Other Magics: My Failures at Hebrew, Math, Music and More

I didn’t really learn to read Hebrew. I mean, they tried to teach me but for whatever reason, it didn’t really stick. I can generally try and follow along when the Torah portion is chanted every Friday night. I can recognize some of the letters. I know some of the sounds. I can make what I’m hearing turn into the shapes on the page.

In my head, I am always transliterating. I’ve memorized the prayers, the chants, the words, the call and response, the rhythm and pattern of Friday night services. Out of context, I flounder.

In the same way, I never learned to read music, despite playing an instrument for two years and growing up in a musical family. I would transcribe the notes below, and learn to recognize where they were or read my transcriptions really fast, but I didn’t learn to read music. If you gave me a sheet of music now, I would be lost.

If you gave me Hebrew with no transliteration and a prayer I didn’t know or recognize by sight, I would be lost.

In the same way, I never truly understood or learned math, despite being moved ahead one grade in math. My teachers mistook my ability to memorize an outcome for my ability to create the outcome. I learned to understand patterns and expect certain outcomes from patterns, but I never learned to do math. I still cannot divide fractions. Simple arithmetic stresses me out.

I know that languages and math and music are connected—when someone is good at one, they’re more likely (though nothing is a promise with brains) to succeed at the other. My father is excellent at math and music and maps, but cannot learn another language to save his life. My siblings too are excellent at math, music, and language.

When I look at a page of Hebrew, or math, or music, it’s panic-inducing. I search, desperately and frenetically, for recognizable patterns. Sometimes they are there. Sometimes they are not.

I’ve often been ashamed of my inability to read Hebrew and music, in my need for transliteration of both, my inability to grasp languages that use different alphabets than the ones to which I am accustomed. Spanish came easily to me in school and at work, but French remained elusive. I joke more easily about my inability to do math, but the shame is a deep well within me. I’ve heard my whole life you’re so smart. If you just concentrated, you would be able to learn this. If you cared, if you focused, you could learn this.

I did care. I wanted to learn them. But at some point, the anxiety was too high, the shame too deep, and I stopped wanting to learn and trying to learn.

I am a learner. I am a Ravenclaw. I pride myself on my intelligence, and my willingness and eagerness to learn. Not just new things, but hard things. I listen carefully when people explain science to me that’s beyond my rudimentary grasp of biology and chemistry. I went to author space camp this summer and absorbed astronomy, even though the math made me panicky and even though the speed at which we learned certain concepts meant they slipped in and out of my mind that struggles with that language. I want to learn.

Sometimes when I’m writing, I can feel that deep well of panic. The words blur in front of me and I think “this is an equation I cannot solve this is an equation I cannot solve” over and over as I try to weave together the story that’s in my mind through my fingertips and into the keyboard and onto the screen. This is a type of math too, a type of pattern recognition. But I can control this pattern. I weave it. I change it as I will it, and I decide what patterns the reader does or does not take away from the texts.

I can usually quell the panic.

Sometimes, I cannot.

I tried to read the John Truby book all my favorite authors rave about, and came away with the profound shame that I didn’t think I was smart enough to read it. Because even now, I still fall into the trap of conflating intelligence with success at doing everything. I am not successful at everything. John Truby’s writing, style and method of pattern recognition in storytelling isn’t for me. I am telling myself now, still, as an affirmation, that that says nothing about me as a person or my worth or my skills as a storyteller.

Stories are patterns I’ve learned to read. Stories are patterns I’ve learned to tell.

When I do school visits or talk to other authors, sometimes they’re surprised to hear that I wasn’t a good student. I wasn’t a good student in any classes, really. I think there’s this perception that if you’re smart, that’s reflected in the way we measure your intelligence in our western society: with grades and tests. My grades were mediocre. I graduated high school with a B average. I graduated college with a B+ average. My standardized test scores suck, honestly. They only improved just enough to get me into colleges after someone taught me how to take the test, not how to learn the information in the test.

And there are some patterns that I’ll never learn: music, Hebrew, math, some books.

I’m trying to be okay with that.

I am trying to remind myself that it doesn’t mean I am less Jewish, or a bad Jew, because Hebrew feels out of reach. I am trying to remind myself that I don’t need to read music to appreciate it. I am trying to remind myself that my inability to do basic math isn’t a moral or intellectual failing on my part because we now have the technology to speak around my tenuous grasp of numbers. I am trying to remind myself that some books aren’t for me, and that isn’t a reflection on my intelligence or self-worth.

I am nearly in my mid-thirties, and I still feel haunted by the things I did not grasp as an adolescent.

Shame is such a painful thing to excavate from one’s soul.