The Benefit of an Enemy

The other day I was in charge of 4 10-year-old boys for a beach adventure, so there was digging, planning, creating the world’s most intricate city of sand. A few times one boy chose more solitary pursuits while the others built and dug; he seamlessly joined and left the group to fly a kite, kick a ball, or head down to the water. The bossier of the bunch (mine) was forthright in ideas; he and another boy, who also has strong ideas about how things should be done, had, of course, ideas, and their grand plans sprang off one another’s, without much conflict, toward ever more grandiose plans.

Eventually, however, the emotional pushes and pulls grew and one boy set himself apart, sitting alone on a bench by for a short time. When I went to intervene, he told me, “I’ll just sit here by myself.”

It took a while to piece together the story, but eventually I learned he’d threatened and tried to destroy the sand creation the others were making. Aah, that’s why the others iced him out. And thus began a string of teachable moments. “People really don’t like others smooshing their creations,” and variations on that theme. I got this boy to start building his own creation out of driftwood, on a separate part of the beach. I then solicited the help of another boy to dig a hole for a wooden tower. Other teachable moments to the three diggers: "You can't ice out one of your friends," and "You must work as a team, solve your conflicts as a team," and variations on that theme.

We were making some slow progress on reuniting the group and soothing ruffled feathers. The diggers returned to the megalopolis in the sand, and the one boy continued his solitary driftwood creation. With the help of the boy who’d dug a hole for him, he’d raised a taller-than-him wooden pole (“it will be the corner for my fort”), and now was fortifying the base so it wouldn’t fall over. After being out of favor with the other boys, his unconscious understood that he needed to rebuild his masculine power to rejoin them, even though his conscious mind didn’t know how to make this happen.

After some refueling with lunch, sitting all together in the shadow of the driftwood phallus, the boys set out to build and dig again. Together. As if they’d unconsciously absorbed the invitation to healthy masculinity and teamwork. Their city became larger and much more elaborate, until they destroyed it - together - in the service of digging a hole.

And here’s where the universe sent some help, in the form of a group of younger kids, who copied the efforts of my group. My group turned them in to THE ENEMY. Nothing could have solidified my foursome quite like the imaginary and yet fully cultivated threat of this other tribe. My tribe came together in complete solidarity, as they shifted roles – some “protecting” their dig site, some scouting out the other site, turn-taking to keep building so that their site was indeed the best. They had become a four-headed machine, creating and digging and removing sand with a palpable sense of purpose. It was for the good-natured grown-ups on the beach to recall the “goodwill between men” philosophy and to marvel at the creativeness of kids left to their own. The boys were now intent on building the biggest, deepest hole ever seen on any beach, anywhere. Any conflicts or squabbles now were managed effectively by themselves, short-lived frustrations that didn’t have enough energy in them to last more than a few moments before they re-aligned themselves to the task.

As they shifted from a group of boys to a tribe, I shifted from Mom to Tribal Elder. It was my responsibility to guide and maintain a moderate level of intergroup communication and conflict, rather than squelch it, to feed the flames of creativity, energy, ambition and focus, so that both tribes were at their best. To avoid unnecessary escalation and scuffles, I peppered the interactions with instruction on how to interact when members of each tribe veered over to the other’s dig site. “Watch with respect!” and “Bodies to yourselves!” I offered, many times. These warnings might still be carried on the breeze over the water, heading whichever ways the wind will blow, perhaps even to today’s beachcombers and builders.

As Tribal Elder, it was also my responsibility to call an end to the excavation, when the adventure and independence of digging was matched by concern for the structure’s stability. My tribe thought we were leaving because the rain came, but Elders use whatever natural forces occur to guide their tribe.

When we'd packed up our gear, the hole was over four feet deep, with two antechambers. Members of the other tribe were able to offer compliments to mine, the equivalent of ball players shaking hands after a game, losers praising the skill of those who bested them. I can’t say my guys were as gracious, as they were awash in the glory of the victory and a mix of pride and amazement at their accomplishment.

But they’d done more than win.

Throughout this day, not a single one of the boys understood that “imitation is a form of flattery” and that the other group was never, in fact, a threat, but was an admiring audience that fed off their energy to do something they never would have thought of on their own. Somehow my guys sensed that their need to re-build the friendship and repair the before-lunch rupture was more powerful than any other urge or need, and in that service, they transformed the other kids’ energy of admiration into the energy of in-group/out-group conflict, pulling themselves together into an indestructible “us.” The walk back to the car was filled with “Next time, we should _______________” plans so that their future efforts will be even more amazing. Four boys built – a sand city, a driftwood tower, eventually a dig site – but mostly they constructed a stronger foundation for their friendship, which now includes life-long memories of coming together to dig the biggest hole ever dug on that beach.

Reason #142 Why I Love My Husband

He tears up at the same country music lyrics that I do.

Loves lost, parents letting go, loved ones dying, or “our” song about broken roads leading us to one another – my strong, capable, masculine provider/protector holds a deep well of emotion. Over lunch today I told him about the most recent song that choked me up – he hadn’t heard it - and before I finished saying the title, he’d teared up, too.

Oh, the comfort of being in a relationship where we both feel things deeply, and are OK with that, something so elemental it has no number on a list.

Dry eye music check: Justin Moore’s, If heaven wasn’t so far away

Dry eye music dare: k.d. lang’s Hallelujah
This song creates a miraculous state of love, longing, sadness, awe and joy, all of which make you happy as the tears run down your face. We saw k.d. lang a year or two ago, opening for Lyle Lovett (there is no better musical pairing - ever), and the music coursed through both of us. His tear-streaked face when it was over is one of my favorite memories, and is embedded in the emotion evoked when I hear it now.

Justin Moore’s video is at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55GAUgjpDQA
A live version of k.d. lang’s Hallelujah is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NpxTWbovE&feature=related

Shadow Boxing

I grew up doing things like a girl. I threw like a girl, ran like a girl, cried like a girl, and in my teenage years I slammed doors, waited by the phone, and pined after unrequited crushes - just like a girl. I got trained to make the bed, shovel a walk, set and clear a table, brush my teeth twice daily and many other important lessons. My parents taught me how to be organized and focused; they taught me delayed gratification (no TV until my homework was completed). And since my teenage years were in the ‘70’s, I was told I could be anything I wanted, to use education to have any career at all. I could be a doctor, a lawyer, any type of professional I wanted to be (except for ballerina, but that was my doing, really, as I lacked grace, fluidity and a thin wispy build, so quite early on I switched to tap). For all these lessons, I’m forever grateful. But something was missing, and I realized it when reading a book about how to help boys through their adolescence.

Boys, according to this source, must be trained, by men, how to experience anger and fear – how to understand and overcome and move through the blackest of emotions. It is this training, they say, that will keep boys from becoming irresponsible, bullying, womanizing, intimidating and shallow men who are afraid to commit to the arduous tasks of adult life. Traditional rites of passage, so often overlooked in our culture, were the ways this was accomplished – older, wiser men taking younger, inexperienced boys and leading them on a some version of a Vision Quest, teaching them skills and then leaving them alone in the wilderness for three days, facing danger and fear, panic and hunger, the anger at the old men and the tribe and the whole damn world for making this impossible quest – then living through all the crazy/scary/inane contents of one’s head and heart, and finding the part of oneself that continues to exist after the fear and anger and danger have ended. In the process, these boys became men, having learned how to handle powerful negative emotions and emerge stronger because of it.

As soon as I read this, it clicked. Yes, train them up. I’ve no doubt boys are desperately in need this training. But what about girls? I don’t think I know of a woman who was trained, as a teenager, in what to DO with anger or fear or insecurities or sadness that would have been effective or satisfying or in any way useful. In the absence of positive training, we just felt these feelings, over and over, and attempted all kinds of ineffective strategies. In the absence of effective training, here are some things that I learned to do with difficult feelings, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only girl on the block who attempted these:

• to not feel things so deeply – aka, grow a thicker skin, not take things personally, and generally “just get over it” - problem with this: it requires denying one’s own experiences, not a great place from which to build.

• to hide painful emotion and create an outer mask of being “fine” – problem with this: it leads to isolation and further misunderstanding. If you succeed, no one knows you except for your mask; if you fail, no one can understand it because you keep denying that you’re in pain.

• to distract oneself – the problem here is that pain is now prolonged, as it’s just right there, waiting, until you come back to it.

• to blame everyone and everything for our misery in a futile attempt to make the villains “do something” to make it better, to draw them in closer to soothe us – oh, the complex problems with this, as false attempts to bring people closer only push them away. And it misses the fact that the other person probably wanted distance to begin with, or they wouldn’t have engaged in hurtful actions. So not likely to work. Ever.

• to make something out of distress, an alter of sorts – bad poems, sad movies and books, endless playbacks of songs where the music and lyrics glorified youthful alienation and loss, long tearful phone calls to friends, fights and fights and fights with parents. And probably the entire Goth decade, girls in shapeless, impenetrable black, even their eyes and lips untouchably, unkissably black. Problematic only if you think building an identity as a misunderstood, lonely, melancholy or angry person is a bad idea.

• to numb one’s pain - in my generation, girls used mostly food (overindulgence and then the emergence of starvation) and drink, but later generations have added in a more complex variety of numbing options, such as cutting, internet/Netflix, designer drugs and meaningless sex. I won’t patronize my readers to state the clear and unremitting problems in these strategies.

Yet it turns out pain isn’t something to be avoided or covered up or ignored or numbed. Pain is to be used as the basis of becoming competent, agentic adults. What we girls needed was a heroine's journey. The time and space to learn about what dangers lay ahead, then the practice in meeting and overcoming these dangers.

Heroic overcoming, especially for boys-becoming-men, is what fills children’s fiction. Mythology, fairy tales and even some modern movies geared toward children provide a villain – the awful, usually ugly, seemingly über-powerful, larger-than-life witch or giant, monster or alien. I always thought that these stories were crucial to help children understand how they will somehow overcome the villains they’ll encounter in their day-to-day life. We allow our children to identify with the hero, and to push away the villain, then celebrate in the victory over the villain, who has been slain, decapitated, banished, evaporated, or at least made a fool, and thus stripped of their seeming power. When anger and fear have no release, someone becomes a villain, someone else a victim. Yet no matter which side of this teeter-totter you sit on, the game is rigged for a lifetime of dissatisfaction and self-sabotage. Wile E. Coyote never actually destroys the Road Runner, and the Road Runner never fully banishes or destroys the stalking, relentless Coyote, yet these two are yoked forever in the most unsatisfying ways. Evil is out there, these stories warn, so be prepared for an endless battle.

But now I see things differently. Great fiction has something else to tell us – the giant or witch is not some OTHER creature. The destructive, rageful, hurtful, selfish, reckless, vain, mean, detested and destestable ogre represents our shadow self. We each have a shadow, an ugly, angry, self-entitled vortex that sits atop our deepest fears and strongest rages. I imagine that it’s the purpose of the anger to keep everyone, including ourselves, far off track from our terror and fear of humiliation. Yet the fear is the root of the anger – the humiliation of feeling so small and inadequate in the face of fear turns in to endless attempts to make others afraid. The more angry and self-absorbed we become, the less others can hurt us. We’ll just hurt all by ourselves, and inflict whatever we can on the people we no longer care a whit about. In this vein, evil is inside us, so we must be prepared to encounter the Shadow within.

And thus the hero’s journey – the ability to learn the unique skill set one brings to bear in the world, and to use it to fight against, tame, and overcome the id-like inner Shadow. This is the training I needed, but it was outside the scope of what my family could provide to their children, both male and female. No one in my clan was prepared or guided on a hero’s journey of their own, so it makes sense they didn’t even know to provide this to their children. And I doubt that in the suburban ‘70’s, any of the neighbor kids were getting this either. Baby boomer parents weren’t exactly raised to be heroes; they were the children of the Great Hero generation, and instead they thought they could coast.

Power is not just in the mind, nor does it rest solely in the body. Power is the ability to use our total physiological energy – from mind, body, and positive and negative emotions – in an unending pursuit of our greater goals. No one is powerful when they are impotently or wildly enraged; no one is effective through avoiding conflict; and certainly, no one who bases action or inaction in fear can harness anything like power. As a teenager and young person, I let my Shadow self call too many of the shots, and didn’t even know I’d done so.

Here’s the training I’d like to see for teenagers: Let’s train boys and girls just like we train boxers and martial artists, to encounter not just outward dangers, but inner Shadows. Let’s develop classes where we introduce kids to their Shadows, then come face to face with their inner ogre/witch, and learn how to encounter, withstand and transform their fear and anger. And sure, there’s a masculine and feminine strength to bring to bear in this training, so boys can learn to Man Up and girls can learn to Woman Up and each learn to take useful, effective action. Let’s build a modern-day Vision Quest field trip into high school curricula (with parental consent and release of liability forms – can you imagine? – well, we should do it anyway).

I have a very different relationship with my Shadow than I ever had before. I’ve come to respect my deeper feelings of discomfort, assume they have something important to tell me either about myself or my situation. I let myself feel them, then turn a curious mind to the action they might call from me. I have been training myself over the years, stripping away the ineffective strategies, to take action – positive action – at the very time that my emotions flood and I’d previously been left to choose between helpless, isolating inaction or stupid, angry, isolating action. Without knowing it, I’ve become a Shadow Boxer – learning protective punches, jabs, straights, hooks, crosses, uppers and the oh-so-important blocks, practicing them in the air, at no one in particular, or in a mirror, at inner Demons and outer Adversaries. I’ve been learning how to move out of the path of incoming danger, through bobbing, weaving, ducking, parrying, to be light and nimble on my (emotional) feet.

I hope no one laughs when they see me at the gym these days, with 5 pound weights in each hand, throwing punches at my mirror image. I still lack the “oomph”, the snap of the throw, but I’m getting better at staying on my toes, better at being able to hold my arms upright with the addition of this small amount of extra weight. I’m my own ringside coach, cajoling more effort, more strength out of myself. I’m a suburban girl who’s come late to the ring, but I’m gonna stay in it as many rounds as I can.

Pajama Day

Yesterday was Pajama Day at my son’s school. It was the midpoint of Spirit Week. This comes at the exact time when some families are hoping for a final academic push to solidify some of the basics that might have slipped under the radar in the year. But who can learn in the midst of summer fever? Teachers, staff, students, and even parents are completely awash in the unraveling that happens when the end is near.

Monday was crazy hair day, Tuesday was crazy hat day, then yesterday’s pajama day. Today it’s twin day (dress like another kid – my son and a friend will be wearing the exact same polo shirt, blue jeans, and the other boy will don a pair of fake glasses to match my son’s). And Friday it’s school spirit day AND field day (so the kids will basically be out running around and playing games for the entire afternoon, clad in t-shirts proclaiming their solidarity to the school).

Just days remain until these kids officially move ahead one grade, and all you have to do is put them in their jammies to see their more tender, young selves that are usually hidden behind the clothes they wear every day. Add in some slippers, a couple of sleeping caps, a few fuzzy robes, pillows and even stuffed animals, and it was a brief time travel moment (for the parents, of course, children don’t really focus on how old or young they feel at any given time). I used to have a small little child in my house, I used to have a person in the kind of footed jammies some of the younger ones were wearing. The soft, flannel jammies – flowers and plaid and Dora and Spiderman and Transformers and Disney Princess – brought out the exquisite tipping point – these children, despite homework, despite being ready for summer camps and adventures, stripped of their usual strivings to look ready-for-school, looked like the small young creatures they still are, creatures who not too long ago didn’t stray far from their sleeping nests, didn’t get up every day and prepare to encounter the large world outside their home.

My son’s class watched movies in their jammies, with pillows and stuffed animals. They were their youngest selves, giggling on mats, sharing popcorn, lying down and whispering amongst themselves, sharing the jokes and adding their own to the soundtrack. At the scheduled time, they grew themselves up to run around on the playground and to attend P.E., where they practiced archery with compound bows.

They moved seamlessly through their ages, their young needs and strivings shifting to their current ages. Not all of this was positive – there were a few turf wars that didn’t end up in the usual 4th grade compromise – a couple of kids hogged the mats and wouldn’t give them up. The lack of usual structure to the day - and the week - took its toll by dinnertime, at our house and I imagine around town. Just try getting your kids to do homework, or to sit down and eat a good dinner, after a double feature of Ghost Busters and Ghost Busters II, a belly full of popcorn and popsicles, and the disjointed sense that they just spent an entire day in their outside world clad in their soft, safe, snuggle-inviting, inside-world jammies.

Learning be damned, these kids are being trained for Rush Week.

Sitting Behind Christie Brinkley at the Ballet

Disclaimer 1: It wasn’t really Christie Brinkley, with or without Billy Joel. The real Christie Brinkley is nearing 60, and wouldn’t have been in my local opera house in row 8 with a 12-year old young girl as a companion. She’d be in a New York or Los Angeles opera house, on opening night, with an entourage, a box seat, and whatever else American Goddesses are granted when they wish to see Giselle.

Disclaimer 2: It was my husband who was sitting directly behind this impossibly tall, impossibly blond vixen, not me. I got the semi-profile view and back view. It was my husband’s knee that one long, silken flaxen tendril of hair cascaded on to, not mine.

So here’s what happened. We were in row 9, in our dress-up finery, just having finished a high-end dinner out. We’re reading through the program, about all the new staging and choreography and mime based on uncovering initial notes from performances in the 1800’s. I’m feeling sophisticated and beautiful. My husband is looking handsome and contented. It’s a lovely twilight-like moment before the lights will dim and the orchestra will begin, an in-between space of awaiting something fine just behind the curtain’s horizon.

Then a woman and a young girl are seated in the row in front of us. “Christie” was six feet tall, wearing a strapless, skin-tight, gathered, belted, sand-colored dress that covered her ample breasts and even more rounded bottom, but not a millimeter more. Her long blond hair was a symphony of shine, light and lighter shades, silky, smooth, and falling down her backless back, over the back of her seat. An aura of willing sexuality was vibrating, pulsating, around her.

She wasn’t wispy-thin or pale, nor did she have a tall-girl’s shoulder stoop; she stood and sat to her full regal height. I wouldn’t have been able to see the stage over her head, but my husband is tall enough. Giselle on stage, Christie’s hair flowing over the seat in front of him. Even if Christie had obstructed his view, he wouldn’t have wanted to change seats – wouldn’t have interfered with his great good fortune to sit behind this kind of Penthouse beauty. And the memory she evoked of the beautiful blonds of his past. My husband, it turns out, has always been attracted to blond women. I’m his only brunette.

This woman was full-bodied and beautiful. Her legs were long, her thighs were generous. Her bottom was round and big. She was perhaps 5 or 10 pounds heavier than she needed to be, but 5 or 10 pounds on a 6-foot frame is really nothing, and it’s more likely that I envied her ability to have this largeness and still be compellingly seductive. Finding fault with her body is something only another woman would do, as I’ve no doubt there’s not a man on the planet, straight or gay, who’d find a single ounce to complain about. They’d just thank whatever deity they usually thank that makes creatures of magnificence and revel in whatever moments they were granted in her company.

Only later, after the lights went out and the performance began, did I notice that Christie wore one tiny braid – with a feather - and several large silver rings. She was so much younger than I’d initially thought – her full-bodied sensuality throwing me off the trail. The braid and feather soothed me, a bit, suggested that my sense of competition was misplaced. There’s such absurdity in my reaction, yet what middle-aged woman doesn’t realize that even in her moments of beauty, she will forever be surpassed by splendor far taller/younger/sexier than she could ever be?

It’s possible that this woman stole more attention from me than from my husband. It’s only after I saw her in the gift shop with her young companion – her younger sister perhaps? – that I fully realized her youth, and I was able to let go of my irrational thoughts about what her presence could do to my husband: whether my married life was in jeopardy because he’d realize he really didn’t want a 5 foot 4 inch brunette in her late forties when there were women like this so close all he has to do is reach his hand down to his knee and twirl her golden lock.

After the ballet, we managed to walk behind this woman all the way through the long corridors and lobby, out to the street. Walk behind her high-heeled sashay. We spent almost three hours seeing this woman from behind. And then she was gone, back to her life.

It’s the next morning, and I’m still happily married. My husband doesn’t want anyone other than me, and when he gives thanks to his version of a deity, I think I’m the one he’s thankful for. Not that he won’t enjoy the fantasy of big-breasted blonds who appear out of nowhere just to grace his day. If Jimmy Smits or Denzel Washington had sat down in front of us, I sure hope my husband would forgive me the fantasy-in-the-dark of what a night/life would be like to revel in their magnificence. Because I’m pretty sure I’d go there.