Hopscotch

I am sure you all remember getting out a piece of chalk as a kid and making that pattern on the ground with the numbers in it.  Or perhaps I have just shown my age and that kind of thing does not go on anymore. A dying art.  Like cats cradle, or those orgami flower kind of things we would make that you put you fingers in and open and close and use like a personal 8-ball.  Hell even the 8-ball might be off the list.  Anybody remember playing crazy 8's? You did not need to go to the store to buy a special card deck for that.  Probably went out of favor as the profit margin on just a deck of cards is probably low, or moreover, it seems like a durable good.  You know like a washing machine or something.  You replace it when it dies.

But hopscotch was kind of neat.  It had sequence and rhythm to it.  I remember it usually was the girls in the neighborhood that would set this up.  Either on the sidewalk, or the street.  And then play for a long time.  Sometimes I was "allowed" to join in.  Most often not.  I confess I was not the most coordinated person.  I was often quickly "out".  My lack of physical coordination showed here way to easily.  And then of course there was this acceptance thing.  After all I should have been off playing kickball, or capture the flag or something else with the rest of the lads.  So it was funny that I was no where good enough for the boys, and I was not enough "like" them for the girls.  Nowhereman(woman).  And so I might sit on my front porch and just watch them for a while.  Taking in the why and wherefore.  Eventually the rain would come, and wash away the chalk marks and return the pavement or concrete of the sidewalk to its original, unadorned state.  Kind of like me.

Lately I feel as if I am in a game of hopscotch.  There is a pattern I am familiar with but not expert at.  If you make a single error you are out.  The pattern keeps changing, just a little bit. But you have to be able to cope.  And since this is a game you almost never play alone.  There are participants who are ready to chide you when you fail.

The second aspect I find is that when I was playing hopscotch most of my energy focused on the next leap. Not the entire path.  And this is what prompted me to write today in the first place.  I find that I draw my life out like the hopscotch "court".  A sequence, a series of events, one after the other.  Each requiring a leap or expenditure of energy to accomplish.  In hopscotch, usually, after you do not blow it on your leap, you collect yourself for the next one.  Again hoping to not make a mistake. Often there is a sense of relief.  Of course the next number in the grid looms in front of you.

My characterization is not really how many play, or see, that game.  They see it as a run to the end, and back.  And I suppose as your skill improves so does your confidence in creating a rhythm to it.  Hop, hop, hop, hop, hop, turn hop hop, hop...  I remember some of the girls going so fast I could not comprehend how they did that.  It was almost it's own form of ballet. 

In my life I find that I set myself up with a similar grid of boxes and numbers.  I set the next goal, and then work on it.  It is almost like it takes my mind off the the pile of personal turds I have in the corner.  I think to myself, if I can just get to event "X".  Then drop back, collect and head to event "Y".  The problem I have is once event "X" is over and done.  Regardless of how well it may be done (one foot in the square, touching no lines) I have to find a way to prep for the next one.  And in that time before I can get moving that blue funk comes and offers doubt.  It says, well you may have pulled that off, but you can still fuck up the next one.  Sheesh.  What a set of wiring I have in my head.

So what is the point of this post? I need to learn to do things in runs.  I have to figure out how to let the present square I just landed on, with success, offer me momentum to move to the next one.  Thus riding over this funk that comes after each effort.  This post-partum. 

I worry that if I do not draw the grid to start and play the game then the pavement is just what is left.  And I am pretty sure that the pavement is dull, and gray, and cold, and uninteresting.  And I would rather have the bright multicolor chalk marks as a guide.  And that is where this transition stuff makes it self apparent to me.  Because it very much is a playbook.  Do this, then that, then this other thing.  And because of my previous note about checkboxes I wonder what the right answer is to this.  The grid forces me to move forward, but usually in ebbs and flows.  Is there a point where you get so good at it that you no longer see the grid and just do the whole thing.? I think maybe so.  

Somebody asked me recently, when do you think your transition will be complete?  I told her when I am "worm food".  She wrinkled her nose for a moment.  She is just getting started on this road, and has already found it full of ruts and bumps.  Certainly one that you could not play hopscotch on.  I remember.  I told her that I would expect that ten years from now I will still be discovering things I did not know about being a woman.  I have a lifetime to make up for.  So my expectation is that the journey will go on.  Perhaps the intensity of this time will fade.  I certainly hope so.

And so back to my chalk marks.  I want to be proficient at this.  I need to be good enough so that the other girls want me to play.  And that is my goal.  Not the course, not perfection, but merely being good enough to not be asked to go sit on the porch.  To be considered as part of the exercise, and not an interloper.  And to do that I need to do things in runs, and do it with my head up.  And having that comfort of knowing that ok, so what if I miss one?  My friends here are going to miss one too.  And we might laugh and smile and just start over.  That would work for me.