In honor of Labor Day

In a light “Summerscapes” essay in today’s New York Times, Bridie Clark colors in sweet details from the summer of her twelfth year, the summer she set out to transform herself. It reminded me of so many childhood girlfriends -  for instance, the one who used the summer of her father’s military transfer to transform herself into “someone different” between seventh and eighth grade; in short, better hairstyle, cuter clothes and a determination to make cheerleader, with the five-year goal of eventually becoming her high school's homecoming queen (which she did, by the way, and still called it the “happiest day of my life” more than a year after she graduated from Berkeley - not just because she got the crown, I told myself, but because she made it happen. Hey, we all have our dreams..).

When I visited her for a week the very next summer, her anxiety was palpable.  Had I arrived as a carrier of the bad juju from that other, past (please, God) place? Would I inadvertently reveal something to her new friends that might break the spell? As we got ready for a summer dance, she rattled off a long list of rules that really, really mattered here. “Girls don’t dance fast dances with girls here!” she kept repeating, as if I hadn’t grasped it the first time. “And no eye contact with boys unless they come right up to you and speak first!” And so much more. Fortunately, some guy with Cool Creds asked me to dance four times – something that rarely (okay, never) happened at home  – and her panic abated. She loved her old friend, but not at the expense of her new self. And that was as it should be.

But that second summer was my own summer of change. For me, it was about walking into a social gathering without the cover of a gang of girls. I never enjoyed – or understood - traveling in packs, and I wanted to be able to walk into any social space all by myself and, no matter what I found there, feel comfortable initiating a conversation. My plan in that summer between eighth and ninth grade went like this: at least three nights a week, all summer long, I would walk by myself – south on Broad one block, west on North a bunch of blocks, left at Church Street for one more - to the PennSupreme ice cream shop next to the big parking lot, where everyone hung out on summer nights, and I would make myself walk into the crowd and start a conversation. I had a job babysitting two little kids for eight hours a day that summer and I made a deal to do the family ironing as well in order to make enough money to buy some new clothes for this effort. I still remember standing in front of my bedroom mirror (I bought a full-length mirror, too, that summer) practicing my smile, my "hi"; even more, I remember my heart pounding as I made my way down North Street. But I never once turned back. I threw up twice, but I didn’t turn back. And I got good at it, something which came in handy years later when I dated a series of shy artists who dreaded their own openings. “Stick with me,” I could say with sunny assurance. “I’ll get you through it. I know how to do this.” To this day, I look back and love that eighth grade girl. I love her discipline, I love her method, I love her accomplishment. I love that she learned that the “trick” was to open her heart, to have gentle good will toward rooms full of strangers. She inspires me.

In the years since, how many times have I winced each time someone pronounces, "People don't change!” as if it's some fresh thought?   I know they are wrong, but grieve for whatever experience has brought them to this no place. When a 70-year-old acquaintance at a party in June waved her hand and announced, “I’m too old to change,” I shouted “NO!" with a ferocity that shocked the both of us.

I mean, if we can’t change, why are we here? What is more satisfying than growing into a new and better way of being, acting, perceiving? Why is it that adolescent girls can seize the moment, while so many supposed adults have given up?

Robert Bly captured it in a Kabir poem on Bill Moyers’ show last week

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!

What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you do not break your ropes while you're alive

do you think that ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten ---

that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now,

you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.

Perhaps one of the richest things about the traditional school summer break is the clear, open  space it provides between what was and what will be, which fuels hot afternoon daydreams of new possibilities and imaginings of how to make them so ... and sometimes, sometimes... the will to act.

This is the essential labor of life.