What you learn when you keep trying

One of these days it might be necessary to admit to myself that it is becoming ever more likely that I will never be entirely fluent in French.

Despite the workshops, the workbooks, the CDs, the story books, the tapes, the emails, the classes and the trips I've dabbled in here and there over the years, I might not ever make it to conversant.

In my defense, this is not because I'm totally inept, though I may have lost a few connections in the brain - synapses or something - that younger language learners still have.

This is not because I haven't been motivated, though I'm equally motivated in about five other areas and spend equal dabbles of time on perhaps too large an array of projects.

This is simply because there are just too many French words and too many ways to string them together, some of which require too many ways of conjugating. And that's not even to mention that every noun is either male of female (car is feminine, taxi is masculine) and every adjective must be either mine to match.

 

It may also be time to admit to myself that all those books in my basement that I printed thinking people would want to read them, may remain in my basement.

This is not because I haven't tried to find people to love them through bookstores and galleries and websites.

This is because ... I don't know why this is because. Or I don't want to admit I know why.

But not learning French and not selling books is not failing.

And that is because of all I've seen and done, all I've learned and felt, everyone I've met and every way I've grown in the process of trying.

I loved meeting the French people (all six of them), whose English was worse than my French so they listened long enough to try and figure out what I was saying.

I've loved opening my mind to a second language and developing a greater appreciation for another culture.

I'm glad I could learn more about my own language by studying another.

It's good to have a greater understanding of what others go through as they try to learn English (which not only has more words but has more exceptions to rules).

And just maybe I'm keeping a few more synapses in the brain functioning by continued studying and memorizing.

As for publishing a book, I loved when someone wrote to tell me the thoughts in my book had meaning to them or inspired them to do something or helped them recognize something meaningful they would otherwise have missed in their own lives.

And reading again the words penned in a different phase of life has kept the memories of that phase, and all its richness and all its challenges, alive.

Sometimes trying has its own reward.

Admitting that my dreams may be a bit out of reach, sometimes because of my own limits and sometimes because of things over which I have no control, will not make me quit trying.

I'm made of sterner, stubborner, more irrational stuff.

Not making it to the end of a journey doesn't make the sights you pass along the way any less worthwhile.

There is still a chance and only quitting would take that chance away.

No matter if it's likely or a stretch, I'm going for that chance.

First published in the Davis Clipper on March 14, 2013

Making it work with another try

By Louise R. Shaw           

                I’d been there with my family some years earlier and was anxious to share it with my new husband, even if it meant spending part of the day on a long drive up a winding road when we could be sitting on a beach.

                There are just some things worth driving long distances for and the overlook of the Na Pali Coast on the Hawaiian island of Kauai is one of them.

The Kalalau Lookout is 4,000-feet above sea level and the view into the ridges and peaks and valley below is nothing short of spectacular. The drive along Waimea Canyon, what has become known as “the Grand Canyon of the Pacific,” is also pretty breathtakingly amazing.

                We ascended, stopping at all lookouts, as is my want, and noticing as we did that more and more clouds were filling the sky.

                Four-thousand feet is pretty high up there. Even clouds are comfortable at 4,000 feet and sure enough, as we drove the last few hundred feet to the very end of the drive, we were enveloped in a cloud.

                And in that particular cloud, there were no views past the end of our arms, much less along the rugged cliffs of the Na Pali and down the Kalalau Valley to the ocean and beyond.

                It was a disappointment, but at least it wasn’t snowing like the time a few days earlier when we’d gotten up in the wee hours of the morning and driven up 10,000 feet to see the sunrise over Haleakala crater on Maui, just like everybody said you should.

Turns out you only should if you check the weather report first.

Sometimes you’re better off just sleeping in. And then sitting on a beach.

But we sighed and shrugged and tried not to be angry or disappointed and our nine-month-old marriage survived. And later we laughed and told the story and others laughed with us.

And now we are approaching our 42^nd year together and there have been all kinds of sighs and shrugs and trying not to be angry or disappointed and laughing and sharing and learning along the way.

Sometimes the views have been clouded in. Sometimes they have been spectacular.

We kept at it.

It was a full 35 years later when we next attempted the 18-mile drive from sea level on the south shore of Kauai to the overlook on the north.

This time we knew better. This time we checked the weather report (easier now with internet) and got up early and drove straight to the top, where the views were … true to expectation … spectacular.

And we hiked around in warm sunshine and I took pictures from every possible angle – twice. Or maybe four times.

As we finished our hike the clouds started to fill in, at first dancing around the trees and cliffs, then filling them all in.

On the way back to our car, we passed a young couple who’d just pulled in.

By now, there was nothing but cloud to see.

We greeted them but said nothing at all about the conditions.

Until they asked.

Was it clear this morning? she said.

Yes, we answered, watching them smile and shrug and try not to be disappointed.

We were you 35 years ago, we said.

We missed the view then too, but we came back.

I hope they will too.

Because after that first time you know better when to come. You know to wait for the right conditions. To start early. Not to be distracted.

And it works.

And when it doesn’t work the first time, it’s even better the second.

Just don’t give up.