Failing to Fail is a Problem...

I am finally ready to fail. It's not a negative, I've decided, to fail. It's a positive. Like falling in an attempt to do a new pose in yoga or biting it on the ski slope, it is a sure sign of trying to reach a new level.

We are so often comfortable right where we are. We stay there out of complacency. "It's just fine here," we say to ourselves while knowing, in that deep, true part of our brains that we try to quiet that it's not what we really want, where we really dreamed we'd be if, in fact, we really let ourself dream. To be fair, information gathered over a lifetime can give one pause about dreams. Dreams come true can easily turn into nightmares, we see that every day on the covers of magazines that love to out the problems of the delebrities who have reached the pinnacle of what they's desperately hoped for only to find misery at the top. "Be careful what you wish for..." my mother always warned.

But you can't be too careful or you will stop wishing altogether. I have, of late, begun cautiously wishing for things and working toward them, knowing that in doing so I might be terribly disappointed but that I will be able to deal with that disappointment. I have put together whole chapters that I have then had to trash, put together proposals that take months only to be told they didn't quite work. While being told to change even a word used to wreck me, I am stronger now. I finally understand personally that it is better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all and that trying is not just a one-time thing. It is constant, applied every day in a new way. Rejections will come often if you are actually ex/pending efforts.

I gave a gold star to a friend yesterday who is going with her gut and switching schools for her young son. She has grilled him, given him all the downside and still he has agreed. She is afraid he is doing it just to please her, but so be it. There is no way, now, of knowing the outcome. There will be drawbacks and great benefits to the decision, like all decisions. I sympathized. Change is hard, but you have to go forward and do those things that your strongest instincts tell you are the things that you have to do. Denial of those things will only lead to regret. We have to be brave enough to try. There is always a way out later, another change that can be made, you can always try something else.

What gets me is when people give up, when I give up, simply because the task at hand seems daunting. Like the story I have to edit, or like the bits of homework that my kids ask for help on only because they don't feel like thinking about it themselves. I try to prod the to do it themselves. I will not always be there, they have to build their own inner drive to push past the fear. All I can do is give them the tools, highest among them feeling good about themselves.

The other day, as Eli and I sat doing hebrew homework after school at Ladybird Bakery, we got on the subject of why a kid at school always acted out.

"He doesn't have the tools to express his frustrations, to feel that he can do things, maybe because people are always telling him about the things he does wrong, not the things he does well." I looked at Eli sadly "He maybe doesn't feel good about himself."

Eli nodded. "Well, I don't need anybody to tell me what I've done well, I feel good about myself," he said.

I could have cried. Now, to be fair, I've seen him flounder in moments, get defensive or push back. None of us feel good about ourselves all the time. But I love that he feels so strongly about feeling good about himself. It is no small thing. He may be ready, then, to face failure, a sure eventuality if he really tries. Trying, it turns out, demands a super strong dose of self-confidence. As with the Lion in the Wizard of Oz, it is all about inner belief: "I think I can, I think I can." I whisper that to myself often as I go through yet another round of trying.

Whether Or Not to Care About The Weather...

"Is this rain or snow?" a woman walking her dog outside my building asked as I rushed out this morning, late to drop off the kids at school, into the...Hmmm...What exactly was it? Could've been rain, could've been snow, could've been what the weathermen newly report as a "wintry mix." Did it matter?

I laughed. "Does it need a label?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, but it's annoying."

We have had a fair share of snow this year, more than Montreal someone told me the other day. As I rushed along next to my new foul-weather friend, I noticed her fabulous furry boots.

"It shouldn't matter, you're definitely prepared with those boots..."

She looked down, kicked up her foot to take a good gander. "I bought them last year after the big snows..." she said.

It's a fact of life. Weather patterns change in a place from time to time, from year to year, from global warming or whatever else we don't quite understand but probably have some hand in. Family members in Arizona have been lamenting the lack of sunshine, the rainy 40 degrees. It's not supposed to be that way. My one sister has gone back there for the winter from the Seattle area, where that is to be expected. What can she do? It makes me think of a saying my Mom always said when we got disappointed by an unexpected outcome, weather or otherwise: "Man Proposes, God disposes..." There's a similar one, "You know how to make God laugh? Make a plan!"

Whether you are a believer or not, someone, something is certainly always having a joke at our expense when it comes to weather patterns. "Must be nice to have a job where you can be wrong more than half the time and still keep your job," someone said to me once about those who report on the weather. Poor bastards. Like doctors, they can only know what they can know, there are signs and symptoms but no sure thing until it happens.

But it's like this: we just have to deal. We have no choice, do we? It is a great opportunity to exert our flexibility muscles.

I dug a gold star out of my bag. "Here," I said, handing it to my precipitation figurer friend, "for trying to muddle through the weather, for putting up with it."

She took it with an excited gasp. "I get a gold star, yeah!" she said. She looked up at me with deep appreciation. "I'm going to have to put you down as one of the nicest people in the world..." she said.

I smiled. "Thank you," I said. Who cares about the weather when you can have awesome moments like this? It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all. I love bad weather, 'cause it so often brings people together, huddled close against the...rain, snow, whatever it is.

Choosing College...or Not

I am tempted to begin my blogs these days as one does Catholic confession: "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned...it has been four days since my last blog." I give in to the temptation. Why not? Therein lies the beauty of a blog.

Today's topic, though, to go or not to go to college, and when to go to college if you do, has been swirling around in my head for days. It seems to come up at every turn, to be the reason for so many of my gold star giveaways. It's time to discuss.

It started last week with my kids, who took out the SpongeBob version of Life, a game we hadn't played in a while. Eli took it upon himself to guide his younger brother.

"First," he said, "you have to decide whether or not you're going to go to college. I'm going to college," he said definitively. "You make more money that way."

I interjected. "Excuse me," I said, "money isn't everything..."

Eli just looked at me and I think I saw a slight almost imperceptible eye-roll. He is used to this. I don't want him to take the idea of going to college for granted, to imagine it as a given. I am constantly piping up when the subject is raised to make sure he knows there is more than one way to go. He, though, as children with vocal parents often do, has made a clear-cut decision already, at 8, just to spite me: he is not only determined to go to college, he told me recently, but he's aiming for the top, he's headed to Harvard. Ugh. What have I done?

Back in the game, my children head to college and I, of course, playing devil's advocate, do not. I end up with a $400 job as a mail carrier and, opting not to live with Grandma but on my own, I also end up with a $400-a-month Clam Shell rental. Between my low-wage job and my bad luck, I am very short on cash. My progeny, however, especially Oscar, a conscientious risk-taker, confident in his moves, are loaded.

"I hope you guys are going to take care of me when I run out of money..." I joked. After briefly balking, they both proffered their hard-won $1,000 bills to help me out. I declined. "Thank you, but I'm fine right now, still holding on. Nice to know that you'll help out if necessary."

It was an amazing experience. Such are the lessons of the Game of Life: accepting money from your children feels weird, even if they have bucketfuls and you have barely enough to get by. Interesting. They, of course, in their little minds, I'm sure decided for certain that college was the road to take, seeing me as I was in desperate straits. But I'm not sure college is always the sure route, especially straight out of high school.

The other day, at an event I attended, a 40-something woman who had entered a French's mustard cook-off contest offered up the fact that she was back at college along with her kids.

She shook her head. "I wouldn't have been ready back then," she said assuredly. "Now, though, I'm getting straight A's. Oh, except for that one B..." The look on her face was so proud, it was amazing. She didn't win the $25,000 prize for her Stoplight Sausage Stuffed Peppers using French's Spicy Brown Mustard (that was offered to the creator of Onion Polenta with Spiced Tomato Avocado Salad made with both French's Cheddar French Fried Onions and French's Horseradish Mustard). She did, however, get a gold star, which she wore proudly on her sweater.

This incident came right on the heels of hearing from a friend that he had finished his graduate degree. He was a great example to show my kids, someone who has been able to get great, well-paid jobs not because he had a college degree (he didn't) but because he had the brains and the courage to take risks and go for what he wanted, and the confidence to convince others he knew what he was talking about. While working at said jobs, he finished his first degree and went on, quickly, to post-graduate work that he recently completed. He is overseas, moving and shaking, but I sent him a digital gold star. I hope he visits soon to tell my kids his story, to convince them that not every person has to take the same path to get solid results.

We have recently swapped French roommates from a young man who is in one of Paris's top university programs to his cousin, who was headed into the same program until, shortly before, he decided instead to travel and work for a while. He worked, straight through and barely stopping for a break, for a year at a Greek restaurant in London and now is planning on spending time travelling around, first taking his time to get to know New York then the larger U.S. He took advantage of the incredible snow day yesterday and wandered through magical Central Park. Now that, my friends, is an education.

This isn't a game. The outcome of Life is the culmination of many choices made. I just want to remind my kids, as I do myself every day, that decisions we make in a free country, common as they seem, are indeed still choices.

Blame "It" On...

The sun hasn't emerged in days. Let me blame my bad mood on that. It's the easiest target. As a writer, I know I should delve deeper, it's never just about the rain, but today I will try to let it be, just for the day. I will put my energies toward focusing on others. It is easier that way.

In line for coffee at Red Horse, where I've come to attempt to get organized, side by side with others who use the mellow cafe as their office, it is easy to put on the good face. The barista, a fellow writer, trying, always trying, working many jobs to support her habit, asked me the usual question: "How are you?"

I laughed and put on a big, big smile. "I'm amazing, of course, as always," I said.

"Great," she said, willing, wanting to buy it, to believe.

I laughed. "Wouldn't that be awesome?" I said. "Do you think there are people who are actually always feeling terrific?"

She shrugged. "Maybe. I worked with a guy who always answered that he was great..."

Another patron piped up. "I think there are people like that, I've met them, they are just sunny all the time."

"Come on," I said, "Do you think that's really possible? Don't you think they're just pretending, putting on the good face?"

My barista friend agreed. She is a writer after all. "Don't you think they are maybe just in deep denial?"

The woman shook her head. "No, I think they are really just good all the time, or maybe...90% of the time?"

I laughed. "As a journalist, I am very skeptical of statistics, especially ones like that, that you just made up. How do you have any idea what these people think?"

"Look," she said, hands up, defending herself from my badgering. "I'm not saying I can identify. These people are not my friends...They couldn't be." She shook her head vehemently. "No, no, I couldn't relate."

I laughed then, hard, pulled, as usual, out of my blame-it-on-the-rain funk just because people are so, so funny in the ways they think. I gave her a big gold star.

I feel bad sometimes pressing people to be skeptical. It would be nice to believe life is easier for some people, that they don't feel the bumps in the road as hard as others. I think, maybe, that is true. Sometimes, if you keep busy enough, distracted enough, sometimes the bumps are easier to gloss over.

Choosing to focus on artistic pursuits, however, pretty much guarantee that the bumps will take center stage. They have to. You have to look at them, try to capture them in order to offer up relatable moments for audiences who will turn to your song, your story, your paintings in the moments they cannot but feel the roughness of the road.

The barista offered up her own personal coping mechanism. "I used to date musicians," she said, "but..." she shook her head.

I laughed. "But...you gave them up for lent?"

She shook her head. "No, survival. If I see a cute guy with a guitar, I just try to run."

I laughed and gave her a gold star, a big one. "It's hard because musicians tend to pour themselves into their music, that's why they play..."

Funny, I had just given a gold star to a musician yesterday, a friend I interviewed about why he had begun playing music as a child in Israel, why he had come to the U.S. to try to make it here, why he was now, more often, back in Israel. He had, in fact, taken up singing and songwriting and playing piano and guitar as solace, a place to put all his childhood angst. He has worked hard since he was 8 to try to actually get paid for performing, but the road is a really hard one, try as he might. Band members have come and gone.

"It's like a marriage," he said. "It's all about ego and expectation..."

I laughed. He's not married, but he is a musician, one who creates excellent ballads. He gets it. He deserved his gold star, as does everybody who just tries, tries and tries again to put "it," whatever "it" is, maybe the rain, maybe something more real, in a place.

Can't Rulers Just Be Nice?

Doing the family hebrew homework last night, Eli had no trouble answering the question of what he thought about power and violence vis a vis a story about the Jewish holiday of Purim, where the Jews are once again saved from extinction from an evil anti-Semite. He started writing even before we could discuss it. "Power and violence are both bad..." he wrote in his little scratchy swirls, saying the words aloud as he penned them, slowly.

"Wait a minute," I said, "power isn't always bad, sometimes it can allow you to do good things."

He shook his head. "No, Mommy, you can't be nice if you're in power." He was so sure, I had to ask why. Again, without hesitation, with a "duh" in his tone, he explained.

"See, it's like in the Presidents book [a book about past presidents he has taken out many times from school and poured over,] the president after Lincoln was a bad president because he was nice to the South. You can't be nice, especially after a war, whether you win or lose." He smiled, pleased with himself. "You see? I gave you a perfect example," he said.

I shook my head. "I don't know..." I said. "I'd like to believe you can rule and still be nice."

He just shrugged, jaded at not-even 9. "Being nice is pretty good," he said, "but being too nice could really backfire. The people you're not as nice to then turn around and are jealous, they say, 'hey, what about me?'"

I just stared, openmouthed, listening to philosophies of rule by might come out of my progeny's little mouth. Shit.

I ran the whole conversation by a friend at Parco this morning, a human rights activist who once questioned if I thought it would be a good idea to give out black stars to bad people, like the kinds of masterminds of genocide that he put behind bars.

"Wow," he said,after I told the story, "sounds like you're raising a little Machiavelli." He defined the philosophy basically as my son had, that "it is better to be feared than loved because fear can be spread more evenly than love."

I get it, but I am hopeful that it is not true, that my son, smart as he is, will somehow in his own life, in his own promising political career, maybe in his future presidency (if he doesn't make it as a pro baseball player) manage to be nice and still be effective.

I did a little research on Eli's example and read about post-Lincoln president Andrew Johnson, a nice, honest man who was "no match for the ruthless Republicans." It is, sadly, still a problem good, nice politicians are up against every day, every election. Realistically, Eli is right: caring doesn't get you there or get the job done, would that it always could. But there are always jealous, violent forces to contend with.

According to an online summary of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli states that "in an ideal world, it is virtuous for a prince to be good. But in reality, princes who distance themselves from ethical concerns and do whatever it takes for the benefit of their states rule best. Therefore, it is better to be parsimonious than generous, cruel than loving, crafty than honest. Machiavelli's general rule is to be as good as circumstances allow, but be willing to resort to any means necessary for the good of the state."

Oh, how I wish it weren't so. Doesn't anybody believe that gold stars can do the trick? That black ones aren't necessary? Obviously I haven't done a good enough job if I can't even convince my own son...But then, I have no desire to rule. You know why? I just want to be nice.

Recognizing Creativity

Today I am the featured guest "artist" on Hey Brooklyn, an awesome weekly podcast featuring, and I quote, "creative people living and working in Brooklyn."

I loved chatting with the host, Amber, who I met at a book party I threw for my friend Ken. She, like me, is trying to recognize people's efforts to put themselves out into the world in one form or another, using a small sound studio off the BQE in what was once a storage unit to offer struggling Brooklyn artists the opportunity to talk freely about their passions. Definitely check it out at www.heybrooklyn.com.

It is interesting timing, the podcast, after my night last night, spent marking the closing of artist Elizabeth Gregory-Gruen's gallery show of detailed scalpel-cut paper works in Tribeca with Wanted editor John Slattery, who had featured Ms. Gregory-Gruen in the latest issue. There is on any given day so much artistic endeavor to be celebrated in New York.

The art show, on the fourth floor of an unmarked warehouse building on Leonard Street, was packed and Ms. Gregory-Gruen was a gracious hostess, explaining her intentions with the smooth, perfectly swirling cut pieces and with those that had been shot through from behind with a 12-gauge.

Sometimes, she said, you just need to shoot at things. I knew exactly what she meant. I put on pink boxing gloves instead of picking up a gun, but there are those days. I gave her a gold star, for trying. Each of the 20 or so pieces on the wall represented, she said, three- to six-months work, a lot of effort, painstaking if the exactness of them was any indication.

She took her star graciously. "Thank you," she said. "You have to just get up the energy again, and again, sometimes every 15 minutes..." Doing one's art, doing anything, isn't at all easy. She had sold some pieces, she said, but with the recession...

Even famous artists don't have it easy these days. Her husband, Bob Gruen, is a rock photographer whose shots of John Lennon on the roof of The Dakota are some of the most well-known images of the legend. The photography business has changed, though, with the advent of digital, with so many changes in technology and the world.

"Everyone is a photographer now," Ms. Gregory-Gruen said.

They live in an artist's commune downtown Manhattan that Mr. Gruen has lived in since the 70s, since well before the area was populated with $13 million condos. Being an artist in New York has changed, a lot. Pioneers are hard to come by on the main island.

"I think you need to move to Brooklyn, that's where it's at," I said. Then, maybe, she could be featured on Hey Brooklyn...

Mountain High

A vacation was had. I hadn't intended to abandon the blog but there it was. Me in the Catskills with a small broken-screened computer and no plug to charge it when it died the first night of our four-night stay at Winter Clove, a.k.a. Family Camp.

I brought gold stars with me but left them back in the room in lieu of lip balm and my Blackberry, all I could feasibly carry with me on the slopes. I should have tried harder. Oh, the efforts being expended, the trying I overheard on lines for the lifts.

My favorite, the comment that could very well capture skiing as a sport, was the one out of the worn-out, ragged mouth of a mother headed out into the driving snow from the lodge at Windham Mountain:

"I HAVE SPENT $400 TODAY AND I AM NOT HAVING ANY FUN!" she screamed, probably to someone in particular but, really, to everyone, to anyone who would listen. I laughed uproariously to everyone, to no one in particular. Oh, how I wished I had stars on me. The great expense of skiing is, in fact, staggering and, sometimes, if maximum fun is not being had, it feels like a terrible, terrible waste.

Second favorite gold star worthy moment was the mother in line with her two small children, the younger a boy of about 6 on a snowboard, whining about something incessantly. She turned to him sweetly.

"Do you want to go to babysitting? Draw a little? Do a little Play-Do?" she asked lightly, airily, making it sound like a genuinely kind offer. A mumble emerged from the mini-boarder, obviously a refusal of the alternative. Jekyll turned to Hyde, sweet to narrowed-eye anger: "Then KNOCK IT OFF!" she yelled. I laughed and she looked up at me and smiled, shrugged as if to say, "sometimes you gotta do whatcha gotta do." Hilarious.

The third, another skiing-weary mother, would have received her star for her addition to my own family drama. I had, as usual, disappointed by progeny, I can't even remember how, forgetting to charge my iPod, failing to hold their glove or some other disgraceful shameful negligence on my part. Oscar chastised me loudly. "You're fired Mommy!" he said.

A mother trying desperately to put on the many layers of ski-wear on her own child looked up longingly. "Can I be fired too?" she asked.

I laughed. "Sure," I said. "Let's see how they fare on their own...They have to get there eventually, right? We can't quit, but if they fire us..."

She just sighed. No such luck. Ah well. Another day, another dollar, lots of them, spent trying to have fun...

I joke, but skiing with the kids was awesome, despite its trying moments. Both my boys deserve big gold stars for their bravery, their (mostly) smooth sailing down mountains on thin, slippery sticks. Oscar, who never left the pen last year learning simply to stand on skis without falling, asked me before we left on the trip this year, "Is skiing scary Mommy?"

I paused. Hell yes! I would have said if I hadn't stopped and thought about it. But I knew that was the wrong answer. His expectant eyes told me I needed to come up with something better if I hoped to see him skiing any time soon, or ever.

"It's FUN!" I said with a big smile, no mention of the sport's many possibilities for death and dismemberment, the trees one could crash into or the cliffs one could slide over...

He got a big smile on his face then and many times afterward as he skiied alongside me, fearless, having fun. "This is awesome!" he said. "Skiing is my favorite sport!"

Eli too loved hitting the trails, the names of which, all W's, he alone could remember. He wanted me to teach him but I am in no position, myself unwise in the ways of keeping my skiis together to turn. After a day of me telling him unhelpfully to keep his skiis together but not knowing quite how to tell him how to do it, he finally acquiesced to lessons and improved greatly, doing more "french fries" than "pizza wedges," in the hands of more able instructors.

Skiing, like all sports, is a metaphor for how hard one is willing to try, a metaphor for getting out of something what you put in. Sore and tired from trying, though, it is good to be home, to rest up for future mountain endeavors.