Grin Bear Move
It’s 3 words, “Grin. Bear. Move.” Or one word, “Grinbearmove.” It’s a directive, “Do it.” An invitation, “Please!” A reminder, “Hey! It’s okay.”
It’s also the name of my old blog that I shared with almost nobody. Did you know? Of course not. I didn’t tell you. All of my essays here before 2024 are from the old Grin Bear Move. To start fresh, 8 years later, I changed the name to Vera Monstera. Truth in monsters, Monstrously true. And Monstera Deliciosa. Does a plant name get more apt? “Beautiful and grotesque and all the rest,” as Ani Difranco says.
I like Vera Monstera as a pen name, a step removed, like a musician putting up a creative wall. “I go by…” like Cat Power is Chan Marshall and Tokimonsta is Jennifer Lee. I don’t pretend to put myself in rarified air, but I do pretend to slip past you in secret. Nameless, once removed. Sliding in and out of crevices under some other marker. “A rose by any other name” said a guy once…but was that his real name? Vera Monstera is Jenny Parrott.
“Hi.”
But…do you like Grin Bear Move? As a name? You can tell me, I can take it. I can't, but I’ll pretend. Even if you don’t like it, it’s something, isn’t it? I can’t get the ring and rhythm out of my head. Now I think it’s the name of a movement book for kids I’m sketching out. Hey kid! Make your own dance!
But I digress. I want to break down the name Grin Bear Move and why I still think about it.
GRIN
Of course “grin and bear it.” But the GRIN part actually comes directly from my dad. When an idea of his is meant to be a lark, a whim, a merry adventure, he’ll say, “it’ll be a grin” or “do it for the grin.” It’s an inner buoyancy of his that can’t be tamped down.
My dad is someone who knows sorrow and joy. Almost like they are one word. Sorrow/Joy. He knows they’re two sides of a coin and the sorrow will swallow the joy if you let it. The Dark/Light. He has seen the dark and yet perpetually chooses the light, the grin. It’s a survival mechanism that keeps many afloat. It’s a part of his expert raconteuring. His charisma. His relentless kidding around. And rituals meant to gather everyone he loves.
So grin. Not because it’s easy. Or because of the flippant tone of “grin and bear it.” But because “for a grin” lends a hand in bearing weight. There’s a tender elegance to it. It speaks to my belief that play is a deep form of work. You play in spite of and because of…everything.
GRIN. because everything depends on it, like a red wheelbarrow.
BEAR
BEAR is shouldering heavy things. Carrying others. And carrying ourselves (both slogging through hard things and aligning muscles and bones.) It’s the things and the people we bear.
Or, you know, bring to bear, put into effect. Get that ball rolling. Or ball bearings. Get your bearings, like balance, like a sailboat in wavy seas. I think of actual bears. Grizzlies and such. And me. A long time ago, I was JBear.
The author Kate DiCamillo was talking to Krista Tippett for the podcast On Being (Krista! You keep coming up for me. A force that hums in the background. I shouldn’t resist. It’s like resisting friendship. Someone’s trying to be nice to me and I am busy hiding. Like feeling seen and feeling the utter beauty and mystery of the world. It’s coming face-to-face with your own earnestness, honestly. Which is–honestly–like trying to dance. It’s earnest as hell. More to be said sometime about earnestness and dance and why it’s too much for us mortals most of the time. And why it’s just what we need.)
Anyway, bears. And Kate, who dedicated Puppets of Spellhorst to Ann Patchett who dedicated Tom Lake to Kate (tip of the hat to Our Town and Thorton Wilder). Both the puppets and the lake will tear your heart out and put it back together and tear it out again, like a film that knows the music playing during the credits will haunt you forever. I actually found the puppets and the lake at the same time in a bookstore. Or they found me. Two books for each other. My dad was there. Hmm. Synchronicity. Our Town-y.
So, Kate. Kate read Krista a beautiful back-and-forth she had with Matt de la Peña about how children’s book authors should talk to kids about the truth of the world’s pain. Kate's response to Matt brings up bearing. And it reminds me that we get through. The Sorrow/Joy. Like one word–sorrowjoy. Like E.E. Cummings. Certainly E.E. has joysorrow in a poem somewhere, it rings a bell. (Oh! It’s “sorrow’s own joys”...I used to have that poem all but memorized. Now it rattles the far recesses of my brain. Brain Recess. That sounds fun! I digress.). So should we? Talk to kids about sorrowjoy? Darklight? Yes.
Books teach us how to bear. I’m still learning. Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperfield just schooled me in the essential art of bearing.
Anyway, Kate again. She talks about Charlotte’s Webb. About her tough childhood. And her friend from childhood reading Charlotte’s Webb over and over. Recently, she asked her friend why. Wishful, magical thinking? Maybe Charlotte won’t die this time? Her friend’s answer defines the weightless weight of the verb “to bear.” She says, “I knew that a terrible thing was going to happen, and I also knew that it was going to be okay somehow. I thought that I couldn’t bear it, but then when I read it again, it was all so beautiful. And I found out that I could bear it.”
So Kate poses a question to storytellers who take up the “sacred task” of talking to children. “How do we tell the truth and make that truth bearable?” Her answer is love. She says, “E.B. White loved the world. And in loving the world, he told the truth about it–its sorrows, its heartbreak, its devastating beauty. He trusted his readers enough to tell them the truth, and with that truth came comfort and a feeling that we are not alone.”
So, BEAR. Because we have to practice the heavy and the light. We have to carry ourselves when things are pressing and when nothing is pressing and we might float away. To bear is to touch–it’s animal in the most majestic sense. We miss it if we’re only cerebral. Which brings us to…
MOVE
“Everything that waits is also preparing itself to move.” There it is, MOVE. And that’s Margaret Renkl writing in The Comfort of Crows in a section called “The Season of Sleeping” detailing the workings of winter, even when everything looks dead. Feels dead. But is not dead. Even when sadness doesn’t just dip in but sets up shop and stays a while. Everything feels dead. Looks dead. But–tendrils of wind, stirrings underneath–isn’t.
I go in and out of movement like I go in and out of sadness. And in those dead moments, things are more alive than I know on the surface. I’m reading. I’m processing. I’m sitting with these authors as they sit with me. Communing across time.
We move because we’re here. We move because we won’t always be. We move because what else? It’s like a children’s story I’m writing about bouncing. Learned buoyancy. Oh, like the art of grinning. Cheer me on, won’t you? Keep me bouncing.
To move is to launch headlong into mystery. Moving is a necessity and yet the hardest of all. Harder than the grinning and the bearing. You know, when I am stuck and feeling trapped, and executive functioning is down the toilet and the Grey Gardens raccoons have taken up residence in my brain and I’m feeding them, I need to move.
To move is a cry of, “I’m worth it.” Marcel the Shell will tell you this. Moving is saying, “I am the stardust–yes, ‘beautiful and grotesque and all the rest.’”
Speaking of moving, specs of seeds or flower dust float through the air right now, backlit by the morning sun. Busy and industrious as ants. Up, up and away. The purpose of glitter is to shine. To be as you are and a bit brighter. The wisdom of Pride Parades and little kids and beautiful, iridescent fish.
So, MOVE. Because we have to, because we must. Not to get from A to B, but to bring us full circle or better yet a spiral…rising up and rooting down.
What is Grin Bear Move? It’s the things I see when I choose to see. Like right now I see the outline of an arched window stenciled in shadow on the wall, expertly framed over the pot filled with spilling pothos. When I say pot, it’s a cooking pot I dubbed “ruined” after bailing water out of our basement and yard years ago. Or maybe it was catching water from a leaky roof crumbing down bits of popcorn ceiling and old house guts. I can’t even remember why or how the pot was ruined. Or why I was beside myself at the time. But right now, the light is dancing, the shadows of the maple leaves out front work their earthly magic (halfway between earth and sky). And nothing is ruined. Or it’s beautiful because it was.
Look up with me and see. That’s the grinning and the bearing and the moving.
Images for this essay were sourced from some of my choreography through the years.