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Should you, a woman, travel to India now?

Posted in Dance/Arts, India, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 18, 2013 | 8 Comments »

Raja Ravi Varma, Goddess Saraswati

The recent and horrific gang rape of a young woman in Delhi who subsequently died from the injuries inflicted during her ordeal has catapulted India’s women into the headlines of media around the world. Someone recently asked me what I thought of this. Is this good for India or bad, she asked. She went on to say that she assumes it will be terrible for tourism. She, for one, would hesitate to go now.

I found myself having several concurrent and conflicting responses. There are so many things to think, it’s difficult to untangle them. As a person of Indian heritage, I felt my hackles rise in defense of a country that has so much culture, tradition, integrity, beauty and richness. Specifically as a woman of Indian heritage, I wanted to remind my friend that India, unlike many more “developed” nations, has in the past elected female prime ministers. As a practical, realistic person, I wanted to point out that this type of thing surely happens in India, and in other countries, much more than one wants to imagine. As a woman traveler, having felt the eyes and hands of strange men in buses and crowded streets in foreign (and not so foreign) countries, I understood her visceral fear.

Indians are trying hard to make the recent tragedy count for something. To that end, the extensive media coverage is a good thing. Public scrutiny, foreign scrutiny, internal scrutiny, these are what can really shake up the status quo. Add to that powerful awareness-building movements such as last week’s Feb 14th One Billion Rising and you have a recipe for change.

But how does one untangle India’s deep, long history of treating women as both sacred and profane? Of venerating female deities—among them Saraswati, goddess of knowledge, music, arts and science whose annual celebration, Saraswati Puja, was just two days ago—while denying some female children education? Of worshiping one’s own mother while copping a feel at someone else’s in the street? Of viewing female temple dancers as auspicious vessels of the divine, yet paying those temples for their more carnal services, as experienced by the central character in Faint Promise of Rain?

Perhaps one doesn’t untangle. One just acts. One takes what is good, and beautiful, and strong, and just, and one spreads it as best one can until it pushes out the rest. In a reversal of the last juxtaposition mentioned above, the New Light Foundation in Kolkata is working with (among others) the children of sex workers to empower them to find opportunities for themselves beyond the world their mothers have inhabited, and has included kathak dance classes as a means toward this empowerment. Kathak, the very dance that originated in those Hindu temples many hundreds of years ago. Pandit Chitresh Das, master kathak dancer and teacher, and the Kolkata branch of his school, has been involved with New Light:

Five years after this clip was shot, another was made with girls from New Light dancing, on the occasion of One Billion Rising. (Thanks to my mother Sara Mitter, author of Dharma’s Daughters who has worked with the New Light founder, Urmi Basu, for calling this to my attention.)

The videos speak for themselves. There are changes to be made. There are changes being made. So yes, I say to my friend. Absolutely. Go to India.

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Writing Wednesday: Possible Prologue for Faint Promise of Rain

Posted in Books, Dance/Arts, India, publishing, Writing and Publishing, Writing Wednesday, tagged , , , , on February 6, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Ancient Jain temple inside Jaisalmer. Photo by Sangeeta Dhanuka (Wikimedia Commons)

Ancient Jain temple inside Jaisalmer. Photo by Sangeeta Dhanuka (Wikimedia Commons)

In Rajasthan, a five year old child is likely never to have seen rain. For centuries, the monsoons have been elusive, and it was no different when I was young. So it is understandable that when I was born during the first rainstorm in so long, some considered me special. In the royal palace of the citadel not far from our home, the walls of children’s rooms were, and are still, trimmed with black and blue cloud designs, so when the gods finally did send rain, the little ones would not be afraid. But for others such as my brothers and sister, who grew up looking at thatched roofs and endlessly blue skies, the day of their first rain can mean an intensity of both fear and hope.

I have no doubt that I now possess an unusual gift, but it came late in my life. I began as all children do, accepting of my lot for it was the only one I knew, and living by the decisions my father made for me. When I was old enough, I began to understand that I could shape my own path. And although I struggled greatly along the way, the gods must have approved of what I chose to do with it, for many, many years later they gave me this gift. I am not sure why they acted as they did, or how they chose what knowledge to grant me and what to keep concealed. Was it a moment of selfishness on their part? Was it for our dance? For humankind? Or, possibly, just for me? Whatever the reason, knowing now the minds and hearts of some of those close to me when I was a child allows me to tell this story. It is not the story of me alone, but mine alone to tell.

www.faintpromiseofrain.com

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The pitfalls of using the Internet to gauge potential for publishing success

Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, India, publishing, Writing and Publishing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 16, 2012 | 3 Comments »

What kind of sales should I expect of my debut novel if I go the indie route? This is what I am asking myself these days, today in particular as I draw up a balance sheet of estimated expenses and revenues, to help me decide whether or not to launch into independently publishing Faint Promise of Rain. Of course, part of me feels like it would be the natural thing to do, in keeping with the whole being-the-people thing, but I still need to understand the nitty gritty of it all.

With enough poking around, I was able to obtain some concrete numbers on the expenses side such as the per copy cost of printing if I do a short-print run, the shipping costs for online sales, the standard retailer wholesale discount (which I was shocked to learn is 55%) and other such data points. For other expenses, the Internet is providing me with enough examples for me to make some informed guesses, such as how much to spend on a publicist, and what editorial services should cost for a manuscript which, my agent tells me, is in good shape.

But when it came to what to expect for revenue, the Internet became my enemy . Not only because I cannot find much in the way of concrete examples of debut literary fiction sales figures, but because I am finding posting after posting filled with depressing predictions. Apparently, if I am to believe what the doom-and-gloom folks out there are saying under the guise of bracing indie hopefuls such as myself for misery, I would be lucky to sell 5,000 copies of my book. In total. Not in one year. Not in five years. EVER.

And this is where turning to the Internet can be so destructive. It’s like allowing yourself to drown in a sea of information regarding an illness, and all its possible horrible ramifications, and how it could, it just might, ruin your life, and how in some cases it will cripple you, and how there are support groups to help you cope because otherwise you might just want to end it all now. You read the discussion forums of those who are suffering and while your heart goes out the them, you quake at the prospect of ending up like them. Ok, perhaps this is an exaggeration, but I see it this way: I could choose to throw in the towel and declare that there’s no point for just 5,000 copies, or I could stand tall and say: 5,000 is nothing to sneeze at, and in any case, I can easily beat that. (And the illness metaphor is not totally gratuitous, as I’ve had some experience in that realm.) The darn thing is, I do believe I can beat that. Five thousand copies? That seems like nothing to me! I think of the connections I have in the dance world, in the Indian community, all the people I know who revel in literary fiction, the fact that India is, for good reason, a popular setting and topic in fiction, I think of all the people who have told me my manuscript is beautiful (thank you!), the fun ideas I have for promotion, and 5,000 seems more than feasible.

And yet. Those glum predictions hang over my head, because now that I have read them, I can’t un-read them. Despite feeling confident in my manuscript and my marketing ideas, there is a voice in the back of my head asking me why I have the hubris to dismiss the cautions of people who purport to know more than I do about the ins and outs of publishing. But then, in the nick of time, the Internet comes to my rescue. Because therein is the beauty of the Internet: it can, in one day, in one hour, mete out despair and hope in equal measure. One of my go-to sites for realistic, supportive advice and ideas regarding publishing, Grub Street, posted this entry just today by Terri Giuliano Long entitled “Indie success: hold on to your dreams.” In it this writer takes us back to when she was, essentially, in my shoes, believing 5,000 copies would be her ideal, through her indie publishing experience, and her sales of 120,000 copies in the past twelve months. And that is when I knew to stop trawling the web for information. I’d found what I wanted.

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Hurry, hurry, wait! Now stop, slow down

Posted in Dance/Arts, Moments, Parenting, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

After just over four years of dance, K, who will turn turn eight in the summer, received her first set of bells on Sunday. These are the ghungroo*, the little brass bells that are woven (by the dancer, or in this case, the dancer’s mother) onto a length of thin rope. These are the bells worn by the kathak dancer around the ankles, wound tightly in coils over a protective layer of felt, the bells that turn the dancer into a musical instrument. The bells arrive via mail in a clump, purchased in bulk (from bellsonline.net, of course) and then we loop them (75 per leg in K’s case) onto the rope in a time-consuming but meditative process that involves a lot of jingling and is sure to wake a napping baby.

The conferring of ghungroo takes place through a traditional ceremony of the type we rarely take the time to slow down for these days. The hall we rented was decorated with Indian cloths and garlands of flowers, the little stage transformed into an altar of sorts, with pictures of the dance gurus (the lineage of teachers of  Chhandika, our dance school), a statuette of Nataraja, Lord of Dance, an incense holder. Each dancer brought an offering of a coin, an element of nature and sweets or fruits to share. The bundles of bells are neatly lined up, each one wrapped in red felt and tied with a ribbon. Our teacher, Gretchen Hayden, sat cross legged on the floor in front of the altar and called up each student in turn, taking his or her bundle of bells, holding it to her forehead to symbolize the mind, in front of her mouth to symbolize breath and speech, and to her heart before handing it to the student who did the same. Despite the thousands of bells in the room, the dozens of children and parents, the video cameras and cell phones, there was peaceful silence in the room as everyone appreciated the significance of what was taking place, the connection with an art form that is so ancient and beautiful, the commitment we each make to carrying it forward, the gratitude we have for our teachers, our students, our children.

It is ironic just how much planning, organizing and running around had to take place just so that K and I could be present for this moment of stillness, tradition and meaning. This was a particularly chaotic weekend during which my other half, J, was away teaching at a black belt martial arts camp, I was enrolled in a two-day writing conference with meetings set up with my agent and possible editors, and apparently both K and her two year old sister required care and feeding. I started planning for the weekend weeks in advance, lining up a series of friends and relatives to tag team to be with S (and K the rest of the weekend), typing out a glossary of her odd vocabulary so that when she started frantically pointing to the fridge and yelling “DEE!” the kind soul who was with her would understand she was asking for cheese, or so that when she touched her nose and said “dodo” it would be clear she wanted to sleep. (Yes, I do have a two year old who asks to sleep, and yes, I do realize how lucky I am.) I had lists and piles everywhere, of things to bring to the conference, of items to bring to the ghungroo ceremony, of things to pack for the little one’s stay with a friend. I had to remember who to leave the stroller with, who would need K’s carseat when, where to leave the present for the birthday party she was going to attend in my absence, when to buy the flowers for the ceremony so that they’d still be fresh for the event itself. I had to remember to leave a change of shoes in the car for when I went straight from the ceremony to the conference, to pick up the ceremony program from the printer before they closed at 5:00 on Friday, to pack tissues and DayQuil in my bag because yes, of course I had to have a cold, to find time to rehearse the elevator pitch for my book, to pre-pack K’s lunch for the break between the ceremony and the class with Pandit Chitresh Das that she was going to attend as well.

And was it worth it? A hundred times over. And not just because of what I experienced for myself, which was augmented by something the lovely author Julia Alvarez said later in the day at the conference keynote address and which I’ll address in a separate post, but because it showed K that this was a matter of importance. Now, of course, she had no idea of the level of mad logistics involved which enabled her to receive her bells that day. She did not see the lists, did not notice the piles, had no insight into the complex logistics.

And that is the way it should be. She is seven. The fact that her parents were overextended that weekend, the fact that we had so many things to juggle all at once, that we are constantly feeling like we have to give one thing up in order to do the other, that is our own doing. Perhaps when she grows up she will be better than we are at finding the right balance. But for the moment, having her think of her attendance at the ceremony as a matter of course, having her find it a normal and fully-integrated part of her life, that is what matters the most.

And now here is what that little asterisk next to “ghungroo” is all about: As I was making edits to the ceremony program before sending it to the printer, I consulted with my teacher as to how to spell the word for the bells. There are so many ways that it is transcribed—ghunghru, gungroo, ghunghroo, ghungroo—and we wanted to pick one and be consistent with it. Then my teacher sent me an email with the following subject line: Is it a g or a gh, an u or an oo?!! And something silly was triggered in my brain:

The question is how do
You spell the word “ghungroo?”
Does it end with a U?
Or do O’s make the oo?
Is there one H or two?
If I only knew
We could then say adieu
To this pesky issue.
It seems the circumstances
Under which one dances
May well affect the chances
Of different types of spelling.
But when someone will choose
To use the O’s or U’s
Or downright refuse
The H–there is no telling.
But some advice for you:
Don’t put them on askew
Or up to your genoux
(for the French among you)
Or tie them to a gnu
Or EVER wear them to the loo!

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Where is my magic writing cloud at the top of the tree?

Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, Writing and Publishing, tagged , , , , , , , on March 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

People ask how I do it—children, freelance work, dance, volunteering, home and meals, writing, but the fact of the matter is, the secret is, very often I just don’t. And when I don’t, it’s the writing that is the first to go. (Well, except for when Next Doors is providing the meal, in which case I can happily let go of the cooking knowing a fantastic dinner is on its way.) Anyone in my situation—and I know that means a lot of people– will understand this. I know I am not alone, and usually I manage to cope, but there are times when I start to despair that I’ll ever get two sentences down for my next book. Because the problem that I have now recognized is that I can never manage to enter and then inhabit the world of my book, across the world and nearly two centuries ago, long enough to get the muse going. How do other writers in this predicament do it, I wonder? And why have I set myself up to place my next story in a setting that requires me to transport myself into another world? (Well, that’s a whole other story, one that David Rocklin touches on in this post on Beyond the Margins.)

Take the other day, for example. It was not even a particularly, remarkably complicated day. Just an average one. But even with one child attending school and one with a sitter for a the morning, I was not able to extract myself from the household scene until 9:30 am, almost three full hours after getting up. There were lunches to make and pack, a full breakfast to cook so we could have a solid meal and some family time to get the day going, negotiations about attire appropriate for the weather and school activities, the spare crib to set up for the Next Doors child who spends Wednesdays with the sitter as well, dinner logistics to arrange, and so on.

When I finally managed to retreat upstairs with my twice reheated tea, leaving two babbling toddlers with the sitter, I found a slew of emails pertaining to my dance group’s performance, including logistics relative to costumes, the cues for the lighting and sound techs, the order of the dance items and more. I skimmed them, responded to as many as possible, and turned off my email program so as not to be distracted by the notifications of new mail. I averted my eyes from the pile of envelopes and papers in my inbox marked “To Deal With Now” which was leaning precariously because of something lumpy buried somewhere underneath, the identity of which I have not tried to elucidate for fear of causing an avalanche of papers that might reveal long overdue bills.

I put my teacup down and wondered if I should, instead of drinking it, go upstairs to practice my dance piece, then decided not to because a serious practice would then entail a shower, and the whole process would seriously cut down on my already dwindling and precious work time. Instead I turned on the music to the piece and went through it a few times in my head. Better than nothing, I told myself, although I still felt guilty. Guilt is a large part of trying to do so many things: one is never fully satisfied with the level at which one is managing to do any given one of them.

Finally, after running the gauntlet of aforementioned toddlers in my living room, I escaped to a coffee shop, settled in, was distracted for a while by the conversation at the adjacent table which I started mining for ideas for another story. By the time I opened the book I’d been toting around for days, a book that looked like it would yield some good research, it was 11 am.

I was right—the book I launched into, singer Sheila Dhar’s Here is Somebody I’d Like You to Meet, was, despite its unwieldy title and dreary cover, engaging, funny, smartly written and full of colorful anecdotes which drew me into the world of Indian classical musicians in the early to mid 1900s, their eccentricities, their art. (See her obituary here. I wish I could have met her in person.) I felt myself slip into that world, and ideas for my own characters started forming. I jotted down some notes, noticed that I was doing so, smiled to myself, then glanced at my watch. And the whole mood was instantly lost. I realized I had only one hour until school pick-up, and that before then I needed to check into my work email for edits to a cover letter for an overdue federal grant proposal. Ugh. I started despairing as to when I’d have another chance to enter that world and recapture the source of story and character ideas. (It’s now over a week later, and that chance has not yet come.)

This is the true challenge of the writer: to be able to create (or re-create) and inhabit a whole different world, to have lengthy and complex experiences in it, to see it in all its detail, and to fit all this into just an hour or two of actual existence. That space is like a dream, one that one can conjure up at will, in which a whole day’s events are compressed into a few minutes of sleep time, or like the cloud at the top of Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree which holds within it an entire universe in which Fanny, Jo and Bessie can have fantastic adventures with Moon Face and Saucepan Man, but be home in time for supper.

I want one of those clouds, one of those dreams. I want a place I can jump into for an hour, and experience ten hours of ideas and adventures. Someone mentioned to me recently that I should apply for a MacDowell Colony fellowship, and so I looked it up, and watched this video, and realized this is it. What a magical-sounding place, where for two weeks (more would be impossible considering children and such) I could be given a studio in the woods, quiet time, lunch delivered in a picnic basket by a kind soul on a bicycle, and the evening company of dozens of other artists with whom conversation would spark ideas and creativity and energy. I could get a year of work done in fourteen days. Of course, there’s the minor issue of being selected from amongst the thousands of applicants each year. But I think I’ll try. If not that one, which is so highly selective, than others, as long as they are open to all sorts of artists, not just writers. In a year or so, when a draft is hopefully well underway and Little One is bigger, I think I’ll try to enter that cloud for just a wee bit of time, and see what happens.

And now Little One is about to wake from her nap, Big One has been chatting at me for a while, and it’s my turn to make dinner. At least the grant proposal is in.

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Dance oasis

Posted in Dance/Arts, Moments, tagged , , , , , , on January 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

A couple of years ago, a photojournalism graduate student from Boston University named Varsha Yeshwant approached Chhandika, the dance group with which I am closely affiliated, asking for permission to create a multi-media project around our dance. Specifically, she said: “I want this to serve as a small window into the world of Kathak and the culture of the dance outside India. I want it to show the involvement of the students and the teachers in order to pursue a form of dance that is not widely known by the society here.”

Below is the short result of this work. Take a moment (1:29 minutes, to be precise) to appreciate the simplicity of the scene, the peaceful atmosphere despite the pounding feet, the understated grace and integrity of the teacher, the sheer joy of simply being present that emanates from her and the students. There is nothing dazzling in the movements themselves, nor in the outfits—this was a series of informal practice sessions and classes with a mixed level group of students—but the overall effect is powerful. This is what our classes are all about, keeping something so special alive.

 

for the love of dance from Varsha Yeshwant on Vimeo.

The sunlight streaming onto the hardwood dance floor, the harmony of thousands of ankle bells in unison, the other-worldliness of the singing and movements, the red tassles of the bronze-colored hand cymbals, the warmth and dedication of the teacher, Gretchen Hayden, these images and feelings that Varsha captured are precisely what drew me in to class eleven years ago.

And yes, that’s me in one of the first shots. A side view of my pregnant self in 2010. Enough said.

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Creative life, you say?

Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, Writing and Publishing, tagged , , , , , , on November 15, 2011 | 1 Comment »

A couple of months ago, a friend—an artistic filmmaker—asked me: how do you sustain a creative life or even a creative project in the midst of children, work, home, health and volunteering? She asked this not as a rhetorical question, but as someone who seemed truly to expect that I would have an answer for her. But the fact of the matter is, despite my having written one work of fiction and dreamed up the ideas for others amidst all those other responsibilities and activities, I have no idea. Really. It turns out that just because one has done something doesn’t mean one knows how to do it. Or at least, how to explain how to do it. Even to oneself.

I’m not sure what answer I gave her. I know I felt the need to give her some substance, some words of advice, a recipe she could hold onto and pull out whenever she does have children, a household that needs more tending, a cause for which she feels driven to volunteer, other demands on her time that take her away from her own creative work. That’s what I would have wanted had I been in her place, asking someone else. I suppose I made something up; it was probably neither eloquent nor useful nor satisfactory, although I know it was truthful. I have been to writers’ conferences in which a handful of established and successful authors have sat on a panel and fielded questions from hopeful writers, and on hearing their answers I’ve thought to myself: well, that’s not very helpful. And now I fear that, should I ever be honored enough to sit on such a panel, I will let others down in the same way. But I understand why.

It’s a question I ask myself a lot these days, and it comes in two parts. Part 1: How on Earth did I do it? And Part 2: How on Earth do I continue to do it? And now that I am no longer on the spot, that I have had some time to mull it over, I realize that the recipe is one that is unique to me. It’s a melange of my personality, my background, my circumstances. It won’t fit exactly for anyone else. There are no neat tablespoon measurements, no fixed stirring times. My ingredients:

Dogged—some might say stubborn—perseverance

The compulsion to use every shred of time toward accomplishing something

The belief that 20 minutes is enough time to accomplish something (this ingredient was given to me once I had children)

Patience (this was an ingredient I had to plant and nurture, not one I already had in my pantry)

Organization

(As you can see, none of these are particularly creative.)

I took all these things, and then I linked as many parts of my life as possible to some aspect of my creative pursuit: I take kathak dance classes (through which I get my exercise), I volunteer for the Chhandam Institute of Kathak Dance, I incorporated the dance into my novel, and I enrolled my older daughter in a class that I teach. I’d like to say that this was all the result of a well-thought out plan, but no. It’s just how things happened.

The truth of the matter is, I just cram it in wherever I can, between work-related conference calls and school pick-up, during the younger one’s nap times while the older one plays with a friend, at a café while rehydrating and having some lunch after a dance practice, in the evening after tucking the little ones into bed and before their father returns from his martial arts class. As Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, said in a March 2002 interview on Writer Unboxed: “All my life I’ve been doing my work in the intervals between making a living and living my life.” (And if I could write a book half as beautiful and haunting as hers, I would feel fulfilled.)

And yet my version of cramming it in “wherever I can” pales in comparison to what I’ve read from other writers. I don’t have daily word-count goals, I don’t write at a specific time of day or week, I don’t get up an hour before the children as many writers suggest. I don’t think much about my creative projects while doing other things like shopping for groceries, I don’t compose dialogues among my characters while driving, because during those times I usually have chatterbox children with me, or I’m planning out family logistics or meals, or I just want to let my brain float. I don’t tend to work once the kids are in bed because that is my time to spend with my husband, and to catch up on other things like reading and reconnecting with friends on the phone. And honestly, I don’t always feel inspired to be creative. The pressure to produce something in a limited time can be counter-productive. Sometimes I manage to set aside a couple of hours to work on my book, and my mind is blank. But for me the key is to honor my decision and make sure I use that time for something at least related to writing. I read agent and editor blogs, I think about a blog post of my own, I daydream about ways to market my book once it’s published.

There is much room for improvement, and for increased efficiency. And so, while I’m not unhappy with my system, I am curious, and would still ask the same question of others: how do you sustain a creative life or even a creative project in the midst of children, work, home, and the other demands on your time?

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Divergent thinking

Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, Parenting, Writing and Publishing, tagged , , , , on November 6, 2010 | 3 Comments »

A friend of mine posted on her Facebook page a link to a fascinating talk by Sir Ken Robinson about education and creativity. Fascinating, but, especially for a parent, worrisome, for it makes me feel that, with my daughters in regular, public schools, there is little hope of them retaining the creativity with which they were born. (Although my friend, who works in the field of education in a non-profit focused on improving schools, says that it is not depressing, as there are movements out there to reform the educational system. I pray that these movements make a difference in the next 15 years.)

The talk, which you may view here, and which is accompanied by expertly drawn and artistic animation which causes one really to pay attention to the presentation, is about changing education paradigms. Sir Ken Robinson, a professor of education and, according to his site, a leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources, argues that the current education system in most of the world was designed in, and created for, another time: the age of enlightenment, and the industrial revolution. It was based on an intellectual model of the mind that valued deductive reasoning, and a knowledge of the classics. What we refer to as “academic” ability. Today, there is still a production line mentality, he argues, in which students are educated in batches (by age), with a separation of subjects (math, literature, etc.) and a focus on standardized testing, on there being one right answer.

But we are now in a different time. Children are bombarded with stimuli. It is become clearer and clearer that children do not all learn in the same way at the same age. Some might benefit from group learning, others might learn best on their own. Some in the morning, some in the afternoon. And yet, we (at least in the United States) are moving more and more toward standardization.

Ken Robinson advocates moving away from standardization, and toward individualism and creativity. He points to studies that show that 98% of kindergarteners score at a “genius” level when it comes to divergent thinking, or the ability to see lots of possible answers to a question and lots of ways to interpret a question, the capacity for creativity. Five years later, the number is down to 50%.  And it continuse downward with time.

Oy. I look at 6 year old K, and I can’t help but feel a twinge of panic about the future. Right now she is super creative, with her ideas, with her words, with her drawings. She comes up with possible answers that I’d never think of, with original ideas. Even the way she dresses, the combinations of clothes she chooses, is creative. Then I imagine her five years from now, conforming to the standard outfits that are “in” for sixth graders, spouting values and opinions that she’s assimilated from the collective.

Perhaps this is too bleak a view to take. I like to think of myself as reasonably creative, as fairly adept in divergent thinking, and of course I followed the trends in school. (One could argue that I did so rather poorly, but that’s a whole other story.) But all this makes me want to think of ways to nurture and preserve that capacity in my daughters. How to do this? Do we as parents have any control over this? K wants to be an art teacher, which sounds fabulous to me. She knows that I write, that in this family we value creative writing. She’s learning to play guitar, and is aware that her father knows a lot about music. But… today in the car she commented on a route I took, saying “Mom, you took the long cut.” And before I could even think about it, I corrected her: “One doesn’t say long cut. One can say short cut, but there’s no such thing as a long cut.” Gah! What possessed me to say that? Why can’t there be a “long cut” just because it’s not a commonly accepted expression? So much for my divergent thinking. Sigh.

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Disappointment

Posted in Being the people, Dance/Arts, Parenting, Writing and Publishing, tagged , , , on October 26, 2010 | 1 Comment »

K doesn’t like tags in clothing. (Who does?) They scratch her, and she always wants them taken out. (Why haven’t more clothing makers adopted the tagless system of printing the relevant information on the inside of the neckline?) A few days ago, we went clothing shopping, and she picked out a few items, including a long sleeved shirt with some kind of shiny design on the front. Yesterday morning, she came downstairs for breakfast, dressed, clutching the side of the shirt, looking contrite and teary-eyed.

“Mommy… something happened,” she said, coming up to me.

I understood immediately, but I asked anyway.

“What?”

“There was a tag and I tried to cut it off… sniff… and now look!” She erupted in wails as she moved her hands to unveil a ragged, jagged hole in the side of her shirt.

“Oh, I’m sorry sweetie. Tags are hard to cut off. That’s why you need to ask an adult to do it.”

“But Mommy! This is my favorite shirt!”

“Well, I’m not sure what to tell you. You can still wear it, if you’d like.”

“But nooooo! Can you sew it up?

Well, I suppose I could have, but I wasn’t going to.

“No, I’m sorry. Next time, just ask me or Papa, ok?”

“Wahhh!”

She tromped upstairs, crying. A few minutes later, she shuffled back downstairs, wearing a different shirt. She lifted her head and said: “You made me feel like I had to make the hole bigger!”

That was a good one.

“No, I really didn’t. If you made the hole bigger, that was entirely your decision.”

“No! You made me do it.”

Sigh. “Would you like a blueberry bagel for breakfast?”

For a while I felt a bit guilty. Maybe I shouldn’t have let her have pointy scissors in her desk. Maybe I should have been more understanding. Maybe I should have agreed to try to sew up the hole. She was just trying to be independent.

A couple of days later, I sat in my dance class discussing with a few of the senior dancers the auditions they had just held for a new kathak youth ensemble. Six students showed up, between the ages of ten and fourteen. Five of them did well enough to form the first youth ensemble group. One of them was not prepared enough, and a decision was necessary. Accept her anyway, to give her the motivation to practice more and so as to avoid her disappointment? Not accept her, in order to send a clear message that showing up for an audition does not guarantee success? Accept her on a trial basis? But then, would that drag down practice sessions with the others? If she was not accepted, would she simply give up? Or at ten would she be mature enough to view this as an opportunity to improve?

We opted for the second option, of not accepting her, albeit being very supportive of her and her dance. The conclusion: children will learn from disappointment. It’s ok if they are upset and cry. I thought of K and her scissors, and felt vindicated.

Later that day, K came to me with her scissors, holding them the way she knows to do, by the blades, and handed them to me, asking me to cut out a tag from her dress. I smiled to myself and thought of all the rejections I have received from agents on my manuscript, and all the times I’ve cried in anger and exploded in expletives at the sight of “I regret to tell you…” and all the times I’ve wanted to tear up the pages (“you made me feel like I had to make the hole bigger!”) and all the times I’ve then pulled myself together to begin revisions anew. And I snipped off the tag.

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