spelling bee

Tuesday night, Zoe stood on the stage at school, nervous even though she’d said she wouldn’t be; all decked out in black velvet, deep green organza, and the sparkly tights.  They were itchy—the tights—but she wore them anyway, and that’s how I knew what this spelling bee meant to her.

That, and the fact that she’d practiced diligently every day over track out.  The initiative her own, she’d sit down with that enormous list of words and work on “the hard side” of the paper.  She circled the ones she didn’t know how to pronounce and asked me to talk to her about them.  She practiced, the way we all do when we prepare for the new, the unknown, anticipating moments round with the possibility of victory.

She prayed about the spelling bee for weeks, her voice soft, asking.  Please.

One night, after Kevin heard her praying hard that she’d do well, he had to go back upstairs after he’d left her room, just to make sure she knew that we’d be proud no matter whether she left the stage first or last.  She’d talked about being brave enough to get up on that stage and spell words in front of everyone.  She’d clipped a sequined black hair bow in her hair.

And the night of the spelling bee, Adam held a grudge against Zoe for making him leave his free time behind.  “Zoe!” He kept saying, layering the letters of her name with frustration and angst as they left his lips.  This week has been furious, limiting, for all of us.  I understood his unhidden reluctance.

But we pushed our way through supper and homework, leaving some assignments to finish when we got back home, and we all went to school to watch Zoe participate.  She ran ahead of us through the doors and down the hall, eager.

While one of the teachers read the rules into the microphone, sitting on the edge of the stage, explaining that the kids had all been informed prior to the contest, Zoe sat straight and high on the platform in the second row, swinging her legs, smiling at me, shrugging her shoulders sweetly.

“Now, this one’s the hard one,” the teacher said slowly into the microphone, drawing our attention closely.  “Once a student has begun to spell the word, he or she may start again from the beginning, but he or she may not change any of the letters which have already been said.  The original spelling will stand.”

oh my.  no second chances.  that one is tough, I thought.

But the first easy words went quickly.  Pill. Sweet. Next.  I realized Zoe would have no trouble with these, that the warm-up should give her confidence.  Eight kids filed up to the microphone and breezed through the introductory round without a single pause or stumble.

Then Zoe stepped up.

“The word is...jazz,” one of the judges called.

I saw the fear-shadow fall over her bright eyes, the way her cheeks turned white as she drew in her breath, and my heart sank, already hurting over her anxiety.  Fear paralyzes, twists, blockades.  Every parent focused on the face of a child knows fear as Enemy.  It’s the reason do not be afraid appears so often in scripture, falls from the Savior’s lips over and over.  Perfect love casts out fear, I thought.  Perfect love, Zoe.  He loves you perfectly.  In that moment, I desperately wished to communicate this to her, to embolden her, to ready her.

She held her arms in front of her, twisting her own fingers.  She’d seen all the eyes watching.  She wished to forget our faces, not to see us as witnesses to her moment.  We always wonder what everyone will think when they see us as we are; when no amount of velvet and organza can cover over our vulnerability.

“Jazz.  (deep, shuddering gulp) …j-a-s..” She made a sound, knowing instantly that she’d slipped, and quickly shook her head, slicing away the mistake, throwing out “Z-Z,” in purposeful, firm staccato.

Silence.  We never know what to do, how to be, when suddenly we’re face to face with someone’s mistake.  She stood there, twisting her body back and forth, waiting.  I felt an awful, helpless, fiercely protective ache settling in my stomach as I watched her not knowing, not remembering the rule, not expecting the judges heads shaking back and forth.  No.  Shock, uncertainty, paralyzed her in that spot.  She doesn’t know it’s over, I thought.

Finally, one of the judges spoke into her microphone.  “I’m sorry, Zoe, that’s incorrect.  Please go sit with your parents.”  Her face fell, clouded with shame, and I watched her walk off the stage, the first child dismissed.  She could not look up.  What do we do when the thing that seems so easy for everyone else turns out to be the thing that trips us up?  Already, I stood, I moved toward her before she rounded the corner and came down the stairs and out from behind the curtain.  Tears hit the floor as she walked, one hand half covering her eyes.  She held her head low, but she looked for me sideways, quickly jerking her eyes up and back down.  She trembled, her whole face red, her cheeks wet.

I grabbed her hand and squeezed, guiding her outside the doors of the gym, walking her over to a lone chair in the hall.  I pulled her into my lap and wrapped my arms around her, bending my head towards hers.  “Honey, it’s okay.  You were nervous.  We’re SO proud of you.”

She shook her head, tears still dripping, eyes down.  “I’m so embarrassed,” She said, stopping a wail before it left her throat.  “Why did I do that?  Why was it wrong?  Why did I just stand there after they said it was incorrect?”

I hugged her, stroking her cheeks, her hair, with one hand.  “You just made a mistake, Zoe.  You won’t be the only one.  They have this rule that once you say the letters out loud you can’t change them.  You got nervous.  It’s okay.  No one in there thinks any less of you for it.”

She shot her eyes toward the doors.  “I can’t go back in there.  I can’t.  I’m so embarrassed.”

“Honey, you need to go back in there and hold your head up high.  Only a small number of kids in the school got to even do this.  We are so proud of you.  Daddy.  Riley. Adam. Me. Your teacher.  You have nothing to be ashamed about.  We all know you just got nervous and made a mistake.  It could’ve happened to anyone.”

The double doors opened and another dad walked out of the gym, smiling.  I don’t know if he’d come out for another reason or specifically to find Zoe, but when he saw us, he walked over.  “Hey,” he said gently, to Zoe, “it’s okay.  You just got nervous.  No big deal.  It’s okay…”

I smiled at him and looked at Zoe, who couldn’t bring herself to look up.  “See, Honey?  All of us parents know you were nervous.”

Another dad walked by with a child, on the way to the bathrooms, and he stopped to talk to Zoe too.  “Hey, are you okay?  Don’t be upset.  Easy mistake.”

She closed her eyes, absorbing the idea that other people knew what had happened and didn’t think her incapable.  I saw the weight falling from her back and wondered if they saw it too, as she sat there trying to breathe.  In the space after our stumble, this is what we need: to know that belief survives, that we have friends who still see the best in us despite what they know of our weakness, that mistake has not labeled us failure.

Zoe wanted to go home, but I knew she had to go back in and finish this night, face her fear before it mastered her.  When she had pulled herself back together, we walked back into the gym, hand-in-hand, and made our way back to our seats next to Kevin, Riley, and Adam.  I pulled Zoe into my lap, wrapping my arms around her waist.  Kevin offered her a simple smile, his always smile for her, and patted her knee with his hand.  Her mistake had changed nothing in her father’s love for her.  He regarded it simply: an opportunity for a better next time.  She got up and hugged him, then sat back down on my lap.  Her teacher leaned toward us from a few chairs away and said, “Hey Zoe!  Get over here!”

Zoe looked at me, wary, sad.  “Go talk to your teacher,” I said gently.  I watched Zoe’s teacher touch her arm, catching her gaze, and I knew enough without hearing the words.  For Zoe’s sake, she had tossed aside the error nonchalantly, cast it out as immaterial.

And when Zoe walked back to me, she smiled, and I whispered, “See?  She’s proud of you too.  No one sees you any differently.”

Then Riley leaned over and said, “Zoe, you did a really good job.  But you got the word wrong.  You spelled it wrong.”  I wanted to grin, to laugh out loud, but I pressed my lips in a straight line.  For Riley, this was not an accusation or a judgement.  Just facts.  Still, it made me think of the human in all of us, the way we’re awkward with what went wrong, the way we try to encourage while never really letting go of the mistake.  This is the thing we all hide from, the idea that our mistakes will be stains everyone else will always see, even while they smile at us.

Zoe shook her head all over again, burying her eyes in my neck.  I patted her back, and we settled in to watch.  As the other students filed through, Zoe whispered in my ear, noting incorrect spellings before the judges said, “I’m sorry, no.  Thank you.”  She knew these words.  I felt bad for her, knowing she’d have done well but for her nervous mistake.

Later, she said she’d never do the spelling bee again.

“Oh no,” I said, smiling at her.  She already knew what I’d say.  She’d shrugged a little when she said it, faintly, almost a whisper.  “You don’t get to do that.  You have to try again, harder even the next time.  You can’t just give up.”

“You learn from your mistakes and do better next time,” Kevin added.  “Like, for example, because of the rules, you know that next time you can spell the word in your head first.  Take your time.  There are no extra points for rushing it.  Next time you’ll know a little better how to handle your nerves.”

But in private, Kevin shook his head as I told him how bad I felt for Zoe that things had happened that way.  “The worst possible scenario…”He said, sharing my sadness over Zoe’s heartache.   Oh how we wished we might have absorbed her pain, shielded her from embarrassment, protected her fledgling confidence.  Oh how God must ache over our mistakes, the choices that He must let us make and the shame we feel because of them.

As I sat hugging Zoe in that hallway, whispering in her ear, the Spirit whispered in mine the way He always does, holding me faithfully, one hand stroking my cheek, my hair.  I live my life seated on His lap, shaking my head, saying things like, “I just can’t go back in there.”  And while my daughter cried in my arms, this is what He said:  What if God had a rule like that?  You mess up, you can start again, but you can’t erase the mistake you made.  It stands.  All is lost.  And then the pause, as I absorb this, as I tell Zoe we love her just as well, way past her mistakes.  And then: You know, some people still believe that’s how it goes.  Every mistake stands.  Every bad effort changes your forever.

But that’s a heartache God couldn’t bear for His children.  It’s true, holy can only be spelled one way, but for our sake, He wrote that word in blood. And the blood of Christ washes white as snow.  Not even an echo of the misspoken letters remains.  No book records all the ways we missed it—nervous, afraid, ignorant, defiant, embarrassing and shameful ways, our blunders casting deathly shadows over all our  preparation, all that velvet and organza, all our innocent desire to make Him proud, all our wishes to be something.  He could never watch us walk away, one hand shielding our eyes, all our pain splashing on the floor at His feet.  So He did what every parent longs to do when our children stand there in the silence, twisting their fingers in front of them, shame settling on their shoulders.  We always wish we could go stand in their place, take the hurt ourselves.  And that’s what He did, writing holy across all our lives in His own blood.

So when we make that sound, having owned our need, having crawled up in His lap and hidden our lives in Christ; the sound admitting our guilt, the grieving, deep-throated pleading for second chances; the moment is completely new, we are completely new, as though it is our first breath, the first syllable we’ve spoken.  No one remembers the jagged “s” hanging in the air, nor ever even hears its hiss.