Listen to thisI remember struggling to apply this characteristic of practice for the first few years of my career. Maybe a more accurate statement would be that I struggled to recognize that I was applying this characteristic. For whatever reason, I couldn’t reflect on and identify myself using it. But I had an experience in 2014, in Moncton, New Brunswick at the Canadian National Child and Youth Care Conference that finally offered me the opportunity to see myself experiencing it.
A group of folks had facilitated a workshop on the use of African drumming in practice with young people. I missed the “official” workshop that day, but, that evening, I was fortunate enough to catch the “unofficial” version (and if you’ve been to a conference, you know that unofficial workshops are the best ones anyway). There were a few dozen of us in the large conference room, and someone said they wished they would have made it to the drumming workshop, but missed it. A few other people murmured in agreement. One of the facilitators caught wind of this, then, one way or another, we all ended up in a big, wide circle, each with our own drum. We all took turns creating a simple beat and everyone else had to follow. Every half-minute or so, one of the facilitators would point at someone else and yell out for them to jump in. That person would take the lead, and we all shifted to reattune to someone else’s frequency.
That was it. Rhythmicity.
Serve and return interactions that occur between a child and caregiver are integral to brain development, particularly in early childhood (Center on the Developing Brain, 2024). When a toddler holds a book up to their caregiver, who is looking down at their phone, the choice to take the book, and sit down and read it together is pivotal. In that choice the caregiver chooses to share moments of rhythmicity with their child, they choose to enter a single moment together (Freeman, Fulcher, Garfat, Gharabaghi, 2018). And, in that moment together, the young person’s brain begins to make neural connections, connections that are crucial to the development of both communication and social skills (Center on the Developing Brain, 2024). Also, according to Reynolds and Burton (2016), serve-and-return interactions are also crucial to language development. While serve-and-return interactions are often discussed in the context of early childhood development (the hugs, eye contact, or verbal exchanges that are returned by a caregiver after being served up by a toddler or infant) I believe the concept of rhythmicity can serve to stretch this concept further into other day-to-day interactions between young people of all ages, and those who are caring for them. Not to mention, the young people we often find ourselves caring for in our field have likely missed these serve-and-return interactions at a time when good-enough raised young people would have been more likely to experience them.
Anyway ...
I think the drumming experience is what finally made the concept of rhythmicity sink in for me because the involvement of music made it virtually impossible to ignore. While music is certainly one obvious and meaningful way to create what Freeman, Fulcher, Garfat, Gharabaghi (2018) would call a “synchronized, dynamic connection with another,” I believe there are as many ways to achieve the same type of attunement as we could likely imagine.
Something as simple as showing up for a 7:00am shift in a 24/7 group care setting when you are aware there are young people expecting you to do just that, is an opportunity to enter a moment together. A young person asks you before you leave at 7:00pm the night before, “you’re back in tomorrow at seven, right?” There’s the serve. You arrive ten minutes early and are there in time to head into their room when they call for a staff at 6:55am. There’s the return.
And that’s the Rhythm.
It could be the rhythm of yours and a young person’s crayon scraping back and forth across a paper as you color together in silence. It could be the rhythm of a shootaround routine while you help a young person practice their jump shot. It could be Taco Tuesday, Sundae Sunday, or Friday Night Pizza and Movies. The opportunities to attune to a young person and enter a moment with them are everywhere.
The story that follows is a story about a Child and Youth Care Practitioner who recognizes these opportunities, and intentionally uses them to enter a rhythm in relationship with others. He values that rhythm for the predictability in creates, and understands that, predictability creates safety. He enters these rhythms to meet the needs of the young people he works with. He enters them to strengthen relationships with his colleagues. And, at a time when one of his most reliable rhythms, one most of us take for granted, the turning of night into day and back again, is disrupted, he enters these rhythms, at least a little bit, for himself.
Long Dark
I wasn’t aware of it as the plane dipped down through the clouds towards the little Arctic Hamlet I was heading into for my 6-week, rotational shift in a 24/7 group care facility, but I had just seen the sun fully crest on the horizon for the last time in about 6 weeks. It was late fall, and my plane was headed for an unpaved, ice-coated runway, in the High Arctic. Western Nunavut, as a matter of fact, if I’m being more specific.
Everything up to this point had been part of the rhythm I had come to expect from the trip North. The multiple connecting flights across country were the same, and I started another re-read of my favorite fantasy novel on the planes to give myself a world to dive into when I needed to detach from the physical reactions my body had to the anxiousness that went along with the intense work I was about to embark on. I had the same Chicken burger at the airport Chili’s in Calgary, and curled up on the same, large, half-circle leather couch I had slept on during those last two overnight layovers waiting for my second to last flight to Yellowknife. To be honest, the couch wasn’t comfortable, but it was exactly where I expected it to be, which is something. I took my customary photo with the stuffed polar bear in the Yellowknife airport and grabbed a copy of “Up North” magazine on that last Canadian North flight to that isolated, fly-in-only Hamlet in Western Nunavut.
Everything was as I had come to expect it to be. Predictable. The trip and the task at hand were daunting, but things that could be counted on were always comforting.
Then the plane stopped on the runway, and I looked outside.
I checked my watch. 2:17pm. I looked outside again. What I saw was not part of the usual arrival routine. The sky wasn’t pitch black, but I had never seen it look the way it did just then, at shortly after 2:00pm, in my life. On the horizon, there was a blend of lightish purples resting on top of the thinnest of orange glows from what remained of the sun’s light. My eyes wandered up into that great big northern sky, and the light purples faded into deeper and deeper shades of violet, blue, and, ultimately, overhead, the beginning of the dark, black night sky. This was not part of my rhythms.
I disembarked from the door-turned-staircase of the plane and walked across the icy runway. If you’ve never taken a breath of fresh Arctic air, the first one usually catches you off guard. This one hit the back of my throat and stopped my full breath short in its tracks. I was, however, ready for it and didn’t gag the way I had back when that minus-40-something air slammed against my trachea for the first time. I switched to my nose and felt the hairs inside of it freeze as I took in the cold that way. That experience probably sounds harsh, but, honestly, words can’t capture how good it felt.
I made my way into the airport, which, if you are unfamiliar with travel in the Arctic, was a structure that would, like many things in Up North, challenge a Southerner’s way of viewing the world. It was (maybe) a 50-foot by 50-foot building. It had a small store (more of a stand), with some basic convenience store munchies, smack in the middle of it. There were two check-in terminals on one side, and a small baggage collection belt on the other. There were about a dozen standard airport seats bolted to the floor in between. That was it. No shoe shining, no vending machines selling iPods, and no Chicken burgers from Chili’s. It was enough, the first time I saw it, to really throw me off my standard rotational axis when I walked in, but I knew what to expect by now, had grown to appreciate the size of the airport as a matter of fact.
Funny story: I met another Southerner on my first trip up North in the Spring, maintenance guy that keeps our program’s building up to licensing standards, who told me one of his favorite things about living in the North was that he hadn’t waited in a line longer than 3 people in the 10 years he’d lived here. This airport was a nice reminder of that benefit.
Anyway …
I took a seat to wait for the luggage belt to start up.
The buzzer buzzed and the belt started moving.
I stood up and walked over to grab my bag that had already pushed its way out of the heavy black, rubber curtains.
See what I mean? No waiting around.
I grabbed my bag, full of 6 weeks' worth of everything I would need on rotation and was heading back to a seat to wait for my ride when I heard, “EH! Francis!” Mykal, the CYC-P I was relieving, hollered across the airport.
I walked past the seat I was headed for and rolled my bag behind me, and the wheels deekadeekadeeka’d across the space between the tiles.
Mykal came at me with his arms held out wide and his right hand slightly in front of him. I was not typically the kind of guy who went in for proximity-oriented greetings, but this was the third time I had relived Mykal from his rotation, and we both knew I wasn't getting away with a fist bump. I put my right hand in his, but still wasn’t ready for the sharp pull into the half handshake, half-hug and I dropped my bag on the floor. There were a couple of big back-pats for each of us, and then I had my personal bubble back.
“S’good to see you, man,” Mykal told me as I picked the handle of my bag of the tiled floor. “I’m thinking though, I’m probably always happier to see you than you are to see me. Whenever I see you, it means I’m seeing my kids again soon.”
“Nah,” I say, “always good to get to the house after one of your rotations.”
“Ha,” Mykal snorted. “You only say that ‘cause you only come after one of my rotations.”
“Fair,” I grinned in response.
We left the warmth of the airport, and the cold wind lashed across my cheeks. I blinked through my lashes sticking together while they froze. The ice crunched under my feet, like only that Arctic ice can. The sound was sort of like a deep squeak, and you didn’t just hear it, you could feel the vibrations run up your leg and into your ears. Mykal popped the trunk of the Suzuki, I slid the handle of my luggage back into the bag, chucked it into the trunk, slammed the hatch and fell into the passenger-side seat.
The airport was a few minutes outside of town, and we drove in silence for a minute or two. I stared out the window at the tundra. The long sunset left the impossibly vast expanse of white ice and snow with a peculiar purple hue. I’d never seen any land look quite like this one did.
“Take a good look,” Mykal told me, jerking his head toward my window and the last bit of light stretching over the land. “That’s as much sun as you’re gonna see until you take off in 6 weeks.”
“That’s it, eh,” I stated plainly in response, still staring out the window and across the tundra. I could feel the thrill of landing leaking out of me and the exhaustion of the 18 hours of travel seeping in.
“It ain’t so bad, man,” Mykal continued. “For real. Southern eyes, man. Take those Southern eyes off and the long dark starts to grow on ya.”
Mykal was the one who taught me about our Southern eyes. I decided to trust him on this one as well.
“You brought vitamin D and B12 though, right?”
I shook the pockets of my coat and the pills rattled around for Mykal to hear. “Carried them on,” I confirmed, “just like you told me.”
“Good,” he said. “I used to think they didn’t help, so I stopped taking them last year on my dark rotation. Trust me, they help. Anyway,” Mykal went on, “the boys are at school until three thirty, you might as well crash for a couple hours when we get back. I changed the sheets, so the bed’s fresh for ya. The boys helped us cook your favorite, so that’s supper.”
“Spaghetti and meat sauce?” I asked.
“With cheesy garlic bread on the side,” Mykal added.
I smiled and leaned the back of my head on the seat, closed my eyes. “Tradition,” I said.
* * *
After a couple hours sleep, a hot shower, and a brief phone call home to check in, I headed down to the kitchen. The symphony of dishes clanging, utensils stirring, and oven doors banging closed greeted me as I entered.
“Francis!” Conan, the youngest boy in the program greeted me as I walked in. “Really could sleep forever. Could play Skip-Bo?”
I dropped into a seat across from him at the long, heavy table in the dining room. “Regular?” I asked. “Or countdown-style?”
Conan paused his straightening out of the deck in front of him and thought for a second. “Up and down?”
“Let’s do it,” I agreed, and we were off.
We didn’t say much while Mykal, Hiktok and Crystal set the table around us. All that was said was the counting up and down of the cards we played as we whittled down the decks we each had in front of us. The game was a familiar one for both of us. The rules were firmly established (even though we made them up during my last rotation), and we quickly fell into the rhythm of the game.
“One, two,” Conan said playing cards from his hand. He paused to look at the discard piles in front of him. “Three, four, five,” he chanted as his turn kept going. Another pause to glance back at the cards in his hand. “Four, three,” he smiled as he pulled from the deck he needed to get rid of to win the game. “Two.” He flipped the next card. “Three!” He exclaimed. He flipped the next card, an ‘8.’ He scanned the various decks in front of him to check for another move. There wasn’t one. “Done,” he said. “You go.”
And back and forth we went like that until supper was in front of us. The game wasn’t finished, but we had a way to decide things in a case like this. “Alright, bud,” I announced. “Supper’s ready, let’s count what we have left in our decks. Lowest wins.”
Conan counted his deck, and I counted mine.
“Seven,” he announced.
“Ah,” I conceded, “nine. You got me again.”
I scooped up the cards, brought them to the coffee table in the adjacent living room and sat back down to eat. We fell into dinner conversation. Mykal told me about Hiktok’s goal to cook supper three times a week. Hiktok was the oldest boy in the house, and usually had goals geared towards increasing his independence. Hiktok chimed in to tell me we were going to have char chowder on Friday. Conan told me about watching the Raptors games with Mykal over the last few months and all the snacks they made while watching. Wesley, the third guy who lived in the house with us, came in about halfway through the meal and told us about a fight two of his friends had got into at the youth center in town. He also reminded me that it would be his turn to pick which movies we rented from the library on the upcoming Friday.
The conversation dwindled and everybody’s bellies filled up, so we all helped clear the table. I sprayed it and wiped it clean with some paper towels after helping Conan and Wesley clear the dishes. Hiktok pushed in the chairs around the table. Mykal came back into the dining room from the kitchen and took the spray bottle from me.
“Let me finish that, man. Go up and get some sleep, read your wizard book or something,” he smirked at me.
I let him take the bottle and stretched my arms over my head with a long groan.
“Could go to the gym?” Hiktok asked me, serving up an opportunity.
“Nah, Dude,” Mykal answered Hiktok for me. “He’s gotta get some rest after that flight.”
“It’s good,” I told Mykal. Hiktok and I had made a routine out of gym sessions during my last rotation and got to the point of going 4 or 5 times a week. Typically, I was initiating the workouts, so I figured the bid by Hiktok shouldn’t be wasted. “Quick back and triceps session?” I returned to Hiktok’s serve.
“Was thinking chest and biceps,” he countered.
“Let’s go then,” I said
* * *
After supper we walked across town. We trudged through the ice-covered ball field, behind the high school, to the rink across from the health centre. We scanned into the gym entrance that was on the opposite side of the rink’s main entrance using the membership fob our program had purchased last year. We headed for the change room and peeled off the many layers required to brave the late fall, evening air, and got down into our shorts and t-shirts. We kicked off our boots and laced up our indoor running shoes, then we hit the weight room.
The weight room in town was like the airport. When you looked at it with Southern eyes, it wasn’t much. I had, however, grown to love it. It had a rack of dumbbells, 10-50 pounds, a proper bench press rack, and a universal gym contraption that could be adjusted to accommodate all types of exercises. And, of course, in all the time I’d been using it, I never once had to wait in a line.
“Where we starting?” I asked Hiktok swinging my arms loosely around me.
“Curls,” he said without skipping a beat.
“Curls it is,” I agreed and picked up a set of weights. “And remember-”
“If I can’t do at least 8 reps, then s’too heavy,” Hiktok finished for me.
“You got it,” I chuckled. “Odds or evens?” I asked him.
“Can do odds,” he said, squaring up to the mirror and straightening his back. He started pulling the weight up to his chin and I followed his lead. “One,” he grunted.
We let the weight down slowly. “Two,” I counted as we pulled them back up.
“Three,” Hiktok continued, we were back into our groove now. Just like that.
“Four.”
And on we went like that. We did three sets of 10 reps with the dumbbells. We said almost nothing aloud unless we were counting our reps. Between sets, we shook out our arms, did some deep breathing and walked around in aimless circles before settling into another round of lifting.
“What’s next?” I breathed heavily after our third set of standing curls.
“Bench,” Hiktok suggested as he headed to one side of the empty bar. He lifted two 25-pound plates onto one side of the bar. “You first,” he told me.
I picked up my own pair of 25-pound plates and loaded them on the other side of the bar, sat at the end of the bench, leaned back, bent my head around the bar and let myself fall against the cool leather bench.
“I’m going for 12 here,” I said, gripping my hands around the bar in preparation to lift it.
“It’s good,” Hiktok confirmed. He moved behind me, placed the index and middle fingers on each of his hands underneath the bar, between my hands, and braced himself to spot me.
I lifted the bar, brought it slowly down to a half-inch above my chest, pushed it back up.
“One,” Hiktok started, leaving his fingers against the bar while I lifted, but not helping me with the weight of it.
Down again, and up again.
“Two.”
Down and up again.
“Three.”
When I got to nine, I started slowing down.
“Breath,” Hiktok reminded me.
Deep breath in on the way down, hard breath out on the push up.
“Ten.”
Eleven was a bit more of a struggle.
“Go,” Hiktok raised his voice a bit. “Last one!”
Deep breath in, long, slow, hard breath out. Hiktok helped me lift with just his fingers still on the bar, and only just as much as I needed.
“Twelve!” He grabbed the bar and guided it back to the rack with me.
I swung up from my back and jumped off the bench. “You’re up,” I told him. Without another word, Hiktok took one of the 25-pound plates off his side, and I took the other off mine. Hiktok laid on the bench and I slid in behind the bar. I put the same two fingers where he did, and he gripped his hands where mine had just been. “What’re you going for?” I asked him.
“Ten,” he responded, taking a deep breath in and letting it out. He took another breath in and lifted the bar off the rack. He let it slowly down to just above his chest and pushed it back up.
“One,” I started counting...
References
Centre on the Developing Child. (2024). Serve and return. Harvard University. Serve and Return (harvard.edu)
Freeman, J., Fulcher, L., Garfat, T., Gharabaghi, K. (2018). Characteristics of a relational child and youth care approach revisited. CYC-Online, 236 pp 7-49. CYC-Online October 2018 (cyc-net.org)
Reynolds, A., Burton, S. (2016). Serve and return: communication foundations for early childhoos music policy stakeholders. Arts Education Policy Review,140-153.
