Évéline

Today is the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death, a time to think about an extraordinary woman and her gifts to me.

This fall, I have been wrapping myself in my mother’s long beige wool coat.  It was her signature, really, the elegant, timeless look that she always favored.  When she died, I just couldn’t give it up.  I tried it on.  It was a little short in the sleeves, but fine otherwise.  A pair of gloves would take care of the shortfall, and I could bask in my mother’s warmth.

I am so lucky to have had a mother who:

·  was 35 when I was born.  Her age allowed her to think outside the parenting box, to my great advantage;

· had a fifteen-year career as an X-ray technician: careers for her daughters were non-negotiable;

· monitored my language (see last blog post);

· insisted on doing things correctly, whether it was vacuuming, or turning the knife blade toward the plate when setting the table, or always using a bread and butter plate, or putting in a zipper;

· was creative—she could draw, make decorations with paper, create a Japanese wig with coarse wool and the balls from roll-on deodorant, as well as a luau pig from chicken wire covered with cloth and colored with pastels by coal-oil lamp during a spring storm power outage; 

· insisted that, “from those to whom much has been given, much will be expected”  (Luke 12 :48);

· always celebrated birthdays and anniversaries with a special meal and a homemade cake;

· used the good china for the family;

· never, ever, gave in to physical challenges she faced throughout her life;

· was indomitable;

· had a real, practical sense of God;

· had an innate sense of style, and could wear a hat with unmatched flair;

· told stories while we watched her sew;

· could do anything with fabric—sew wedding dresses, graduation dresses, coats, suits, quilts for her grandchildren, dance skirts.

· lived her life for others;

· loved with every fibre of her being.

All I can say is, “Thank you.”

Language

Turns out my mother was right.  What comes out of our mouth defines us.

For that reason, she scrutinized our language more closely than a political organizer does the polls.  Participles had to agree with the auxiliary.  No “I seen” or “had went” for her.  In fact, grammatical faux pas were for her nails scratching on a blackboard.  She just couldn’t bear it.  She corrected us before the final sounds had escaped our lips.

Her secret weapon was that she could monitor proficiency in two languages.  She was just as demanding in French.  Should a wayward « moé » or « toé » slip out, she would insist on our repeating the sentence using « moi » or « toi ».  She would have nothing of patois; she insisted on standard English or standard French. 

I am indebted to my mother for her relentless insistance on correct speech.  Her high standards gifted me with a lifelong love of language.  Just ask my children.  I have subjected them to the same discipline.  In two languages.  My mother knew instinctively that “Respect for language is respect for yourself; it lifts you up” (Mikhail Barishnykov).  Language peels back the veneer of Armani suits, Coach handbags, and exquisite makeup to reveal a polished, articulate individual.  Or not.  Grammatical errors in speech prompt an axiomatic reevaluation of an individual’s true competence.

Even more important, the words we use communicate our values and our perspectives with respect to our personal and professional lives.  The word “allowed”, for example, that partners sometimes use to describe what one or the other can or cannot do, clarions control.  If I use tentative language, and suggest what options might exist, I suggest multiple pathways to an end rather than one singular vision.    If, in my work as an educator, I speak of my “markbook ” and talk about all the “correcting” I have to do, I am revealing my preferential pedagogy.  If, in the same way, my speech talks about “keeping records” or “providing feedback” or “reading student work,”  I am also telegraphing my philosophy.   Our words broadcast our approaches to our work and to our human relationships.

Dan and Chris Heath, in their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, reiterate the point.  “Every culture,” the Heath brothers say, “whether national or organizational, is shaped powerfully by its language” (p. 247).  Our words transmit our beliefs, whether we are aware or not.   When a colleague might ask me to resend a document she can’t find, and I have a nagging feeling that maybe I forgot to send it in the first place, I feel bathed in balm.  The colleague assumed the positive about me; her words are proof of her belief in people’s good intentions.

I am so grateful to Maman for raising my awareness of the impact of language.   Our words do indeed reveal our inner selves, our values, and the quality of our interactions.

Switch

One of my current projects involves change.  Not change of the routine garden variety, like learning a new route around the supermarket when the floor plan has changed, or managing a new operating system, or even working with a new person.  We’re talking serious change that requires from the people affected a paradigm shift in thinking.   In that context, the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (2010) by the Heath brothers (Dan and Chip) has been a compelling read.

“Oh, Yvette, a parcel came for you,”  our office assistant says as she hands me a heavy, bulky brown envelope, padded with bubble paper.  I stare at the return address all the back to my office, but can’t make sense of it.  The weight  of the package and its odd shape point to books, but I can’t imagine a source.  I haven’t ordered anything, and I’m not expecting anything either.  I reach for the scissors, trim a sliver from the top of the package, and reach in.  I pull out a note from my friend and colleague:  Thanks so much for sharing your process and experience with us.  I reach in again—three books, the first of which is Switch. 

Now the compulsion to read kicks in.  Resistance is futile.  I can’t get a new book and just leave it alone unscanned and unpaged until I have time.  It will call me until I give in.  There’s no continuing  my work until I have succombed.  Perhaps you feel the same way.  Having now read the title and surmised my endorsment, you might be interested in tidbits from the book.  I would be happy to oblige.  Three critical snippets from Switch follow.

1.    The Fundamental Attribution Error

is an articulation of Stanford University psychologist Lee Ross who noted  that “people have a systemic tendency to ignore the situational forces that shape other people’s behaviour” (p. 180).      The Switch authors, Heath and Heath, maintain that, when things go wrong, we tend to blame the character of the people rather than factor in the contribution of the context to the outcome.  They extrapolate from Ross: “The error lies in our inclination to attribute people’s behavior to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in” (p. 180; authors' italics).    

So, for example, if a colleague misses a meeting, we might assume negligence rather  than concluding that an emergency might have come up preventing the individual from communicating an absence.  In another context, we might ascribe a student’s inability to meet a deadline to lack of planning or foresight rather than to legitimate roadblocks to finishing on time.  Both of these cases would be examples of The Fundamental Attribution Error.  This principle underlines a belief I have long held: to cultivate a harmonious atmosphere in the workplace,  all must work from a positive premise, that every person in the organization desires a successful result, and is doing his or her best to bring that about.  In that way, people are able to assume the positive.  When challenges occur, they are able to focus on the problem and deal with it without letting emotions interfere.

2.    Communication and Change

Following from the Fundamental Attribution Error, people initiating change might ascribe any resistance to a person’s character.  The person might be obstinate and close-minded.  Not so, say the Heath brothers:  “What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity” (p. 14).   People are skeptical of change they don’t understand.  The agents of change, therefore, have an obligation to break down the change into its component stages, and to clarify the expectations.

3.    Forget Punishment

If we want people’s behavior to change, for any reason, we must encourage rather than punish.  This would seem self-evident.  Apparently not.  The authors of Switch cite the work of writer Amy Sutherland, who studied the approach of animal trainers.  How might they “teach dolphins to jump through hooops and monkeys to ride skateboards [?]  . . . The answer doesn’t involve punishment.” (p. 250 – 251).  The answer lies rather in very small steps and, in the case of the monkeys,  bushels of mango.  In the same way, harshness and the threat of failure will not motivate students to improve. 

I can only give myself in example.  I continue to do what brings me success and satisfaction.  I reject those activities in which I believe I lack ability.  I have played golf only a few times because I am convinced that my poor play frustrates any foursome I might be a part of, even in a Texas Scramble.  I don’t play pool or video games, either, because  I am no match for the competition.  The experiences are not positive.  On the other hand, I love Scrabble because I can hold my own.  I became a better pianist when my hard work  brought me encouragement from my teacher, an exam mark I had thought unattainable for someone with my ability, and positive comments from professional musicians I respect.  Why would my students not react the same way?  They would want to continue to do what they feel successful at, be it playing video games, skateboarding, hockey, writing, or mathematics.  My job would be to structure that success in the classes I teach.

Switch, then, is a timely and absorbing read that explains key principles of change using a variety of examples in diverse contexts.  I am so grateful to my friend and colleague for her thoughtfulness.

Styluses

I’ve opened my Nepali journal, and retrieved my fountain pen from its cubicle on my desk hutch.  I uncover the nib, snap the cap on the top to maintain the weight, and I begin to write.   One word after another, the pen translates the day’s highs and lows, its details and insights, onto the thick, handmade paper.  It becomes an extension of my hand and a conduit for my thoughts.  I sit a little straighter.  I take the time to form the letters.  I write a long time, basking in the luxury of this simple, elegant poster tool for authorship and professionalism.    

It occurs to me that I’ve been writing in one form or another, for various purposes, all my life, and that the writing tools, the styluses, I have used since I was a child represent the chapters in the volume of my life.   Lost in reverie, I notice that, in the few seconds I have paused at the end of my sentence to ponder this thought,  the period has become a Rorschach ink blot.  A subliminal slip,  the ink stain on the pristine page authenticates the story.  My Life in Pens reads like a list.

1.              Wax crayons, a small box of Crayola basic colors to carry me through my childhood etchings and the drawings of primary school.  I remember feeling so grown up when my parents let me buy a bigger box of crayons with a dizzying array of shades.

2.              Thick red pencil, with a fat lead, appropriate for printing in Grade 1. A cousin of the flat, rectangular carpenter’s pencil my father always tucked behind his ear between measurements as he ran boards through the table saw, or nailed them in place, it connected me to him somehow.

3.              Sleek gold HB pencil, just like the ones my parents sharpened to do crossword puzzles.  I could write in cursive hand, and I felt so grown up. 

4.              Papermate ballpoint pen, my mother’s, a sleek design, with a brown bottom and a pearl top, which Maman let me use to write thank-you notes to my grandmothers and my godmother for Chrismas and birthday gifts.

5.              Fountain pen with a cartridge—the latest technology.  After all, finally, I had moved up in the school world to the wooden desks I had longed for, those with heavy lids that covered a cavernous hold for books, scribblers, and my all-important cartridge refills, with a hole in the top right hand corner to accommodate an ink well.   Out of deference to potential mess, we had to substitute a glue bottle for the ink well,  but even that  concession to practicality could not dispell the feeling that I was moving up in the world.

6.              Generic Bic blue pens in the cellophane packages, lots of them, for the serious work of notetaking, and homework, and compositions, and projects.  They accompanied me through Grade 6 and all of the studies beyond.

7.              Typewriter.  My father received one as a premium with a World Book encyclopedia he purchased when I was twelve.  My school library didn't have an encyclopedia, but I had one at home.  My father was a visionary, and a purist.  If I wanted to use the new machine, I had to learn to type properly using QWERTY fingering.  I taught myself to type when I was twelve, closeted in the den at my father’s desk,  working through the instruction and exercise manual that came with the typewriter like following a new and delicate recipe.  In my enthusiasm, I even began applying my new typing skills to some of my school assignments.

8.              Promotional ballpoint pens, in assorted fluorescent colours, inscribed with the business name and motto, retrieved from conference bags or the recesses of my purses.  Crammed into the pen jar on the kitchen counter or the storage bin of the car, these reminders of our travels and our service providers still corner the market on telephone messages, grocery lists, notes to family members and student fund-raising forms, even in the era of cellphones..

9.              Pilot V5 Hi-Tecpoint pen, Fine point.  Its smooth glide on paper made it my favorite pen for years to journal and generate ideas.  A pseudo-fountain pen, it preserved the feel and look of the real deal without the threat of mess.  Total convenience.  It had a professional look, and I could get ideas down quickly. 

10.          Colored pens, a few red, mostly green or purple, and mostly Pilot V5 Tecpoints too, as well as mechanical pencils, that I used for thirty years to provide feedback on student writing, and note potential corrections.

11.          Word processors, the first an Apple 2e, with which I have a love-hate relationship in the early years.  I treat it like a fancy typewriter that doesn’t need carbon paper or a correcting feature.  Not having shifted paradigms yet, I write my drafts in pen, revise, and only then transfer my work to the computer.  Now,  I can’t imagine my life without my MacBook, and I compose at the computer.  The keys have become my pens, and they can capture my thoughts as faithfully as their predecessors.  I’ve written eulogies, reference letters, bins of binders of lesson plans, a few articles,  workshop materials, many speeches, a thesis, a dozen or so special projects, some poems and stories, scores of emails, and, now, these blogs.

Today, I have come back to my fountain pen, a gift from the children for my sixtieth birthday, inscribed with Each decade better than the last.  This stylus is a public acknowledgment of the role writing has played in my life.  A bridge between the quill and the computer, it is a catalyst for writing.  I wonder if its aura comes from a connection I feel to those through the generations who have paused to record their impressions of life and the evolution of thought.  Its very presence and feel in my hand are an incentive to slip it from its special case and add my own thoughts to those of humanity. 

Fluoride

“What flavour would you like for your fluoride treatment, Yvette?” the dental hygienist asks.  “Orange, bubble gum, or grape?”

Every decision is crucial during the annual Extreme Gag-reflex Test, the fluoride treatment.  I already have the essential equipment :  two nestled blue plastic cups that will collect the dribble, and three tissues, one for each side of my mouth and my chin. 

“We can rule out bubble gum right off the bat,” I answer.  “I think I did orange last year, so let’s go with grape this time.”   The fruit flavor might offset the fluride’s cloying sweetness that triggers my gag-reflex as much as the foreign objects she will put in my mouth.  As Lori prepares the treatment, I steady my breathing, through my nose, slow and regular.  Breathing will get me through the next three minutes.   Much too soon, she stands before me, one u-shaped plastic cup brimming with white grape-flavored foam in each hand.  For some reason, I think of Anne Boleyn on the platform at the Tower of London, panning the people before her and the city beyond, deciding the moment to signal the executioner to wield his axe.

I shake my head to dispel the image, smile at the incongruous juxtaposition, and tell Lori I’m ready.  I open wide.  She inserts one cup on the top, and inverts the other for the bottom.  I bite down.    Grape was a good choice, but still, my stomach heaves. I remember to breathe.  She might as well have turned on the saliva tap.  The count-down begins.

Images of other moments when time slows down project onto the Disney Circle-theatre that my mind has become :  the slow motion chronology of burning my thigh with boiling water; any kind of waiting—to see a doctor, for test results, for a text message from a child on the road; the first few weeks of anything new—a job, a relationship, a baby’s birth, a holiday; the final three minutes of a CFL football game, when your team is either ahead or behind by a touchdown or less.  To be honest, I must add clock-watching during a boring class.  As a teacher, it hurts to even contemplate that some students have probably felt that way during classes I have taught.  They might share John Green’s resolve in Paper Towns :  If I am ever told that I have one day to live, I will head straight for the hallowed halls of Winter Park High School, where a day has been known to last a thousand years.   Oh, and a three-minute fluoride treatment.

The slow shuffle of time, then, is often associated with anxiety, boredom, loss, stress, or danger.  So, we want time to fly.  We make choices because “it passes the time”, « ça passe le temps ».  We kill time, we have don’t like having time on our hands, and we are pleased when time passes quickly.   A full calendar, a wedding, time spent with friends, visits from adult children, absorption in a passionate activity, all seem to run on an accelerated clock.  Maybe we want this rapidity because we perceive it as a sign that things are going well, that we are prosperous in the economic, emotional, and social senses of the word.   

As the tissues get wetter and the plastic cups fill with fluoride residue I wonder if we are being  cavalier about time.   Why do we want time to pass so quickly?  All of us are journeying toward the same end.  I am in no hurry to get there, to arrive at the finish line of my time.  In fact, I want to savour every morsel, like a decadent chocolate.  I want to collect it like drops of water in a drought, or ration it like an expensive cream.   I want to rein time in.

That means I must stay awake :  pause on the front step to smell the fresh morning air,  stop on the highway shoulder on the way to work to watch the sunrise, set aside my work to listen to a colleague, suspend my to-do list to post a blog after an absence of almost two weeks.

It also means not to wish away anything, even the last eternal seconds before Lori returns to remove the fluoride, and I can go home.

Procrastination

I stare at the photocopy distributed at the meeting like I’ve  1.  won the lottery,  2.  been given a gift,  3.  have been handed a reprieve,  and 4.  all of the above.  I have to smile.  After all, I intended to include that very information in a section of a handbook I am preparing.  A quick email, and I have the electronic copy and permission to include it in the handbook.  I wipe the item off my mental to-do list.  

Procrastination pays off.   Again.  It happens with uncanny regularity. 

Another case in point. 

As I labour over an organizer for a question I am answering  for a project, I am inspired to check if the question might have changed in the most recent iteration of the document.  Imagine my surprise—the revised document has just been posted!  Imagine my  dismay—the question I have been working on has been deleted.  Gone!  Replaced with a much simpler version not requiring an orgnizer.  I’m off the hook, but more than an hour of my time has been hoodwinked.  Swaying back on my office chair, I congratulate myself on prescient pause-button pressing on my work to verify the question, and salvaging the potential lost minutes, so precious in this time of tight deadlines.  What if crisp efficiency or dogged determination had kept me shackled to my work during the previous weeks ?  I would have been farther ahead only to end up way behind.

Another victory for procrastination, or, what I have come to call, the power of positive procrastination.   For procrastination has power, and its force is positive.  I owe this insight to a principal I had the good fortune of working with in my first years teaching.  He explained to me that he didn’t make any decisions until he had all the pieces of information he needed.  He waited for the critical moment to decide—not sooner, not later.  Experience had taught him to discern the right time for a decision.

I don’t pretend to have my former principal’s wisdom.  Over the years, however, I have come to trust my intuition.  When 1.  I feel uneasy about a task, or 2.  I am spinning my wheels on a project, or 3.  life intervenes to interrupt my schedule, I will likely postpone the job.  Better to simmer a bit longer so that the flavours are well blended.  What appears to be procrastination is, rather, judicious analysis of circumstances combined with trust in the heart’s messages and divine intervention.

Procrastination has a bad rap, like old-time music, bread, whole wheat pasta, Regina, or disorder.  It doesn’t have to be indifference and laissez-faire, snubbing one’s nose at obligations in favour of personal indulgence.  Deliberate procrastination growing out of an astute analysis of circumstances and respect for intuition is a powerful force and an intriguing phenomenon.  I have dubbed that force "The Power of Positive Procrastination."

Nobility

Elmer and I nudge into the last row of mourners gathered around Ralph’s grave in the October chill.  Standing at the head of the grave just behind the urn, Reverend Sue begins the grave side rite.  Her voice soothes as she speaks the prayers, but the words don’t penetrate.  Gloria’s eyes are fixed on the urn, the finality of the physical separation from her husband obliterating everything.   I only have byte space for images of Ralph, our neighbor for the past thirty-seven years:

Railroader Ralph tutoring tourist bureau employee Julian on rail history and telegraph equipment so he can give credible tours of the Railway Museum;

Philosopher Ralph presenting eldest son Daniel with a copy of “Desiderata”;

Farmer Ralph pulling into the driveway during harvest in the red ’53 Mercury pickup he called “Big Red”;

 

Ornithologist Ralph putting a scrap of bread in the hands of four-year old Daniel,  and snapping a photo when a robin came to eat out of the hands of an amazed little boy;

Shriner Ralph in a red fez zigzagging a miniature car in the annual parade;

Cheerleader Ralph in our living room, guest of honor at a private jazz concert courtesy of son Julian on trumpet, with pals Alex on bass, and Eric on saxopone;

Sculptor Ralph presenting me with carved wheat sheafs in commemoration of my convocation;

Carpenter Ralph designing and building a spiral staircase to the second story he added to their family cabin;

Social Ralph gathered with neighbors around the fire,  addressing current issues;

Enduring Ralph, disease eroding physical capacity,  accepting, serene, concerned only with easing his family through difficult times.

Good-bye, Ralph.  For us, you will forever enshrine nobility.