Trial and Error

When I was in junior high, boys took Shop and girls took Home Economics. Required classes, strictly segregated by gender. It seemed to me that most of the other girls came into the classes already having some experience, being taught to a greater or lesser degree to sew and cook by their mothers. I came in with no experience. Sewing class was the first class I ever failed, because I didn't complete my apron in the allotted time. For a "good" student like me to fail a class, oh my goodness, I was crushed. Perhaps I had a natural talent for cooking and baking, because I did really well in Cooking class. It was an exciting mixture of Art and Science, where creativity met chemistry to make something delicious.

Graham Smith of National Public Radio has written an article (complete with gorgeous photographs) on Thomas Jefferson the farmer. I visited his Virginia home, Monticello, when I was a child but I don't really remember it. I would love to go back now and take another tour. Jefferson had 130 different varieties of fruit trees, and over 300 varieties of 90 different plants. He experimented with exotics unknown to that area at the time, like kale, sesame, eggplant and tomatoes.

A meticulous record keeper, Jefferson kept track of his successes and his many, many failures. He wrote that if he failed 99 times out of 100, that one success was worth the 99 failures. Trial and error. I can still remember my angst and frustration trying to make that apron, knowing that it was not okay to fail. I remember the sewing machine being a completely foreign object. New words like "bobbin" and "selvage."  Trying to wrap my brain around what the teacher explained to the class. I can remember her seeming impatience with me as I asked again and again how to do it, while the other girls seemingly zipped through sewing, the machines whirling around me. My dread as the deadline approached, when it became increasingly evident that I was not going to be done with that apron. It was not okay to fail. Not okay. And the more pressure I put on myself, the less able I was to perform. I can remember when I got that failing grade, when I saw that "E" (we didn't have "F" as a grade; failing was an "E") on paper. I cried buckets.

 It was actually perfectly okay for me to fail seventh grade Sewing. Now while it is true they used to say to us, "This will go down on your permanent record," my inability to get an apron finished on time has not held me back from doing anything I wanted to do with my life these past forty years. I went on to eighth and ninth grade Sewing, and I did all right. It was okay to fail. I just didn't know it. To me, getting anything less than a B in any class was not acceptable. This is not something my parents put on me. It was all me and my strong identification with being a good student and a good girl.

Smith tells us that many times Jefferson wrote the word "failed" in his journals. Failed due to bad weather. Failed due to a bug. Failed. Failed. Failed. Jefferson was a very accomplished adult, but he seemed to take his hobby of being what was called back then a "gentleman farmer" seriously. But not so seriously that he was paralyzed by a fear of failure.

One of the wonderful things that has happened to me throughout my life is that I have become much less of a perfectionist. I have learned to be kind and gentle with myself, to strike a delicate balance between challenging myself and being too hard on myself. I fail and it's okay. I'm not perfect, and that's perfectly fine.

And you know what? I don't even own an apron.

Susan