There's a Momentum to Mastery

He comes in to J's room, from his own, wailing:

"I waaaaant a piece of paper. I want to write."

"No. It's bedtime. Either go back to your room, or climb up there.

I point to the top bunk.

"Well Julian has papers."

"He does. But we're reading them. Do you want to listen to Julian read equations?"

I choose my words carefully, picking a sarcastic string, for the benefit of Olin, who has come in to retrieve Kai.

"whhAhhh...."

Kai sorts of fake cries. Jon walks out of the room, half smiling. Jules, who is reclining with his head on my sideways knees, turns toward Kai and generously offers:

"Do you want to hear math? It's so fun."

 Julian has been reciting every character of every worksheet he completed in kindergarten this week (and then stapled together into a "book"). He seems to find this book enthralling. Kai, not interested, climbs up to the top bunk. His whining eventually settles into the sound of thumb-sucking.

"5 + 5 = 10. 10 + 0 = 10."

Seven or eight pages in and Julian is still immersed in this book. I, on the other hand, am immersed in his face—and its sweet, focused expression. It's a mix of curiosity and confidence, pride and passion. It strikes me that if we held all of our conversations face-to-face and truly observed others when they were speaking, we might be that much more empathetic and engaged and interested. I think about how much I distract myself with my phone, text when I should call, call when I should meet. I make a note to remember this.

Lately, the pace of Julian's mastering new milestones is sort of blowing me away: riding on two wheels; starting to swim underwater; beginning to read; hitting line drives—and not off a tee. Every time, it seems that one day something just starts to click and—BOOM—he's got it.

Kai too. Until just recently, he had no interest in writing his name. Then, Friday night, he came home from a BBQ with Jon and Jules, obsessed with writing "K's." It was 9:30 pm—but he was insistent and getting him into bed seemed like a losing battle so I just let him go. He did a bunch. And then drew some a's and i's—an a random-yet-artful pattern. He decorated an entire envelope full of "his letters." (The envelope was a card for Maria's baby shower—which made it that much sweeter.) He was so proud.

I have a theory: Summer is accelerating this milestone crushing: the bike riding, the swimming, the line-driving. Our fair weather is so fleeting here  in VT that you have to jam as much stuff as you can into the short season. And then, when you're in the practice of mastering, you just keep moving. You make letters. You calculate equations. You persevere at sounding it out. Yes, I think that must be it. Momentum.

He Wasted All of His Money

I scan the tables where kids are painting swirls of pink, white and red, looking for his dirty-blonde head and colorful plaid shirt (which he's actually not wearing). He's not there—nor is he on the floor playing cards. Then I see him, huddled, head-down, with four little buddies. They whisper as I approach, and he quietly gets up, tucking a big book under his arm. He walks over and pushes the tome toward me.

"Look what I got."

He pauses, looking proud and slightly tentative.

"It was 19 dollars."

 It is Lego Minifigures: Character Encyclopedia. Which is, essentially, a glorified 203-page hardcover catalogue. Which, apparently, purchased on Amazon, costs $10.55.

"Wow,"

I say.

"So that's what you decided to get?" 

After much discussion about the school book fair, Jon and I had somehow come to the decision that we would let him spend the $20 he had saved on whatever books he wanted. Initially, I'd preferred that one of us supervise his purchases at the fair on Thursday night—but we talked it through and decided that we'd go ahead and let him take his money and make the buy during his class "field trip" to the fair (a class activity that I think is crazy) today. The deal was this: First, Jules had to do some comparison shopping with me online last night. He agreed to this happily and we took the list of 8 books (6 of them came with toys) that he'd made when he'd visited the fair with his class the day before (!!!). We looked at them one by one—evaluating the pros and cons of each, and he actually crossed off 6 books, leaving only the two most expensive choices: both came with toys; one was the book he actually purchased.

"Yes!!!"

He is so excited he's shouting (louder than normal).

"I wasted all of my money on this one book!"

Not quite grasping the nuances of similar words is one of my favorite traits of five-year-olds. Clearly he meant that he "spent" all of his money on his choice, and I quickly explain the difference. Which he appreciates.

"Oh, yes, spent!"

He laughs heartily at his mistake as if we're old friends. He's in a spectacular mood. Even more so when he pulls out his backpack to show me the other prizes he "got" (read: bought)—erasers in various shapes—after finding another $1.25 in his wallet. Ironically, one is in the form of a miniature $50 bill.

Our evening centers solidly around his purchase: while I make black-bean quesadillas and cut strawberries, he assembles the toy soldier that came with the guide and lets Kai play with the koala and lion prizes (which might be erasers or might not, I realize upon closer inspection). After a shower, he flips through the pages, "reading" about the characters to Kai. He requests that we read this story—which is not at all a story—before bed. Kai's into it too. And so we do: covering ho-hum characters like Cheerleader girl and Skater boy but also discovering Tribal Hunter, an intriguing shy-guy who apparently has a talent for finding lost objects and an obsession with dancing when nobody's looking. As the "story" goes, he's got mad moves. This guy, I'd like to meet.

When it's time for bed, Jules carefully places his new bible on the shelf next to his scrolling animal nightlight and crawls under his covers, patting down a place for me. The moment I lay down my head next to his, he asks earnestly, in a whisper:

"Do you think my book was a good choice?"

I deflect the question:

"Do you?"

"Yes,"

he says confidently.

"Me too,"

I whisper back. And I'm not even totally lying.

Perfect is Stupid

It all started with a bit of crooked cutting. His goal was to follow the perfectly framed edge of the catfish photo but his scissored slipped, the edge frayed and he flipped out. "I messed up! I can't do this. Mommy, you do it."

"I can't do your homework, Jules. And it doesn't have to be perfect," I told him calmly, offering the very advice I so often can't seem to accept myself. "Plus, we're making a collage [with Mod Podge - and I could barely contain my excitement]. Sometimes it actually looks cooler if the pictures don't all have straight edges."

That he wasn't buying. Jules is a guy with an affinity for angles, straight lines and squares, just like his dad. Maybe it's those engineer genes. But he calmed down and settled back into striving for straight lines. Which went mostly almost perfectly. Lucky for us.

Then he started writing the words. The task was to capture two facts about electric eels and he was pleased by those he picked: 1) an electric eel is not really an eel—it's a fish, and related to a catfish; and 2) an electric eel can put out enough voltage to light up a Christmas tree. Fascinating really. But that "r" starting off "related" somehow made its way to the paper facing the wrong way, the mirror image of a right-facing R. He screamed and threw the crayon. "It's a stupid R. I hate this." Two short sentences containing two words that are off-limits at our house. (Those who know how I speak in the company of adults might find this amusing but I'm pretty strict on this point.)

I showed him another superb benefit of collages: You can just cut off that part. If you want, you can cut all the words apart and glue them down separately. And sometimes that's just the right art effect you're going for. He bought it. We kept going. To great success. From his determined expression, and the chatter-box commentary that accompanied the sketching of Christmas tree clearly illuminated with lots of eel-powered voltage, I could tell he was  proud. And I felt proud, too: I hadn't intervened with his vision, hadn't reached more than once for the sponge-brush to help him smooth the Mod Podge, hadn't pushed him to paint the white parts of his poster with watercolors as I'd envisioned, hadn't suggested, a second time, that he might want to find one more fact—because Ms. E had assigned them to report on "two or three" things.

Pushing "perfect" (unattainable, of course) might be the number-one thing I want to avoid as a parent. Of course, I want to encourage the boys to reach—within reason. But I also want them to feel that they that they can create, or conceptualize something, and feel confident enough to share it with someone else, or lots of someone elses, before they feel like that something is fully figured out. That's how you learn, that's how you grow. That's how you get awesome. And have fun.

But I struggle with insecurity of sharing semi-shaped stuff. A lot. I spent more than a dozen years in a world where things are supposed to be edited to perfection before they leave your desk. Now, I work in a role where things have to be iterative. It's empowering. It's liberating. History aside, it's the way I actually prefer to work: with creative input from all sorts of smart collaborators. But I often need to be reminded to let go. To route what I've got right now. And, on that front, I appreciate the encouragement, the coaching.

Today, I told this to my boss when he told me not to overthink part of a project. "Often, I totally need that reminder and love that you help me with that," I'd said. "But not this time. You'd be proud of me. I'm really keeping things moving, even if it feels like I'm just throwing shit on the walls." He loved that. Truly. He even stopped by my office later to suggest a "Throw Shit" sign for my wall.

I'm thinking about it.

Lower the Bar, Feel Better

Maybe I've had high standards. Or medium-highish standards that have offered an easy out, an excuse, for accomplishing... nothing. If I couldn't do it "right."

If I couldn't run at least 3 miles, then I might as well not even lace up the shoes. What was the point? 

If I couldn't do runs with my friends, then snowboarding wouldn't be fun. I'll just stay home and make the chili.

If I didn't make a really amazing family calendar then I might as well just let everyone hang the free ones they got from their bank/car dealership/alma mater.  Or just use their iPhones. 

You know what I did in this fancy gear? I remembered, after a 6-year hiatus, that I ride regular, not goofy.

I practiced heelside and toeside turns and perfected hockey stops. On the kids' hill.

And then I had a beer with my riding partner to celebrate our progress. 

But, these days, there's no reaching the bars set where they've been. I can't always find time to run 3+ miles—but I can fit in 2 miles on the treadmill after the boys get off to school, before I shower and leave for work. I'm never going to ride like my past-pro (for real) snowboarding friends—but I can relearn the basics in lessons while my little guys are in their own classes so that I don't dread the family trips to the mountain that inevitably are going to happen for the next decade. 

And my 2014 calendars are going to be filled with the first 12 high-enough-resolution sorta cool photos I can find in the next 24 hours (or two, because then I'm going to bed). I've slacked just the right amount on this one: Shutterfly calendars are 50% off till January 7. 

What I've somehow finally started to learn in the last month or so is this: Lowering the bar is making me happier, healthier and richer. I think I'm becoming wise at 38.