Believing in yourself is half the battle

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being yourself, change, control, dreams coming true, express feelings, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, natural talent, play, teacher, trust

I’ve heard that creative people are creative in multiple ways and so we should not be surprised to find that Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan also paint pictures. But when you are struggling to be the artist you imagine yourself to be, like me, writing a memoir and telling a story I very much want to share, finding that I have hidden talents is confirmational.

In cleaning out an old trunk in the spare bedroom I came upon this drawing I made when I was sixteen. I’d forgotten that I once believed myself capable of such creations because honestly, right now, I can barely play Pictionary. But possibly if I renewed that notion that I can draw and I put my mind to it, I might win a few rounds.

This sketch is the result of the one drawing class I had in high school, with Robin Burkhardt, who insisted it was about taking the time and seeing clearly. And voila, she was kind of correct! This Bonwit Teller department store ad is a direct mimic of one I saw in the newspaper at the time. The coloring-outside-the-lines I allow occasionally suggests a little artsyness!

Believing in yourself is half the battle.

 

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Sing to your babies and they’ll sing to you

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, higher power, I have no idea what these tags mean, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, listening, love, mother, natural talent, parents, relationship, Rock Me Mama, security, singers, teacher, trust, Wagon Wheel, words

Your singing, and the blended voice of song, thrill me
What is this magic that moves me so?
I hear you there

Sing to your kids when they are little and someday they’ll sing back to you.

I used to belt out the Christmas music to my crying babies in mid-July because those were the songs whose lyrics I could remember, and therefore could keep going long enough to capture attention. Oh hark, the herald angels, I would tell my little babes. You’d better not cry, I’m telling you why, sleep, baby, sleep. I’d rock and dance around the nursery with an overtired child stringing together the magic held in songs. I faked like it sounded good because kids are wildly forgiving and unjudgmental, and somehow they hear the beauty hidden between the squawks. My heartfelt intentions cloaked in verse and rhythm and tone could move at least a two year old. And that’s all I needed at the time. The magic carpet of song carried my deep love, my deep concern, my deep desire to help teach how to be in this world, to my children, despite myself. Sleep, baby, sleep.

And what I have learned about singing to your kids when they are little, is that they grow up to think that singing is a way to express. A way to soothe. A way to share. A way to be. And if you are lucky they will sing back to you. Only maybe even better. And so, we’ll be charmed.

My boy is the one who rode his tricycle down the deck stairs

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being yourself, control, exchange student, express feelings, fear, goals, inspire, joy, natural talent, parents, play, pole vaulting, South America, trust, writing

Okay, below is the kind of thing I read on my son’s blog periodically as he experiences the cultural exchange in Ecuador. Provided he lives to look back on these kinds of thrilling events he surely will see that he has learned some things along the way. But really, as a parent, I must train myself to look at this through new eyes. He is eighteen and typically he’d be in college by now and I would know nothing of his foolish escapades. Also, it helps that he has conditioned me since he was born to look the other way when he tries to injure/kill himself since so far he has failed to do either despite being quite daring and fearless. So, take note while your kids are little, if they have the “T” factor, I believe it is called, that inspires them to take risks greater than those you and I might take, it might be a good time to wallow in the delight of being able to personally inform them of the danger, unlike when they will be off to college or other such places tasting the world on their own. In other words, it is when they are young and scaring you to death that it is best to teach them how to protect themselves. We steered this son towards daring yet controlled feats like performing live on stage, and sports like pole-vaulting, to help channel his wild energy.

Here’s Andrew’s blog post for yesterday, and really, I woke up today still thinking about it:

A really big sport in Ambato is downhill. Its literally just taking a mountain bike with shocks and riding down the side of a mountain. There are paths but they look like this ——___——- and the bike wheel fits in the ___. So there is no room for the pedals. And it is extremely hard to break because youre riding on very fine dirt. Mateo and David brought me to try it. You have to pay someone with a pick up truck to drive you to the top of the mountain. From there we started the descent. It started off easy, not very steep and only a few random holes in the ground that I had to jump over while speeding down a hill. But the next part was terrible. I fell head over the handlebars 4 times. I almost rode off the side of the mountain. I had to jump off the bike because the breaks werent working. Towards the end, I was riding and passed a cow tied to a tree. I didnt think anything of it because it Ecuador, but I then found myself in danger. A dog, almost definately rabid, jumped out of nowhere and ran at me barking. It got very close but then was pulled back by the rope by which it was tied to another tree. It was freaking out. Then when I tried to run away more dogs, without leashes, came running, barking, at me. I had to bark at them and wave my arms while I walked backwards up the hill. It turns out I had taken a wrong turn into someones farm/hut/land(?). I got to the bottom of the mountain bleeding,
bruised, sore, dirty, and almost rabid.

The good thing about this post for me it that Andrew is still Andrew and clearly is having a good time exploring what it is to be on his own. Thankfully he spent his childhood teaching me what to expect and I am hardened against the horror of this scene. Or maybe it was my own childhood that took away my fears of getting hurt. To read a story from my childhood called, “You Could Get Electrocuted Doing That”, go to “You’ll Get Over It, Jane Ellen”.

Letting kids make decisions

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control, fear, goals, inspire, joy, listening, making decisions, natural talent, parents

Sometimes I think young people end up in college unsure of which way to go, not clear on their likes and dislikes or their interests, because they have not had much practice in getting to know themselves. Maybe this happens if their parents make a lot of decisions for them. And as soon as I say that I think of just the opposite, that is, all the times I’ve seen parents ask their toddler, or elementary school child to decide things they cannot possible grasp. It took me a while as a parent to realize my kids do not have the same frame of reference that I have because I’ve been around so much longer. When you are six and you are asked if you want to do something you do not have any way of knowing what it means. Signing up for horseback riding lessons? Sure, whatever that is.

So somewhere in all this there is a rational way of allowing kids to make decisions without expecting too much. Personally I love the idea of guiding kids to make their own decisions by watching their actions to interpret their interests. Forget asking them what they want….I don’t think they really know. Unless the are so excited it is obvious, I would not trust kids agreement to do things you are not sure about yourself. I am not saying not to do them, just don’t assign undue value to them.

So many decisions, like what time and what day to do something, just don’t belong among a child’s decisions. To me those are the responsibility of the driver and schedule-keeper so they can remain sane, and allowing a child to decide those things make the driver and schedule-keeper slave to someone who doesn’t really know what it’s like to drive or keep a schedule. But, choosing between wearing a red shirt or a green shirt seems just right to me.

Watching kids to see what they actually enjoy, you know, what seems to make them happy, is a gift you can give them that few others would bother to do. Family knows us. So watch your kids and notice what they do naturally, and for free, and for fun, to get to know what their interests are. Then point that out so they are able to see what you have seen. That’s how they get to know who they are. And then insist on nothing. Allow exploration. Encourage activities that relate to their real interests. And if you do that for a childhood they just might end up at the door to college with some ideas about which way they might want to head next.

Creating great things instead of making money

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being yourself, biography, creativity, dreams coming true, goals, inspire, joy, natural talent, parents, Steve Jobs

Even though he made lots of money in the end, according to the biography I am reading now, Steve Jobs says he had a “…sense of what was important – creating great things instead of making money…”.

I love this idea, and it fits perfectly with my focus as a parent. My eyes have been on helping my kids be creative, and on helping them become themselves, and not on the typical competitive ideas of trying to be better than others.

When my kids were little we reinforced ideas that defined who each child was rather than what might make him presumably better than someone else. Even as a child Emmett was bookish, intellectual and deliberate, Andrew, physically coordinated, daring and funny, and our girl athletic, curious and with a great sense of humor. Our kids came with this stuff and we just help nurture it. As they get older we encourage them to further develop these gifts, and not so they can make more money by being better, but so they can be more themselves and feel free to create whatever they can with the gifts they have been given.

I love it that Steve Jobs, known for being a difficult man but a great innovator, points out the value of creativity over competition. It rings a bell with me because fostering creativity might be the goal of any parent, not creating a child who will be financially above the crowd. Best grades, best in class, best school, best job….that stuff can happen incidentally if you focus on helping your kids be who they are, not on beating out others.

Our kids have been molded and unfolded and that makes them who they are

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being yourself, express feelings, goals, gymnastics, inspire, listening, natural talent, parents, pole vaulting, teacher

A former high school coach saw something in our six-year old boy, who was climbing up and down a pole on the sidelines of his brother’s hockey game, that led him to approach and inform us that our kiddo was a pole vaulter, and we must promise to get him on a track team some day. Shortly after, the phone rang and it was our same son’s elementary gym teacher saying she didn’t do this too often, but she felt compelled to urge us to get him into gymnastics because he showed a natural talent, and he was unusually well-coordinated. After all, she saw hundreds of kids every year.

At the time our boy wanted nothing to do with gymnastics, but when I think back on it, I wonder what would have happened if instead of asking him if he wanted to do it we’d told him he was going to do it. Trouble is, we value letting our kids direct themselves. We do enough insisting that they go to school and do homework and clean the house and help in the yard, must we also tell them how to spend their free time?

There did come a moment when as a teenager we were fed up with his choices for his free time and we insisted on pole-vaulting. After all he’d been spotted as a youngster as just that, and we were pushing him for good reason. Now that he loves the sport and is good at it I wonder how much better he’d be if we’d insisted on gymnastics when it was suggested. Gymnasts make great pole vaulters. But then, if we’d done that he’d never have had the opportunity to wow us with his skateboard tricks, and then the guitar solos, drum playing and vocals on stage all of which he developed instead, and loved.

Do we want children who are the result of our molding or do we want children who have been allowed to unfold themselves? Yes.

What if no one ever wrote any letters?

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being yourself, change, express feelings, inspire, natural talent, Vincent Van Gogh, writing, writing letters

Okay, half-way through the gigantic Van Gogh biography I see that he is indeed a victim of some psychologically extreme state, and all my attempts to forgive these excesses seem irrational on my part. Of course there are scholars galore who have already determined what ailed him, but I like going into this naively, allowing myself an unadulterated look at a revered artist to see just how he strikes me.

I relate to his new directions, his sudden belief that this time it will all go better and he’ll get it right. I know how it is to want something so much and to try so hard to make it be even when it is not logical. I relate to the angst, the betrayal, the discord, and the giving up but trying again because passionate feelings do not just leave because you tell them to. Anger, denial, disgust, intolerance, and lots of other negative emotions follow him around no matter where he goes. I understand that, to a point. But….eventually the great desire to find prostitutes everywhere he goes, and the financial and time investment he makes in them, including the subsequent illnesses and recoveries, and then the resultant lies, not to mention the years of feeling entitled to live completely off his brother’s largess all while berating him, have me seeing that indeed Vincent and I have parted company despite our early similarities.

The fascination in this for me is that his life is documented in a multitude of letters, written in his own words, just because that is how the world communicated then, and these unwittingly serve as valid, believable fossils of his life and his inner struggle.

My kids thought I was just making cookies and muffins but I was actually on my way to a masterpiece

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asylum, baking, being yourself, cooking, dreams coming true, express feelings, goals, inspire, natural talent, passion, Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh took to wandering the streets barely clothed, barely fed, sleeping outdoors and muttering incoherently to himself like a vagabond for a year. He so upset everyone around him with his wayward behavior that his family decided to have him committed to an asylum where he could be hidden.

He resisted the asylum, yet complained of gnawing disappointment with himself for failing to meet his father’s expectations. He felt so low he wrote that if he ceased to be it would be best for all, yet he defended his actions as a man of passions, and claimed that his hands were tied, and that he was maddened by pain, unable to free himself as if he were a captive bird.

He wrote that ‘one does not always know what he can do’. Under all this he instinctively felt that he was good for something. He asked, “How can I be of use? How can I be of service? There is something inside me but what can it be?”

Silly me. I am still waiting for my path and Vincent’s to diverge before we both go crazy. I have not literally stripped myself and wandered aimlessly, but I have felt gnawing disappointment for failing to meet my father’s expectations. I have wondered what it would be like to just not be, and I have felt unable to free myself as if a captive bird. I am aware that I do not always know what I can do. And I instinctively know that I am good for something.

But now I see that it is here when Vincent starts drawing carefully and methodically, with great passion, that we head our separate ways. Already he is much more possessed than I. He cannot see beyond his own pain to meet with another and form a family, or quiet himself to hold a job, or rest enough to consider anything but the driving forces that push him. He is tortured to the point that by the age of twenty-seven Vincent can accomplish little besides scratching out pictures of everything he sees with dark pencils. Me, at twenty-seven, I was married and working. My feelings might have been similar but my actions were quite different.

This leads me to wonder whether if I’d just kept indulging in my true passion at the time, baking, maybe by this point in my life, like Vincent, I too would have created a masterpiece.

Maybe we are all worthy of life

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art, being yourself, express feelings, Gauguin, goals, inspire, metaphor, natural talent, parents, the sower, Vincent Van Gogh

Just skipping ahead to look at the color plates of Vincent Van Gogh’s work since when I get the nook back I know the photos will be tough to see. I know nothing of art except what I see. Since there is no photography I appreciate that Vincent Van Gogh has captured for me the look of the local postman, the look of women eating potatoes, the look of a copper pot full of flowers, and the look of the interior of a restaurant in 1888. He found it reasonable to paint for me his own chair with his pipe, as well as that of Gauguin’s, to let me know what the chair of a great painter might look like. And it delights me to discover that the chairs of great painters look like chairs I might sit in, yet each with a distinct personality. Maybe my chair has a distinct personality too.

As I turn pages and see pictures some appear that are familiar, the famous Van Gogh’s. I am able to see now that they become unusually energetic, full of movement and color and detail as his style develops, and I know I have have not appreciated this before. When I free myself to just see them for what they are, I too, an untrained viewer can appreciate this great art.

Themes arise. He maniacally honors a drive to draw and paint the sower over and over, in iteration after iteration. There is some reason to toil over every stroke. In the end the scenes of the sower are haunting and symbolic. Van Gogh’s father preached the stories of the sowers from the Bible and used the metaphor of the sower often to teach the promise of rebirth.

It touches me to think that Vincent was drawn to his father’s theme, this same metaphorical scene of casting out with the hope of rebirth, as something worthy of life.

Every child needs acceptance

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armed forces, ballistics, being yourself, detectives, express feelings, fear, goals, inspire, listening, lovable, love, natural talent, parents, passionate, trust, weaponry, weapons

Every child needs to believe that she is liked for herself, just the way she is, and that she is liked all the time, not just when she is acting according to others’ ideas of the way a child should act. Every child needs to believe that she will be able to grow and develop in her own way.

Speaking of acceptance, my friend just told me her teenage son has a sincere fascination with weapons! This might be enough to stop lots of people from accepting this boy and his ways, but it is who he is and it is good. The world is full of weapons and people who use them, so having individuals who prize their knowledge of them and feel passionate about weapons can serve us all well. I don’t think the world today can operate without good guys who are ballistics specialists, or members of the armed forces, or detectives, or spies, or any of a myriad of jobs and roles that require folks who understand and care about weapons. It sounds difficult in a teenager because we associate weapons and teens with bad events, but reasonable, rational adults who specialize in weaponry have to come out of somewhere, so starting as a teen fascinated by weapons is probably the perfect credential.

Accepting kids for who they are is not always easy if their interests are different than ours, but letting kids be who they are, and celebrating that and letting them develop their interests with our guidance, I believe produces the most passionate, alive, creative, lovable people on earth.