Fathers Dream While Sons Live

There are so many compromises necessary if you are to be a good parent in modern American society. I have no idea if anything resembling our dilemma exists elsewhere, but I suspect it does.

Because the common element is time -- there never is enough of it. There also are the laws of physics -- you can't be in two places at the same time.

But what about this? What if your heart is split, and wants you to be in two places at once? What if you are willing, with all of your energy, to fight time, and try to force it to allow you to be both a good parent and a good friend, or lover, or worker?

As to the last question, you will get a speeding ticket, so forget it.

Time and physics.

As for time, it's not how much of it you have; it's how you use it. But as for physics there is no hope. Nobody ever defeated the laws of physics.

I've been told by girlfriends that being a good parent was "sexy." I've been told by girlfriends unless I reduced my time with my kids to be with them more, it was "over." * I've been told so many things that my head literally spins, like only a cartoon character's head can.

Then again, maybe I am a cartoon. Who in modern America has six kids? What writer, always living on the edge, supports his family through the good (moneyed) times and the bad (normal).

I've always hoped to be able to consider myself "normal," as probably most of us do. But there is nothing normal about my life, my choices, or my outcomes.

Let's just say, hypothetically, that my girlfriend leaves me. Happens every day, right, all over the land.

So get over it, right?

Guess what? The first week after she leaves me one of my kids has a school crisis -- bad grade in a tough subject that requires Dad's involvement.

The second week, another kid has a social crisis, left out of a love triangle too painful to admit, but which you sense, and which you eventually draw out of her.

The third week, another kid is injured in a soccer game. Luckily, after X-rays, it is determined to be "only" a bad sprain, which will require weeks of treatment.

Think about it. How the hell am I supposed to get over the loss of love in the midst of all of this drama?

The answer is I can't.

But a far deeper question is whether someone like me, in a place like this, can even afford to fall in love. Maybe it is out of the question, and maybe that is the biggest mistake I ever could have made.

Cliche: "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

You decide. The lonely hell that love lost has consigned me to endure allows for no answers whatsoever.

***

Lovely, warm day. Soccer scrimmage. Son, as always, excited. Early on, makes an error, which on defense is almost always fatal. This one was. You can see he is burning with hurt pride, looking for revenge -- not against any person but against the God of Errors. The God that stalks us all.

But he's an athlete, a young man who uses his body to defeat whatever Gods choose to stand in his way.

I'm a mere sideliner, but I know my son. I know there will be another play.

And here it comes. Here is one of the fastest players on the other squad with the ball on a breakaway, closing in on goal.

And here he comes, the defender. Streaking at what seems the speed of light, he smashes the striker off the ball, assumes control and turns it upfield, far out of danger.

Later, I ask him, "How exactly did you do that?"

"I don't know.It was instinctual."

Sports allow you to make mistakes and then atone for them by brilliance.

But a mistake in love -- there is no remedy for that. No second chance; no replay. No happy ending; no bright new day. No beating time; no beating physics; no solving dilemmas; no second chances.

You can win and lose in both realms, but only in one does the loss actually matter. As an athlete, you'll "live to play another day."

With love lost, there never will be another day at all.

So you stand on the sideline, cheering for your son, hoping his dreams turn out better than yours. It may be a poor substitute for living your own life, some would say, but you wouldn't be anywhere else.

And that's a law of physics, and the heart, as well.

* You know what I have never had? A girlfriend who truly wanted to be part of my family. I have never had that.

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Reading, Writing and Feeling

Somehow I guess I had overlooked Norwegian Wood, the Murakami novel that is now a film in Japan. But I did, so I got a copy and read it straight through in two days.

Trying to figure out what it is about his writing that I like, I came up with this: It goes down easily, like a smoothie. Most of the time, that is.

Then there is the punch in the stomach, where he delivers plot elements, usually the death of a beloved character, that is hard to take. He writes about these deaths with rare eloquence: "...no truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it..."

I do have an editor's criticism. Only in places where his description s people or places go into too much detail does my mind begin to wander and my eye skip ahead until he finds his way back to the narrative. Here, his writing needs to be tightened up.

***

The other novel I read is a different genre altogether: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson. Like Murakami, Larsson is masterly at drawing a character, particularly a female character.

The protagonist in this book -- a computer hacker named Lisbeth Salander -- is unforgettable. Lucky that she appears in his other two novels, and I'm sorry that the author died before he could write more.

***

Writing as therapy, writing as a way to vent; writing as a way to heal; writing as a way to reclaim hope. These are all valid uses of the written word. Words, like moods, come and go. Sometimes, a storm blows in. Afterwards, the sun returns.

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In Forward Gear

A young African-American woman asked if I wanted her seat on the bus. I said no. Back home, I stared in the mirror -- do I look old?

Later on the same bus another young African-American woman offered her seat to an elderly man.

The reason for my bus ride (I don't like the buses here) was jury duty. Every year or so, I get a summons to appear, but I've never served on a jury and probably never will. Once the prosecutor in any criminal or civil case learns my profession, he asks for me to be dismissed.

So the whole exercise seems pointless. This time it was beyond pointless. "You've already been excused," the guy at the desk told me after my bus ride downtown. "last Thursday."

Okay, whatever. Back to the bus line in the other direction. This time nobody offered seats to anybody but a woman in a wheelchair backed up to let a confused-seeming man with two small dogs room to stand with them out of the aisle.

Entering Safeway, the automatic doors only opened part-way as a woman approached at the same moment I did. "It seems reluctant to let us in," I said, and she smiled. Buying lunch foods for my boys, who are here with me every night this week.

They both lift weights multiple times a day, with noticeable effect on their upper arms and shoulders. It's all male-stuff around here; my daughter is on a trip to snow country. "I'll miss you," she said as she kissed me good-bye.

The warm weather was swept aside by a cutting wind today. But buds are on the trees, blossoms have opened, flowers are out. The smell of spring is in the air -- lilac, wisteria, jasmine.

It's a time of renewal. For me, a time of relative calm, as I contemplate the changes in my life that are underway. No one remains static; what characterized me a few months ago is no longer entirely true.

Now I'm forward-looking. No more checking the rear-view mirror. What's gone is gone.

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As Your Time Comes

Earlier this evening, at a memorial for a friend who died recently, I was sitting a bit apart from the rest of the crowd with my two-year-old grandson. The ceremony was on the back deck of a museum with a broad view of San Francisco Bay.

Below us, swimmers walked by in towels or with their wetsuits half off. Children rode their trikes with training wheels. Lovers strolled hand in hand. Some people walked dogs. Some dogs looked to be walking people.

Many of those below looked up to the solemn scene: A Buddhist Monk lighting candles and the gathered friends and family of the departed chanting and singing and praying.

Up above was the mourning; down below was life, vibrant and fresh.

As the designated babysitter, I knew I probably would not be able to stay for the entire ceremony, and I did not. Although he behaved wonderfully, my little companion eventually tired of the scene and led me back indoors, and then, ultimately, back to "Grandpa's house."

The person whose life we gathered to celebrate would have appreciated the humor inherent in a memorial service conducted just above half-naked beach goers. She would have appreciated a solemn moment in a place of great beauty. She would have appreciated her husband's stirring, funny talk. She would have loved every minute of it.

***

I always cry at funerals; I always cry at weddings. I cry at births, I cry at deaths. I cry at good news and at bad news. It occurs to me I cry all too often for a big, strong man like me.

As I move through crowds, I am always conscious of being bigger and taller than most people. When the kid next to me is my soccer-playing 16-year-old, we are both taller than most everyone else -- him especially, since he is now 6'1" tall. His "little" brother looks like he is about to become the tallest of all of us; at 14, he is visibly poking higher and higher into the atmosphere, to a level none of us in this family have previously reached.

He disclaims athletics, but yesterday dusted both me and his brother at "21" in the backyard basketball court. "It's funny how the basket looks closer now," he said as he sank shot after shot.

Of course, when you are tall, basketball becomes an entirely different game than it was when you were short.

***

People come and go in life. We all know this, but this confuses me greatly. Sometimes I wonder whether I am capable of knowing who is here and who isn't in conventional terms.

Let me try to explain.

I forgive people easily. There are many who done me harm in one way or another; just as I have harmed others. Some have dealt me great harm.

But with virtually all of them, when they approach me again, I easily forgive and welcome them back into my life.

Why?

Maybe it is the same reason while at our friend's memorial tonight, my eye was drawn more to the life below than the memory of life above. Time has never felt endless to me. For many years, particularly when I escaped death by an hour or so in India in early 1971, I've not had the capacity to stay mad at anyone for very long.

They will die. I will die. We all will die.

Why hold a grudge?

They will suffer pain; I will suffer pain; we all will suffer pain.

Why not feel compassion?

I know this much -- I am at my very best when comforting another dealing with a loss that overwhelms them. I know this state; clearly, it is familiar territory emotionally, for me.

Deep emotions like this scare some people. But they don't scare me. The honor of comforting a friend about a loss that is hurting them is one I never shy away from.

If they let me in then, a friend will be a friend for life. Life and death.

There is no other way to close this post but to say that I am glad my grandson was there tonight, at a memorial ceremony, even if he didn't know exactly what was going on. It didn't matter, because when it comes to spiritual moments, even babies know.

We all know.

May she rest in peace, the one who has left this realm. May the rest of us cherish what time we have left, and try to see the world again through the eyes of a two-year-old.

"Look, Grandpa. A sailboat. It's going out to sea."

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You Might Call It Love

My Universal Theory of Love has to do not with how people fall into love -- that seems pretty obvious, but why. Also, I can't write about how or why people fall out of love because I do not understand that part.

What I think I understand and therefore can theorize about is the why. There's nothing original in my theory -- people fall in love because they need to. They seek intimacy, security, company, partnership, friendship and sex, not necessarily in that order.

The only part that interests me here is intimacy. So maybe what I have created is a Universal Theory of Intimacy. Here's how it goes:

Our expectations of intimacy form in childhood. If our parents are warm and loving toward us, regardless of their other flaws, we grow up expecting to experience that same intimacy as adults. We seek it in others, and a match occurs when the right balance of intimacy and individuality is found.

But if our parents neglected us emotionally, or worse yet, abandoned us, it's possible that as adults we will flee from intimacy when someone gets too close to us, because it begins to feel claustrophobic.

Adults can and do change their fate when it comes to intimacy. Besides therapy, which really can help, self-awareness is a tool for change. Sometimes, one amazingly loving partner can help to heal the wounds of a childhood bereft of intimacy. I've seen couples like this.

The intimacy question may remain invisible to many people; they just do not think in those terms; if so, they are likely to repeat patterns in relationships throughout their lives. They start new relationships much easier than those whose intimacy quotient is higher, and they break up much easier as well.

The pattern is to start and end relationships over intimacy. They tell other stories, some of which are compelling, but my Theory has merit. Once someone becomes "too close," they flee.

The problem here is that opposites attract. Sames attract too but those relationships often are doomed for different reasons. Opposites can form terrific relationships in intimacy, because they each have something vital to offer one another.

The deeply intimate person needs to learn how to be a strong individual on his or her own, to not let the quest for intimacy turn into neediness. Nobody long appreciates a partner who appears to not be able to make it on his own -- at least not in this culture.

The trick is to learn how to strike this balance while giving the gift of greater intimacy to the person accustomed to fleeing from it. Assuming self-awareness, everyone involved can calibrate their roles so that a true couple emerges.

Couples that last, I believe, solve this intimacy riddle. They are capable of cyclical adjustments -- both pulling apart for a while and then growing much closer again. An intimately balanced life supports both yin and yang.

The person seeking deep intimacy has to flee sometimes; the one who usually leave when things get too hot has to come back sometimes. People make mistakes, but our hearts tell us when we do.

There's a lot more to this Theory; it's complex stuff, and I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I do fall in love, however, and in various relationships I've played both roles described above.

That's because all of this is relative. There are no absolutes. And it all changes as we age, and grow emotionally.

Admitting a mistake about intimacy is much harder than admitting an affair. The latter does not necessarily spell the end of a marriage -- sometimes it even brings people closer. But pinpointing a different in intimate needs often sounds and feels like blame, because we cannot fundamentally alter who we are in this respect.

The odd and beautiful thing, though, is we can learn how to balance one another. When she needs distance, he can provide it, without guilt-ripping. When she needs intimacy, he can provide that too.

No blame games. No tricks. Just working together to stay in balance.

You might cal that love.

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