“excellent! B+!”

My father has a curious way of encouraging me. I’ll say, “well, Dad… I had a great year. The design thinking program launched, we ran four major events in the lower and middle schools. I won the respect and admiration from my colleagues that I needed, to move the design thinking project forward. My students did great on their examination. The seventh graders are all abuzz about their history projects, thanks to Di. I ran (with my colleagues) an awesome seminar for twenty teachers from around the state. Another school association has hired me to run some workshops for them, too. I’ve really made my professional life come alive. And I’m happy.”

And he’ll say…

that’s really awesome, son. I’m so proud of you. B+.

It’s not as awful as it sounds. Let’s face it. We’re teachers. We love the A+ students, the ones who already have their act together, the ones who “get” what excellent work looks like, reads like, sounds like. We love reading a paper without a grammatical alert or a misplaced modifier or an awkward apostrophe. And we find and share the joy that comes from the finding of a student so pulled together, so driven, so capable, so dedicated.

But… You know… Who cares? We don’t leave as much of a lasting impression on those kids. We don’t affect their lives as much. We don’t encourage those students to chase their dreams — they already have dreams, and they know how to chase them. Hey, they’ve got goals and they know how to reach them, and when they reach those goal posts, they usually know how to move them. Good for those kids. Great. Awesome. Get out there, figure out what you want, go for it. You can get it done.

My dad has been giving me a whole series of B+’s since I was 7 or 8. I used to resent him for it. I’m now about to turn 42, and in 35 years of striving I’ve gotten exactly one (one!) A–. [I deserved it, too. I was awesome that day. Like, if three bishops had seen me that morning, I'd be a living saint already.]

But no. I’ve had a B+ average from the most important teacher in my life, for more than twice as long as most of my own students have been alive.

And it’s because he loves me. He wants me to succeed and grow and help others be a success in the worst way. And he knows that A+ students don’t do that. Those A+ kids are too much driven by external factors. Or they burn out. Or they become stress monsters. Or they become arrogant, prideful. Or overconfident. Or too dependent on their teachers for outside validation.

Those B+ kids, though. They know they can do better. They know they can work harder or smarter or be more canny or work just a bit different than anyone else. Their drive to succeed is partially external, partially internal. The B+ isn’t about the quality of their work now; it’s about lighting the pilot light of their furnace and seeing how hot they can burn. It’s about stoking them up, and then providing a slow, consistent stream of fuel.

But this isn’t about my students who will be getting grades soon. This is about my dad: the man who gave me another B+ today, after I told him what an awesome year at school it really was. The man who, since before many of my readers were born, was handing down grades that said, “adequate and a little more. But what can you do now?”

For a long time I thought I was working hard and making big things happen for him. It’s taken a long time for me to understand that he was making me think that to help me light my pilot light, to drive me toward the kind of successful outcomes I wanted, at the things I wanted to do. He wanted me to light the fire inside; and he understood that all it took was a B+… again and again and again.

Now… I give me the B+. I am the one striving to build more, do more, create more. Because the world, of course, values that sort of thing more and more, these days. Dad said,

when I started in business, of course, everybody said, “you’re only as good as your last deal.” But now, twenty years, twenty-five years on, they say, “you’re only as good as your next deal.”

And that means that your last effort always has to be a B+. You’ve got to reflect on the experience, see what has to change, build anew, and make it better. The next big thing is started already and you’ve got to be leaning into it because failure puts you out of the game.

So. B+. “Because I love you, son.”

Happy Fathers’ Day.

Poem: Up the River

I promised a poem about the insights from this morning’s kayak trip, in my last entry. It was a beautiful day, the tide was high, and it was exactly the right time to go in the water. At the same time, my body and mind were making another journey this morning, that I wasn’t really aware of until a little later in the trip. As one of my professors kept saying, “matters of ritual are often functional in origin but ontological upon reflection.”

The orange kayak susses across the sand and into the water,
where rock and sea, air and tide meet.
Astronomical forces are at play here:
the water coming into the river,
drawn by Moon invisible on her course,
as I am drawn upriver by the same tide,
the same urgency of now,
when breeze comes down the river,
Pulling herons and swallows in her wake.

Mother makes journey with me,
gliding in a boat of her own,
Both of us solitary voyagers,
Voyaging together.
I pass the first house on the right,
The one with the huge maple tree in its yard,
Its garden alive with green growing things.
Across the river, big orange brick house
Still looks empty,
Its walls a pastiche of European style,
Referencing every noble tradition known,
A silent jewel box that never seems to know human action.

Here in mid-river, reflecting the sun,
The water is resplendently purple,
The rich color of emperors and kings,
Priests and Phoenicians and Pharaohs:
Wavelets carry memory of passing ships,
Presage laughing children,
The darting arrows of rowers —
Disciplined as warriors or water dancers.

We cross under the first bridge.
Here, the dazzling whiteness
Of many ships gathered together
Blinds me in brightness. Such wealth,
Such wonder, such beauty!

The side fork takes us to the mill pond,
Water so shallow it’s almost red. Some folks on their deck watch us paddle past,
Masking irritation and anger with their morning mugs of coffee. Why are they
In our water? seems essence of their question. how to get them to go away?

Retiring to the main stream, we find the households of the mighty along the water: brilliant big mansions that only great wealth can build: this purple one with a turret painted purple, adirondack chairs like thrones on the porch.

The current is stronger here, pushing us backward. We struggle harder against the current. The speed of the tide carrying us inward and upward is slacking; the tide is turning. We must pull hard to move forward. On the left, here is the senior center with its elderly inhabitants, fragile and slow as lead.

On the right, nestled amid complex, marshy ground — always stable with the same marsh plants, yet ever in motion — new cygnets shelter under the wings of two old-soul swans: two parents, five children, swirling in circles in the river’s blackness.

Beyond, beyond:
Up the river still further!

Here is no abyss, but a dam:
The river in my fingers is salt,
It tastes of the sea, of fish,
Of living creatures

But now my orange kayak’s bow
Thuds against the great black wall.
Behold! The fresh water, living water,
Falls in cascades across the bows,
Sprays me in its excellence,
Makes me take in breath sharply,
Makes me tingle in delight

this far and no farther.

So says the river. abandon the boat, abandon safety,
To come further up,
And further in.

The black cormorants of the estuary
Give way to the white gulls where brine ends,
And the clear water begins.
There is a deepness,
A Fullness,
Beyond this black wall,
One I cannot touch,
Nor sense,
Nor see,
Nor taste.

Oh but I sense its results.
This flow from the source,
This mother and father of waters,
Feeding the swans and the seniors,
The mansions of the mighty,
And the angry coffee-drinkers,
The fleet of bright beautiful boats,
The grand spreading maple,
And the big orange house forever turned inward,
All depend upon the water cascading
Down over this dam,
Flowing out from the springs
That feed this mighty stream.

And now, with other eyes,
I can see the springs beyond the river’s source,
And the black earth of unknown marshes,
Forever feeding water into this river.

And beyond the springs, the rain:
Falling on receptive ground.

And beyond the rain, the clouds,
And beyond the clouds, great Ocean,
Untold depths,
The inexplicable, ineffable Deep.

The water in me wakes at this sense,
Cries aloud, a voice in a desert,
“and me also! Forget me not!”

Enough. The tide is turned,
My arms are tired, my head is weary.
The ocean pulls at my boat,
The stream is rushing to meet it.
I and my orange kayak drift south,
Downstream,
To return to my starting place:
Where the great river meets ocean.
Gathering clouds all around
Prophesy rain.

Taiji Day 104: In the grass

Today I got to do taiji in the back yard of my parents’ house.  Doing the form and five golden coins and eight pieces of silk in an unfamiliar place is always a little wonky.  But today was especially delicious: the scents of my mother’s garden, dewy grass under my feet, sunshine dappling through the trees… beautiful.  Everything happened at the right speed, with the right amount of breath work, and the right amount of muscle tension and stretching.  Afterwards, it turned out to be high tide. So we went for a lovely kayaking trip, my mother and I, on the river.  More on that shortly.

Of course, then it took me most of the morning to find a working internet connection to tell you about it, but hey.  These things happen.