Author: Judy Hanawalt (Page 4 of 23)

My relationship with math has been complicated. 

My earliest memory of math is a mimeographed sheet of paper with a grid on it, labeled 1 to 12 on the top and left side. We were supposed to memorize the multiplication table well enough to fill that sheet out in a minute or two, with a timer ticking as we scribbled in the answers. I see the point—we would know it so well that we wouldn’t even have to think about multiplication when doing more advanced math problems.  I didn’t practice enough at home, and even now I  get bogged down in the middle of the 7’s and 8’s (I’m beginning to see a pattern here; I wasn’t wearing my eye patch faithfully then either). I didn’t pass the first few tries, so I had to go into a little office at the back of class to take the test alone, a straggler. Eventually I did pass, but my relationship with math was starting to feel uncomfortable.

In middle school, I was in a good place with math. I enjoyed it, class was fun, and I got the hang of the slide rule. I met a friend in class, and over the next few years, we spent hours on the phone doing our homework together, even when our mothers picked up the extension in the other room and ordered us to hang up. We got our problem sets done, but we also listened to music, talked and laughed about events and crushes, and just hung out over the telephone wires. I wonder if our mothers appreciated how easy we made their parenting when we were tethered to the phone; even though we tied up the single line in the house for so long, they knew exactly what we were up to and we were never late for dinner.

In geometry, when Mr. Camp had us come to the board to do proofs, that my feelings about math got more complicated. All my life, people have loved the fact that I turn a deep shade of red when I’m embarrassed—and not just because I do something dumb—I turn red when I feel singled out or put on the spot, or really, I turn red about almost everything. Apparently people who don’t have this trait think it’s hilarious and they love to point it out. Of course, that makes me blush more, which, apparently is even funnier. 

Because he found this phenomenon so endearing, a friend of mine whispered around the class to laugh when I finished my work on the board one day.  I turned around, ready to hear from the teacher that I had done the proof right, and instead the whole class began to laugh. I was confused, and of course, I turned  a brilliant shade of red. What did I miss? What was the joke? My red face must have been funny to see, but my sense of ease in math class took a hard hit. I pretended to laugh too and sat down.

It was just a joke. I had good friends in the class. My proof was probably ok. Maybe the friend who did this would have gotten a good laugh out of it if someone did it to him. I know moments like this happen to almost everybody in their childhood. At a high school reunion, I asked the jokester why he pulled that prank on me, and he didn’t remember it. He was sorry, but not that sorry; I’m sure he had  no idea what a lasting memory it would be for me.

I kept taking the next math class because it was the expected path, and most of my friends were doing it. By my senior year, I was taking calculus, and each quarter, my grade slipped lower–along with my motivation. It wasn’t working for me to memorize the formulas and grind out the problems. Calculus requires, I guess, some deeper connection with the concepts, and I wasn’t feeling it. The fact that I finished the year—and took the Advanced Placement test and got a passing grade—is so unbelievable to my friends and family that it’s my secret weapon in a game of Three Truths and a Lie (oops, it’s out there now!). 

In college, I put math behind me and never looked back. It was humanities all the way for me.

There is one teacher at Berkeley High that may have made a difference in my math experience if I had been in her class. She is so excited about everyone exploring the wonders of math, especially the ones who come to class feeling like they can’t learn it. I’ve heard her telling students and parents alike, “Yes! You can do math!” Her love for math is contagious.

At back-to-school nights, I visited her classroom a few times when one of my kids was her student for AP Calculus. As the parents took seats, she passed out a problem to solve. She planned for us to spend the 15-minute period discovering the concepts with her enthusiastic coaching. She wanted us to see what our kids were learning and that we could do it too, but a sense of dread gripped me at the thought of being called on. I let the parents next to me work on the exercise and avoided eye contact; I was not going to put myself in blushing danger. Maybe if I was in high school, she could helped me connect with the world she was so enthusiastic about. Maybe.

It doesn’t matter; I don’t think we were meant for each other. My relationship with math is simple now. We have gone our separate ways.

Last year, I was in Albuquerque visiting my daughter, staying in a little one bedroom AirBnb filled with antiques. The owners called it the “Casita.” One morning, my daughter and her fiancé came to pick me up for the day’s adventures, and brought their two dogs along. While we were packing up to leave, the dogs were sniffing around outside. Somewhere in the bushes, they found a tiny baby bird, no feathers, dead. They dropped it by the front door.

The day before, another of my daughters had texted us with the sad news that during a wind and rain storm, the hummingbird who was sitting on a nest in the front yard had left her perch in the tree when the branches were lashing around in the storm. She had been sitting there for days, caring for two navy-bean size eggs. When my daughter peered into the nest the next morning to see how the eggs had fared, she saw two tiny, inch-long baby hummingbirds in the nest, naked and still. 

My daughter came into the casita after seeing the little bird on the doorstep and said soberly, “If we were in a book, this would mean something.”

I was so proud of her. My love of foreshadowing must have rubbed off.

My favorite thing to read is a novel. I love long stories, full of characters whose lives intersect and diverge until all the plot lines are tied together at the end. The resolution only works for me if it makes sense for the characters and their situation, and the trick that makes it all fit together is foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing makes it possible to have plot twists. It holds the story together when the plot is pulling it apart. Without the twists, the story is boring; without the foreshadowing, the narrative is a string of disjointed, disconnected action. The puzzle pieces of the story have to fit together and make a complete picture when they are assembled. One without the other feels either shallow or false.

Sometimes foreshadowing is obvious and you know something is coming. Sometimes, it is subtle, or even mysterious. My favorite kind comes in the little details–maybe they tug a little or seem a little odd, or maybe not–but when the big twist comes, they take on a new meaning. Flipping back through the pages, it all makes sense. What was an offhand comment or an insignificant fact at first reading becomes the clue that ties the story together.

It doesn’t ruin the surprise; it makes the surprise richer because it was there, hidden, all the time. It is satisfying because it is consistent. The puzzle piece snaps into place. I’m not talking about predictability; that’s almost as bad as complete randomness. The fun comes from discovering a pattern or a plan that was there all along.

When I am immersed in a novel, sometimes the suspense is too much. I am so worried about what is going to happen that reading isn’t enjoyable anymore. Will the character I love survive? Will what’s lost ever be found? I can’t read fast enough to outpace my anxiety.

True confession: When it’s too much to bear, I turn to the last page to see who is still there.  It doesn’t ruin it for me; it gives me courage to go back and live through whatever is coming with the characters, even if the ending isn’t happy. At least I know what’s coming.

Life isn’t a novel, though. I can’t say that a strange occurrence means that some plot twist is about to happen in my life. I’m not able to relieve my anxiety by checking the ending. The closest I can come is looking back after I have some distance from a situation and finding some understanding. Looking back, events and problems seem clearer, and there is a sense that what seems random at the time is leading to something.

Hindsight.

When my children were babies and young children, I learned their likes and dislikes, their patterns and how to respond to their needs. I memorized their sweet faces. But who they would grow up to be was a wide-open question, a mystery. Now that they are adults, I look back and recognize them. They were exactly themselves from the beginning, but I couldn’t project into the future to see it. My imagination wasn’t big enough.

As a young girl, I sat in my big, comfy chair reading for hours. I wished that there was a book that would never end; a world full of characters I love that I could stay immersed in, never reaching the last page. With a little hindsight on my side now, I can see that my life is my great story, full of plot twists, true love, adventure and comedy. No foreshadowing, but I think it will somehow make sense in the end.