I'm not a gardener: you won't read here about crocuses poking up through the thawing earth or about my desire to get my hands in the dirt to plant pansies. More likely, you'll hear about the unwrapping of tasty cheeses and the uncorking of wine to aid in my study of the brackets for women's March Madness.
Generally speaking, six inches of snow must suddenly cloak the entire landscape, or big hailstones hit me on the head, for nature to get my attention.
But the leaves on the trees surprised me this fall. Driving to Adele's soccer games, I was pulled out of my everyday life, transported to some magical reality, just by the leaves on the trees around me.
It was a big, unforgettable farm feast in the sky. Great swaths of glittering color lined the roads: towering stained-glass windows of candy-apple coating; flaming orange tissue-paper persimmons; a giant pomegranate forest; humongous baked-sunset meringues, moving and alive.
It was as if the trees themselves were daring me: Just try to proceed with business as usual! Maples and oaks screamed from the bleachers, This is an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime moment! Pay attention! Look alive!
Sensitive to stimuli, the trees prepared to shut down as the light changed and the days became shorter. They didn't go dormant quietly. They became a stadium of fans all cheering for life and change and beauty, wildly waving their glowing handkerchiefs.
They put on their show, a veritable circus full of shimmering costumes. Fantastically, they rode in on elephants and swung from trapezes. Stand up and take notice! they cried to the onlookers.
This is how I want to be. Just when I become so familiar to all that the pharmacist knows my prescription, the neighbors know where and when I walk, and my family knows what's for dinner, I want to surprise them--POW!--with some unexpected and generous act of beauty.
11/18/09
11/8/09
Size Large, and Holding
While Steve and Adele and I were walking our dogs one morning recently, an acquaintance called to me from far across the street:
"Every time I see you, you get smaller!"
"What?" I yelled back, thinking I hadn't heard right.
"Every time I see you," she yelled again cheerfully across the four-lane thoroughfare, "you get smaller!"
"Oh," I yelled back, stupefied, thinking, No I don't. I don't get smaller.
For the record, the nice woman was incorrect. I am still nearly six feet tall, and for the past ten years my weight has vacillated only a few pounds. But more importantly, my goal is not to be small. I have come to believe that it's a misuse of a woman's energy to try to be small. My goal is to be the strongest woman I can be in this body. I want to feel my power. I want to bring some muscle to all of the things that I do.
It bothered me, too, when Adele scolded me after this interaction.
"Why did you say 'What?' You knew what she said," she accused me. "You just wanted to hear it again."
"No, I didn't," I said, indignant. "It was weird! I didn't know what she said."
"It wasn't weird. You knew what she meant. You knew it was a compliment."
The fact that my younger daughter, not even a teenager yet, understood this odd exclamation to be a compliment instead of the mystifying utterance that it was means that her thinking about women's bodies is already being molded by our culture. Why else would she consider it a compliment when her tall, sturdy mother of stable weight, whom she counts on to meet all of her needs, whom she depends on to be strong and alive, is told she is shrinking on every encounter?
"Every time I see you, you get smaller!"
"What?" I yelled back, thinking I hadn't heard right.
"Every time I see you," she yelled again cheerfully across the four-lane thoroughfare, "you get smaller!"
"Oh," I yelled back, stupefied, thinking, No I don't. I don't get smaller.
For the record, the nice woman was incorrect. I am still nearly six feet tall, and for the past ten years my weight has vacillated only a few pounds. But more importantly, my goal is not to be small. I have come to believe that it's a misuse of a woman's energy to try to be small. My goal is to be the strongest woman I can be in this body. I want to feel my power. I want to bring some muscle to all of the things that I do.
It bothered me, too, when Adele scolded me after this interaction.
"Why did you say 'What?' You knew what she said," she accused me. "You just wanted to hear it again."
"No, I didn't," I said, indignant. "It was weird! I didn't know what she said."
"It wasn't weird. You knew what she meant. You knew it was a compliment."
The fact that my younger daughter, not even a teenager yet, understood this odd exclamation to be a compliment instead of the mystifying utterance that it was means that her thinking about women's bodies is already being molded by our culture. Why else would she consider it a compliment when her tall, sturdy mother of stable weight, whom she counts on to meet all of her needs, whom she depends on to be strong and alive, is told she is shrinking on every encounter?
11/3/09
C, as in "Capable"
I was shocked in high school to learn that the women's tennis team my mom played on was called the C team. For years and years, she'd played tennis, and I couldn't understand how she could hold her head high if she couldn't make it beyond grade C.
My pre-teen, Adele, now plays on a C team in club soccer, the next step up from youth recreational leagues. From what I observe, A teams (premier) boast prodigies, the best trained, most athletic players in the state. B teams (elite) claim on their rosters extraordinary young athletes whose speed and skill with the ball are rare. And C teams (select) are not to be sneezed at either. The kids on these teams love the game and are developing into competitive players with impressive skill sets.
I see so much growth in the girls on the C team. Each one brings her own strengths to the group as a whole. One player can run down any opponent and cut her off; one can blast through the defense, booting the ball powerfully to the goal. Another can consistently clear the ball and send it up to the forwards; my own daughter can outwit her opponent with footwork and complete a smooth pass to her teammate.
I see the girls pushing themselves for the sake of the team, for something bigger than themselves. I see them cheering on each other's successes. Sometimes, I see them crushed and defeated. Occasionally, a game is awful, and they can't accomplish much of anything. After some games, they're convinced the referees were against them, or the other team cheated.
But other days, in the crisp fall air, they seem to rise up together, in a swell of skill and self-confidence and teamwork. They play important roles in a game that exists outside their everyday life, and they're temporarily removed from the constraints and requirements of being twelve-year-old girls. There are new rules--the game has its own logic and structure and beauty--and they rise up to the challenges and express all their potential. For one hour, they lay it all out on the grassy field for themselves and all the world to see.
My pre-teen, Adele, now plays on a C team in club soccer, the next step up from youth recreational leagues. From what I observe, A teams (premier) boast prodigies, the best trained, most athletic players in the state. B teams (elite) claim on their rosters extraordinary young athletes whose speed and skill with the ball are rare. And C teams (select) are not to be sneezed at either. The kids on these teams love the game and are developing into competitive players with impressive skill sets.
I see so much growth in the girls on the C team. Each one brings her own strengths to the group as a whole. One player can run down any opponent and cut her off; one can blast through the defense, booting the ball powerfully to the goal. Another can consistently clear the ball and send it up to the forwards; my own daughter can outwit her opponent with footwork and complete a smooth pass to her teammate.
I see the girls pushing themselves for the sake of the team, for something bigger than themselves. I see them cheering on each other's successes. Sometimes, I see them crushed and defeated. Occasionally, a game is awful, and they can't accomplish much of anything. After some games, they're convinced the referees were against them, or the other team cheated.
But other days, in the crisp fall air, they seem to rise up together, in a swell of skill and self-confidence and teamwork. They play important roles in a game that exists outside their everyday life, and they're temporarily removed from the constraints and requirements of being twelve-year-old girls. There are new rules--the game has its own logic and structure and beauty--and they rise up to the challenges and express all their potential. For one hour, they lay it all out on the grassy field for themselves and all the world to see.
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