Rapunzel, Authentic Life, and Flappers

I changed the look of this blog, because the other look didn't look right.   I had done the obvious, and I didn't like it.  Wooden planks?  Bridges?  That's in the title, but the image just wasn't right.  Something unconventional should find its place here....cue Belle's song about the provincial life...and I decided that even though I live and breathe the title Life on the Bridge, I in fact do not have to have a bridge in a background to express a point.

Because this week is very full, I am on a quest for clarity.  I holed up tonight and didn't venture west to Minneapolis and my good friends and Bible study.  I needed to hide away and do something removed from the teacher life.  So I ate popcorn for dinner because I could, and I watched 'Tangled' because I wanted someone to tell me a story. 



What a good movie.  This lends itself well to girls who have confidence and grow into being thoughtful people.  I found myself glad that people in the world thought up this modern look at an old story.  I thought of my students.  Not about their grades and the expectations we have of them and their progress.  Well, yes, their progress in the way that they are going to be grown ups someday and do interesting and wonderful things.  (I hope.)  I thought about the thing in me that loves potential and the fact that young people growing into their fullest self, that ideal, is what helps me look at students and see more than a restless group of people who had indoor recess.

Again.

So, in a roundabout way, girl adventures shown in 'Tangled', coupled with a good soundtrack, made me think about potential in people and why it's best not to give up on them.  When the plot got to the part about lighting lanterns, I got shivers because this scene, even in a Disney movie, was beautiful.  I thought about the lantern festivals in Asia and the importance of knowing something deep down and not forgetting it.  This is what she does in the movie.  She knows something, and she doesn't waver, and I found it to be a good reminder.  THAT made me think about things that were easy to forget. 

Which got me to reminders.  And remembering things.

I am giving myself lots of reminders lately.  Things about God's goodness and faithfulness, things about repair, things about breathing, enjoying what is right in front of me, that spring will come and flowers will show up.  That it's ok to miss Kari a lot every day.  That my friends are every day more and more of my organic and very real and 'as is' community.  I asked God for this, and I've gotten it.  People who are real, and tried by things, and who are strong.  I know great people. 

More reminders... that love is very confusing and most people have lots of theories about it, but the confusion is ok.  That I have found a niche in education...more than I first realized.  That buying a piano was a great idea.  That knowing Jesus really does make your life free.  That I still believe in being an idealist and giving people grace.  That I am being taken care of, and that I've become something very different compared to my first year living in Stillwater.  

First year teaching picture.  That's all I have to say.  THAT shows something in itself.  The first year I taught, my school picture made me think of two words.  Baby adult.  I looked like an adult, and a baby one, and there was no getting around it.  Kind of dweeby and accomplished and bold in being young.  All of this, but really nothing more.  It's a very unpolished picture.  Reflecting on this reminds me of the scene in The Office when Jim Halpert is showing a picture of his younger self on sales calls with Dwight - wanting so say so much to the younger Halpert.  "And yet, I cannot."

Aside from all of the beauty and the potential and the adventure for strong and happy girls, I also thought about Rapunzel's hair.  I know it's an animated movie, but how long IS that hair anyway?  And I didn't see a bathroom in that tower - how does she take care of it so well? I guess it is magic.  That would help.  And I noticed that they put 'brushing and brushing and brushing my hair' at the end of the song, after she took the time to paint, bake, clean, knit, practice with her pottery wheel, etc.  I was glad to see that.  Sure, she has to have help carrying this bundle of hair as she's running through the forest to escape villains, but she doesn't obsess about it.  

I also thought about a time in the last year when I got my hair cut and the woman doing my hair told me that her 3 year old daughter wanted a 'Tangled' wig for Christmas.  They are around $30!!!  That's insane.  I found myself glad that I didn't have pressure in my own life to buy a wig for a 3 year old who wanted hair like Rapunzel.

This is a classic scenario though.  I wanted to be Ariel, but I just used a red towel. 

Actually, there were tons of life lessons in this movie.  Really healthy things happening.  I am a fan.

Aside from a Disney movie, there has been a lot happening in life.  I feel that I am coming into some new thing, some new phase of my life, and I don't really know what it is.  Is it teaching?  Is it just becoming older in general?  Is it directly related to my family?  Is it boldness that comes with growing older and doing something with what you've been? 

I'm reflecting about teaching in a different way, and I'm trying out new angles in thinking about teaching.  I feel grateful for things that God has put in my life...things that I've got to work on and hammer out and make sense of.  No longer do I directly pine for the immediate answer about things that are important in life.  I think this has been a defining factor in the lens I have about life now.  God is shifting my focus...something from before wanting to pray for a lighter load, and now knowing to pray for a stronger back.  I want what is real all of the time, and I know things have to be reckoned with, and I just want to get to those life giving things.  What is real in front of me.

I used to call this a love for the word authenticity, but I think it's something else now.  There are strands of the love for authenticity in this way of thinking, but I do feel propelled to something deeper.  What do you call it when authenticity is tried?  What new tier of understanding do you hit?  I don't claim to know this answer, but something new and interesting and surprising is coming into focus.  Thoughts about a new word to describe authenticity tried would be appreciated. 

Today at school we talked about flappers.  What an interesting batch of people in history.  I found myself really feeling the impact of these crazy women just stepping out and doing something scandalously different than a generation of people before them.  When I talked about this, the kids were giving me that learning look (what a novel idea, but really it is a magical moment when they are staring at you waiting for the next idea) and I realized again that this was NOT a conversation about "kids now who have cell phones so early, and can you even believe it?  We never had that and we didn't go on the vacations we do now."  A quick poll told me that 8th graders often hear these words...'story of my life' was a direct quote.  But THESE people, these flappers, were really stepping out to do something bold.  Dancing!  Smoking!  Drinking!  Chopping off the crowning glory of young womanhood!  Showing those ankles!  Whenever we talk about the scandal of ankles (which has only been once before this) the kids will look at girls ankles in complete confusion.  I think it's really a funny moment. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald described a flapper as someone who was 'lovely, expensive, and about nineteen.'  That was more flattering than one British expression of a fledgling with pinfeathers who can't get out of the nest to fly.  Fitzgerald was more glamorous for sure.  Today when teaching the kids about these women, I wondered what it would have been like to be one of those flappers.  Would I have been a bold 20 something in the 1920s?  I have too much of the current modern perspective (and awareness of the warnings from the Surgeon General) in me to start smoking I think, and it would bother me to be in a speakeasy if it was illegal.  I am a rule follower.  But I would have liked freedom to do my own thing (and the car to get there - thank you, Henry Ford) and I would have shucked a corset right away and wanted to cut my hair.  There was a lot of pressure to be the right kind of Gibson Girl during WWI.  And, last of all, it would be nice to know some dance steps like people did back in the 1920s.  Sure, they were doing weird dances, (I showed this in class today) but they had some kind of a structure.   Is it possible to be an orthodox flapper? 

If so, that's what I'd be.