The Joy of Learning

This is a fantastic email with an attached essay that Anita wrote in 2006. It was during the time when she was exploring being a writer and it’s picture is beautifully painted by Anita. (She even put a copyright on it – what a lawyer!)

From her friend Caroline:

I was reminded of this email that Anita sent to me 2 years ago and wanted to send it to you, Ben and Julia. Her essay and the cover email explains a lot about the kind of person that Anita was, and explained a lot to me about why she made the decisions she made. She was such a terrifically open friend who shared herself without reservation. But there was never any question that you and the kids were the loves of her life, and her family was the number one priority for her. She was a master at making her friends feel smart and fascinating, but I always knew that, as much as she seemed to be interested in talking to me at work, she really wanted to be spending time with you all and not in the office. This essay about Ben and Julia, and particularly, Anita’s openness about her relationship with them, is so incredibly insightful (not to mention flat out compelling and articulate). I hope that they each will be able to appreciate how deeply proud she was of them and how profoundly she loved them.

Those of us who worked with Anita at H&K [Holland & Knight] had an immense amount of respect for her intellect, instinct and common sense. She was a terrific colleague and a treasured friend.

From: Anita Schick
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2007 10:42 PM
To: Caroline
Subject: OK. YOU WIN.

I’ll go first.

Unlike you, I’m not a writer. But six months ago, I did write the short thingy that is attached to this email. This is the only thing in my whole life that I’ve ever written that I’m really proud of. Not because it’s happy – it isn’t. I don’t even know what motivated me to write it. As I said, I’m not a writer at all. But I had so many feelings, and they had nowhere to go. I had talked and whined and complained so much, I just couldn’t listen to myself anymore. So I wrote this. And it was one of those things that just flowed out of my fingers effortlessly. I don’t even remember writing it, really. One moment I was writing the first paragraph, and then next moment I was finished, tears streaming down my face. It was a major turning point for me. I didn’t even know I felt those things until I wrote them down. Then I had to actually deal with them.

I’m not this person anymore. Thank goodness. But I was. For what seems like a very, very long time. I don’t ever want to go back there, but I wanted to share it with you (even though it is very hard to do) because you are my friend, and I want you to feel like you owe me your own written piece in return. One page a night. That’s all it takes. Write about anything. Write about nothing. It doesn’t matter. It’ll become more clear as the days and weeks pass. Write for no reason at all. Write for me. Write for you. Write for your kids. Write for your mom and sisters. Write to your dad. Just write. I just know there’s a writer in you. I can feel it.

So here you go. I’m trusting you with something that is very personal to me. Now it’s your turn. I’ll be expecting your first draft in one month – April 15. Don’t make me have to ask for it.

Have a great night,

Anita

September 9, 2006
The Joy of Learning

“Oh, come on,” I barked tersely at my son. “Come on. Come on. You know this. We’ve been going over this for weeks, and this word is one of the first ones we learned. H-A-T. Now what does that spell?”

My son looked intensely at the word, squinting at it, first peering at it through one eye, then the other. He bawled up his little 5-year-old fists and pressed on his temples, as if he could squeeze the correct answer out of himself if he tried hard enough. “Cover up the first letter and focus on the last two,” I continued, using one of the techniques I had learned in the reading course I had purchased. I bought this phonics-based tutorial under the guise of having educational “family time” with my kids. However, all too often this “family time” became a pressure-filled, exasperatingly frustrating, spelling-bee type pop quiz game show like the one Ben and I were engaged in right now.

“You can do it, Ben. You can do it,” encouraged my daughter, Julia. As a second child, precocious female, and textbook learner, 4-year-old Julia knew the correct answer almost on sight. She was a dream child to educate – she learned sequentially and moved facilely from easy concepts to the more difficult ones. She has a good memory and parrot-like ability to repeat and obey instructions almost perfectly. But her brother Ben is a different case entirely. Ben is frighteningly brilliant, but in a very different way than his sister. He learns best from complexity and context. He reads people, not words. He observed my face, my body language, my tone of voice when he looked at me out of the blue one day and said, “Mom, here’s what I think you should do. Figure out what you want to do with your life, and then just do it.”

How could he have known? How could his young, inexperienced mind have known that I was deep in the throes of a personal crisis of magnum proportions, having chosen a career as a big firm lawyer only to find it was devoid of substance and meaning and took me away from my family far more than I preferred?

But that’s what Ben does – he just knows stuff about people. Put three letters in front of him, and he’s uninterested. But flank him with colors and context and complexity, images and sounds and make-believe, and he roars to life. He’s an incredibly perceptive and gifted child, any mother could see that. You only have to spend two minutes with him to see his empathy, his innate creativity, and the unbridled joy of life reflected from his sweet brown eyes.

But that mushy stuff is not what this lesson is about. The world doesn’t want creativity and empathy. You don’t get paid for “feeling someone’s pain.” It’s a tough world out there, especially for the black man that Ben is going to grow up to be. He must be better than everyone else. He must be able to perform on-point and as expected. They will be expecting less of him. He must exceed their expectations by hundred-fold. That is exactly how I got where I am – earning over six figures and able to amply support my family in an intellectually challenging and specialized profession. Never mind that my heart isn’t in it. The world isn’t about heart. It’s about the golden rule: he who has the gold rules. My son has to learn the skills to get the gold. His heart comes in a distant second.

I’m back to the drills, convinced that if I try hard enough, I can make Ben learn the “right” way. After several minutes, my daughter inconspicuously stands up and heads toward the toy closet. She rifles around. I notice her out of the corner of my eye, but I’m not distracted. I assume she’s looking for a toy to amuse herself because she’s bored with what has now stretched into a fifteen-minute-long, unproductive quiz session with her brother. Suddenly, Ben’s head snaps up, his eyes become bright, and he yells “Hat!! The word is hat!” Yipeee! I shout to myself. I’m elated! Finally, my diligence and determination have paid off! He’s on his way to fame and fortune! He doesn’t need coddling! He doesn’t need “context”! He’ll learn like everyone else, get great grades like everyone else and take over the world. Exactly what every sane mother wants for her son.

Then, I notice his sister, Julia, and I stop dead in my tracks. Her pink pajama’d body is dancing and leaping, twirling and pointing to a red hat on her head. Her eyes are sparkling, too – as if her brother’s pride has somehow leapt over to her and infected her own view on the world. She’s skipping and pointing, chanting “hat-hat-hat,” and soon, Ben joins her. The two of them join hands and begin to do a ring-around-the-rosie inspired “hat” dance, all the while continuing to chant “hat-hat-h-a-t-hat.” After a few seconds of this, Julia takes off the hat and throws it back into the toy closet, dutifully turning off the closet light and closing the door as I’ve chided her a number of times to do. “Just thought I’d give him a little hint,” she says innocently, then returns to the floor at my feet for Lesson No. 2.

A hint. My heart burned with shame. Never for a moment did it cross my mind to give my son a “hint.” I should have been there to help, and instead all I did was push. I was supposed to be encouraging, but rather than develop the strong, self-sufficient student I had hoped for, I was creating a child who was beginning to see our nighttime reading exercises as a dreaded opportunity to fail to impress an overachieving mother. I was extracting everything that was unique and endearing about my son in order to fit him into a box that I thought would be more socially acceptable to the world. I was doing the same thing to him that I had done to myself – exalting what was “respected” over what was real, instructing him to become what the world wants instead of who he truly is. I don’t wish that fate on anyone, least of all the person I love most in the world.

We returned to the lessons. “The next word,” I brokenly proceeded, “is C-A-T.” Ben looked at me nervously. “I’ll do better this time, Mom. I promise.” I looked directly into his eyes. “Meow,” I said. Ben’s eyes lit up. “It has whiskers and likes fish and milk!” he shouted gleefully.

“Exactly, my son,” I beamed. “Exactly.”

Copyright © Anita Schick, 2006, All Rights Reserved