The Outside Edge

Winterfest 2010 Photo Blog

2010-02-28T16:38:00.000-08:00

A Response to My Last Post

2010-02-21T13:23:00.000-08:00

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)

2010-02-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

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.

Grace's First Stab at Non-Fiction Prose

2010-01-28T15:24:00.000-08:00

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."

2010-01-24T15:31:00.000-08:00

Grace with Jason at the Ice Box

Backseat Driving

2010-01-24T15:05:00.000-08:00

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.

Photos of Grace with Coach James and with Ryan Bradley

2010-01-18T18:39:00.000-08:00

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

Grace with Coach James after skating for Haiti.

Disappointment

2010-01-18T18:26:00.000-08:00

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.

Learning Presence

2010-01-13T13:52:00.000-08:00

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!

Future Perfect

2009-12-08T11:01:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-08T10:55:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-30T07:06:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-23T06:33:00.001-08:00

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.

The Lull Between Learning and Mastery

2009-02-12T20:06:00.000-08:00

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.

Hockey Fights and Family Values

2009-02-09T06:17:00.000-08:00

Well, it's happened. My sweet baby boy (okay, so he's a husky almost-thirteen year old) has had his first hockey fight. I've dreaded this day, known it was coming, and hoped it would never come.

In the final game of a tournament to determine the Midwest Regional Championship PeeWee team, Dan earned a game misconduct for fighting. Apparently, the Omaha players were taunting him by calling him "Condom" among other equally nasty names and Dan lost his temper.

One thing I haven't written about in this blog is the role that faith plays in our lives. We are Quakers. Most people don't know very much about Quakers and tend, when hearing the name, to think of the guy on the oatmeal box or to think of people long ago who didn't wear buttons or dance. Quakers do have a long faith tradition dating back to the seventeenth century. Quakerism is a Christian faith, but differs significantly from other protestant denominations, perhaps most evidently in our belief that every person is a minister; hence, at least in conservative Meetings, we don't have ordained ministers, but sit in silence waiting on the Word of God. Any person who feels moved to speak may do so.

Much has changed in Quaker faith and practice, but four central tenets of our faith remain. These are Simplicity, Truth, Equality, and Peace (I teach my children to remember these by the acronym, "STEP." Mike and I remember them by the acronym, "PEST" as Quakers can be pests when we feel convinced that we must stand firm in our faith.

For our family, Simplicity means being conscious of the mark we leave upon the earth, stewarding our planet as responsibly as we are able and it means holding most dear our shared faith, our love for one another, and God's creatures rather than prizing material gain.

Truth means that we try in every circumstance to speak the Truth as best we can discern it by attending deeply, reflectively, and deliberately to the will of God as it is revealed to us. We talk of listening to the Still Small Voice Within and attending to that voice at every moment in our lives. For this reason, we don't swear oaths but commit ourselves to speaking the Truth in every circumstance.

Equality means that God recognizes no hierarchies among the peoples of the earth. Each of us, regardless of age, race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture, nationality, or faith, is beloved of God and equal in Her eyes. And God may give any one of us some piece of the Truth and ask of us that we minister that Truth.

Peace means that there is that of God in every person and in every one of God's creatures. Therefore, to do harm to another is to do harm to God, Herself. Most Quakers are pacifists.

When Dan first started playing hockey, we were living in Kinderhook, NY and were members of Old Chatham Monthly Meeting. Some of our Friends were, well...not shocked exactly, but curious about our choice to encourage Dan in the sport because of its reputation as a game that values, even encourages violence. I won't speak for Mike, but I felt (and still feel, I guess) that the pleasure that hockey gave to Dan and the athleticism it required of him trumped the predilection of some fans toward a kind of gladitorial culture. I felt that we could teach Dan to play the game well and bring our faith to his playing of the game. I felt, and really do still feel, that faith means little if it is never tested and that the right choice would be to talk with Dan about the violence of the sport rather than seeking to protect him from thinking through how our faith might inform all kinds of choices he might make even and especially under the most challenging of conditions.

While there are certainly fights in professional hockey, the culture of violence in hockey, I think, is most prevalent at the junior level, particularly in leagues like the USHL in which the players are high school aged boys with promising talent. Here, games are preceded by light shows, smoke, and loud music in a style quite akin, I imagine, to the opening of professional wrestling matches. There is, in these games, an endorsement and promotion of a masculinity defined by aggressive physical prowess even, in many cases, at the expense of skills in skating, stick-handling,and strategy. And this culture, I think, is not unique to hockey played at this level, but is, rather, an exaggeration or a kind of excessive performance of masculinities in which boys are steeped in all cultural contexts (including school).

To live his faith off and on the ice is a lot to ask of young Dan. And yet, I think, it is in the imperfections of our faith as lived experience, as choice, that we learn how better to be faithful in our lives. The objective of faith, I think, is to honor God by trying hard and with humility, not to achieve the fact of or some conviction that we are, in fact, perfect in faith.

When we were living in Minnesota, we really stopped going to Meeting. There was no Quaker Meeting in St. Cloud and the nearest gatherings were in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Brainerd (an hour's drive each way). Two weeks ago, though, and largely because Grace has been asking so much about Quakerism, I started attending the Quaker Meeting here in Lincoln. Next weekend, Dan, Lucy, and Mike will, I hope, go with Grace and me. I realize I've taken to much for granted with regard to our faith. We need to be more intentional in our sharing of our faith with our children if Dan, Lucy, and Grace are to be equipped to choose lives of faith even in the face of a culture that espouses and valorizes violence over love, respect, reflectiveness, and compassion.

Girls U-12 in Northfield

2009-02-02T06:30:00.000-08:00

I spent the weekend in Northfield MN with Lucy and Grace. The Omaha Lady Jr. Maverick's played a tournament there and took home the third place trophy. Their first game took place at 8AM on Saturday morning and all the girls looked tired and slow. But their second and third games...well...those were a different story...

In the way that I do, I've worried about Lucy. She and Grace are dramatically different characters in all kinds of ways, but they do share one trait in common. They are superbly talented athletes who are not always inclined to push themselves to work at the outside edges of their ability. With some regularity, both girls seem content to skate well within their comfort zones and this, I think, slows their development. Having said that, Lucy played so well in the second (and third games) this weekend. She was stunning.

Lucy plays hockey like a shark when she's of a mind to do it. She circles, watching for opportunities, and then strikes with exceptional speed. Lu scored the first goal of the second game with a sweet shot through a scramble at the net. She played great offensive hockey and was absolutely fearless about working for the puck at the boards. She was fast, confident, and aggressive in the best sense. She scored a second goal later in the game and the team went on to take the game 5 - 1. The third game pitted Omaha against Waconia in a very even match. Again, Lucy played confident, aggressive hockey, scrambling fearlessly against Waconia's #14 (a girl who was probably a foot taller than Lucy). Lucy took a couple of hard hits that probably should have been called (one as checking and one as interference), but she jumped right back up and got right back into the game. One of Lucy's great strengths as a player is the degree to which she keeps her head up and looks for passing opportunities. She has really good puck control and when other players are also playing heads-up hockey, Lucy can keep a passing game going strong. Bella, Connor, Miley, and Taylor also played exceptionally well in the second and third games and the goal-tending for both games was fantastic!

On Saturday night, most of the parents and kids went to a bowling alley near our hotel. I had so much fun watching Lucy with her friends. Off the ice, she is so funny and kind. I think I fell in love all over again with little Lucy Condon this weekend. What a gal! What a weekend!

Other news in Brief: Last Wednesday I passed level four having finally mastered (sort of) my three-turns. On to backward crossovers. Yipe! Grace has a bee in her bonnet about testing. She worked with Mike on Friday morning at the Ice Box on her camel spin. She's working to get her flying leg higher. She also has to land her flip consistently before Roxanne will test her. So, we're in for another intense week of skating as Grace prepares for the Winterfest competition and works toward testing...

Skating in Michigan

2009-01-21T07:26:00.000-08:00

Early in January, Grace and I traveled to Grand Rapids, Michigan to see family. While we were there, Grace practiced at the Patterson Ice Rink, home to the Greater Grand Rapids Figure Skating Club (http://www.ggrfsc.org/). Grace shared the ice with some extraordinary skaters. I was thrilled to see her skate out, without hesitation or self-consciousness, to share the practice ice with competitive junior and senior level skaters (of whom there were many). The Patterson Rink is a fantastic facility (something we yearn for here in Lincoln). The Club leaders were exceptionally welcoming to Grace. We visited the Pro Shop, which has a very tempting inventory of beautiful practice and competition dresses and talked for a while with Jennifer Forrest. She invited us to come back to Grand Rapids over the summer. The rink offers numerous hockey camps that Dan and Lucy might attend and arrangements could be made for Grace could to skate with the GGRFSC. Wouldn't that be cool?!?! Here's a picture of Grace getting ready to skate in Michigan.

Shameful Neglect

2009-01-15T12:09:00.000-08:00

I admit it. I have neglected my blog terribly in the last few months. I am deeply ashamed. But there's a story attached to my absence from The Outside Edge and it's taken me this long to discern what that story is exactly.

On October 15, 2008, Grace and I went to the rink as we usually do on Wednesdays. Grace had her lesson which, as I recall, went well. Then she went back on the ice for Junior Club (Blade and Edge FSC's developmental program for skaters at the Free Skate Levels prior to Pre-Preliminary) and I took the ice for the Learn to Skate session. We were working on backwards stroking. I wasn't, even then, a fan of doing anything backwards on the ice or off. On my blades, when I'm going backwards I feel teetery -- like I'm going to going to fall right over -- and at LTS I just know I'm going to run over some poor toddler. In any case, I was stroking away -- backwards -- when suddenly I heard Jerry start to say my name and registered that there was panic in his face. Then I was flat out on the ice. Another adult skater had collided with me. My right hand felt funny and I felt wobbly on the inside. As I got up, Jerry skated over to make sure I was okay. I told him I was, but I didn't feel okay. I don't think I would have described how I was feeling at the time as pain. I experienced it more as a kind of overwhelming desire to be alone. It was only after I left the ice and sat down to take my skates off that I realized I had actually broken a finger.

Lest you think I'm a total weenie, it really wasn't the pain of a broken finger that kept me from writing blog entries all this time. It was the creature that snuck in the back while I was applying ice, driving home afterward, imagining my next lesson, and driving back to the rink the following Wednesday. It was fear: not as an abstraction and not fear as the result of imagining hurt or failure or pain, but the kind of fear that follows from experience. I was not afraid of the possibility I might fall again, but because I knew I would -- and it would be as embarrassing and painful and public as it had been that other time.

And that was it. I wasn't having fun anymore. I didn't want to go fast; I didn't want to try anything new; I didn't want to wobble even the slightest little bit. Not surprisingly, I stopped progressing. I couldn't do crossovers, I couldn't do three turns. I didn't want to work on backwards stroking. I didn't write blog posts because I had nothing to say. I wasn't excited or interested or composed enough to write, I felt. Instead, I thought a lot and long and hard about quitting. I really wanted to quit.

But what would I ever say to Grace, I thought, or Dan or Lucy if they wanted to pull a stunt like quitting after what was, really, such a minor failure? Plus I just hate thinking of myself as a quitter or as someone to fearful to try things. One night at the rink, I was watching Jenny (one of the Blade and Edge coaches) work with her skaters. I like watching Jenny coach and I like watching her skaters perform. As I watched her work that night I realized that the reason I like watching Jenny and her skaters is that you can really see in their faces, their bodies, and in the way they skate how much pleasure they are taking from the sport. There's just no doubt they're having fun. I've also noticed that mostly Jenny's skaters have a strong dance sensibility. When I've worked with Jenny during LTS sessions, she uses language to describe what she's looking for that I can connect with my studies of dance and movement from way back

So I asked Jenny to give me a few lessons. I've worked with her twice and I've skated with Grace quite a bit over the holiday season. I'm not all back to where I was before. I'm still more fearful than I was, but I am having fun again. And I feel like I can write again. And that's important -- really important -- to me.

So I'm back, with apologies for my absence, and with a renewed sense of motivation and interest if not fearlessness.

frankie

Postcards from the Rink

2008-10-12T07:06:00.001-07:00

I spent most of the last skating class working on the skills on which I was about to be tested: stroking, backwards one-foot glides, half swizzles on the circle, a two-foot turn on the circle, and a two-foot spin. Of these, the backwards one-foot glides and two-foot spin threatened to do me in. I finally figured out, though, that if I lift the hip of the foot I'm lifting off the ice and turn that hip outwards in the backwards glide, I can balance better and longer. I was working on the two-foot spin when I lost my balance, teetered, and feel flat on my butt. It really wasn't as bad as I imagined falling would be. I laughed, got back up, and tried again. My spin isn't lovely, but I can do it.

Postcards from the Rink

2008-10-12T07:03:00.001-07:00

And I passed the test! On to Level Four!

Updates

2008-10-12T06:42:00.000-07:00

Dan's friend is out of the hospital and recovering at home. That was a near miss and too scary for words, but all of his friends are so very glad he's safe and home.

Dan and Lucy are playing their last football games of the season (Oh Joy!) this weekend and then we'll be an all ice all the time family again.

Mike led his first coaching clinic for certification yesterday. He stayed up until 2 in the morning the night before worrying about whether he had every plan just right. but then he did. So the clinic went great and he had fun. Then he came home and went to bed for three hours.

Prayer

2008-09-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

One of Dan's friends, a buddy from his PeeWee travel hockey team, suffered a shoulder injury in football. In the aftermath of the injury, Dan's friend has suffered a bone infection. On Thursday, he underwent surgery for ARDS (acute respiratory distress syndrome). He was life-flighted to Omaha where he remains on life-support in the ICU. His Dad says he has improved every day, but Dan's friend is desperately ill.

I don't know how many people read this blog (I suspect it's me and one or two of my closest friends), but if you are reading this, know that there is a brave, life-loving boy struggling for breath. Please pray.

~Frankie

Speed

2008-09-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

When you sit at the rink and watch other skaters turn or change direction on the ice, you see a constellation of skills building one on the next that impress you. Maybe you think about how quickly the skaters’ feet seem to move in a turn, how balanced they are over their centers, how graceful they make such quick movements seem. But attending every observable motion in a quick turn are a myriad of invisible and intangible body/mind moves: the quickness of breath stilled for the moment preceding the turn, the laying aside of fear and doubt, the instantaneous decision that now is the moment and the concomitant will to believe one is prepared to change direction in the blink of an eye.

To earn a Level Three badge, one of the skills I will be tested on is the two-foot turn on a circle. This skill builds on the standing two-foot turn that I learned in Level Two. For the Level Two turn, my feet, carefully held together, point toward the boards on one side of the rink. I have one arm outstretched in the same direction as my toes and the other stretched out parallel to my torso. To turn, keeping my feet close together, I torque my upper body, at the same time as I quickly swing my feet 180 degrees so that my toes point to the boards on the other side of the rink and my arms have switched positions.

On Wednesday, my teacher tells me it’s time to try a moving two-foot turn on the circle. Now I need to gather speed as I move around the inked-in face-off circle on the ice, bring my feet together in a glide, and perform the same two-foot turn in motion so that I end by gliding backwards on two feet around the circle. I’ve watched hundreds of kids perform this move both in figure skating and in hockey and admired their sureness, quickness, and grace. I’ve never imagined doing it myself. In fact, this move is one of several thousand that I’ve imagined would be impossible for me. Jenny says you can’t do it slowly or your feet will come apart, you’ll waver on your center, and you’ll fall. I don’t want to fall.

One autumn day in 1989, I stand on a firing range with my friend, Dave. He’s showing me how to shoot a gun. I feel like a character in a movie. He tells me to stand with my feet shoulder-width apart. Not too wide, he says, and nudges my feet a bit closer together. He fusses about my arms too. Two hands on the gun, arms straight, but with just a little give. He instructs me in how to aim. He tells me to pull the trigger and I do. The shot is loud and my arms jounce. He laughs and tells me to try again. This time, he says, I need to breathe in deep, relax my shoulders, let the breath out slowly and stop when I’ve released about half. Now he wants me to fire. I do. I hit the target, but wide of the bulls-eye by a large margin. We do this over and over again.

One summer day, years later, I’m bobbing in a lake, having squeezed my feet into the rubber boots of two skis. I’m holding onto the bar of a ski rope. The line of the rope goes between my skis to the back of the boat that rocks ahead of me. My knees are bent almost up to my chest and I’m imagining pushing down with my heels, but letting the boat pull me to standing. The waves of leftover wake from the boat are tilting me this way and that so I struggle to keep the tips of my skis above the surface of the lake. I want to wait until the surface of the lake is still, but the occupants of the boat are looking back at me, waiting for me to shout, “Hit it.” So I do. I land face-first in the water. The boat circles to bring me the rope. I reach for it, wrangle it between my skis, pull my knees to my chest, and the water rocks me. The water won’t be still. I have to decide, I think, that I can do this. I put my doubt, alongside my frustration at the way the water rocks me, in parentheses. I turn myself over to the power of the boat and the sluicing of the waves and yell, “Hit it.”

It’s 1979. I’m standing on a beam of the Toby Bridge where it crosses over the Clarion River, outside the railing that prevents cars from slipping off the pavement and into the green water below. None of my friends have made the leap, the patently illegal and transgressive leap. I want to be the first. I want to land feet first and slice into the water so that I don’t slap my belly or back or hit my head on the water or the bridge pilings. Every moment I spend thinking about the jump increases the likelihood that someone else will jump first. I feel the nagging tickle of adrenaline at my core. I decide and go. Just like that. I just do it in the blink of an eye.

On the ice, I gather speed around the circle. I’m scared and I can feel the fear less as an abstraction than as a physical sense of dread pulsing in my muscles, blood, and breath. My left arm is outstretched ahead of me, over my toes. My right arm reaches toward the center of the circle. I pull my feet together and try a glide. I stroke some more around the circle, gather speed again. I see Grace glance at me from the other end of the ice. I get up some more speed, take a breath, release it halfway then hold it. I feel the wobble over my blades and imagine, quick as lightening, what it will feel like to be gliding backwards. I decide and rip my blades around, willing my feet to stay together, while I wrench my torso in the opposite direction, switching arms as I go. Now I’m facing the opposite direction, still on my feet, and slowing to a stop. I breathe again.

In the afterward of this lesson, I think about limits. I think about the ways I seem always to be looking for the outside edge of myself -- and for the knife-thin slice of opening in the membrane that separates self from world and from others as if I might slip through. I think about the ways in which I am both repelled by the possibility of the end of self and simultaneously and nearly inexorably drawn to it. I think about the impossibility of realizing that possibility or of knowing, assuming that one could achieve it, what slipping through would feel like. I can only know that feeling as an approximation: this is what it might feel like, and never this is what it is. And as I think about limits, I think about the strange matter of fact that skating (and shooting and skiing and leaping off bridges) and writing seem all to be expressions of this terrible fascination I have with the limit, with the arts of the impossible, with speeding toward oblivion in the absurd, but lovely faith that I will find life there.

Another Postcard from the Rink

2008-09-23T05:59:00.000-07:00

Last week two other Moms joined me on the ice for Learn to Skate. Watch out kids! Because if we fall on you, you will be smushed! I worked on backwards swizzles and stroking and backward one-foot glides. I have to be able to glide a length of ice equal to twice my height. This is not the first time in my life I've regretted being 5'10. If I were 4'8 I'd have passed Level Three already. Sigh. I also learned the beginnings of a two-footed spin. I think I'm going to like spinning, although I wasn't turning very fast and still got that dizzy feeling in my tummy. At the end of class, Grace skated over and gave me some tips so that I was able to work in a few more turns at a just-slightly higher rate of speed.

I ordered a new point and shoot digital camera and I'm hoping it arrives before Wednesday night so I can try it out along with my Flip Ultra (BUY ONE OF THESE -- they are great!).

I'm working up a longer post, but didn't want to let the Blog go for too long without saying anything. I'll give you a hint: the new post is about limit-experiences and learning. Enough said.

More coming soon...

Changing

2008-09-16T06:13:00.000-07:00

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?

Postcards from the Rink

2008-09-11T14:40:00.001-07:00

Wednesday was my first day of skating class. Grace got herself ready to go onto the ice while I paced around, talked with folks, signed kids in for Junior Club (a class for more advanced skaters). I watched Grace work with Roxanne and practice on her own, then I watched her skate with her Junior Club class. Somehow, watching her helped me relax a bit and as I calmed down I decided to give myself permission, again, to just have fun.

Learning to Skate

2008-09-11T14:39:00.003-07:00

Finally, it was time for the Learn to Skate kids (and adults) to take the ice. Jerry, one of my favorite Blade and Edge coaches, worked with me. I learned about the center of gravity on figure skate blades and discovered how different figure skate blades are from hockey skates.

Hockey skates rock you forward on the blades so that your center of gravity is closer to the ball of your foot. There's a kind of built-in forward momentum, I think, in a hockey blade. Figure skates place your center of gravity further back on the blade, closer to your heel. Hence, you might notice when you watch good skaters (not me), that they stand upright and kind of stretched between ice and sky.

I wobbled and bobbled around for quite a while. But then Jerry started to talk about feeling your center or core and the way every motion begins there. And he started to describe the way that, as you move, you gather strength in your center, push down, and bend your knees so that the ice softens beneath you. That image made sense to me. And it sounded a lot (and reminded my body) of all those years spent in dance and movement classes.

I tried forward swizzles (your heels are together, you gather your center, bend your knees and stretch your feet out and around in a forward motion till your toes come together again. And I tried backward swizzles (your toes are together, you gather your center, bend your knees and stretch your feet out going backwards until your heels touch again). If you go one-forward-one-back, that's a "rocking horse" and if you keep going forward or backward, then you're doing actual swizzles. I learned one foot glides and some stroking. I worked on snowplow stops and a standing turn in which you torque your upper body at the same time as you rotate your feet in a half turn. Scary, but cool.

Jerry is a great teacher and he was really encouraging. At one point he told me that he thinks he has learned so much about coaching from working with adult skaters. He said that adult skaters are never ambivalent about being on the ice. They ask good questions and they're excited to learn. At the end of my half-hour with Jerry he said, "Now you know why we get addicted to this sport!" And he was right; I did know and this time from a skater's perspective. It's fun and not because it's easy. Figure skating is challenging. You learn the skills in small enough chunks to be successful quickly, at least in the beginning. But you know, even as you're learning, that you are capable of making those movements more solidly, more fluidly, with greater balance and beauty. And, in watching other skaters, you can see how this small movement you're learning in this moment will become a part of some much more elaborate and complex movement later.

Whoo Hoo

2008-09-11T14:39:00.001-07:00

So, at the end of the lesson I came off the ice and my friend Rhonda handed me my first two badges. Somehow, I managed to pass two levels on my first night. Whoo Hoo!

Proof

2008-09-11T14:26:00.000-07:00

In case you couldn't see them in that last picture, here are my first two badges!

Heresy

2008-09-07T06:17:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. When it comes to football, I play Loose End. I don't get football. And in Husker territory, to admit this is to commit heresy.

Dan and Lucy will be playing their second games of the season today. Both of them are excited. Each of them will be running the ball. Don't ask me what positions they're playing because I can't keep the positions in football straight in my head. Tight End, Full Back, Half Back. What's up with that? Run around, knock people down. Whistle blows. Stand around for twenty minutes. Line up. Run around and knock people down some more. Fascinating.

I feel like I should go watch and cheer my kids on. But the truth is that I'd rather poke my own intestines with a pickle fork than stand around in the rain watching football no matter who is playing. Give me a rink and a hot cup of coffee. Give me a game with forward and defensive lines: a game that's easy to understand. Give me a game where size is good, but speed and skill are all: a game in which the skills required to play are complex. Give me a game that moves.

About the possibility of learning more about football, I feel much as I felt about algebra and French in high school: I prefer not to, as Bartleby the Scrivenor would have said. Now life has given me the assignment. A good parent would learn this even if she doesn't want to. I want to be a good parent, but I HATE FOOTBALL.

Years ago, when I was in graduate school, I dreaded the day when I have would have to take the course that would satisfy the language requirement. Without that course, I'd have no PhD and would have wasted hope, desire, years, and thousands of dollars. I waited and worried until everything else was finished. Finally, I just had to take that course or pack myself in and live with failure. So I enrolled in a French class for graduate students. I was very very pregnant (this seems to be a running theme in my life) and I had to squeeze into the seat. When the baby kicked I worried about it breaking a foot on the desk that pressed into my tummy. I took copious notes; I highlighted every line in the textbook; I made flashcards and carried them with me everywhere. I got a D on the first quiz and further humiliated myself by weeping in class.

I hate failure. So, I made myself keep going. I made more flashcards. I checked out books by Foucault still in their original French and practiced translating. I underlined what I had highlighted in the textbook. I'm not sure how, but I did ultimately pass the course and even did well in it if the grade at the end of the semester suggests success. The larger success was that I learned that I can learn, even when I don't really want to, if I set my mind to it. I haven't used French since taking the course and the truth is that I've forgotten almost all of what I learned.

Except this: when I most dread learning and ask myself why, the answer that returns to me is that I am afraid I can't. I may tell myself I don't like the one who teaches or I may tell myself the subject is boring, but the cold hard reality is fear. I'm afraid of failing.

I think Lucy might be the only girl in Lincoln playing football. She isn't just the only girl on her team. I haven't seen another girl playing on any team. She is the only one so far as I can tell. It took her coaches a couple of weeks to figure out that she is a girl. I don't think Lucy worries about failure too much. She wants to learn football. She wants to play. So she marches up to the practice fields three or four times a week and runs drills and knocks people over and gets knocked over. And she gets back up. What is it, I wonder, that Lucy will learn from me if I refuse to learn football? Will she get somehow that football really is a boy's game after all because even her own mother finds it too hard to grasp? Will she learn that some things are beyond her girl body to learn and she shouldn't even try?

No, I think I have to suck it up and learn a bit about football. I may never use that knowledge again after this season (or after the kids give up the game, which I secretly hope they will sooner rather than later). But for this autumn in addition to learning to skate, which I want to do, I have to learn enough about football to not be a Loose End.

Gracie works on her Sit Spin

2008-09-05T16:21:00.000-07:00

Analogies: Skating and Writing

2008-09-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

I am standing, nose pressed against the glass, in the observation area of the ice rink at Tranquility Park in Omaha. Thankfully, the room is heated for this is the coldest rink in Nebraska, I think. I am watching Grace and her coach work together. Grace is practicing stroking around the outside perimeter of the rink. Roxanne is leaning against the boards watching. Grace pushes with one leg, then the other. After each stroke, she lifts her power leg and stretches it, long and with pointed toe, behind her for the glide. Her chest bobs as she goes. She stops by Roxanne when she has completed her circuit of the rink and gives the coach a big hug. Roxanne smiles, ruffles Grace’s hair, and I see her place one hand on Grace’s chest and the other on Grace’s back as she talks. Then she mimics the bobbing motion Grace was making during her first circuit. They laugh together.

Grace begins a second circuit, stroking carefully, her head high and arms outstretched. She still bobs a bit, but not as much.

And so it goes. Hour after hour, day after day. Grace and Roxanne work together on what might appear to be minutia, but are, in fact, essential elements of both the athleticism and artistry of skating. Painstakingly, Grace learns a complex grammar of the body that demands memory and understanding, the ability to calculate angle and speed, to draw apparently discrete and complex skills into a seamless composition, and the willingness to risk testing the limits of ability and genre – to press against prior conceptions of the possible and the lovely.

As I watch and as I put the word, “grammar,” to the work Grace and her coach are doing together, I realize that I have invoked a more expansive notion of grammar than one typically might as a writer, a teacher, a writing center consultant or director. I mean here to invoke “grammar” as the principles or rules attending an “art, science, or technique” and yet even this articulation is made inadequate by its conjunction: OR. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grammar) For the grammar of skating like the grammar of writing is composed of principles informing the technique AND science AND art of the practice or craft. And these apparently constituent aspects of both skating and writing cannot be pulled apart from one another for the purpose of learning, then stuck back together again for the purpose of doing without some critical loss. To learn, for example, the principles attending the technique of a scratch spin is not to learn only the physical how, but to learn also and simultaneously the art of making such a move beautiful to spectators who have a conception of what beauty might mean in this context (the rules governing what will be accounted as beautiful), but who hope also to be surprised by a beauty conceived anew and extended – a beauty heretofore unknown and therefore breathtaking in that it changes the rules, the principles, the very definition of both the skill and the art.

The stroking that is the focus of Grace’s lesson with Roxanne this day will have its moment as a thread in the elaborate composition of a performance at some future time. This kind of stroking becomes the opening rhetorical move in a skating program: skaters use it first when they take the stage prior to the start of their music. The stroking is the projection of the skater’s presence on the ice. As an epideictic move, this stroking suggests the ceremonial quality of the occasion. This stroking is also an expression and demonstration of the ethos of the skater and of her performance: it communicates not only the skill and confidence of the skater, but the ease and grace with which she claims the right to speak, as it were, the right to perform this program at this moment before this audience.

Maybe, I think as I watch my daughter and her coach, traditional instruction in grammar and its alternative, the teaching of grammar in context (a practice so highly regarded as to have become axiomatic in writing centers) share a kind of impoverishment. Both approaches divorce the principles or rules governing usage from the art of writing, from the practice of producing not only grammatically correct text in a prescriptive sense, but also from the practice of producing writing that a reader might find beautiful where what constitutes beauty is simultaneously delimited and unfettered by genre and context. Neither approach accounts for the readiness for and delight of readers when by art one redefines convention.

Learning to Skate (Trepidation)

2008-09-03T05:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the idea of me learning to skate strikes me as being absurd. Here's one truth: I am 46 years old. Isn't there at least the possibility that I am just too old for this sort of shenanigans? Of course, I learned to water ski in my thirties and then the idea of being pulled behind a boat going 30 miles an hour seemed absurd too. Perhaps what I'm seeking for is one last opportunity to feel my body doing something beautiful...which of course begs the question of whether or not I will ever get to the point where my body is capable of pulling off beauty while balancing on ice wearing cute white boots set onto two very thin blades with toe picks conspiring to land me face-first, bruised, and humiliated in front of 60 jeering children who seem never to fall of if they do fall to bounce back up off the ice like rubber balls.

Thirteen years ago, when I was pregnant with Dan, Mike and I went skating together for the first time. I worked my way around the outside perimeter of the rink. To say I went slowly and carefully is to understate the matter. I was, after all, hauling around a very large belly filled with baby. Mike, on the other hand, skated with a speed and grace that was breathtaking. I thought as I watched him that joy was written not only on his face, but radiating from his center, from the movement and speed of body through space and time too. I was witnessing not only that moment, but also a childhood full of winters marked by the lacing of skates, the first step onto the ice, the claiming of strokes and glides, the clash of hockey sticks, the laughter of brothers and sisters and cousins, the cheering of parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles. This was a body overtaken by joy.

I thought then that our children should have that feeling, that learning to skate should be an integral part of their lives, and that skating might be, should be as integral to our lives as it had been in Mike's life before he and I had ever met. Skating seemed a joy too great, too precious to abandon in service of the claims of everyday life on our time.

Since then I've spent hour upon hour upon hour in ice rinks watching Mike, Dan, Lucy and Grace skate. I've plunked my rear down on the bleachers of rinks in New York, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas. I have been the observer, the cheerleader, the advocate, the wannabe referee, the nervous parent (you'd be nervous too if you were watching your firstborn working the goal and getting pucks fired at him with alarming speed and increasingly good aim or, while playing defense, getting taken out on the boards by some overgrown monster of a child whose parents are sitting next to you screaming, "hit him! Hit him hard!"). I've watched Lucy out-skate boys her age and older after having listened in the locker room to Dads telling their sons not to act like girls. I've watched Grace work hour after hour after hour on a scratch spin that seemed eternally illusive and then master it, magically, in an evening. I'm good at watching. I'm not sure that I'll ever be good at skating.

This morning as I woke my Mom and got her ready for the day we listened to a program about Willa Cather. Here's something Cather said near the end of her life: "The end is nothing; the road is all." I'm guessing that she intended to speak of life, itself. But in these words I hear also an extraordinary insight about learning. The point of learning to skate, for me at least, may not be to say at some end-point, "I know how to skate." but to live more fully in the verb, in the trying, the failing, the laughing, the pleasuring that attends learning. To accomplish skill or beauty would be nice, I guess. But to be a body learning might be all.

Gracie's Scratch Spin

2008-08-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

Quitting

2008-08-28T04:38:00.000-07:00

"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.

Zamboni Mechanics

2008-08-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

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

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

Long Time No Write

2008-08-26T09:16:00.000-07:00

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

A Weekend of Tournaments

2007-12-15T17:47:00.000-08:00

This weekend Lucy and her Squirt team are playing a tournament in Sioux City and Dan’s PeeWee team is playing a tournament in Marshall MN. I just talked with Mike on the phone and Dan’s team got fifty shots on goal in their first game, winning 9 – 1.

Under the heading of how cool hockey parents can be, the family of Lucy’s best friend on her team offered to take her to the SC tournament for the weekend so I wouldn’t have to haul Mom and all her equipment to Iowa and take care of her in a hotel. Lucy is thrilled to spend the weekend with her friend and I’m able to take care of Mom here in Lincoln as well as get Grace to her hockey and figure skating practices and a Mites game tomorrow afternoon.
There’s lots of politics in the hockey world as there is in figure skating, but this weekend it seems like the hockey gods are smiling on us.

Just took a call from Lucy and her team won their first game 8 - 2, I think, and their second game 12 - 0. Yikes! Lucy had two assists and she says she got a goal in the first game, but it wasn't counted for some reason. These are the kind of games during which I feel I just have to stop cheering because cheering starts to feel just downright mean.

Grace’s coach suggested that she take the Level 7 test this week. If she passes, and I suspect she will, she’ll have passed two levels in two and a half weeks. Now this might suggest that she’s improving at a miraculous pace, but my sense is that really this rapid progress through the Basic levels suggests that my intuition about her previous club was right on: the head of the LTS program was not testing Grace at the pace Grace was learning. I’m thinking that now she’s skating and being coached at the level she needs. This also tells me that her private coach in St. Cloud did a good job of working with her even though the LTS folks were pokey.

The thing that worries me though is that as she progresses, I need to learn how to parent at these new, more competitive levels. We’ve gone through these kinds of transitions with Dan and Lucy in hockey. In those cases there’s this interesting way that, as a parent, I’ve had to both step back – trust coaches in increasing degrees to provide instruction not only in skills, but in the intangibles like maintaining balance between desire and good sportsmanship, between aggression and fair play. With Grace, I’m wondering if there are new dimensions of her relationship to her coach that I’ll need to learn. I also wonder if relationships between Grace and the other skaters or between me and the other parents will take on some new, heightened quality. I wonder what things will be like when Grace starts building her actual figure skating resume in the Pre-preliminaries.

I’ve started volunteering for Grace’s club, which both gives me pleasure (and something to do at the rink while she skates) and helps me meet people.

More from Zamboni land soon…

The Undocumented Culture and Unwritten Rules of Figure Skating for Moms

2007-12-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

There are some things about figure skating that no one will tell you. I don’t know why no one will tell you. On my more cynical days I think it’s because of a kind parental competitiveness: a fear that the newest child to the scene will overtake one’s own child in skill and talent. Other times I think it’s because of a kind of pervasive disbelief that the new kids will stick with the sport. And sometimes I think the reluctance to say any of the unspoken culture and conventions is related to a pay-your-dues kind of mentality (“I had to figure it all out on my own so you should too…”)

In any case, here are some things I’ve had to figure out on my own:

1) All figure skating clubs are not created equal (and this is true for both beginner and more advanced programs). Learn to Skate programs are revenue generators for Clubs. This means that a Club may have a vested interest in not testing beginner level skaters such that they advance as quickly as they are able through LTS Levels. If you are the parent of a beginning skater who has really taken to the ice and is learning quickly, pay attention to the skills attached to each level. Ask program leaders to test your child when you feel fairly certain your child has mastered those skills. If you find a club that's really good at delivering a Learn to Skate Program, stick with it.

2) All figure skating clubs are not created equal. If you start asking for your child to be tested, you may be given the cold shoulder by program leaders (if the Club is politicized in a nasty sort of way). They may start treating you like you’re the archetypal stage Mom. If this starts to happen, find another club. Program leaders should be delighted when they encounter kids who love the sport and show some early talent. When you find Program leaders like this, stick with them and with their Program.

3) All coaches are not created equal. Spend some time watching coaches interact with their skaters. I look for a balance between the rapport coaches have with their skaters and rigorous attention to detail in skills development. Involve your child in choosing a coach. Kids need a coach who they can love and laugh with as well as one who can challenge them to work at the outside edges of their abilities and give them appropriate support. And your child needs a coach who you trust to coach well.

4) Once you’ve chosen a coach, he or she becomes the boss at the rink. Don’t second-guess your child’s coach. Don’t interfere in the coaching of your child. Don’t get your child involved with a second coach without the prior knowledge and approval of the first coach. Don’t go behind your child’s coach for any reason. If another coach approaches you about coaching your child, tell them you can’t have that conversation without talking to your child’s coach first. If you have questions or concerns, ask. But remember that this is your child’s coach, not yours.

5) Temper your enthusiasm for your child’s accomplishments when in the company of other skaters’ parents. You can learn a lot by listening to parents talk. And one of the things you might learn by listening is how pride can distort support for a child into extraordinary pressure for perfection or accomplishment. What bothers you may not bother your child one iota and my observation is that so much of the time, the kids are right. Stay out of rink and club gossip. Listen because the rink and club politics are interesting, but do not engage.

6) In as much as seems responsible, let your child be the leader in determining how often he or she will practice, compete, and test. My experience is that when you give children support and let them choose, they’ll make good choices.

7) There are exceptions to everything. Watch and listen and de-center so you’re ready if the exceptional occurs.

Why Zamboni Mama?

2007-12-04T16:20:00.001-08:00

This morning I started thinking about what our lives will be like if Dan, Lucy, and Grace ever stop skating…or what our lives will be like when they’re older and driving themselves to the rink or off at college. I don’t know what I’ll do with myself. I figure I spend between fifteen and twenty-five hours a week at the rink (depending on whether there’s a tournament or competition or not). I’ll be lost. This is why I need to learn to drive a zamboni.

A Typical Day in the Life of a Zamboni Mama

2007-12-04T12:28:00.000-08:00

My typical day begins at 4:30. I get up to take my youngest daughter to the rink for freestyle practice. I'm home by 6:30 waking up my oldest son (who is zonked because he had hockey practice the night before, then had to finish the homework he didn't have time to do after school). I get my Mom out of bed (she’s wheelchair-bound). My son and I head out the door by 7:15. My husband takes over at that point and gets the girls to school. I'm at work at UNL by 8.

After work all of us meet up again at the rink for hockey practice. One night a week my youngest daughter skates the freestyle session that follows hockey practices. On Wednesdays, we drive to Omaha for more figure skating. At 8 PM or so I head for home, feed everyone, tuck my Mom into bed, then pass out.

But this description doesn't quite get at how much I love watching my kids learn the skills and pleasures of their sports, and also the drive, discipline, and determination that attend serious athleticism. This doesn't quite cover how much I love my teaching and writing work at the University, nor does it get at the connections I sense between my work as a teacher/researcher of writing and the work of coaching skaters. Living this way just must be a crazy little thing called love: there's no other excuse for it.