That is one picky universe

"I have a crush on the New York Times," I told a writer friend a few years ago.

"Ask it out,"  he said.

So, I submitted a piece to the Modern Love column. Kindly, they rejected it before I could get my hopes up.

"I was rejected by the New York Times,"  I reported to my writer friend.

"Everybody gets rejected by the New York Times," he said.

That's not true, of course, there are plenty of people at that party,  but I know what he meant. You need talent and the right topic to get in line and then you still might have to talk to the bouncer.

Many rejections ago, when I started writing and sending my submissions "into the universe",  here's what I did. I wrote a 1600 word essay and sent it on heavy bond paper to the Boston Globe. I never got a response and assumed it never arrived. 

What with snail mail.

Many rejections later, I realized that the essay was rejected not only because it was 1000 words too long,  or because it was submitted on cardboard, but because it was not well written, despite what my mother and husband said.

It was over-everything. Over-long, over-wrought, over-reaching, and of course, overweight.

I wasn't startled when I found out how hard it was to publish, I was stunned. Had I known how many rejections that  universe spits out before it accepts a submission, I may have quit.

But because I'm a writer and I love my captor, I soldiered on after the Boston Globe maybe-never received my piece.

I focused on  my fiction and submitted a completed novel which was rejected by everyone.

I wrote a second that was rejected by half of everyone

I wrote a third which brought a request for a full manuscript by a mega-agent the next day.

A week later,  and you'll be so jealous if you're a writer, I received the rejection  with a letter of praise and suggestions. I took the book back and rewrote it.

For six years.

Eventually, I discovered that writing better was more important to me than submitting, and that loving my work felt better than being noticed.  Most important, I learned that big goals are not met in a single leap, but by taking the smaller, friendlier ones along the way seriously.

And here's the thing about "eventually":

The ratio does begin to turn around. More submissions are accepted than they are rejected, and each rejection hurts less. If you don't become an Eeyore, you realize that you're probably further away from the submissions-on-cardboard days,  than the Big Goal.

Eventually:

I published a first piece, about two kids leaving for college at the same time  in  the Concord Monitor.
I focused on my blog and  my traffic increased until some readers were not even related to me, and, lived in places I had to look up on a map.
I sold an essay to a national publication
I published in three online magazines.
The Christian Science Monitor selected one of my pieces as a top ten in its category.
I got picked up by the Washington Post.

My novel and I are almost ready to journey into the universe once more.  "You again?" it will say several times before I catch it in a good mood.

And then, eventually, probably - not possibly - there will be another exchange with my writer friend.

"I did it," I'll say.

"I knew you would," he'll respond.

I would sometimes like to flee, but I can't. I'm a writer and I love my captor.

And I haven't been published in the New York Times yet.

The girl who didn't think she'd win

What do the judges want?

This day, it's the question on the minds of seven contenders for the Boys and Girls Club Youth of the Year title. Judges will choose a state winner from seven districts, and that winner will go home with $11,000.   

This day will be long, crammed with photo-ops, nervous small talk with political figures, speeches and interviews.

The kids arrive within the same five minute window, not late, not early. They walk a beat behind their mentors, taking in the surroundings, dog-eared speech pages in hand. They wear new suits, borrowed dresses, shoes that hurt their feet and haircuts they aren't used to yet. Their facial expressions are neutral and fixed with the question that has been steeping for months: "What do the judges want?" 

My charming mentee

Some seem terrified, some don't. Most don't behave as if they'll win. The ones who do, I know after last year's ceremony, probably won't.

There is palpable tension while the nominees shift awkwardly from foot to foot, their smiles quick, their eyes darting, their faces animated for only seconds at a time.   

A willowy, nervous girl dressed in a micro-mini, cowboy boots and a leather jacket is part of this crowd.  She has colored her hair in trendy strands of mahogany and fuschia and when she stands near the other kids she says nothing. She slumps as if her height might work against her.

I wonder how she'll do. The judges want poise. Confidence.

My mentee is here, but it's home court for her so she is putting the others at ease. There is not a competitive bone in her body. She's spent a decade learning how to engage with people - too long to put them at arm's length now. She doesn't think she'll win but is here to play anyway.

It's part of my mentee's charm. 

Halfway through the day, the judging starts. The door opens, they are called, they step in and the door closes.

Exactly 18 minutes later, the facilitator taps on the door indicating a two-minute warning, then knocks again at one minute. Not before or after, the door opens and out they come, looking even younger than they are with all that relief flooding their minds and bodies. They are smiling, hugging their mentors, the question of what-the-judges-want, behind them now.

My mentee goes in and uses the entire allotment.

The facilitator knocks at two minutes.

Knocks at one minute.

My mentee comes out, beaming.

The willowy girl goes in, she's out ten minutes later.

Another nervous nominee approaches my mentee. "What did they ask?" She whispers.

My mentee starts to tell her, but I interrupt, fearing the other nominee will fret over irrelevant questions:

"They'll ask different questions of everyone. Just answer truthfully," I say.

Later, the judging is done, the kids are themselves again. Everyone's hungry, their gone appetites back with a vengeance . They're silly and boisterous and a bit sassy  now that they are off display. Tension leaves the atmosphere like air from a balloon.

Later, through a dinner which precedes the big announcement, new energy sizzles in the room. There are speeches and thank yous and acknowledgments and winners in secondary categories.

Two well dressed teens talk about overcoming absent parents, social awkwardness and unhealthy temptations to craft futures of college and, of "giving back". The girl in the cowboy boots talks about overcoming the low expectations of others to be accepted at the NASCAR Technical Institute to study auto mechanics. A polished, poetic nominee compares her life and role in her community to that lived by her grandmother in a Kenyan village. My mentee talks about her crippling shyness that kept her isolated for years.

But few are fully listening. Everyone's waiting for that MC to open the envelope and now she does.

And the willowy girl in the cowboy boots wins.

The applause is instant and sustained.

She stands up and breaks down.

She turns to her father who wraps her in a hug.

She drifts, dazed, to the podium in tears.

She looks around, eyes on everyone.

She wipes her eyes with a Kleenex and, barely able to speak says, "God, I don't know what to say. I just never thought I'd win. I just didn't expect this. Thank you so much. Just... thank you."

Words fail her and the governor begins a new round of applause to rescue her.

"I never thought I'd win," she says again.

And yet, didn't she show up and walk the walk and talk the talk as if she would.

The faces of the other nominees react, some are smiling and some aren't. Some of the coaches look surprised, others delighted.

But if hearts have been toppled I see one that sings, and if minds are racing, I see one at rest,  that question of what the judges want, answered.

She was wrong

I was raised by a single mother and I am not a prostitute

I know it isn't Mother's Day yet. Close enough.

Recently, a story appeared in the New York Times about Terran Lyons, a third shift worker at McDonald's  who is trying to raise two children on minimum wage. Each night, Ms. Lyons shuttles her children to evening caregivers and each day she balances the tasks of parenting on little or no sleep. She works the less preferred night shift because that's where the opportunity lies to work up to a supervisory level. She is twenty-four.

Twenty-four.

I commented on the article: "This brave, focused woman...is paying some huge dues now. But among the rewards I believe are in store for Terran, is seeing those kids grow up loved, strong, and driven to make a success of themselves. They don't have much, but they have a lot of the right things." 

Here was one response to my comment:  "This is something of a fairy tale response. If Ms. Lyons lives in a low income area, once the kids are old enough, the neighborhood will come calling and if mom is at work a lot, the kids will face peer pressure like they have never known. It's just life. You'd understand if you grew up without."

It wasn't just the "growing up without" comment that gave me pause. It was her assumption that the family is fighting a losing battle.

My parents divorced when I was in grade school and my brother and I were raised by my mother. She worked all day, and we spent a lot of time after school in respective activities which, for me at least, did not include a heavy amount of homework. 

Often, following a parent-teacher meeting, my mother would come home and report that I was performing at an "average" level. I started to dislike the word.

"Don't tell me anymore that I'm working hard and doing average work," I used to say. "There's nothing special about average."

"Well. Maybe you should be sure you really are working hard," she suggested, with her nice mother smile. 

I reacted to this by stomping upstairs and slamming the door, and she reacted to this by starting dinner.

But after that, I worked harder. And she didn't call me average again.

Despite my mother and father's agreeable relationship, and my regular contact with him, this was at a time when single-parent homes were considered "broken" and children living in them were considered juvenile delinquents in the making. Nervous women in the neighborhood kept a closer eye on their husbands when we moved in.   

Many outcomes of our situation were possible. If I'd believed my classmate in the third grade, who leaned forward, shook the back of my chair and whispered "I know what you're going to be when you grow up. A prostitute. My mother told me last night,"  I might have feared I was destined to prowl dark alleys like a feral cat. But I reported the comment to my mother who, with impressive restraint, only iterated her own expectations of me, and made me understand that ignorant and cruel people didn't become that way because of me. She modeled work ethic, independence and class. Moreover, she modeled the ability to turn a deaf ear to people like my classmate's mother every day.  

However hard Terran Lyons works to create an example, she will be dogged by the assumptions people hold about other people living with risk: poor, single-parent households will produce unsupervised children who will meet their need to be loved by becoming pregnant or seeking out the closest gang.

Does that happen? Yes. And those outcomes break lives in half. But when we talk about the underserved in our society it strikes me that it isn't just poverty or the privilege of others that keeps children of disadvantage behind the ropes. Very often, it's the expectation that their circumstances will fail them more than their own resilience will free them.  

The assumptions behind the New York Times comment bring home the reality that people still view hardworking, challenged people like Terran Lyons  and her children  in pass/fail terms. It might have been the way people thought of my brother and me.

But in our house, there was no "probably won't" about it. My mother expected nothing less of us than complete success and to nobody's surprise, we went on to build productive, happy lives, and raise strong, loved children.

My fairy tale experience is that children are resilient, strong creatures. They know more intuitively at young ages than they ever may again. If you tell them something, they will believe it, maybe forever. But when it is modeled for a child that a better life is within one's own control, it is more than hopeful. It is the key to that child's castle.

When you should tell someone to quit a dream

Got dreams? You'll need this

In honor of all those athletes who will realize their long term goal of running in Monday's Boston Marathon, it seems fitting to write today about "grit". 

And quitting.

About a year ago, Angela Lee Duckworth, a management consultant-turned educator-turned -University of Pennsylvania psychologist  gave a Ted Talk about the concept of "grit". It is here.

In her presentation, Dr. Duckworth talked about successful kids and the usual correlates:  talent, upbringing, socioeconomic station, etc. Her conclusion:  even more than intelligence, a significant predictor of success is "grit": The tenacity of motivated people to pursue a long term goal without quitting.

This month, an essay writtenby Alfie Kohn, author of "The Myth of the Spoiled Child" has been appearing in different publications. In his argument, he debunks and characterizes the concept of "grit" as a trendy, wrongly accepted link to success, one he fears will turn parents into task masters and their children into frustrated, disappointed worker bees trying in vain to meet impossible goals.

Here is an excerpt:

"The problems with grit... To begin with, not everything is worth doing, let alone doing for extended periods, and not everyone who works hard is pursuing something worthwhile. On closer inspection, the concept of grit turns out to be dubious, as does the evidence cited to support it. Persistence can actually backfire and distract from more important goals."

I have a problem with all of this massive point-missing.

For  detractors to confuse "grit", which deals with the dreams of passionate people, with "persistence" which deals with the habits of productive people, is to confuse dreams with plans, skills with gifts, effort with drive, and all the other things that separate tenacious super-achievers from hard-working drones.

And for proponents to treat the notion of grit as a "discovery", a link to success, something to incorporate into our psycho-speak and foster in the classroom as teachable behaviors, is as much a failure  to "get" grit and understand its role in the work of very successful people.

First, while many possess strong work ethic, grit is rare. Really, how many thirty-year-old millionaires do most of us have over for dinner? Thirty-year-old millionaires are too busy to eat dinner.

Second, it isn't a single behavior like time-management or careful note-taking.  It co-exists with passion, the way dreams co-exist with imagination. 

Third, it can't be taught any more than confidence can be taught.  You can't go buy it or find a grit expert to talk to the class. You've got grit if you've got other things first, like vision and scary-competitive drive.

Fourth, where it is present, it is involuntary. Grit is as willful in a dream-maker as breathing, and it's foolish to treat this as something that we should, or even can, dial up or down in another person.    

And this brings me to the title of my post: When to tell someone to quit a dream?

Where there is grit, there is passion.  To urge someone away from "gritty" behavior because a passion in our view is "not worthwhile" or, so that they can "pursue other opportunities" is to dishonor that passion. And however gently we do it, to suggest that someone give up on their passion is like asking them to live without a digit, to accept a lifelong feeling of having left something unfinished.  

To live with "might have".

What an insult to people who, fueled by their own spirit, spend years creeping toward a  goal, all while developing the patience and pace and maturity to know it may not - but may - happen at once.

The person who is advised to quit, who quits out of frustration, who must quit out of  necessity may live free of those spiritual muscle cramps that come with journeying toward a long term goal, but dreams die slowly. When it's all over, we only trade those cramps for a limp. I did this. Frustrated over my sluggish success as a published writer, I stopped writing a while back to "pursue other opportunities" and I died a little every day.

When I was able to return to writing full-time, I started publishing like nobody's business.

To be sure, mindful parents should realize when a child is spinning their wheels in pursuit of a goal that will never be met - crappy baseball players will not grow up and play for the Red Sox.  Sometimes there really are opportunity costs and good parents can and should help their kids identify their particular joys and talents.  

And yes,  anyone with a near-impossible dream should have their own plan B, a way to support themselves, an order of priorities that enables them to live independently and not drag dependents if there are any, through a life of skeletal expenses and late notices.

We once joked - sort of - about putting all of our kids through bartending school so that they could always pay the rent, dress for the weather and keep their lights on while they went after-  or didn't - the thing they had to do with their particular talents and spirit.  

Like love, a passionate pursuit doesn't always give back right away. But to be blind to the difference between plans and dreams, to ever nudge someone away from pursuing a passion, is on par with asking why they would bother with love at all - when they could spend their time and energy on something "more worthwhile".

When to tell a child, a friend, a spouse or anyone to quit a dream?

Never. 

"I only know I'm going"

Disclaimer:  This post is going to be about how much we help our kids get into college. We did it, you did it, and according to the book of Good Parenting, which is also known as What Everyone Else Does, it is what we should do. This is not a post that thinks there's anything wrong with "helping", even though it is about what can happen when we don't.

Once I had a psychology teacher who said to the class, "When you get that feeling in your stomach that you're being manipulated, you are."

I have been reading about the changes in the SAT.  Among other things, the writing requirement will be removed, the subject matter will be updated to align with contemporary culture and curriculum, and kids previously unable to avail themselves of expensive SAT prep will find it online for free so that nobody is left standing behind the rope.

It means a lot of kids will get into college who might not have before.

I'm getting that feeling in my stomach.

It's not for us, because Sam graduated high school two years ago; it's more of a sympathy tummy ache for those who believe that  the easier getting in part has anything to do with the staying in and getting out parts, which have everything to do with initiative, drive, maturity, intelligence and of course, a compelling desire to run their own lives. Things for which there is no standardized test.

Most of us who have raised our children with the expectation that they WILL go to college gear up to "help" in the junior year and are full-on "helpful" in the senior year, when every conversation between parents and their seniors starts with "Did you", or, "Don't forget".  

Our own refrigerator door was so full of (cheerful! Always cheerful!) post-it reminders, it annoyed even me. It did not annoy Sam because he went to the refrigerator for little pizza snacks, and cherry Coke, not information. 

Here would not be a bad time to cultivate that initiative (or at least glimpse it) but this is when many of us move from full-on helpful to "I'll just do it." We schedule the SAT, pay for the prep, hire the tutors and suggest essay topics. We leave the Barron's guide where they'll trip over it, and have many, many meetings in the living room to "narrow things down". We read up and panic ourselves about the "difficulty today of getting in" (And by the way, there has never been a "today" when it wasn't difficult for one reason or another) and we cheerfully, always cheerfully, urge our students to bring their grades up when they get a chance. We send them to take the SAT every quarter. We book flights and tours. We send them  links.

Why do we? Two reasons, in my opinion:

First, because the thought of leaving life-altering, critical priorities and deadlines in the hands of people who start big projects eight or nine hours before they are due, is terrifying.

Second, because everyone else does it. 

What if we didn't? 

What if the helpful-parent culture suggested that getting into college belongs to our kids as much as staying in college does? What then, would we see of readiness?

A parent once said to me about her exasperatingly mellow junior, "I told her, 'This is in your hands. You don't research where you want to go? You're not going.'"

What if we meant it?

Think for a moment, if we parents stopped the college-prep bus, moved over and asked the kid to drive, how far they'd get. What if you left the entire project in their hands? Made them buy their own Barron's guide, organize their tours, pay for their apps and their own SAT prep? What if we ceased the nagging, and said, like the friendly neighbor over the fence, "How are you doing with the whole college thing? Good?"

Can you imagine? I can.

I met that kid.

She is one of the teens at our local Boys and Girls Club who is competing for "Youth of the Year", the Club's scholarship program. There is a $500 scholarship for participating, another $500 if they win, and at the state level, a $10,000 scholarship to the college of their choice.

When I began working with her on her essays and speeches, she was a junior who had  "never really thought about college" because nobody in her family had ever gone. Family expectations of her amounted to graduating high school, finding a job and moving out. She was self-conscious when she talked about her college plans with me as if she were not convinced by her own words on the subject.  

I wondered how her ambition would be sustained with no money, no role model, no support from home. No refrigerator door with post-its..

"I only know I'm going," she said.

At school, she took on an ambitious course load, including a sprinkling of AP classes, the strain of which, on top of managing a household in the dawn-to-dark absence of her parents, reduced her to tears more than once.

Still, she pulled her GPA from the low threes to a 3.8, and took a job bagging groceries twenty hours a week to pay for the SATs and college applications. The first SAT "really, really sucked" she said,  but scores from the second one were much better because "she knew what to expect." 

There's your free SAT prep.

She applied to six schools, five where her major is offered and a "safety". As of this month, she has been accepted into all but one.

She has no idea how she'll pay for it. Her guidance counselor responded by telling her she wasn't the only one going to college, and to come back after she'd done more digging on her own. I took her to the New Hampshire Higher Education Assistance Foundation for financial counselling.

"So how can I help you today?" asked the counselor. 
"I have no idea how to do this," said my B & G teen. 
"Well, then, we know where to start," said the angel-counselor.
And she was off.

Last week, she competed at the local level for the Youth of the Year title and gave a speech describing her "story". Afterward, she answered questions before a panel of seven judges about her life. When she was asked the question:  "Where do you see yourself  in five years?" she looked straight at the judge and said, "I'll be a marine biologist. And," she laughed, "I'll be in some pretty big debt." 

She won the title and the money. In May she'll compete for the big money.

With no family culture that reinforced the importance of college, with no funds and then, with that dismissive response from the school's guidance office, my B &G teen still found a way because she has one thing: a compelling desire to move on with her life.

There's your level playing field.

Parents who can support their kids should. And many kids would not get as far as my B & G teen did without the lifelong expectation of a college education like a hand at their backs. Conversely, many kids who are walked through the process as our kids were, go on to set up very impressive staging for their futures on their own.  

But here's my sympathy tummy ache:

We should not be manipulated by our culture of parent-dependent achievement, or, the industries that profit from parent-anxiety, into thinking our kids lack the initiative to do the college thing without us. 

When they are driven to move on with their lives, even without post-its on the refrigerator, they can. 

And will.

John Travolta, old women, and other post-Oscars shark bait

Post-Oscars party

The piece I began writing for this space turned out to be so big, awkward, clunky and sprawling that to finish it in time was becoming, as Anne Lamott would say, "like putting an octopus to bed". 

So I'm just going to post about John Travolta and Kim Novak and Liza Minnelli instead. 

Is it important that John Travolta mispronounced the name of Idina Menzel last Sunday? No. Do we really care? No. Is it news? Of course not. Do we care that Kim Novak looks old? Or that Liza Minelli was ill-informed about her Oscar outfit? No. We don't. It barely rises to the level of a distraction.  But you'd think it was worth our attention from the social media feeding frenzy that began minutes after the Oscars and didn't let up for days. 

I'll go off topic for a moment to make this observation: The most vicious comments came from media-savvy people who appear to be in their twenties and thirties. Much as I adore this generation - because they are the huggiest, kissiest, loveiest and selfie-est of any I've observed - they also popularized the phrases "don't judge" and, "don't hate" and in general seem very attuned to the feelings they feel in the places they're at. Is it all just a secret, attunement-handshake, offered only by one twenty or thirty-something to another?

Anyway.

When, and why, did people become unsatisfied with being merely snarky and develop such an appetite for meanness?

Because we are. We're mean. We're past funny-mean, we're vicious-mean. When it comes to skewering people who can't punch our faces for the things we say, we are appallingly insensitive and disrespectful.

As Slate magazine reported, "81-year-old Vertigo star Kim Novak - who was roundly mocked for turning up onstage, two decades after her last movie, exhibiting extensive plastic surgery - might as well be dead."

From comedian Rob Delaney: "Will they have time to edit Kim Novak into the In Memoriam section?"

And, also from the Slate piece, "...Matthew McConaughey's mother, who last night aspired only to the role of proud parent, was eviscerated for rocking a keyhole-neck gown that gave the world a peek at her cleavage...which Twitter commentators deemed "leathery," "ancient," "inappropriate," and "terrifying."

Terrifying? 

Liza Minnelli, considered to be a model for female impersonators and drag artists, was described by Ellen DeGeneres as "the best Liza Minnelli impersonator I've ever seen," and then, referred to as "Sir."

Everyone loves Ellen. But if it was funny for Ellen to see Liza's smile drop from her face in embarrassment, well, for me anyway,  it kind of takes away from that sweet gesture of buying the car for the single-mother server.

There's always a little schadenfreude going on when giant people stumble, but I feel for John Travolta. He was reportedly mortified, and the stories of crowds-of-Travolta-fans-so-huge-during-the-filming-of Saturday-Night-Fever-they-had-to-film-at-four in-the-morning aside, it must have stung to realize the appetite that exists for your public humiliation. Forget that you've endured a failing marriage and the death of a child and have donated tens of thousands to charities  which support first responders, special needs children, environment, and families grieving the loss of members. You're John Travolta. You are a celebrity with a lot of money and your own plane. To Buzzfeed, with you and your bad wig.

I'm a user and a fan of social media and I've seen how easy it is for people to be vicious without consequence on the internet. If it were not, last Sunday's Oscar "highlights" would have been a hiccup. What intrigues me is why we become mean, and I think I realize why.  

Because we want attention. On the internet, we are seventh-graders who would rather be a mean girl's friend, than a kind one. We can be noticed now at the drop of a cruel comment, and in the meantime, if only in our own minds, we can be little celebrities ourselves if our newsfeeds and comment threads heat up enough. 

Maybe my octopus-piece is making me impatient. But when people delight in holding up another's faux pas to the light, or when people attack someone for showing themselves to the world as they are, and in so doing, launch a tweeting trend that becomes a social media chew-fest, well, I grow a little ashamed of us.

I would bet that many of the commenters who ran this trend into the ground are also people who champion anti-bullying laws and will teach their children to respect the feelings and places of others.

Or maybe they aren't. 

On the upside, John Travolta may have inadvertently advanced the career of Idina Menzel with all that focus on her correct name. 

I hope so. It would be a very nice way to say I'm sorry. And bad wig or not, he showed the class to want to apologize for his verbal misstep.

Sharks on the other hand, wait for the next feeding.

Sliding out of the comfort zone for fun

Two things before I begin my post, which is not about the Winter Olympics, despite the sporty graphic.

Skates that I would not wear but would 
like to have made into shoes

First, many Winter Olympic seasons ago when I was in my twenties, I said to a good friend who had invited me to play tennis, "I won't win, but I'll play. Is that okay?"

"Interesting," he said.

You can fire people up by convincing them that you'll win. But you can make them drop their guard if you apologize in advance for losing, was my strategy. Fun? What fun? Game on.

Second, I've been thinking, for all my talk of seizing the moment and following dreams and trying new things and leaving no day unturned for the magic and meaning and discovery that awaits, I haven't been working very hard at being my own example.

And just like that, I was invited to go skating.

I used to ski, and skied well until I was injured. Then, I skied against medical advice and injured myself again. Then, because, and only because I had just purchased an expensive, flattering outfit, new skis, and a season pass to Loon, I was advised by my sensible and witty doctor that unless I had to (ha ha), it would be a good idea not to ski anymore.

I'll go off topic for a second. Skiing is an attractive sport. First, even if they're sometimes puffy and you have to wear them in the freezing cold, most ski outfits are flattering. We all look a little more youthful and healthier in them. And, if it hurts to move that fast in the freezing cold, we're apt to wind up with a little windburn at the end of the day which makes us look "outdoorsy" as well. An "outdoorsy" look, in my opinion, says "evolved". When I see a person with an authentic winter tan who hasn't been on a cruise, I think of him/her as someone who probably uses their intelligence, strength and spirit to, as everyone likes to say, "live out loud". A reader of real books. Possibly a wearer of expensive woolen socks. Probably  a late afternoon juice drinker and massage have-er.

I can't remember the last time I skated, and I am so unaccustomed to outdoor winter activities since I stopped "having to" ski, my first thought was: What will I wear?

Then, I thought about not being in my twenties anymore. I thought about how my right ankle hurts sometimes for no reason. I thought about the multiple surgeries I had on one leg until, eventually, they yanked my deteriorating kneecap and replaced it with a fake.While I'm not exercise-averse, I am cold-averse, willing to circle parking lots to secure the closest space possible to the door, start my car fifteen minutes before I leave the house, and refuse to check the temperature ahead of time knowing the information will just make me feel colder than I have to feel. 

Then, I accepted the invitation.

When I woke the next morning, my heart had opened to the idea. I thought about how some good things can only come from hard things. I thought about how I'll look back on it, now that my mental attitude toward performing is - for real - one of  participating over triumphing, and playing over winning. I thought about the many times I've reached an elusive goal the minute I stopped hitching my happiness to the end result and focused on the rest. What fun? That fun.

Interesting. 

So now, I will buy another outfit. A warm one, or maybe a few pieces which I might layer and wear at the same time depending not on how cold it is (because I won't know that) but how cold it feels which is a much better guide. I particularly look forward to wearing the skates because, like ski outfits make us look more youthful and healthier, ice skates make everyone look like they at least plan to have fun.

Whatever happens, I will survive the cold, I may discover a new activity, and if nothing else, I will have nice, rosy outdoorsy cheeks when it's over and look like I could be meeting these people for lunch:

I don't know these people, but
 I'll bet their socks are nice