Rosemary on Water

All you can know for sure is that time passes. The herbal stand blooms. The wind peels away its petals and drops them onto the surface of the pond waiting below.

As they drift aimlessly, the fish look up. They know this isn't food.

The sun looks down.

The camera clicks.

A friend's husband has cancer, and it sounds bad, very bad. It's the aggressive kind.

You think back over decades about the ways in which this friend has helped you and you have helped her.

You remember her joy at finally finding a good man when they'd both reached an age where this kind of love story seemed impossible.

But, for them, it happened.

For a while, all seemed possible. They both have been in fantastic shape for their ages, which are measured by the scores, not the decades.

Still, time catches up with us all. You remember moments, when you all mixed happily. You and your partner and she with hers. There was an ethnic, national, and cultural parallel in your choices.

Your choice turned out to be a fool's choice. Hers turned out to be about true love.

Now she faces the prospect of all too soon losing her husband forever.

By contrast, you have no one like that left to lose. That's because she chose wisely and you did not. All is in balance in the end. So your heart goes out to her, for that is the greater loss, the loss of love shared compared to love imagined, but never shared at all.

For the former, memories worth sharing.

For the latter, only silence, and the utter lack of any meaning whatsoever.

The again, friendships endure. Imposters disappear. And God is watching.

-30-

Family Sunday Night

A visit to our neighborhood from one of the elite boys' teams from Manchester, U.K., tonight led to what my 16-year-old soccer player called the "most exciting Sunday night" he can ever remember.

For hours before the game, he couldn't restrain himself or stay inside -- he was racing around with his soccer ball, kicking it against buildings, fences, and practicing his many moves, balancing the ball on a toe, twirling it up to his forehead, dropping it down on the opposite heel, curling it around a leg, feinting as if to pass it one way, stopping the ball in mid-pass and reversing it.

If you've never watched soccer players as they fool around with the ball, the closest comparison I can make is with ballet. Arms and hands are strictly for balance; everything relies on your legs and feet.

In a way it is like revisiting our ancestral heritage as primates in forests, who developed startling skills with their lower extremities that no longer are required for our survival -- except on the soccer pitch.

As the two teams prepared for tonight's match -- a friendly challenge -- Aidan and his teammates were joking about how big some of the Manchester lads were. Aidan pointed to the biggest of them all, number 11, and told his buddies, "Watch, that will be the guy I have to guard."

Sure enough. As a center back, he usually draws the toughest player the opposition has to offer.

It was a fun game to watch. The English players were terrific athletes -- fast, strong, and used to playing an extremely physical game. It became obvious early on that they would win this game, but it was equally obvious that our local team was improving right before our eyes and could match up athletically, on a skills level, with a team where several of the players are already signed on with professional English soccer teams.

After the game, Aidan was all smiles. He knew he hadn't played a perfect game (#11 scored one goal on him), but he also knew he had played extremely well, disrupting at least a dozen scoring opportunities for Manchester, and more or less boxing #11 out of the game except for that one time, when the English kid made a great move, a great shot, and a well-deserved goal.

***

This, for us, was a family affair. Our extended family reaches around the globe when it comes to soccer. Little Luca was on the sidelines, cheering for his Uncle Aidan, as were his parents, and Grandma from France, herself a soccer Mom of a great player, now executive of another English team, in Liverpool.

Meanwhile, the youngest attendee by far was little Sophia, who at the age of nine days was also present at her very first soccer game! When she got hungry and started crying, the half of Aidan's team sitting nearby on the bench all turned their heads in her direction.

The sound of a baby that young is a very special thing to hear. And if you want to talk about primal reactions, try letting a bunch of teenage boys, in possession of physical powers they do not yet even comprehend, hear the sound of a newborn nearby when they otherwise would be intently watching their teammates on the pitch.

And then ask yourself what fathers are all about.

***

The game ended when the city-mandated curfew arrived and the field suddenly went dark. As he jogged off the field, coated with sweat, to greet his extended family (who were all shivering in the night air) on the sidelines, Uncle Aidan scooped up little Luca in his arms.

You know what? That was my favorite moment of all...

Survival of the Nicest

Driving her to her game, parking the car, then walking behind my daughter as she hurried to her soccer game this afternoon, I could sense her tension. It was palpable. Today her team was playing a team of girls who on average were two years older, and therefore that much bigger and more experienced.

Also, a number of those opponents were eighth-graders who go to her school, and it turns out there has been a bunch of "trash-talking" this week, with the older girls telling the younger ones, "We are going to crush you."

Hmmm. This is where I have to slow down, look inside, and consider how I really feel about the idea of competition.

This, of course, goes beyond sports, as competition fuels our capitalist economy, and on many other levels, triggers primeval fears inside a species of hairless monkeys with big brains always alert for threats to our survival.

So, yes, it cuts deep.

***

You know something? When I am on the sideline, watching a game in which one of my kids is playing, I do hope their team wins. Very much. But I also hope that my child plays well, regardless of the score.

And many times, I hope that my player feels that she or he played well more than anything else.

This is an emotional world.

I have the privilege of being the parent of kids who do relatively well in things like sports and academics, so I am always proud of how well they have done, but I also have to admit that there is also something else going on inside me as I cheer for them.

And that is as a man.

As a man, I want only to win, only to be the best. I want to be the most successful, the most powerful and the kindest, sweetest, most generous, and feared human on the planet.

Why is this so?

***

My little girl's team was not crushed today, but they did lose, 0-3. She was exhausted afterward, whether from the heat or the defeat, who can say.

But she played hard and she played well.

In this life all you can do is the best that you can do. If you encounter someone able and willing to beat you or lie to you and screw you over, you probably will lose that fight.

But their "wins" are pyrrhic in nature.

I continue to believe that the decent and kind and true will prevail, not the cheaters, liars, betrayers, etc. Especially in emotional terms, it is and has never been about winning or losing; it is and always has been about how you play the game.

Opening Nights

What was a very brief "heat wave" turned into a night with a cutting wind as I watched out at the side of the pitch.

Lots of anticipation as the boys team from Manchester, UK, comes to play our guys this Sunday night. Big opportunity for this still inexperienced team with lots of raw talent to face players who grew up on soccer, morning, noon and night. It probably will be a lopsided contest, but who knows?

Picked up my youngest son from Virgin America today after his visit down at Cal Tech in Pasadena with my oldest son. What a great spring break for this academically oriented young man.

Fantasy baseball is back along with the real thing and this year I'm in two leagues -- the second one with all three of my boys. Now that my favorite sport is back, for real and in fantasy, and the spring soccer seasons are underway, I will once again be able to distract myself as I did last year from July until November.

Math homework with my daughter, cooking the kids meals, babysitting my grandkids, and driving all over the city and the Bay Area keeps me from having much time to reflect about all of the unpleasant things.

They're still there, still mystifying, illogical, maddening, disgusting, and capable of inducing hopelessness in a moment's notice, but I'm less likely to stay in those moments now.

Maybe the key to happiness is distracting yourself from reality to such an extent that you know longer know or care about all the crappy things that happen in life. The people who disappoint you, or worse; the work opportunities you do not get; the friendships lost; the lives of people you cared for, now gone; the relentless financial pressures in a recession without end; the worries of a parent, a single person unskilled at being single, a man aging who doesn't want to age at all.

There's nothing "graceful" about any of this; it may be in most ways a sordid mess, but being distracted by the better things makes you the last person to notice -- or care -- any longer.

After all, the brutality of a lonely, cold, winter of despair has passed now. There are flowers everywhere. New friendships blossom. The birds sing. Jasmine, wisteria, rosemary scents fill the house.

Best of all -- Go Giants!

-30-