What Makes You So Happy?

When my oldest daughter, Elise, was four, I took her and a friend to see the ballet Copellia.  The friends' mom and I purchased new dolls to occupy the girls should they need bribes to make it through, but we didn't need them.  The girls were mesmerized.  Especially mine.  She watched every second as if it were the best Barbie movie ever (her obsession at the time).  For weeks after, she talked about dancing and ballet, she had to dance along with her Bella  Ballerina DVD at least once every day.  She staged dance classes with her little sister.  It didn't take a lot of thought when I saw a local ballet school was holding a preschool level "ballet camp" workshop the next summer.  I signed

Four year old Elise on her way to her first day
of ballet camp.

Elise up.  You should have seen her face when I bought her proper dance clothes and shoes.  Oh heavens,  I wish I had that on video because the surprise and happiness was beautiful.  She spent fourty minutes a day for the next two weeks in heaven. She had a lovely teacher, Miss Misty, who had control of the room and taught real technique, but also made it feel magical.  Elise would get the happiest look on her face when it was time to go to ballet.  She smiled through every class, made friends, fell in love with Miss Misty.  I swear I could actually hear her heart sing through the little observation window.  Miss Misty was very encouraging.  She always praised Elise's focus and "try".  She often raved to me about her dancer's feet and posture.  She told me Elise had a naturally perfect point, turn out and relevé.  Ballet camp was two weeks of happiness.  When it was time to sign up for fall classes, I didn't even consider not enrolling her.  From then on Elise had a passion.  Oh, she tried gymnastics, soccer and swimming, but nothing made her light up like ballet.

Fast forward eight years to this fall.  The poor kid had a crisis of confidence.  On the day of placements, she realized she was likely to be placed in the most advanced classes our school offers as well as pointe. Her brain started freaking out. She would now be with girls at least a year or two older than her and for the first time Miss Misty wouldn't be her teacher in any of them.  She'd have the choice to take lower classes with girls her age of course, and she liked the advanced teacher, but fear gripped her.  

As I tried to talk her down from the ledge of "I don't want to do ballet!!", I told her a story from when she was four.  We were in a store buying her second pair of ballet shoes.  Elise was not the kind of kid who threw fits or made demands but she had a full blown temper tantrum because we were buying flat shoes instead of pointe.  She didn't understand why she wasn't getting pointe shoes.  Miss Misty said she was a good dancer!  Why couldn't she have pointe shoes?!?!  She finally calmed down enough to understand she had to be older to be considered for pointe, and I laughed to myself over her angry little face.  As I told this story I wrapped it up with "Four year old you would never forgive you if you quit ballet just as you're going en pointe".  Elise laughed and the fear was broken.  She went to placements, did her best and was, indeed, placed in the advanced classes, with an hour of pointe to boot.  We had expected she would go the pointe class in flats for at least a while while she built strength, but her teacher told me to go have her fitted for pointe shoes immediately.  (Let me tell you, that was an exciting shopping trip.)

I was smart enough, this time, to have the camera ready.  

She doesn't grin broadly anymore, but she's just as happy as she was when she was four.

At this winter's recital.
Photo by Parker Grimes Photography.

At this point in the dance season, Elise is doing wonderfully.  She's never had more confidence and she says dancing still makes her smile.  Yesterday, she was cast as a mechanical ballerina doll in a local company's production of Copellia.  It's a pointe role, and the first time she'll be in more than the corps de ballet in a production.  It doesn't matter to her that it's a tiny role. She's a teenager now and isn't quite so demonstrative with her happiness, but I again wished I had videoed her face when she got the news.  She was one happy girl.

As I think about her ballet story, I think about passion and happiness.  She found something she truly loved when she was four.  I am stunned that her love has endured, after all, four is so tiny.  We change so much as we move from year to year, but the effect of dance has not lessened for her.  Last spring, at the age of six, my son had a similar experience with swimming.  He literally jumps with happiness when it's time to go to swim team.  You can't wipe the smile from his face while he's in the water.  He puts his wet suit on and glows from within. Playing baseball was a chore for him, but swimming is a reward.

My middle child hasn't found an activity she loves yet. (She LOVES cats, but I'm not sure that's the same.)  She likes writing and singing and creating.  She thought she wanted to be a singer so I put her in singing lessons.  She likes them alright but now she wants to dance or act.  She doesn't really know.  She might want to play the ukulele or piano or drums.  She doesn't know.  It's fine with me that she's trying so many things.  I identify with her lack of certainty.  Heck, I'm 41 and I don't know what I really love to do. It makes me wonder though, where does passion come from.  Is it a matter of happening across something that clicks with you? Is it a great teacher who lights a fire?  Is it finding the right thing at the right time?  Perhaps it's having the right kind of personality.

When I think about it, I realize most people do not have a true passion.  Most people have a hobby or career they enjoy, but few have something they're driven to do, something they work really hard to improve in just because they want to.  I wish for my middle one's sake that she had something that made her happy every time she did it.  It's such a joy to see my other two light up the way they do, I wish that for her.  Heck, I wish it for myself, and everyone else, too.  If we never find it though, perhaps that's okay.  Maybe some of us aren't meant to have that high.  It's not as if I'm unhappy without a passion.  I have a lot of leveled joy and peace in my life.  Maybe I'm trading the high of passion for those things.  

Queen Birdie

Once upon a time we had a fat tom cat.  Fat Tom (name changed to protect his privacy) allowed mice to live in the garage.  I found this unacceptable, so I went looking for a new cat.  Having grown up with herds of feral farm cats, I knew that females are better hunters. I focused on finding a female cat in need of a home.  I learned a stray cat had given birth in a friend's garage and she was looking for homes for the kittens. I picked the prettiest little female, named her Birdie and congratulated myself when, at about seven weeks old, she caught the garage mouse with great ferocity. Birdie grew in beauty and attitude.  She is a fierce girl who accepts affection only on her terms.  We jokingly call her Your Highness, but she merely twitches her tail at us.  Acknowledging our humor is beneath her.

Coffee and the Internet

My dogs when I asked them if they wanted a walk.

It happened again.  The great magnet that is a creamy cup of coffee and the yawning depths of The Internet has trapped me.  I see my oldest daughter off on the bus at 7:15, and for two mornings this week I then took my elderly border collies out for a quick walk before I had to get my middle daughter ready for school.  The spring like mornings out put an extra bounce in my step for the whole day, my very bored dogs were happy to get out of the house and smell new smells.  Then Wednesday happened.  The kids school schedules are all messed up on Wednesdays, so there goes my schedule, too.  On Thursday, I drove my oldest to school but promised the dogs I'd take them out tomorrow.  Here it is, Tomorrow.  Instead taking them out I poured a fresh cup of coffee and woke up my laptop.  I never even thought of walking the dogs, even though they were sitting by the patio door, staring hopefully at me.  It wasn't until my middle child wandered out of her room that I realized how late it was, that I'd spent the intended dog walk time fluttering around my Facebook feed. Ugh.  Sorry dogs. Maybe we can walk this afternoon.

Sweet Corn : A repost in honor of Ray Bradbury

When Ray Bradbury died, I learned that he was quite disciplined about writing every day.  He was also fond of short stories.  He wrote one short story a week for pleasure and discipline.  After his passing, I thought I'd try my hand at writing a short in his memory.  I was quite pleased with how it turned out, considering I wrote the whole thing on my phone in the bath tub.  (Haha!! I'm sure that's how Ray did it, too.)  If you're interested in seeing the original post, it's here then here.

This is the story I wrote.

Sweet Corn

Posted on June 7, 2012 | 4 comments

In 1982, our town was tiny.  I was a happy kid on our farm, spending most of my free time rambling about the fields or skipping rocks in the river that ran through them.   In my six years I had learned a lot about cows – calves in particular.  I’d learned you had irrigate a corn field so the water got all the way to the bottom of each furrow and I’d learned how to catch the wildest cats you ever saw.  I hadn’t yet learned that sidewalks were not an exotic luxury to most of the country.  I was about to learn something so big some people struggle with it their whole lives.

My dad was a dairy farmer.  He raised corn and alfalfa hay for our cows.  His corn was mostly what he called “field” corn.  It had giant ears full of tough muddy yellow kernels.  The field corn was only for the cows.  You’d have to be awfully hungry to eat the tough field corn if you were a person.  It was like chewing on an old stick.  Dad did plant several rows of “sweet” corn for the family though.  Near fall we’d pick the sweet corn endlessly – so it seemed- and help my mom shuck it and cook it and cut it from the cob for packing in to bags for the freezer.  We ate it for every meal.  You’d think we’d grow to hate it, but let me tell you, there are few things in life as good as corn picked moments before it is served.  I crave it to this day.

My older sister Jill and I also sold the sweet corn out of an old blue plastic wading pool in front of our house.  We had a big sign propped against the mailbox announcing fresh sweet corn for sale.  Lot’s of kids in the area sold sweet corn out of old plastic pools, but Jill and I had an advantage.  Our house sat on major highway, in the first town travelers heading east would have seen for possibly hours.  We had many customers stop to buy corn who said they wanted to arrive at their destination with something good to contribute for supper.  The lure of fresh corn was too much to resist.  The kids further on down the road didn’t sell nearly as much corn as we did for this reason alone.

One summer, Jill and I sold a brown paper sack full of corn to a nice man from Las Vegas who drove a Cadillac.  I remember he wore a pretty watch and was very friendly.  He was really interested in us and asked a lot of questions.  A week or so later, he stopped to buy more corn.  He said he’d been thinking about how good it was and couldn’t wait to eat it again.  A few days after that, Jill and I received a letter in the mail.  Since most of our family lived pretty nearby, personal mail was a rare thing.  We excitedly read the letter out loud.  It opened with “to the two beautiful girls selling corn on Highway 89″.  The man’s name was Hal, and he had served our corn at a dinner party where all of his guests raved over it’s flavor.  He said he’d be back our way within the week and hoped we’d still have corn to sell.  He knew it was toward the end of the season.  He said that if we had enough, he’d like to buy 200 ears for a church dinner.  Normally, a dozen ears was a good sale and if we sold two dozen ears a day it was a pretty good day.  At .15$ an ear, we weren’t getting rich off our corn stand.  Jill, who was six years older than me, did a little multiplication and we realized if we sold Hal 200  ears of corn, we’d make more from him than we had all season!

We beat it out to the corn field to pick all the sweet corn we could find.  We picked for what must have been hours, swatting at bugs, counting and recounting to make sure we’d have enough.  On the day Hal was to arrive for the corn, my dad decided he wanted to be there when this stranger arrived for the third time to do business with his young daughters.  Late in the afternoon Hal’s car pulled off the road, kicking up remarkably little dust on our dry dirt driveway.  Hal got out, shook my dad’s hand and exclaimed how happy he was to have our wonderful corn.  He assured us we had greatly improved his church’s summer picnic.  He asked our names again as he paid for the corn, and remarked that it had been wonderful to meet us.  He said goodbye, and got back in his Cadillac.  He waited for our neighbor, who was a highway patrolman, to pass, then pulled on to the highway.  As Jill and I watched Hal drive into the sunset on his way back to Las Vegas, our neighbor turned his big cruiser around.  He pulled into our drive in a cloud of dust, got out of his car and walked toward my dad.

“Who was that LaVoy?” he asked.  My dad explained, as our neighbor shook his head, staring down the road.

“That sure looks like a car I helped clean up off the side of the road about a week ago.  Driver was out of Las Vegas.  He was killed in the crash.”

We all looked at each other in wonder for a moment, then Jill and I lost interest and went in the house to divy up our cash.

A few weeks later, almost Thanksgiving time, a strange phone call came in.  My mom thought it was a joke and exasperatedly told the caller to call later in the day so they could speak to my dad, imagining they never would.  They did.  We only had one phone in the house, the kind you plugged into the wall.  It was in the living room so you couldn’t help but over hear every conversation.  I didn’t pay much attention to my dad’s half if the discussion, other than to recognize that it wasn’t a joke at all.  Later, my mom and dad talked a lot, in the kind of voices they used when they didn’t want little ears listening.  The next day they put on nice clothes and went in to town.  When they came back, they looked stunned, as if they were suddenly required to explain quantum physics in front of Einstein himself.  Finally, my dad cleared his throat and started talking.  They’d been to see a lawyer, turns out, about Hal.  Hal had been killed in a car accident after his second stop for corn.  In his belongings was a note to his secretary, telling her about me and Jill.  He thought we were wonderful and wanted her to send us gift.  A big one.  My parents had returned from the meeting with a check.  A check big enough to send me and my sister to college, and then some.

That day, at the age of six, I learned that there are not only figurative angels who decide to send little farm girls to college, but literal angels, who come to say goodbye in person.  There are those who have doubts about an afterlife,  but I will never be I one.  I still have the letter from Hal.  Inexplicably sent after his death.  I don’t know if it’s proof of a God, but life goes on.  That I know for sure.