Facing the fear of failure...

Outside, the snow has fallen all day and left the landscape mounded and muted in white, now glowing under the light of a full moon. In the yard, a string of Tibetan prayer flags decorates two snow forts my daughters have abandoned for the night. 

It is silent; the snow plows have forgotten us. Three foot drifts in our street sit untouched. School's been called off for tomorrow already. My husband is shoveling the driveway again anyway, hoping he can get out to ski tomorrow. 

Inside, my daughters are sitting around me. My three year-old's face, smeared with chocolate pudding and red glitter, is intently focused on her drawing. She has recently learned how to make a smiley face. It is a happy miracle to her each time she successfully creates two circles over a crooked crescent. 

My ten year-old is sitting on the arm of my chair, braiding her American Girl's hair. The dinner dishes are washed, and even the dog is laid out on the carpet snoring, enjoying our warm house. 

I am a fortunate woman. So what is wrong with me? 

I made it into the gym, did an abdominal workout, took my run. But several conversations I had over the course of the day made a strange impact that I've yet to shake off. And spending the rest of the day in the house made me come of of my skin with food cravings. My drive and my resolve sits deep in the snow drifts under the soil, with the daffodils.

Today, as the snow piled higher, my mood sank lower. Be productive, I said to myself, find a distraction. So I reunited a mound of unpaired socks. Then I cleaned up my work desk. Unfortunately, my tidying unearthed a composition notebook titled, "Training Log 2003." I had set out to run a marathon that year. In it were only three entries before I sputtered and failed. 

Digging in the fridge for dinner possibilities, I discovered the "best by" date on the cream cheese read 05/09/09. My chest tightened as I realized this competition was actually close enough now to show up on the expiration date of my dairy products.

I spent most of the day steeped in evidence that failure is a distinct possibility. And the problem is that I know failure all too well.

The dark voice inside me reminds me that I have never been pugilistic. Even as a young child I was always relieved to finally get caught during a game of hide and seek. Becoming "it" meant I would no longer be chased. And during my youth, I often chose to sidestep down a daunting ski hill after watching my brothers disappear into the moguls. I could peer over the precipice, but I rarely jumped off it. I spent my first year of college at UC Santa Barbara hoping to get work as a writer, and when the school paper miraculously offered me a position for the following year, I transferred schools and moved to UC Riverside. 

Fear of failure has always had me by the tail. When something good comes my way, I encourage it towards me with my arms outstretched, yet when it toddles close enough to reach my fingertips, I step away and let it fall.  The truth is, it is safer to quit early and make excuses than to hang in until the end and risk making myself look really foolish. Right now I want to retreat from my current challenge like one would pull back from the end of a knife.

My three year-old repeats her summons until I come out of my brooding cloud, "Mama, look! It is you."

I look at the paper she is holding up. A cock-eyed set of eyes with thin-lined mouth. "That's so great! You are getting so good at that."

She returns to her work, talking to herself, "Now I will draw Gwama."

I watch the back of her head as she sits on the carpet in front of me. Why am I doing this competition? Will my kids really care if I spend a Saturday this spring on a stage flexing in a bikini? I am already a hero to my three year-old because I didn't get upset when she scraped my car windows with metal salad tongs, and my ten year-old loves me because I let her pour green Jello over her chocolate birthday cake. It is that simple. 

May 9th matters to me alone, because at one point in my life, for the sake of me, my own self, I want to make it all the way. That is a small a matter in the big scheme of this universe. But it counts. Like learning to draw smiley faces.