s short and long programs from this year’s championships and talk about the strength, courage, determination, and unbridled joy he brings to the sport even when times are hard. I can’t speak with any authority to the technical legitimacy of the final outcome of the Men’s National Championship, but for me and for Grace, it is Ryan Bradley who is the real Olympian.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Learning Presence

One night last week, after her lesson and some practice time, Grace came running off the ice to find me. I was in the lobby of the rink reading. “Mom! Mom! Watch my sit spin! It’s awesome!” I moved to the observation glass and Grace went back out on the ice. She showed me a sit spin. Then she ran through her compulsory program…three or four times. Then she worked on backspins. Then she decided to run through all of her spins. Then she ran through her long program. Twice. Then she re-worked a jump sequence three or four times. By this time, she’d been on the ice for over two hours. I went to the gate and told her it was time to come off the ice. She groaned and reluctantly followed me back to her Zuca bag in the lobby.

Let’s see…when is the last time I’ve had to pull Grace from the ice after such a long skate? Hmmmm…I think that would be….ummmm…before we moved from St. Cloud to Lincoln, when Prescott was still coaching her.

This morning Grace came off the ice after her lesson with Jason and she was vibrating with energy. “Mom,” she whispered (as if speaking aloud would crack the world apart), “Jason started me on my double salchow! Oh Mom, I’m so excited!”

Let’s see…when is the last time I’ve seen Grace so thrilled, so beside herself with excitement about her own skating? Hmmm…I think that would be…ummm…before we moved from St. Cloud to Lincoln, after her very first ice show.

Grace has had a challenging couple of weeks. For some time, Jason had been talking with me about connecting Grace with an up and coming artistic coach he works with in Omaha. I’d watched this coach working with Grace’s super best skating friend and I was very impressed. It took us all a while, but just before Christmas we managed to begin scheduling regular twice-a-week lessons for Grace with James. While Jason focuses especially on the technical, athletic elements of Grace’s skating and pushes her ongoing, overall development, James focuses on the artistic, performative aspects of Grace’s skating -- on character development, artistry, attunement to music, and perhaps most importantly of all on presence.

This is HARD for Grace. As competitive as Grace is, as much joy as she takes from imaginative play at home and with her closest friends, Grace is a rather deeply situated introvert. Her joy, her passion for skating is driven, I believe, by the pleasure she takes from moving; she loves the feeling of flying that attends jumping, the feeling of speed that attends spinning. She loves the feeling of her body at the edge of what is physically possible. It takes work for Grace to think about and feel for an audience. The kind of extroversion that attends audience awareness, for right now at least, demands energy of her rather than feeding her with energy. So when Grace is challenged to skate a role, as emotionally connected as she may be with the character, she wants to hide herself, to tuck that self away deep within. Further, and complicating matters for Grace, is the fact that she knows she is a powerful competitor. She can pull out a performance on competition days and often relies on that ability. When she begins to believe that the purpose of practice is to prepare for competition, she can slack off, giving less than she is capable of giving in the moment in which she finds herself -- the learning, learningful moment.

James has challenged Grace to give of herself as a skater in ways I think she has not been challenged previously. He asks her to be present in her body with her whole self, to make visible the spirit that drives not only her skating, but her movement through the world as a unique, extraordinary being. In an email to me about his growing conception of himself as a coach and his work with Grace, James wrote, “You cannot teach students "presence" on the ice without teaching them the value of "the present." The present cannot be honored without Integrity. This is why I believe that artistry is in fact a byproduct of one's commitment to technique, discipline, compassion and awareness (both inside and out). Everything is connected. My goals for Grace have nothing to do with skating clean programs, winning gold medals, or going to the Olympics. My goal is to inspire her to be open to these ideas so that she may approach everything in her life, not just skating, with a focus (intention) that is "so complete," "so honest" that her work will be met with the rewards of self respect, clarity and most importantly - inner peace. If that isn’t confidence, I don't know what is. I want her to know that the moment to value most is not the moment that occurs four weeks from now in front of an audience and a panel of judges. The moment that must be paid due is the present.”

And Grace has resisted. She’s wrestled with herself and she’s wrestled with both James’ and Jason’s pressure to try, to push herself in these new ways. But as much as she has resisted, I can see her processing, experimenting, and even enjoying what she discovers is possible as she takes the most tentative steps toward what I would think of as generosity and what James frames as integrity in her skating. Grace has been practicing in front of a large mirror in our upstairs hallway. She’s been practicing in our living room and on the playground at recess. The other day she told me that she showed her classmates at school what she’s working on in skating, including her off-ice axel walk-through (an interesting choice given the level of difficulty of the move and the likelihood of falling down in public). This new way of thinking involves a very different kind of risk than the risk that Grace more naturally embraces in skating. James and Jason are asking Grace to risk revelation by risking presence as a performer.

What really interests me as a teacher and fills me with joy as a parent is the way in which this new set of challenges presented by Grace’s coaches seems to have re-energized Grace’s Bliss. Although things haven’t been easy for Grace on the ice this last month, suddenly she doesn’t want to come off the ice, and when she does leave the ice she’s vibrating with pleasure at what she can do and what she is learning to do. She is living the lesson that what may be hardest for us, what feels so terribly uncomfortable for us as we learn it, might also be that which brings us unimaginable joy. Now that’s an extraordinary lesson for a nine-year old to be learning on or off the ice!

Cool! Very cool!