the more I see the (more and less) I know

I don’t consider myself a fan of pop culture.  I appreciate art, music, drama and like many people my taste’s fluctuate  but simultaneously stay the same.  I have a mark, a code that calls and describes me.  I follow some artists and the interest usually wanes.  I rarely attach much meaning to one icon.  
  
But I’ve got to admit that I’m a fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Sure, like anything, I’ve lost interest and the guys have certainly had their share of drama.  But who doesn’t love Blood Sugar Sex Magik?  They played from the gut terrifically tapped into the primal. And now as they age, they play with a softer edge buttered with insight.   

This year, I have a burning desire to see them in concert.  I booked tickets to my husband’s delight this November.  I can’t wait to see Anthony Kiedis and Flea and expect an unforgettable show. 

I have so many memories attached to these guys; high school parties, broken hearts, Southern California surfing, college road trips, unforgettable odysseys , mountain camp outs, ferris wheels, rich evergreen forests, red canyons and deep swimmable springs. 

And now, parenting?

As I drove Dana, Snow played on the radio.  Anthony Kiedis sang:

The more I see the less I know, the more I like to let it go.

Dana exclaimed, “What! That’s not right.  The more I see the less I know?  It should be the more I see the more I know.”

As in many parenting moments, many things went through my mind. 

·         Crap, my daughter is really listening to the lyrics of songs.  I’ve got to edit some of our favorite Pandora playlists that stream through the house and get rid of songs like Lily Allen’s “Fuck You” 

·         What?  My daughter is really listening to the lyrics of songs!  I shudder to think about what is she learning from pop media's cultural bombardment and misaligned values. How can I get the funds to buy that island we will live on until she is 21?  Please help.

·         What?  My daughter is having a conversation with the lyrics of songs?   Not only is she listening, she is processing and aligning those lyrics to her own meaning making and amazingly her own meta-cognition, she is thinking about how she is thinking.  And if it doesn’t align, she resists it and attempts to correct it.  Anthony Kiedis got the lyrics wrong and broadcast them publically.  Shame on him.   

·         Dana is right.  In her world, the more she sees the more she knows.  That is the way a six year old learns.  The sponge analogy is accurate.  She absorbs every experience and extracts the learnable moments in the instant.  She is building a knowledge bank filled with writing, reading, vocabulary, math, geometry, science, history, culture, love.

·         Anthony Kiedis is right.  The more I see the less I know.  Adulthood is a process of unlearning all the assumptions and habits of mind we acquired in childhood.  Personally, I have unpeeled an unknowable number of layers of assumptions.  When I learn something new it simultaneously uncovers that I know very little.  I’m learning how to let assumptions go and just be open to the world.  It is a process with an unwinnable goal.      

I told her that she was right.  But It will happen when she is an adult.  The more she sees the less she will know.  It is a way adults learn. 

I wonder when that happens?  When do we switch from acquiring knowledge and assumptions to unlearning them?  There can’t be a singular moment.  But can it be identified? 

Likely, it is like the ebb and flow of the ocean waves.  As the tide rises we acquire knowledge and as the tide lowers we unlearn and deconstruct meaning.  Then the tides of acquisition rise again and we create new buildings of meaning only to be wiped away by another tide.  We take two steps forward and one step back.  Learning is a process of construction and deconstruction. 

Dana had a conversation with Anthony Kiedis and it opened up her understanding of the world and how she interacts with it. Maybe it widened her understanding of her learning, meaning, adults, songs, and her mother.   It certainly deepened my understanding of the learning process.    

And I have a new memory of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

be a girl

My daughter is a girl’s girl.  Her head is full of floral dresses, pink ribbons, pirouetting dolls, porcelain fairies, flying unicorns, bouquets of roses, peonies, foxglove, carnations, delphiniums, daisies and pink frosting curling atop a vanilla cupcake.  These icons are code.  They tell the language of girlhood, a language of friendship, a mutual language she utilizes and manipulates. The cypher goes something like this: We are girls. We like these things. We have mutual interests.  We can be friends. 

She likes bugs, worms, caterpillars, pill bugs, loamy dirt.  She explores and uncovers the filthy world with zest.  Fearlessly, she rides her pink fringed bike up hills and down, sometimes forgetting how to brake.  She has a mean throwing arm and a talent for hitting a ball with a stick.  She tackles the world in carefully planned pink outfits, skirts with flounces, dresses with ribbons, and a tiara of flowers. 

It is shocking.  I did not grow up accepting this ordinary girl lexicon.  I was a tomboy independent of girlishness.  In my childhood, Barbies were decapitated, thrown out the window and sometimes burned.  I fought with boys.  My hair was a mess of knots and my jeans were proudly torn.  I was often dirty and rebellious of dresses.   I didn’t trust girl signals.  I forcefully rejected them and many of the girls that embraced them.  I was a five-year-old dissident. 

Our five-year-old perspectives stand at opposite ends. 

“Mom, you don’t wear enough dresses.”  She says to me.  She is dressed in a pink polka dotted dress and a headband with a shocking pink rose.  I’m wearing jeans and a warm well-loved carrot-colored jacket. 

It is true.  I don’t wear dresses. 

Ironically, it was motherhood that robbed me of my few feminine conceits.  Since kids, I’d forgone makeup, wore jeans, baggy sweaters, t-shirts.  I hid my jewelry from groping baby hands that broke locks and painfully pulled at shiny loops in my ears.   For similar reasons, my hair was hidden in a bandeau or ponytail.   This was my new, more mature lexicon of a proud, hard-working mother.  I had outgrown my girl-ness. 

Childbirth is the ultimate feminine.  I respect and love my woman-ness.  It does not deserve a puffed up pastel colored fairy on a cupcake. 

Beyond childbirth, moms work hard at the planet’s toughest job.  We run an extreme business.   We plan kids’ lives to details. We worry about happiness.   We worry about futures.  We worry about relationships.  We worry about right action when we know there is absolutely no right answer.  We commiserate and strategize.  We evaluate and test repeatedly.  Mothers straddle a delicate balance of potentials; work, home, friendships, marriage, children and at any moment if one collapses the rest will sink into a black hole.  There is no more precarious profession. 

Motherhood is never-ending and relentless.   It is a tattoo suddenly and perfectly imprinted on each one of my heart’s chambers, never dislodged, forever permanent.  Its mark is a scar, a war wound, a blossom, a blessing, and a flawless circle.  Pink’s frivolity doesn’t belong near it.    

But Dana has complained more than once about my girl-less-ness.  She doesn’t understand how we can connect without a common girl language.   

I look in the mirror.  I remember a time when fashion was a personal badge.  I expressed myself in color, patterns, fabrics, textures, metals, shine, powders.  I carried a collection of jewelry on my body.  I believed in romance.  Fairytales nourished and fed my imagination. Magical unicorns unlocked a hidden world of possibility.  All forms of beauty were serene and life giving.   I like being a girl. 

Maybe girlhood and womanhood are not in battle and they can embrace each other. 

I like lipstick, mascara, shiny sunglasses and colorful earrings.  I could write to the moon about bikinis and own more than a girl from Seattle should.  I have an extensive collection of necklaces thanks to Blugh.  I’ve always wanted a crocheted dress.  Scorching ardent crimson bewitches me.  Vanilla bliss, not floral, but spicy and spirited scents ground me. I love lingerie with playful icons; hello kitty, snoopy, polka dots and stripes.  Romantic comedies make me cry.  It is fun to turn a head or two, but more fun to surprise my husband who witnessed and supported this journey and has proclaimed me beautiful every day and on my worse days. 

And it is delightful to witness my daughter’s expression when she sees me in a silk paprika-colored dress.  We enchant each other with our girl-ness.          

Hide and Seek

I forgot the thrill of hiding.  It is exhilarating to be crouched in a corner, body scrunched as small as it can be, waiting and praying for invisibility.  It is easy to forget to breathe, difficult not to giggle and delightful when the hunter passes by so close I can see their arm hairs yet remain safely unseen.   Other times, it is amusing to find the perfect spot, hiding in plain view but unnoticed by my seeker.  I love to hide under the seeker and peek up through bench lattices as she counts. I giggle and even scream when I am suddenly and surprisingly found. 

Today, my belly turned over when a curtain pulled back unexpectedly.  I squawked and she jumped.  We locked eyes, seeker and found, electrified.  We burst into laughter.       

It is routine for Dana and I to play hide and seek at the community center pool while we wait for Daire and dad to finish their class.  We made new friends with 8 year old twins, Megan and Kelsey, towheads with large inquisitive aquamarine eyes.    The four of us roam the lobby and locker room looking for perfect hiding spots and amusing onlookers. 

Who would have thought that watching a game of hide and seek would put a smile on so many faces, both young and old?

There are nights when I don’t want to play.  I’m tired.  A lot on my mind.  Crappy work day.   Too much to do.  The garbage of adulthood haunts me. 

Dana insists.  She loves our time together. She loves making friends.  She loves laughter.  She vividly remembers the thrill of hiding.  I concede.  Within minutes I forget the rubbish and remember what Dana never forgets; everything worth keeping is subject to play’s gravity.  The rest can float away.      

Firsts and Fear

This weekend marked a significant and exhilarating first for Dana. It was momentous because it marked a step towards tangible independence; her first sleepover at her friend Emmy’s house. The whole day leading up to the moment her excitement lit her up.  She was wound so tight she bubbled, sparkled and popped. She packed diligently; matching PJs, a change of clothes, toothbrush, sleeping bag, hair brush, a soft stuffed doggie named Blue and at the last minute, a carton of soy milk. She would have packed the whole house if I had allowed it. Instead, I explained the importance of necessity and reminded her of the abundance of new and different delights at Emmy’s house. Thirty minutes before we left, she stood at the front door counting down the minutes to the easy walk a half block up the street.

As I walked down the stairs to accompany her to Emmy’s house, I saw taut fear stretch across her face. It was the first clue since announcing the intended sleepover of anything amiss. I asked her if she was ok and her response completely delighted me.

“Yes. I’m ok. I’m scared. But I’m only scared because I’m about to do something I’ve never done before. I’m scared of the dark and I’m scared of monsters.” She put her hand to the side of her mouth and said in whisper. “Even though I know there is no such thing as monsters.” Then her hand dropped and she said. “Mostly I’m so excited. But I’m scared.” She bounded up the stairs to hug her brother and dad goodbye.  I giggled, completely enchanted by her. 

May she never forget these words.

And may I never forget that energy, the driving life force that makes us grow, stretch and yearn for more.  It is the tension between fear and wanting.  The point when fear is outweighed by a yearning so profound we suddenly blossom. 

Dana matured last night.  She successfully tested her independence. This morning, when she returned from the magical night a confident radiance hovered around her.  She had explored herself, her limits and had uprooted new self-discoveries.  She tested her fear and had thrived.       

Learning Edge

I love the concept of the learning edge. It invokes an image of one standing at the verge of a precipice, staring into the dark unknown, the wind battering as if a too strong gust will push one over and in. Because of this, the learner swallows her heart a few times, hesitates, and thinks too much while grasping for the familiar threads that will keep her standing. For some unfamiliar reason she is about to jump and only hopes that when she does it will make sense. Because jumping is the only way she will know. It is the only way that she will learn. And when she does there will be new land under foot, and some new knowledge or skill acquired. Even after deliberating for so long it comes as a complete surprise.

It is an exciting place to stand. As anyone afraid of heights knows it is also terrifying.

Up until last Sunday my daughter, Dana, was standing on that edge at the climbing gym. We watched her as she bouldered. She ascended half way, scanned the wall in all directions clearly seeking safety from her fear. Then she’d find a fitting hold to grasp and jump down. We praised her ability to fall and helped her learn how to stay safe doing it. She would work out a few tough spots, a pattern of riddles on the wall, but never ascend beyond the middle. She felt the holds, explored their shapes; this one looks like a monkey, an ice cream cone, a turtle. She was getting used to the idea. We cheered her when she tried a new wall, a new set of holds, or when she mastered a difficult sequence or move. We discussed our own bouldering projects with her and introduced her to the puzzles we were working on. She watched us climb, fall, try again, discuss different approaches and even master routes. She was thinking about it.

Dana broke through this learning edge on Sunday in the climbing gym. After a quick ascent in the kid’s play area to the top of the mini-wall she proclaimed “I want to go to the bouldering area.”

Quickly, confidently, she grasped the first hold and launched her way up to the top of the twenty foot wall and walked off the top. Then, and this is the amazing thing about kids, she did it another ten times. I love that she repeated it over and over and over again. Repetition is the key to acquiring learning. She instinctively knows this. It is the mortar that keeps all the pieces she put together in place. Each time she went up that wall again, she trained her body to integrate the climbing moves and sequences to perfection. But more importantly, she was training her mind. In the future there will be no excuses, she can do it not only once but twelve times. Once that feels good, she will find the next problem to master and a new learning edge will emerge.

I loved watching her take that step over into the unknown and scale the wall. We were exhilarated but only by a fraction of her delight. It was truly a breakthrough and a complete surprise.

And now I wonder where my own learning edge waits.



A Category

A category is a safe bet. It is the obvious, tangible, concrete, reliable. It proclaims our security with clear demarcation, a definition, a purpose, objectives and conclusion. Substance, people, trees, rocks, metals, light, water have a place, a definition, a group, a belonging. A category is absolute. We surround ourselves in categories. A map draws lines around landscapes, fills each country in pink, purple, brown. It labels them, spells them correctly, and protects each boundary with a bold black line. We tell ourselves stories about those shapes, about the people, their color, language, food, belongings, houses, bodies, art. The people in that shape are like this not that. We do not argue with the category, it is unconditional. A category is contracted. A frame draws a rectangle around a painting, manipulating the eye to view the colors, lines, value, composition. It focuses the viewer and demands attention. It entices one to see and utilize only vision to experience it. But there is emotion, process, love, conversation, history, woven among hues and shapes. It can be seen if one does not use the eyes. A category is limiting. We sort our children. Arrange them in order from smart to dumb, pretty to ugly, athletic to academic, light to dark, good to bad. Children are measured, lined up, compared, contrasted, analyzed and finally put in a grid and told what the future will hold for them. It is easy. It is logical. But it is diminishing and devastating. A category is cowardly.

The scene: The playroom. A box lies on the ground, half the marble game inside, the other half gone. The rest is upstairs, split between the living room and Dana's bedroom. I'm annoyed. Why can't Dana keep one toy in the same room? It seems a small thing to ask.

Then I remember, yesterday she sat by the window in the living room, the pieces of the game formed a long spear with a spinning mill on top. Dana talked to it. It was a wand. A talking wand. A great towering city. A princess. A noble companion watching out the window for her friend to arrive. A brave soldier keeping her safe. It did not occur to her that it was, in fact, a marble game.

To Dana, in every item there is endless potential. When we sit at a restaurant the condiments on the table become animals. They march across the table cloth, tell stories, sing, dance and commune. They play hide and seek, cook her a meal and quickly become best friends. She transforms herself into a suitcase. She is carried to the airplane, dropped off at baggage claim to land safely in my hands where I find my shampoo and bathing suit inside. Now she is a cleaner and endeavors to pick up all the garbage on land and sea. We pick up plastic bottles, wet newspaper and old straws. We search for garbage cans and dumpsters for our findings. She has multiple identities; girl, bird, princess, sandwich, chef, cookie, snake, monster, cleaner, storyteller. They layer her with meaning and boundlessness. She has multiple companions made up of flesh, plastic, Styrofoam, metal, petals, grass, wood. Her world is never lonely. Her world is rich with possibility, complex in its ability to make connections, wise in its capacity to see meaning. There are no categories.

The marble game sits next to a stuffed baby gorilla on the window sill. I leave it there. The box in the playroom is still half empty. It doesn't annoy me anymore. I only hope that I don't limit her with my own short comings, stunted expectations and unconscious arrangements. I'm excited to see what new connection or transformation she will imagine. And I can't help but wonder how we collectively forgot the astonishing freedom of a world without categories.

Self Permanence

People are permanently of this world, still milling about, birthing ,thinking, laughing, crying, working, loving, fighting, dying, even when we don't see them. There is a staggering multitude of souls and energy existing without restraint. To think that there are an infinite number of lives simultaneously dying and being born. To think that the world is made for all these people and not exclusively me. The concept of object permanence is baffling. It is boundless and scary. Everything exists whether I'm here or not, whether I'm alive or not.

Daire won't have an expanded sense of his world and object permanence until he is about 8 months old. Right now, everything exists in the moment he senses it. My voice means I've suddenly been born to him. Dana's rough hugs rouse him from a nap and unexpectedly she exists. For now, it is dazzling that dad's face disappears behind some hands and reappears with a "Boo!" We are all determined by him. He is truly the center of his own universe and genuinely of the moment.

A three-year-old Dana's universe, on the other hand, is different. Object permanence is not a problem. She understands that her sunglasses still exist in the bag she put them in. She knows her friends are having their own family life in their own houses. She appreciates that dad is at work or I'm at the gym. She does not need to sense them to know they are real. For her, the problem is the reversal of the concept. She does not understand her own existence without being seen.

It is easy to detect. "Watch this!" she screams as she does a bat hang on her trampoline. "Look at me!" while she belly drops from the slide. The essence of the moment lacks depth without a spectator. Without appreciation, she has no place to pocket the moment, to categorize and comprehend it or to make it a part of herself. She is real when she is seen. She is the most real when she is seen by her parents. She is coming to grips with self permanence.

So I found myself tensely saying to her "Be careful with that stick!" My thoughts were only on the possibility that she could swing it and hit Daire who lay on the ground beside her. Then I noticed how quickly the joy on her face vanished. I had seen only the stick, not my daughter holding it and certainly not the pride she felt in finding and wielding it. She had disappeared.

Fear is an unfaithful emotion. My fear had erased her and made me blind. Unless unleashed for emergency purposes, it should be tempered with compassion, love, vision. I had let my fear reign pure and Dana suffered.

I realized further, that I had hurt her similarly many times but more frequently since Daire's birth. As a result, she is more stubborn and willing to break rules. Sadly, I recognized that my fear defeated my good intentions and created a vicious cycle. Plainly, she is coaxing us to pursue her since any seeing helps her understand her permanence. It is heartbreakingly true that I need to seize my slippery fear so she can learn about herself apprehension free. No easy task.

As I observe her discover herself through our eyes, it becomes clear that children aren't alone in their struggle with self permanence. In a world of object permanence, where a boundless explosion of people thrive regardless of the individual, what other meaning making way is there than to find someone to look at us purely and without fear?

Witness

This is tough. The emotional journey one takes into love is a jumbled mess, especially when it comes to kids. One day while preparing for an hour to get Dana and Daire out the door, it came over me. I've just experienced every emotion in less than an hour. From the emotional high of love, happiness, laughter and adoration to the low of exasperation, frustration, anxiety and anger, in parenting there is a new emotion every minute.

It is another reminder that parenting is where the true work is. My job is the vacation. Unlike work, I have little control over the content of day-to-day parenting moments. I can't take a lunch break, turn to a new task or take an hour to respond to the latest communication. I can set a framework for Dana and Daire but their reactions and interactions are entirely in their control and my role is to react for good or bad.

Dana doesn't want to wear her pink shoes. The small crisis must be resolved or we will not make it to point B and Dana will surely end up in tears. If Dana ends up in tears, I will simultaneously feel guilty, a failure, frustrated, bewildered and angry. I will have to deal with our emotions and hopefully feel competent in the process because I will get no feedback from the authoritarian expert on the subject. No one will tell me whether that was the "right" way to deal with it. I can only hope in 18 years my kids are the adults to prove that I did, but what if their outcome has little to do with shoes (as I suspect)?

It is easy to over-analyze every moment. Here is a small example. If I get the blue shoes for Dana, she will be happy but I've reinforced my role as her runner and our dependence. If she gets her shoes, it will take longer and support her independence but maybe she feels rejected? If we both get her shoes then we have made no progress and nothing has been taught. I can make her wear her pink shoes because shoes really aren't that important anyway – are they? But Dana may not feel like her feelings are being nurtured and maybe the pink shoes are uncomfortable in some way that is hard for her to communicate. There is no right answer and yet I'm constantly searching for one. It is exhausting and by the time I've decided, Dana has already put on one flowered rain boot and one blue croc on the wrong feet. Another dilemma. I settle with telling her that they are on the wrong feet and she tells me that is the way she wants them. Ok. We are out the door.

Parenting is my endless education. My role may be to love, teach and civilize my kids, but I'm sure I'm learning more. Every little lesson comes whether I have asked for it or not. The toughest lesson is to appreciate and live the moment. All the emotions come and go but the time with my kids are the unifying factor and the absolute foundation. For me, those moments are the truest meaning of life. In fact, in the end, my kids will be who they will be and I will have been their witness and wiser for it.