I managed a scholarship to a young and rather affluent school where I was in a class of about 40 students. We didn’t have a school song, but if we did, it would be “You Can Do Or Be Anything You Want, Honey,” composed with five-part harmony and a cello solo written especially for Yo-Yo Ma to play when he flew in for the debut (naturally). The only two things apparently forbidden on campus were the words “tryout” and “cut.” Any kid could be on the soccer team or join the choir, and if you joined the choir, you automatically had a role in the over-cast musical. Before I get carried away, let me be very clear. I loved, loved, loved this school. The professors and the education they offered impacted my life to such a degree, I fear I may never pay forward their generosity.

Still, I wonder if all the indiscriminate activities adequately prepared us for the oft-discriminating reality. One would think me a regular renaissance woman to look at my college application, but perhaps those many diversions were just that – diversions from where my actual talent would naturally lead. Lord knows, if I had attended a school with thousands of students, I would have been lucky to make varsity soccer and never even stepped a cleated foot on a softball field. And its highly unlikely I’d have attended the university I did with those tidbits absent from my application.

Then again, the dream-it-do-it refrain may deserve more credit. In the past few years, we’ve seen scores of catchy titles – The Law of Attraction, The Secret, The Power of Positive Thinking – all backed by science (insert twinkling lights and echo effects) – telling us that if we give all our energy to positive thoughts and give any naysaying the figurative bird, checks will astonishingly appear in the mailbox, success will knock on the door and orgasms will always come in threes. Giddy-yap!

This theory must have worked, because look at us now – every Joe owns a big house with a low-interest … oops … never mind.

Seems to me this would comprise an interesting study; the correlation between lavish encouragement and success. But, surely, now you’re wondering how we might measure “success” for this study. So glad you asked because, thanks to the stream of consciousness above, I actually have an answer.

Success is exercising one’s natural gifts.
With that said, I have some work to do!

*Song title from the musical comedy, “No, No, Nanette.”

Why is This Not In a Landfill?

Alas, I dared to blink and a month has past since my last entry. We’ve barely scratched the surface of what it means to be successfully unaccomplished, so straight to work we go.

One reason for my hiatus is my recent trip home. Yes, home. I’ve already contemplated the complex significance that I’ve never ceased referring to my parents’ house, where I was a teenager, as “home.” I’ll also confess that to any stranger I’ve met who asks, “Where do you live?” I reply, “Phoenix, but it’s not my home,” as if the post disclaimer forgives me for living in perhaps the most eco-unfriendly urban sprawl to manifest from the bigger-is-better American dream.

Trips back home are always interesting, especially given the closet in my old room is still filled with high school keepsakes – recordings of mediocre choir concerts, the oversized athletic jacket with my maiden name on the back, gifts that I haven’t touched since that oh-so painful breakup! All of them slightly dusty with expectation.

This visit was slightly more nostalgic, as it happened to coincide with the wedding of an old friend. I was not a wedding guest, but several old classmates, evidently better at keeping ties, were there for the occasion. Thus, an impromptu reunion ensued. I was prepared for an epic awkward moment, but in keeping with tradition, I was wrong. In spite of six mini-we kiddos ruckusing around the room, the gathering was strangely normal. The biggest surprise was that, after 10 years, the only mention of career consisted of one sentence that was initiated by me – None of the interrogating or squinted eyes that I get when I talk to that wretch from Mirror Town.

Two days before my departure, I came down with a 24-hour stomach flu. I’ll refrain from the details and just say that it was disgusting. Still, I can’t help but ponder how strange and ironic that my body, which gets sick once in a blue moon, contracted this nasty pathogen while my own mother was there to offer a helping hand and a bucket filled with macrobiotic remedies. It’s as if my body lowered all its defenses merely because it could.

My husband and I have considered relocating to my hometown, and the prospect conjures certain reservations. Part of me fears that I’ll regress; I’ll rely on assimilating into the same group of friends, on the same plot of sand at my favorite beach, on my mother and her latest placebo cure-all. Then, another part of me wonders/ fears that I’m giving myself too much credit. In order to regress, one would have to progress in the first place, right? For all the varying climates and experiences, I sure have little to show for it – no badges for my sash, no participatory ribbons. What if I’m simply the late-model version of myself with extended seating room? Now that is a scary thought.

During my day of retching and regressing, in a near-comatose state, I observed a commercial featuring a tank-topped, tousle-haired pixie skipping along the beach. I swore, “If I ever walk again, I will never waste another sunny day.”

Twelve dramatic hours later, purged of the sick and inebriated by my newest commercial-inspired philosophy, I was ready to take on the day – in my jammies, chatting with Mom, whilst the sun steadfastly beamed outside.

Oh, to hell with philosophy. I can buy transformation at the hair salon.

Both reality television and films depict stage moms as trailer-park denizens who mold their female breed into lipstick-wearing, show-tune blaring pixies who flaunt plastic smiles and high-heeled shoes before they can walk. In these portrayals, the stage mom appears a crude, uneducated catastrophe; a self-appointed agent who demeans the expression of “love” into a conditional reward system. And, of course, she always has a sad tale of dashed hopes, which explains her vicarious existence.

Do not let this characterization let you be caught unawares, for the stage mom can manifest in all professions, classes and genders. Bundle up and eat your Vitamin C because no one is immune.

I was thrilled to get the part of “Marie” in The Nutcracker for the second year in a row. What child wouldn’t? I got to pretend I had a bratty brother, wear beautiful costumes and hold hands with a young “Prince” (who I had a crush on for about the first day, until I realized he was bored out of his premature mind and more fond of men than I’ve ever been). But on the first day of rehearsal, during our break, I remember vividly a girl in the corner remarking loudly to her friend, “Marie is supposed to be a little girl. She’s supposed to be, like, 8, not 11.”

At 11 years, I still thought myself little, but I got the snot’s message loud and clear anyway. I knew she was just repeating something her mother said, but the knowledge didn’t lessen the sting. Incredible, how some childhood memories never fade.

By the end of that season, and a host of stage-mom encounters, I wanted nothing to do with the role. I never thought receiving a named part was anything significant in the first place, but the attention made me feel apart from the pack, and being that some of the attention was negative, I came to identify standing out as negative. The next year came, and I was much relieved to get the part of a polichinelle, however (would you believe it if I said it was much to my chagrin?), they asked me to play the role of Marie again for half of the performances.  Even I didn’t think it was fair.  Not that the Biz has anything to do with fairness, but children are usually spared this reality.  As lady luck would decree, my partner for the dance of the polichinelles was the daughter of another stage mom who wanted her girl to clutch the lead.

The polichinelle costume consists of cropped pants, an oversized top, a pound of clown makeup and a pointed hat. To this day, I have baby-fine curly hair, and to keep a hat attached securely to my noggin for an afternoon stroll, let alone 10,000 balancés, would require 20 bobby pins. I didn’t realize this before the dress rehearsal, giving way to a comedic performance indeed, as my partner (daughter of said stage mom) nudged my drooping clown hat back into place in time with the music at every opportunity. It would have remained purely jocular, except that by the time we exit stage left, the dear mom was backstage, waiting to volunteer a hearty laugh at – not with – me and my big baby hair.

The next and last time we crossed paths was more than one year later. I had been accepted into a summer ballet program and took part in a local competition in hopes of wrangling some much needed scholarship funds. I was one of four girls competing, and there on the judges panel was Stage Mom. My stomach immediately thickened into a tub of sugarplum Jell-O.

The competition was originally setup to offer awards to only first and second place winners, so I was a little nervous, but then the judges announced that due to the difficult decision, they elected to add an award for third place. Hearing this, I was confident. But I didn’t win. Nada. My husband sometimes jokes, “If you’re not first, you’re last.” In this case, that would be a true statement. I was dead last, and unlike when I got a certificate at Disney World for being the slowest racer on the waterslide, there was no laughing about it. The stage mom knew me. She knew my mother. So the fact that she remained decidedly awkward and aloof without so much as a nod the entire day made her suspicious in my view.

I held this stage mom in contempt from that day forward, but years later, one of my closest friends made the connection that this woman was a member of her church community. She knew her as a personable, generous woman who frequently donated her time. Stage Mom was also a pediatrician. She was educated and respected. There was no obvious evidence that she would seek fulfillment through her daughter. So, why didn’t she like me? Did I remind her of some other skinny little freckle face she once knew? Was it my frilly leotard?  My nasal voice?

Or was, perchance, her behavior merely that of a lioness protecting her young? Perhaps the anti-Annie demonstration was this mother’s way of teaching her daughter that the lead role isn’t everything. It doesn’t make or signify that any one person is better or prettier than the rest. I understand this tactic because I play a similar game in regards to celebrity gossip.  When someone starts rattling on about the latest People headline, I often pretend that I have no idea whom they’re talking about, just to make a point that I’m not impressed by celebrity status.  ”Huh? Who’s Tiger Woods?”

Perhaps Stage Mom was just trying to be a mom to the best of her ability, like the lot of us.  In which case, I get it – not as an excuse, but a reason nonetheless.

Merciful Heavens, I did it again!  Can I not even commit to detesting something?? First cats and now stage moms.  Blast! Now I have to find something else that I can love to loathe.

Sometimes I wonder how I never ended up on the (pardon the expression) short bus. I didn’t truly grasped what was going on outside of my fairytale labyrinth of a mind until the age of 10. I recall as a first grader thinking that standardized tests were simply a test of how well I could fill in a bubble, I distinctly remember wandering into and through neighbor’s houses uninvited and when my eldest sister told me that I came from Mars, I believed her. Yet there was enough going on in my head that I could entertain myself for hours, playing in a giant bush shaped like cave. I had older siblings to tell me where to go and what to do, so while my body followed those orders, my mind could stay devoted to fantasy and play.

It was in this state that I auditioned for the Nutcracker. At first, they cast me as an angel and an understudy for a girl in the party scene, but at the first party scene rehearsal, they told me that I could be a party girl if I started taking ballet. Et voilá. I became a ballerina for the fun of it.

I don’t know that I was a naturally born performer, but I do believe that I was bred as such. My mother, a pianist, played and/or directed musicals at universities in Philadelphia, and my sisters and I frequently attended rehearsals. Amidst rolling down the aisles, negotiating change for the vending machine, and playing hide-and-seek, we memorized every song in Grease, Dames at Sea, Guys and Dolls, Sweet Charity and Godspell. Then at home, we played the records of Cats, A Little Night Music, Pippin, Two Gentlemen of Verona and dozens more. I never aspired to be on the stage or dreamed of performance as a career. A stage was simply my playground. A performance hall was my home. Acting and singing were as natural as getting dressed for school or setting the dinner table.

Ballet remained enjoyable through the next year’s Nutcracker as well, when I received the lead children’s role. The following year, however, when I received the lead for a second time, I became the target of the unavoidable Stage Moms and their offspring, the full ramifications of which I’ll explore at a later date. I became disenchanted with Nutcracker, but by then, ballet had become an end in itself, largely thanks to my teacher, Sybil. Sybil, with her regal neck and salient cheekbones, who could wax poetic about Vivaldi as much as a “rond de jambe en l’air.” Her classroom was a sanctuary where we learned that beauty was not something we were; it was something we created.

Sybil now owns a large dance studio in Naples, but I wonder if she ever grappled with the would-haves and could-haves of why she was teaching instead of dancing in a company; why she was renting a humble space in a gymnastics building; why some other teachers in the area were held in higher esteem. Did she ever want to be a principle dancer or a choreographer, both of which she certainly could have achieved? Or perhaps Sybil was the rare person who realized the gift that she had as a teacher and knew that she didn’t need a sexy title to impact the lives of countless children. That is a success, is it not?

Only in retrospect do I realize what an incredible teacher Sybil always has been. Her technique was superior and her knowledge vast. I had other teachers and professors with these qualities, but most of them lacked an asset far more rare –humility. Sybil never imposed her ego on the students. Of course she wanted us to excel, but she demonstrating this by progressively challenging us within the privacy of a classroom, not scolding us for a lost attempt at the SAB cut or other such trophies. After demonstrating a routine, she would whip around on her way to the record player and inquire, “Questions? Answers?” hinting at our own intuition. She allowed us to be children, especially when the full moon had our spirits a little more rowdy. Many instructors lack the confidence to offer freedom to their students, fearing that mistakes or missteps would reflect upon their own abilities. Sybil knew that neither our failures nor our successes were hers to own.

Unfortunately, I knew even less then about success than I do now. I didn’t recognize Sybil’s excellence as an instructor or her triumph as a selfless human being. Why aren’t we, as children, groomed to applaud success such as hers? Motherhood reveals that patience and beneficence are more difficult to master than language or potty training, but there’s a disproportionate emphasis on the latter category. Why do so many strangers care where my child’s head circumference falls on the percentile bell curve? Come on now.

Magnanimity such as Sybil’s is a skill like any other; a developmental milestone that we rarely attempt until later in life when new concepts elude our deteriorating synapses. This is the stuff of consequence, not the trophies and test scores that get lost in the Rubbermaid jungles of our parents’ attics.

But I’m an adult now – an adult and a mother – and at the time when I need a teacher the most, I am the teacher.

The definition of success is ambiguous enough that the question is conversational kindling across dinner tables, among classrooms and off psychiatric sofas alike. At quarter-life, mid-life and three-quarters-life crises, we all ask, “What is my definition of success?” If we ourselves define success, wouldn’t we also control the power it wields? Clearly, this is not the case. The “malleable success” tactic fails to satisfy every time, so it must not be our own definition of success that we seek.

Perhaps, then, it is not truly success but rather its perception for which we yearn. Furthermore, since we don’t traditionally poll those whose approval we seek, we’re left to presume that a positive perception would stem from their own interests and accomplishments. For example, a polyglot colleague might perceive success in one who is well traveled, as would an Eli of a Harvard-alum, or a People magazine-reader of someone who gets pictured in the Who’s-Who.

I’m not supposing that we correctly derive others’ definitions of success. But I do submit that too often the true source of our ambition is reduced to a smattering of context clues. We abandon our own spirit and vocation in search of what might get a nod from a father, a mother-in-law, a brother, an old flame.

Despite what we may say, our actions ultimately define success as our speculation of how several others might define and perceive success, and there’s a vast market of scrapbooks, trophies, “who’s who” magazines, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs (hmm…) etc. etc. etc. that prove it. Goodness! So many italicizations cannot possibly bode well. At least, that’s what I figured while racking up my many unaccomplishments!

Success – the alluring, elusive, motivating, taunting, intangible measure of worth.

I introduce my blog with a purposefully equivocal title. I surmise that I’m not the only sap who has, in the midst of all energy and potential focused down one path, turned life’s direction on its ass. Yet I will assume (humbly) that in this realm of wandering minstrels*, I am the questing queen.

My varied interests and strengths have propelled my wardrobe from snoods to military covers, from black pumps to water socks, from bikinis to lab coats and from costumes to wind pants. Since the age of 13, when I ditched the life of a promising dancer, my unaccomplishments have been successive. Therefore in the sequential sense of the word, I have certainly demonstrated success!

Through this blog, I will explore the many paths I have been compelled to take and subsequently abandon, with an honest look at my reasons, motivations and the ever-evolving definitions of success.

*The title and reference to wandering minstrels was inspired by the so named song in Rogers and Hammerstein’s “The Mikado.”