To be slow

It's the busy season, as evidenced by my lack of posting. How is it that the time in the Christian calendar that is supposed to be about solemn waiting has become the season of frenetic hilarity? The backwardness of it--that we do all our celebrating of Christmas on the front end, before Christmas actually arrives--is striking me this year. I was inspired when I heard Anne Lamott say that the only meaningful way she has found to celebrate this season is to refuse all party invitations, light candles regularly, and pray more.

Meanwhile Alice has been wandering around the house singing about dreidels to play with and latkes to eat. This is how we know we are back on the East Coast. Tonight I broke it to her, when she announced that Hanukkah is her favorite holiday other than Christmas, that we don't celebrate Hanukkah in our house. She was surprised and disappointed. I promised we'd try to make some latkes. Please send your best recipes my way.

***

So what to do? We all know we live in a society that values speed and bustle over slowness. How much do we have to play along? How much can we resist the tide?

While I yearn for us all to slow down, Tom and I find ourselves struggling with the suggestion from Edith's new school that she might have a learning disability....but that $3,000+ of testing would help us know for sure. The suggestion stems from the fact that she performs exceptionally on all things verbal and artistic and performs at grade level in math--but she does the latter very slowly. She takes much longer than other kids to finish her math work, sometimes not completing it at all. Her teacher hasn't figured out any way to speed her up.

The teacher and the school psychologist both admit the picture is hard to figure out. Edith is not disruptive or acting out, and she doesn't seem distracted externally, but it's hard to know what's going on when she is sitting at her desk for a long time and moving like molasses. Her teacher has asked her outright what's happening at those times, and she has said her mind is "somewhere else." We've discussed the possibilities: She's isn't interested in math and simply isn't motivated to complete it. She's not resistant to completing her math, but her overactive imagination is off in the ether, and it's hard for her to rein it in. There's an actual cognitive processing problem of a sort that doesn't seem to affect her language work or even her mathematical comprehension--just her speed. But such a problem, says the psychologist, could trip her up as math gets harder or as more aspects of schoolwork are subject to time limits.

Then there's the fact that she has expressed uber-shyness since we moved, usually not responding when adults talk to her for the first time, just staring at them. (See previous posts.) Most people around here don't seem to know what to make of it: Is she rude? Deaf? Uncomprehending? Unhappy? I don't know what to make of it either. My suspicion is that there's a lot that has been overwhelming in this transition, and her defense is to shut down when she feels vulnerable. As she has gotten to know particular adults, she has slowly warmed up to each in turn, but it has been slow and grudging.

Is that the same slowness as the math slowness? The same slowness as the can't-get-dressed-in-under-twenty-minutes slowness? The teacher is unsure; we're unsure.

It hurts, of course, to see people think one's kid is either unintelligent or incredibly rude, though I understand why they would come to those conclusions. It's especially baffling since the child we know at home is so dynamic, bright, and all-around interesting to talk to. I would rather have Edith with me on a desert island for my conversation partner than almost any adult I know.

The quarterly report had plenty of great things to say, too: among them, she has exceptional inferential ability, deep capacity for empathy, and a "wonderfully developed" sense of humor (i.e. she is often the only kid get who gets her teacher's jokes). She's "complex," says her teacher, and we agree.

All of which makes it hard to know whether or how much to worry. It's hard to imagine needing to worry $3,000 worth. We can't help wondering if public-school kids are identified as having potential problems with a $3,000 pricetag on them. But we don't want to neglect something that needs investigating, if that's the case.

***

Meanwhile, I enjoy moments every day like the one last night, when I was reviewing Ken Burns' Civil War for my class and the narrator says about young men who fought in the war, "It was the greatest adventure of their lives." I said out loud that I thought it was a bloody, terrifying adventure, not a great one. And Edith said, "Mom, he doesn't mean 'great' like it was a good thing. He means 'great' like 'significant,' a big deal in their lives. And it probably was the biggest deal in their lives."

Or the moment yesterday afternoon, after the second-grade field trip to see a live performance of Cinderella.

How was it? I asked Edith.

Really good, but not the regular Cinderella at all.

How so, I asked.

She shows me the souvenir poster with the silhouette of a clock on it, about to strike midnight. It was a play about time, she said. About how time often seems to move slowly, and then too fast, and only rarely at just the right speed.

Wow, I say, that sounds pretty sophisticated for second graders. Did she understand it?

She shrugged. Sure. It was really funny.

Later we picked up a friend of Edith's to take the two of them to choir practice. I asked Julie how she liked the Cinderella performance.

It was great, she said, but not the normal Cinderella at all.

How so, I asked again.

Well, she said, the king is sick in bed and can't get up. He hasn't taken a bath in four years. And he decides to have a ball for his son--in his bedroom, because he's too sick to get up...

Julie's plot review is detailed and takes us all the way to our drop-off point.

Later in the evening, I ask Edith why she said the play was about perceptions of time, when Julie said it was about a king giving a ball for his son, and the prince meeting Cinderella.

Well yeah, agreed Edith. But the real message of this version was about time and how we experience it.

That's my girl.