Grit Seeds

I stood alone at the chalkboard, the only first-grader in the rather hodgepodge assembly of 12 other students, grades one through eight, in a one-room country schoolhouse in Missouri.

I’d been sent to the chalkboard by Miss Sutherland, my first-grade teacher, with the assignment to write my numbers from one to ten. The task was a piece of cake for me. I quickly scribbled the digits across the top and stood back to proofread my work before announcing my completion.

As I stood admiring my work, I suddenly began to imagine what the lineup to 100 might look like, and I distinctly remember calculating what the most likely assemblage could be. I furiously began to scribble across three of the four panels all the way to the victorious number of 99, not yet confident enough to conclude that one zero following 10 was exactly right.

Once again, I stood back to proof my project before announcing my completion. Before I could finish, Miss Sutherland came up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and quietly murmured, “Very good, Lynne. How did you learn to do that?”

She was very quiet, of course, so as not to disturb the other rows of students lined up by grade. It was usually solitary class sizes, such as my own, that were allowed to work at the chalkboard. For other teaching, she mostly pulled her chair to two or three circled desks and taught from her center perch. Remarkably, all the voices remained soft as they read aloud or presented math projects.

I rattled off my logic that if one preceded zero at the end of the assigned sequence, then two must proceed zero at the second lineup, with three following and so forth.

She smiled a proud smile that went clean through me. It sent a warm rush of pleasure that settled smack-dab in my middle. Call it confidence maybe, but the wondrous uplift was much too buoyant to have an explanation so simple.

I air-lifted myself the quarter-mile home from my one-room schoolhouse that afternoon. Minus a hello or hug, I gushed to my mother, without comma or period, about the experience.

My mother was given a special smile for occasions such as the one she and I then shared. Half grin, near laughter, she complimented me with words I do not remember, but left me with a feeling that I have never forgotten.

Source: Pinterest

The memories of my first two years of education were as soft and lovely as life ever got.

I had two different teachers, but they both encouraged me to progress at my own high-speed pace. They would assign two pages in the math workbook and I would scurry to complete four. Assign me five pages of a story and I would rush through to completion.

In the summer between my second and third grade, my mother informed me that our one-room school was closing. Our school district was consolidating with the larger district ten miles away. That’s exactly how Mother said it, and I was proud to know the meaning of consolidate when she told me.

I was excited by the prospect, eager to begin.

Everything up to that point in my life had been celebratory leaps toward something new and exciting. My life, at that time, was as nice or better, as that of the neighbors around us.

Everyone knew my father and mother and addressed them with respect. Mother directed the church Christmas pageants. I saw that deference was always paid to her opinions. My father’s currency was earned by his family’s longevity to place and to his prior company’s dedication to building roads that connected neighbors in the county. When I walked into the general store with him on Saturday mornings, men got up from their own comfy chairs by the pot-bellied stove and offered him their seat. I felt important beside him.

I thought life was good and presumed that mine didn’t need to get any better.

I thought every mother sewed new dresses from Dan River packages bought at that same general store. I assumed that every child scrunched next to the wood stove in the morning waiting for the flames to lap up the cold that had claimed the house the night before, and that cracked windowpanes were patched over with plastic until the paychecks caught up with the need to replace.

Registration for the new town school occurred in August. My mother was still working at a summer camp close to our home in the country, so it was decided that my sister, Helen, who was eight years older, would accompany me.

My father dropped us off early in his blue pick-up truck because he was due at work by 7:30. With the doors to the school locked, my sister and I sat down on the front steps to wait.

I saw two teachers inside looking down at us through the window. They pointed at us while they spoke. I wanted to know what they were saying. My sister saw them too, but she quickly turned back and stared straight ahead as though they weren’t there. I stole a fast sideward glance at her, copied her pose, and made myself into a stiff mini double.

Mothers and children soon started to arrive. They were strangers to us, arriving in wood-paneled station wagons, still dressed in summer shorts and sandals. They greeted each other with laughter and intimate tones that signaled familiarity. Mothers stuck sunglasses on top of their heads and made pool time dates for later that afternoon at the country club. The country club sounded exotic. For a fleeting second, I wondered where it was located in relation to my rural house ten miles away.

Promptly at 8:00, Helen took my hand and led me to the just-unlocked door.

We were the first to step up to the registration table and lay out our vaccination papers and scholastic summaries. My vaccination papers were compliant and my scholastic summaries were excellent.

The teachers behind the table whispered and huddled.

I clasped my hands in front of me, hunched my shoulders, and studied, with no particular interest, the ugly alternating brown and mustard tiles beneath me.

At last, the cluster of ladies handed my sister a card with the classroom assignment. I was to be in a split class while they continued to evaluate my capabilities.

My cheeks blushed crimson. I tried to hide the inner shame that had involuntarily popped out by slipping a normally cool hand to my face, but to my surprise my palm was sweaty and hot as well.

I pushed back, hard, on the tears behind my eyes. My sister glanced sideways, took my hand and guided me to my new classroom.

I glanced backward as I walked away from the classroom at the other end of the hall, the one with the terrarium, the aquarium, and the live plants. I didn’t yet know that those things were there, but I sensed I was walking away from the premier offering. Later, when my class was invited to visit the one with the terrarium, I would learn that my first instincts were right.

I knew my paperwork spoke highly of my abilities. My grades for all eight quarters were A’s, but for one lonely B+ in conduct one quarter, when the second-grade teacher, Mr. Clark, commented that I talked a little too much. It never happened again and my mother actually took delight in the written remark.

So, even at that tender age, I knew my documents were judged more by their origin than by their content.

Even though I didn’t know the word margins, I felt the sensation of their mark that morning. Even though my new classroom was a short physical distance from the registration table, I trekked the 30 feet or so into a new life perspective. At first, my little heart beat so hard and so fast I wanted to reach inside and hold it, hoping to slow it down. But about halfway there, I stopped for a moment, looked up at my sister, back down at the floor, and then back up again. Eyes facing forward, fast heartbeat gone, red cheeks dissolved, and sweaty palms cool, I greeted my new teacher with a poise that was birthed during my journey to her room.

Said another way, my GRIT was conceived and born that morning, on that walk. I knew I was smarter than the huddling teachers and counselors had granted me. I knew that most second graders did not do long division.

Consciously or unconsciously, I knew they had attached a backwoods and rural Post-it note to my records. My near-perfect grades and tests were not of the same value as the other children’s documents. The decision was to hold me back and see if I could measure up in their environment.

After meeting my new teacher, I walked alone over to the window and looked out at the school parking lot.

I bandaged my hurt pride with a feigned apathy that I learned to apply on the spot. It would be one of many dressings that I would apply throughout my life.

When my sister tapped me on the shoulder and said it was time to go, I answered her questioning gaze with a simple reply.

“I’m fine,” I said.

Brent Baum, a gifted therapist and former priest, who developed an empowering process called Holographic Memory Resolution, speaks often about a child’s remembrance of trauma. A child has no cushion of experience from which to position distress. Small infractions become hugely significant because children have no experience witnessing hurts being resolved. Their clean, uncluttered brains receive the full impact of the transgression and lodge the memory, with perfect precision. He professes that the brain delivers the raw wound, with no healing agents, to soft tissue in the body for safekeeping. Buried deeply, nursed raggedly, and protected by thick scar tissue, the injury never completely heals unless it is reopened and examined.

However, I was somewhat fortunate in my situation as the unfair judgment at the registration table was tempered by the self-confidence I had gained at the chalkboard. Two perfectly precise memories, one ecstatic and one difficult, made a new brew.

GRIT.

GRIT is the one-word title of Angela Duckworth’s bestselling book arguing that as much as talent counts, effort counts twice.

She populates the book with multiple examples of success that illustrate her point. One of her fellow scientists evaluated 67 traits of 100 geniuses. In ranking the super eminent from the merely eminent she concluded that the highest intelligence, combined with the highest degree of persistence, separated the eminent ones from the less eminent. The founder of modern astronomy, Nicolaus Copernicus, had an estimated childhood IQ of just above 100, and Isaac Newton ranks squarely in the middle range with a barely gifted IQ of 130.

Calvin Coolidge famously said:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than an unsuccessful man with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.”

I have no idea the actual number of my IQ, but I do know that shortly after being placed in my third-grade remedial class they moved me to the upper level of a fifth-grade classroom for my reading instruction. Quietly, they also told me to move ahead to the advanced lessons in the math workbook if I chose, while the rest of the class caught up to my skill level.

I never forgot the birthing of my GRIT seed. Most people never do.

In her book, Leading from the Margins, Dr. Mary Hinton, the current president of Hollins University, in Virginia, describes multiple and harsher incidents than mine that led to her perseverance. She defines her own demographic margin as poor, black, and female.

Throughout her childhood in rural North Carolina, she was mocked plenty by white kids. She was called a pickaninny and openly teased for her rat’s nest hair.

In the seventh grade she opened a packet to take a career assessment test. She describes one of the first questions as the most challenging question she’d encountered up to that point in her young life: What are your parents’ titles? A bit like my day at the chalkboard, she stopped at the Dr. and Mrs. option and contemplated the omission of the Dr. and Mr. choice.

“I decided in that moment that I would one day be Dr. and Mr. I had to get a doctor title of some sort so I could show them.”

A GRIT seed similar to my own appears to have been born in a moment of defiance and confidence.

GRIT seeds may be conceived in one memorable incident, but they are fertilized and watered plenty throughout a life lived from the margins. Dr. Hinton goes on to describe an incident in the tenth grade when she was told by a guidance counselor that college was not an option for her as a black woman. Essentially, she was told that her place in the world (the margins) had been defined by others, and that she should accept that place.

The harsh conclusion made her even more determined to pursue her Dr. dream from several years before.

Leading from the margins with a GRIT SEED drives a unique kind of behavior. When Mary, now Dr. Hinton, pointed out that she did not share her origin story while attending a New England liberal arts college or later, when leading in predominantly white institutions, I knew exactly her reason.

She, like I, was rigorously dedicated to truthful one-word answers, but neither one of us felt obligated to share the granular reality of our origins, especially when it might unfairly compromise our credibility.

Instead, we became and lived the proverbial “Stanford Duck Syndrome.”

We appeared to move effortlessly across the water while paddling frantically underneath the surface. That pattern not only requires the energy to do the actual work, it also necessitates an unyielding strength and effort to still the internal anxiety and produce the floating serenity.

In the fashion business, a sense of style was a mandate. A privileged upbringing implied good taste. Like blue eyes from a gene pool, there was an unspoken assumption that style had to be bred.

It was not unusual to overhear a snide remark, whispered off to the side, in a conference room, to a fellow blueblood, “Look where they came from,” if a particular project was not to the liking of the ranking male executive.

So, in the beginning, I kept my mouth shut and my eyes open as my thoroughbred higher-ups pointed out flaws in the photo shoot or questioned the color combinations of the promotional material.

I memorized entire business strategy books, while studying, observing, and learning about the softer side of beauty from some of the most famous tastemakers and art collectors in the world. I carefully began to contribute only after I had learned to speak, albeit in a tentative way at first, the refined language of the elites.

I had, with the confident side of my grit, presumed I could learn what common opinion deemed was inaccessible without good breeding. With my defiant side I swore that the background statement would not be murmured about me.

Of course I had no way of knowing if it was ever said, but the awareness of the bias sent me to beauty counters on Saturday mornings to study the competitors, and to art museums in the afternoon to hear the audio tours of the master artists.

I watched many of my colleagues pick up their pink and turquoise bags at 4:00 on Friday afternoon and head to the Hamptons or Watch Hill or wherever. I heard them brazenly draw boundaries of responsibility around their work projects.

“Not in the scope of my work” I often heard them saying.

I watched without envy or malice. I took on the work that they proclaimed was not theirs. I quite simply knew I had to work harder for the same reward.

Ever since that long walk from the registration table to my town school classroom, I knew I was ENTITLED to NOTHING. I always knew I had to EARN everything I received.

And I knew if I failed on any one step of my journey, I had a longer and harsher fall to take.

GRIT is a work of friction. Self-assurance grinds against anger and circumstance, and Mary Hinton’s “I’ll show them” is the battle cry.

While I might not have chosen my origins, they were the ones I was given. While I left the physical boundaries of my beginnings behind me long ago, I carried the psychological cross of their weight until late in life.

Because of it, I learned to push through, no matter the difficulty. I learned to stand up straight, look straight ahead, and to swallow tears in one big, silent gulp, no matter the pain or fatigue level.

Annie Lamott, one of my favorite writers, reminds listeners in a humorous YouTube piece that if an appliance or digital machine performs erratically, it will usually perk right up if it is unplugged and started again. So goes the human parallel with a night of rest.

But, in the last few years of my career, after years of plugged-in running, I needed more than a good night’s rest or nap. God, from his Genius Bar, proclaimed it was time for a new battery. In my case, it was time to attend to the side effect of exhaustion and adrenal fatigue that the Stanford Duck Syndrome and the Swan Glide had created.

With sleep, and a more mature attitude, I pondered a different kind of life. I retired, a few years later married the love of my life, and I reframed Mary Hinton’s I’ll show them to I’ll show me.

Only after retirement did I have the time to examine the activities that birthed and coddled my GRIT. And only after several years of retirement and reflection did I have the courage to speak about the disadvantages I had overcome.

I wish I’d had the time to examine earlier the activities that birthed and nurtured my GRIT, but it often seems that it is only after a measured victory that we feel free enough to remove the lead topcoat and expose, even to ourselves, who we were then and who we are now. It’s only then that we can cut away the angry half of the grit seed, toss it, and be proud of the person we have become.

Recently I met the aforementioned Dr. Mary Hinton at a gala dinner at the Metropolitan Club, located on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

It took only minutes before we understood the similarities in our lives.

Toward the end of the dinner she looked up at the inlaid gold of the dining room ceiling.

After a long pause, she looked down at her dinner plate and then back at me as she motioned toward the ceiling with her dinner fork.

“You lived almost all of your adult life here? Here, in this world?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“That must have been hard for you.”

“Yes, yes it was.”

Source: Metropolitanclubnyc.org

It was not long after, that I was reading a Wall Street Journal article about Keith Richards, the rhythm guitarist for the Rolling Stones, now 82 years of age.

I was struck by his quote at the end of the article, “If you get up just one more time than you’ve been knocked down, people will ascribe to you a quality that is indistinguishable from wisdom.”

I cut the article out of the paper and underlined his words with a red ink pen. I still have the article on the corner of my desk.