100+ days ago

I just realized tonight that my last blog entry was roughly 100+ days ago. The beginning of April. Here we are, mid July. Strangely, this reflects almost the exact days that the Rwandan genocide took place back in 1994. I've been trying and trying to get back to this art piece, this experience and exploration, but many full life events have taken precedence: end of school year activities for our kids, jury duty, finishing my first semester of graduate school, working, playing and hearing music with friends, the day to day family details of a rich life. And, oh yeah, summer break.

During that time, i did manage to conduct a timing test with nails and wood. And i'm discovering that -- for such a simple idea -- this is a mountainous endeavor.

A few weeks ago, our 7 year old son was in the back seat of the car, banging his black converse sneaker against his forehead on the way to the beach, calling himself stupid and dumb. Why? He had ruined an orange t-shirt by cutting out a design that he had in mind. The cuts were too jagged, too big, not what he had envisioned and he was so mad at himself and thus, heading down that dark path for a moment:

"I don't know how to do anything."
"I suck."
"I'm stupid."
"I should be able to do this."
"Nothing I ever do is right."

Of course, as a parent, this is scary. No one wants to hear their child beat themselves up figuratively or literally. Oh, he ate a meatball sandwich 20 minutes later and was a completely different child, but this isn't an examination on the effects of low blood sugar.

The next day, I took him out to the side of our house, to the wood/nail sample that i had worked on in june. Here were the facts:

THE GOAL:

To pound 2400 nails into 3 square feet of a section of wood in 3 hours.

The RESULT:

1800 nails into 3 sq feet of wood in 10.5 hours over 4 broken up mornings. And, the wood split into 3 fractured pieces.

I showed him how the wood weakens when i get too many nails in a square foot. The wood simply can't hold a certain number of certain sized nails at some point. I showed him the bent, ruined nails off to the side. I showed him how, sometimes, when i would hammer a new nail into a crowded section of the wood, 5 or 6 nails on the wood would fall out. The wood was in one piece when i started and now, it's in three pieces. And do you know what thoughts would race across my mind?

"I don't know how to do anything."
"I suck."
"I'm stupid."
"I should be able to do this."
"Nothing I ever do is right."

I told him how, in moments over the past 100 days, i've said that i really can't pull this off. I'm not capable of doing it. And then, i listen to that voice, smile at it and decide to keep working alongside it. keep making mistakes. keep learning. and that, shock of shocks, it's the process, not the end result that matters. "we must be gentle with ourselves," I said. "And when we are trying to make something that's deeply important to us, we have to be especially gentle with ourselves."

Cooper looked at the nails, touched the wood, made a suggestion of using smaller nails and then added, "can i have a fudgcicle now? It's just that it's really hot today."