The Freedom to Fail

image credit: Impulse Magazine

Yesterday, the Library of Congress announced the appointment of Philip Levine as the new Poet Laureate of the United States. The job of the Poet Laureate is "to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry." (Taken from the website of the Library of Congress.)

Prior to that announcement, I knew little to nothing about Philip Levine, although his name was familiar. But the news came to me yesterday while I was lamenting the quality of my children's exposure to arts and culture, at least any arts and culture that doesn't make my ears bleed. So when, on our way to Shakespeare camp this morning (yes, I do see the irony there), our local public radio station, KQED, aired an interview with Levine, I turned it up. I wanted my kids to hear this guy talking about poetry. I'm sure my intended audience was more attentive to his/her electronic devices, but I turned it up anyway. I paused to explain to my captive audience what a Poet Laureate is, and was greeted by blank stares.

But I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed the interview. I liked what he had to say about teaching at Fresno State, where he has been for 30 years:

"I've got these students, who are capable of learning, gave themselves the freedom to learn because they gave themselves the freedom to fail."

He goes on to say that at other, more prestigious schools at which he has taught, like Yale and Vanderbilt, "students had a lot of trouble being told that their poems were no damn good." It seems that education, for these high achieving students, is more about being brilliant already than about expanding one's mind and possibilities. (You can access the whole interview here.)

What an important concept to keep in mind. Amidst all our striving towards excellence and achievement, it's easy to lose sight of real learning. We can forget the importance of failure in shaping our minds, our hearts, who we are, and how much we grow, in intellectual and in more personal or creative endeavors.

While we may want our children to work hard enough to go to a good college or university, what we want for them even more is the freedom to fail, the freedom to find more and better paths for their creativity and innovation to flourish. Maybe in art or poetry, maybe in engineering, maybe on a soccer field or in a medical lab, maybe in their personal pursuits or in common cause for others.

Maybe in family life and raising children, too. Maybe parents need the freedom to fail, in order to grow and get better at crafting children, the way a poet crafts his poems. Perhaps it's not about being perfect already, but about keeping ourselves open to the possibilities before us, to directions we aren't expecting to go.

Leave it to a poet to remind us how our hearts and minds expand. Thank you, Mr. Levine.

* * *

I'd like to help Mr. Levine out in his new job of raising poetry awareness. So please, find a poem to read today. Read one by our new poet laureate, or click on over to The Writer's Almanac and explore Garrison Keillor's poetry-promoting effort. Write one of your own! (I write poems, but they're really just shameless thefts of great works for my own petty purposes...not really what I'm thinking of here.)

Let's all let a little poetry into our lives, and see where it takes us. I'm guessing it will be somewhere pretty great.

* * *

Go To Sleep, Girls

Daughters do not go gentle into that good night.

Young girls do burn and rave at close of day,

And rage, rage against the mother every night.

Though wise-ass girls in the end know mom is right,

Because their shouts have sparked great lightning, they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Strong girls, the last heads down, trying so hard

Their wild deeds to keep on spinning in a dark room,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Willful girls who catch the sun when its most bright,

And learn, too late, they should not grieve their mum tonight,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Tired girls, near sleep, whose eyes will not shut tight,

(Those eyes do blaze like meteors while I sigh),

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, their father, there on the sad couch,

Curse them, force them now with your fierce words, I pray.

Make them go into that good night.

Rage, rage against the striving of the sprites.

* * *

with gratitude and apologies to Dylan Thomas

The Last 20 Minutes

Got home from the grocery store.

Trying to make dinner.

Girl doing laps through the house on heelies.

Girl playing "volleyball" with a rubber glove balloon.

Boy playing a loud video game.

Boy putting clean dishes away loudly.

Girl riding unicorn hobby horse throughout the house, yelling random things.

Girl opening freezer door forcefully and straight into her sister's forehead.

Boy doing his best imitation of Eminem.

Girl crying about something and yelling "HEY GIVE ME MY PONY BACK!"

Girl repeatedly kicking a soccer ball against the kitchen door.

Girl hiding Biscuit the dog from other girl.

Girl crying and yelling "WHERE'S BISCUIT???"

Kids ignoring orders to put stuff away.

Girl making tent in living room. This is the part where I go on record to say that I hate tents.

Children asking to watch a movie like they're entitled.

Boy singing Hey Jude.

* * *

Mom drinking beer.

* * *

My New Mantra

Mine was not an athletic childhood.

I played a little basketball, and my most vivid memory of that experience is that there were not enough black uniforms for all the girls on the team, so I wore a black leotard instead. That was fine with me.

I played a little soccer, and have no vivid memories of that whatsoever.

I played some Little League baseball, and I remember two things. First, my sister and I were on the team with our two best buddies, twins Jennifer and Heather. The four of us had a great time, mostly centered around eating as much candy as possible without getting caught.

And second, I remember my hit. Yes, my one hit. It was near the end of the season, might even have been the very last game, and I was sick and tired of striking out. My skinny little 8 year old self decided I was hittin' that ball, no matter what. At my next at bat, I stood there thinking about all the batting advice I'd ever heard, about watching and waiting for the right pitch, keeping my eye on the ball, having the proper stance and swing. I swung and I missed. Twice. And then a ball was coming towards me, way too high, not in my strike zone at all, and in a split second, I decided I didn't give a hoot, I was going to hit that thing. So I raised the bat straight over my head, elbows pointing to heaven, and karate chopped with everything I had. I hit the ball and it was wonderful. Terrible, awful form, the very antithesis of perfect execution, but I made contact. Running to first base was like flying. In my decidedly unreliable memory, the crowd went wild, and I felt like a star.

Alas, it ended there. I didn't play Little League the next season, and I didn't care. I could eat candy with Jennifer and Heather any old place, and I just wasn't a natural athlete.

My daughters, on the other hand, are competitors. All five of my kids are already athletes, with four of them playing soccer and Little T playing at life, which for her is pretty much a contact sport she intends to win.

What I love about sports is how much it can teach a kid about life in general. And not having experienced this as a child, it's like I'm figuring out sport for the first time. Soccer provides so many fantastic opportunities for us to talk to the kids about life, hard work, devotion, team-work, committment, sportsmanship -- you name it and we've talked about it in the context of sport. (We tease Rick that he can make soccer a metaphor for anything. But it's true, he can because it is.)

And it is a particular joy to watch my girls play, and play hard. I love that they know what it's like to be strong and aggressive, to challenge themselves physically. I love that they will grow up with this as a norm, as something as natural to them as the endless artwork they create at the dining room table. And I love watching them play.

The other day, we got the girls some t-shirts that capture their love of sports. Lola made her own version at the dining room table that night:

Isn't that fantastic?

It's perfect for my girls, but it turns out it's perfect for so much more as well! A day or so after we got the shirts and Lola made the poster, I was talking with a friend about a difficult conversation she needed to have with a guy (see what you put us through dudes?), and out of my mouth came the perfect advice: "Play like a girl!" In other words, be tough, because you know you are.

So it turns out that my daughter's t-shirts are teaching me a thing or two about life.

Don't want to tackle my to-do list?

Feeling daunted by raising my teenager?

Unsure how to get that next project done?

Lacking a little confidence?

Play like a girl, Mama Monica! Get in there and play hard! You can do it! Take 'em down! (Sometimes, that last one is truly necessary.) I think we big girls need to make that our new mantra, our new rallying cry. It's all in there, all the courage and confidence anyone could ever need.

Looks like I need to go back to Target and see if they make those shirts in adult sizes.

* * *

Better

Last night, I sat down with a new book, Sarah's Key. Six and half hours later, at 3:30am, I finished it.

At about page 25, I wasn't sure I wanted to keep reading. It was already brutal. By page 50, I couldn't put it down, and knew that I'd read it in one sitting.

I am bleary-eyed, exhausted, and inhabiting another world today, suspended in the pages of Sarah's story, so beautifully written by Tatiana de Rosnay.

Reading that book makes me want to be better, a better mother, a better wife, a better friend, daughter, sister. I can't say why or how. It makes me want to be stronger and braver.

I stayed awake for another hour, not thinking coherently, but acutely aware of the yearning the book had stirred in me, and wondering about it.

Today, with the daily tasks of motherhood and family life ahead of me, with all of the chores I loathe needing to be done, and with not nearly enough sleep, I will strive to be better.

* * *

Go Cowboys!

My son took me to the movies today. Sure, he didn't pay for the ticket, but if not for him wanting to go see Cowboys and Aliens, I wouldn't have gone.

He had a lousy start to a tough week this past Monday, and he was pitifully miserable that night. I tried everything I could think of to make him feel better and nothing worked. If anything, all my encouraging words made him feel worse. Why is that? Why, when we are offering our children pure gold to chew on, are they most annoyed with us?

Anyway, I changed tactics. I did what we've all done. I bribed him. "If you'll stop that incessant whining, I'll take you to the movies on Saturday."

Maybe I didn't put it quite that way, but you get the idea. However I put it, it worked, and he finally saw that life wasn't quite so dismal as he feared. Nothing like a little mass media to soothe the soul.

So off to the movies we went today, he, his buddy, and I.

How was it? Well, it's a little predictable. It's got the standard issue characters: the handsome outlaw, the bespectacled saloon owner, the good-for-nothing weakling son, the gruff but good-down-deep Colonel, the Native American with all the integrity, etc . The dialogue is a little tired, with gruff confessions of past crimes and casually dropped lines full of significant information. There's a loyal dog. Of course.

But it was super fun, and sometimes, that's exactly what you want in a movie. I'll try not to give away too much, but I do "spoil" one line of dialogue below, so stop reading if you don't want to know it.

Overall, the movie is great. The aliens are creative enough to be interesting, which must be hard to do after so many alien creatures have filled up the big screen. The clash of the two genres, sci-fi and western, is something new and engaging. And the battle scenes are perfect for anyone who likes to see good guys go after bad guys.

The boys loved it. There were enough surprises and enough violence to keep them on the edge of their seats and happy. The special effects were good enough for me, although I'm maybe not the best judge of special effects, since most of the movies I go see require tissues instead of 3-D glasses. And there were some great last breath scenes, with people speaking the truth right before expiring. The best was the preacher, looking at the outlaw, gasping and saying: "Bring back our people. God doesn't care who you were, son. Just who you are now." Then he dies of a huge gaping wound inflicted by a sticky alien.

Awesome.

So yes, I recommend this movie. It helps if you take a 10 year old boy with you. He will think both the movie and you are awesome.

* * *

7 Quick Takes: Volume 33

I spent way too much time writing my quick takes post this morning and lost the entire thing. Will attempt to recreate it now, double time. First, let me wipe away tears of internet-induced frustration.

Aaaand, here we go:

(1) Cringe.

I am an idiot. I just figured out yesterday that I've been mis-singing a lyric in my all time favorite Beatles song. I thought the Hey Jude line was "the moment you need is on your shoulder," but actually it's "the movement you need is on your shoulder." I've even used this line, or my version of it, in two blog posts.

I stand corrected. Sheepishly corrected. I fixed one of the posts, but left the other as is, to keep myself humble.

Please feel free to make me feel better by telling me your own most embarrassing Lyric Fail.

(2) Wisdom.

After a particularly awesome soccer practice last night, Lola Berry said:

"When you play hard and do well, you have more fun."

Perhaps this would be good to remember for life in general.

(3) Celebrating

Instead of being at BlogHer '11, I am here with my daughters celebrating Dangles the Monkey's birthday (she has a few per week). Little T took an orange coat off her Molly Wiggins doll, wrapped it up, and gave it to Dangles as a present. We think she looks charming in her new toggs. We are having blueberry muffins for "cake," and washing it down with Irish breakfast tea with cream and sugar.

All this and I saved at least $300!

(4) Sleep, or the Lack Thereof.

I need sleep. Badly. My son's alarm went off last night at midnight -- he claims he has no idea who set it -- and kept going off at neat five minute intervals for the next 35 minutes. Right next to his head. He did not hear it. I finally got up and crushed the thing with a stiletto heel to get it to stop, and then I couldn't get back to sleep until around 3am. Two hours later, I was awakened again, this time by a pee-soaked four year old. Don't worry, she didn't suffer the same fate as the alarm.

So. I'm tired. And I decided my girls can spend this particular summer day watching a movie. Their survival might depend on it.

(5) A Growl a Day.

To make myself feel better about letting my girls be couch potatoes today, I decided to take them and the dog on a quick walk before starting the movie. They wanted to ride various wheeled conveyances: Lola Berry, a bike; Lady E, a scooter; Little T, a trik. "NO WAY!" I said. "We will get half way down the block, and you will get tired, and you'll want me to take your wheels, and I will have the dog, and NO WAY!"

we won't we promise we won't we promise we won't we promise

Please, please please please please please

mommie mommie mommie mommie mommie mommie mommie

You know I gave in to that onslaught. Fast forward, not far, just half way down the block, and two of them were standing next to their wheels and wailing. That's when I heard a gutteral shout: "Stay with your wheels and ride! That's the deal!" I didn't even know I could make myself sound like that.

It all worked out. We made it all the way around the block with wheels turning and people riding, and by half way through, Little T had stopped whining "But my legs are full!" She even raced me the last stretch to home.

(6) The Price

I've written about this hillside a couple of times before. The first time, back in April of 2008, the sign read 4,012. More than 2,000 U. S. soldiers have died since then. We should always know the price of war. Today, it's 6,175 priceless lives.

Actually it's much higher than that, because that number only counts American servicemen and women, not soldiers from any other country, not American contractors, not civilians, not enemies.

But for the 6,175 and counting, there is a hillside to always remind us.

(7) The Sun.

It's overcast here today, so we had to find our sun from another source:

Luckily, we only had to go as far as our back garden. Here's hoping everyone finds a little sunshine in their Friday.

* * *

Please visit Conversion Diary for the original 7 Quick Takes and visit the links of other Quick Takers!

And thank you for stopping by. Feel free to step out of the anonymous shadows and post a comment.

* * *

There Oughta Be A Law

You know how there ought to be a law against mothers getting sick?

Yeah, well, there isn't one yet, and I went and got sick yesterday, and the house...well...not that it was the picture of efficiency before I took to my bed, but let's just say the chaos took its best opportunity to get the upper hand and is now doing victory laps all over the property.

Things I learned when I emerged from my bed this morning:

• Laundry piles breed like rabbits.
• Yesterday's breakfast dishes had a camp out on my kitchen counter, later joined by the lunch and dinner dishes, and the party is still going on. I've heard talk of s'mores.
• Shoes are magnetically attracted to my living room floor. I just counted 17 of them in there.
• When I am sick, the dog seems to shed 3x as much as usual. I think she worries about me. Or perhaps she worries who will feed her if I am down for the count.

Suffice it to say, that even though I am not quite fully recovered from whatever bug was buggin' me yesterday, I cannot CANNOT be out of commission for another day. I'd wake up to to find my family buried underneath piles of dirty socks.

So I'm taking a page from Fly Lady's book, setting my timer, and cleaning as much as I can for 15 minutes. Then I am stopping and drinking water and blogging and checking email, texts, and facebook for 15 minutes. And then I will repeat the cycle. It'll get me through the day, and at least I won't be more behind by the end.

I'm a fledgling Fly Girl, but the 15 minute thing works for me.

The getting sick thing? Not so much.

* * *

bouquet courtesy of Lady E, age 6

* * *

How To Hurl An Insult

It's Shakespeare Season again at our house! This week commenceth our 12 year-old son's fifth summer of Shakespeare camp. Can you imagine spending two weeks, 9-3 each day, attending classes with names like "Stage Combat" and "Improv" and "Voice and Text" and "Shakespeare History?" He loves it. We are eternally grateful to the California Shakespeare Theatre for running this camp each year. (And I don't even want to think about how close we came to missing the chance this year; I signed up late and Sam was on a wait list. I held my breath for three weeks before getting the good news that he was in.)

When Sam was 8, he was in King Lear. This was the year he responded to being told to take a bath with a sniff to his arm and a thoughtful "...smells of mortality." This was the year that I put him in a time out for something and he said: "I am a boy more sinned against than sinning."

When he was 9, he was in Pericles. Yeah, I had never heard of that one either. It was about a King. And some battles. And some of the characters died. Shocking, I know.

When he was 10, he was in Hamlet. This was the year that he called his messy bedroom Denmark, as in "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." Sure enough, we unearthed an extremely disgusting apple beneath his bed.

When he was 11, he was (Puck!) in A Midsummer Night's Dream. That was just plain awesome.

Then he shook things up by being in a production of Love's Labour's Lost this past Spring, with a group called The Greenwood Players, an all youth-run, youth-directed company that produces one play each Spring with kids ranging in age from 10 to 16 or so. That was also awesome.

Now he is 12, and he is in The Taming of The Shrew. He is at a perfect age to get a huge kick out of this play. I expect him to be coming home for the next two weeks saying things like: "Mom, did you know what this means? Let me tell you!"

He's learned many things from all of his Shakespearean activity. He has learned how to kill and be killed on stage. He has learned some choice Elizabethan swear words. He was learned about innuendo. He learned that Shakespeare invented the word puke. And now, he is learning how to hurl an insult like Will Shakes.

Today at camp he received the Shakespearean Insult Sheet, which was adapted (by whom, I am not sure) from The Folger Shakespeare Library's Shakespeare Set Free. The sheet consists of three columns. Column A contains a spicy adjective, such as "churlish." Column B contains a hyphenated, and therefore double toned, adjective, such as "evil-eyed." And Column C contains a noun, and not a very flattering one at that.

The instructions start out like this: "Combineth one word or phrase from each column below and addeth 'Thou' to the beginning." That made me laugh. Then Sam and I had loads of fun insulting each other.

Thou distempered, sour-faced nut-hook!

Thou reeky, onion-eyed malignancy!

Thou queasy, eye-offending remnant!

Thou pernicious, lean-witted pantaloon!

There are 30 entries in each column. That means there are 27,000 different possible insults. That should last us at least through the rest of the summer, don't you think?

Here is a link to the insult sheet, so you can have as much fun as we are having being horrible to each other. We might as well learn from the best!

* * *

Can't Protect Them From Much

Katie Nolan, the mother of Francie Nolan, in the Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, said it best after hearing about her 16 year old daughter's first heartbreak:

Katie heard the story. "It's come at last," she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn't enough food in the house you pretended that you weren't hungry so they could have more. In the cold of a winter's night you got up and put your blanket on their bed so they wouldn't be cold. You'd kill anyone who tried to harm them--I tried my best to kill that man in the hallway. Then one sunny day, they walk out in all innocence and they walk right into the grief that you'd give your life to spare them."

We can't protect them from much, really, if you think about it. We can talk till we are blue in the face (which seems to be my current strategy) but when it comes right down to it, these kids will go out into the world and make their own way. All we can do is feed them and keep them warm, and talk till we're blue in the face, and then we wait. And hope. And pray. And watch. And seek sweet revenge on anyone who harms them. After the fact though, because we probably won't be there when the actual harm is done.

That passage from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was one of my favorites. I have enough food to feed my family, even if they don't like what I serve. We are warm enough in the winter, even if they claim that their father and I have ice for blood and don't understand what the heater is for. I am not raising my children in the kind of poverty that Katie Nolan had to raise her children in. But Katie and I, both mommies, share that protective instinct and the sure knowledge that it will take us, and our children, only so far.

Which, if you think about it, is totally unfair. There is no other realm in which all of a person's hardwork and devotion and sleep deprivation, all of person's planning and preparing and striving delivers absolutely ZERO guarantees that everything will work out. NOT FAIR.

On the other hand, it's probably fairly well documented that the absence of all of the above will pretty much guarantee that nothing will work out.

So I guess I will keep fighting the good fight. I will continue to feed them, and clothe them, and give them lectures about sticking with things that are hard, standing up for the underdog, trying your best at everything you do, learning from your mistakes, staying true to yourself in the face of pressure, and about anything else I can think of...

...and someday, I will know that the time has come, the time when I can no longer stand between them and heartache.

Awesome.

No wonder no one ever tells expectant parents the real truth.

* * *

Then You Can Start To Make It Better

Happiness is...

...driving in the car listening to Hey Jude with my kids, thinking about how much I loved this song when I was a teenager, how much the music moved me and validated my every angst-filled thought, and about how back then, I never could have guessed that I would have these five little beings to call my own, all of whom know all the words to Hey Jude, who love it as much as I ever did, and about my own almost-teen, for whom this song is every bit as powerful and meaningful as it was for me when I was his age, and about how even today, in my less angst-filled but much more complicated world, the message is good and timely and such a blessing.

The movement I need is on my shoulder.

The movement to get up and make the coffee...

to make sure the laundry gets switched from washer to dryer...

to stop and admire my daughter's drawing of a mermaid under the sea...

to make tortilla soup...

to load everyone in the car and drive people to their destinations, to Shakespeare camp and soccer camp and Trader Joe's...

to make everyone do their chores...

to laugh at old Carol Burnett reruns...

to take a call from a friend who needs help drafting a letter to her boss, because her workplace is full of corruption and she wants to take a stand...

to wash the damn dishes...again...

to find shorts for the would-be 4 year old nudist...

to send a text to my husband with a photo of the latest kid creation I came across and to trade funny text messages with him...

to read The Thief Lord to the kids...

to let my daughter rest her head on my shoulder...

They are all here, ready for me to make the most of them, all of these movements, and the many, many more that will make up this day that seems impossible but probably isn't.

"Don't let me down. You have found her, now go and get her. Remember, to let her into your heart, then you can start to make it better."

* * *

Find her. Go get her. Let her in. Let her go. Watch her fly.

* * *