The Day That Was

Fog coated our city, we knew the heat couldn't last. Out to the Presidio we went, and I watched as my 17-year-old coached his third game this fall. His 12 and 13 year old girls played their hearts out, implementing his game plan to perfection.

His little sister played her part very well.

By halftime, they had the lead, and he explained to them how they should play the second half to keep it.

They listened. And they won 2-0.

Victors! Big brother coach and little sister player.

Then he and I headed south to Hayward, for his game in one of the State Cup matches with his club team, the Seals.

He played very well but in a losing effort, 0-3.

That's how it goes in sports. You win one. You lose one. One minute you are up top and smiling; the next you are down and out.

Think about it. Sports are probably the best metaphor for life. I only wish I had been healthy enough as a kid to have competed myself, because if so, everything subsequently might have turned out differently.

As I drove him home after his club team's loss, the winning coach still felt good about his day. Very good, actually.

That you win some and lose some is something he knows.

But I don't.

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Weekend Preview

The heat continues here; old-timers call it "earthquake weather." Let's hope not. Friday nights are practice nights for this U-13 girls team and their young coach.

Saturdays are game days. Tomorrow's game will be in the Presidio at noon. After that, the coach will don his uniform for the drive south to Hayward, where he'll compete in a State Cup game with his club team.

I've always loved back-lit photographs this time of year. The angle of the sun in late afternoon brings out details and colors that remain obscured much of the year, or from other angles.

If we could back-light our own lives, maybe everything would look a little better than it does in the harsh glare of everyday reality. Or maybe we'd be even more captive to the illusions that trap most of us into believing that we know anything at all.

Anything at all.

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Old Men and Their Foolish Loves

Wakeful Dreamings

Summer is here while most people experience fall, but that's San Francisco for you. It was 95 the other day when I was in Palo Alto; 80-something yesterday in downtown SF. This morning's fog was cool but burned off quickly enough for sunbathing by those so inclined (there are a few around here) by late morning.

But I was writing and watching over my sick child, who called not long after being dropped at school at 7, having thrown up. So, back across town and back home again. After a day of rest, hopefully, tomorrow will be a day to get back to school and catch up.

I've been gathering the apples that fall in great volume in my backyard. They're not really edible, unless you are starving, but letting them lie there only leads to a rotten experience underfoot.

Still, I found one large green one that was pretty good today. Maybe I should gather up a bushel and try cooking something with them.

So many meetings, so many posts to write. So many stories to try and tell, few of which are my own. The best I can do on a blog like this is hint around at the things that really bother me, or inspire me, or visit me in the night.

There is one persistent dream that puzzles me. Someone is still with me who for quite a while has not been. Yet there she is. I don't get it; I don't understand why these dreams keep happening.

What am I supposed to do with this information? How I am to react?

As long, fitful bouts of sleep give way to the darkness of morning (no early sunrises any longer, now the seasonal pivot has occurred), I awake in confusion as to what and who is real or ever was, as opposed to who or what is fake and always was.

Or maybe that's a false choice, too absolute. Maybe, all was and will be gray, cloaked in illusion, much as the city is when it's bathed in fog. You cannot see very far, and what you do see is hazy -- more like an outline than anything tangible or real.

Grasping for pith from shadows is most certainly a dangerous exercise. What, for example, if there was something or someone there after all?

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A Day With Nothing But Bad Luck

The minute I got to the game today I had a bad feeling. When you've watched your kid play for so many (12) years, you know when something is wrong with him.

Even from way across the stadium, I could see that something was wrong with his left hand; he was holding it at a funny angle, and there was some sort of bandage or ice-pack attached to it.

I tried to get his attention but when I did he brushed me off.

That's when I knew for sure.

In any event, even if his hand was broken, which six and a half hours later I do not believe is the case, he would of course play the game.

Which he did.

But this was not to be one of the good days, the kind where you have a happy story to tell afterwards. Although he played well, his team's offense did not show up. And much like the deeply disappointing San Francisco Giants baseball team this season, his soccer team's offense is largely MIA.

They lost 0-1 to a vastly inferior team (by the numbers) and perhaps now their season, which started out so promising, is falling apart.

Or not.

Athletics is every bit as much about failure and recovery as it is success and consistency. An individual athlete playing a team sport has very little control over the outcome of any individual game -- all (s)he can do is do her very best and try to contribute.

Often, they have to play hurt, as #16 did today. He believed that a small bone at the base of his little finger was broken or dislocated, because it hurt so much. During one of the many collisions he sustained today, he winced and jumped around in obvious discomfort, shaking the hand again and again in order to try and make the pain calm down enough to keep playing on.

After it was over, dejected much more at losing than being hurt, he barely spoke a word on the long drive back home. We iced the hand, he took Ibuprofen, I felt it gingerly, trying to gauge where the pain was worst, and tried to evaluate how swollen it was.

After hours of this, my conclusion was it is probably a deep bone bruise, not a break. But I'm no doctor (and who can afford to go to them anyway these days?), so I think we will just hope for the best over the coming days.

There are really no words that can comfort a competitive athlete after a game like today's. His team faces a crisis of confidence and of leadership.

Whether they can find themselves in time is an open question -- next week they play two of the toughest teams in the city. Both routinely make mincemeat of the team they lost to today.

But that is what sports is like. Anyway who thinks it's easy hasn't played. And the longer you play, the higher level you reach, everything, including the competitive aspect, becomes magnified.

For now, we have to find a soft hand brace, so this injury doesn't interfere with our all-city defender's ability to continue to do his part -- win or lose -- as this season continues.

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Grit True

When I picked her up after school today, my daughter had her cross-country uniform on, ready to race in the first city-wide event of the season.

But she also was limping (she's had sore ankles for weeks) and was worried about the heat. It was over 80 degrees here in the Mission, where her school is located -- not good running weather, to put it mildly.

On the way to the Polo Fields, we stopped by Whole Foods in the Haight, so she could get a fruit roll and an apple. I also bought her a tube of Arnica, a homeopathic pain-relief cream that might (I hope) help relieve some of her chronic ankle pain.

Once the race started, she fell into the stream of runners near the rear. She was easy to spot, in her yellow uniform wearing #13, as she was the only girl from her school competing at the 7th/8th grade level.

As she neared the halfway point in the race, she was limping noticeably and dead last among the 40 or so girls competing. I called out to her as she passed, asking whether she was okay and whether she wanted to quit, given how badly she obviously was feeling.

She didn't answer, but ran on.

Then, something remarkable began to happen. As I watched her as the group rounded the first quarter of the second lap, I noticed that she was starting to pass other runners. First one, then two, then five, then ten, and by the time she was approaching the finish line, by my count there were at least 16 girls behind her.

On the final stretch, she ran at a strong pace and came in as #20.

Her face was red and she was favoring her right ankle as we embraced and I gave her her water bottle.

"My goal was to finish twentieth and I did," she said.

Normally, you would never congratulate an athlete for finishing about halfway in a field, but on this day, I did.

This girl has guts, perseverance, and a competitive streak that allows her to overcome injuries and bad weather conditions. I look forward to seeing what she can do once she is healthy.

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p.s. I accidentally destroyed my digital photos of today's race, darn it.

On the Road to Reno

Up, up, up from the Sacramento Delta and its gathering heat early this morning, we rose along with the foothills, climbing toward the sky. The thermometer on my rear-view mirror that senses the outside temperature had hit 75 degrees when we started the serious upgrade; when I glanced again maybe fifteen minutes later, it had fallen to 58 degrees.

By now we were in the shadow of the western-facing peak, shaded from the eastern sun. Magnificent Ponderosa Pines rose on every side, lining the jagged peaks that fanned outward like the granite fingers they are, reaching from deep in the earth below.

The soil was red.

Up to the summit, way over a mile above sea-level, on through the Donner Pass (~7200') we drove. Now the outside temp was back up to 75 degrees and climbing. We drove parallel to a train along the transcontinental railroad built under great duress by Chinese workers in the century before last.

I did my best to make this brief road trip a history and geography lesson, but my 17-year-old had something else on his mind – his first tattoo.

He’s been planning this since he was 16, but in our home state it’s not legal until you are 18. Thus, our trip across the borderline, down the eastern face of the mighty Sierra.

Reno’s a bit different from San Francisco, you might say, a casino town, with a thriving tattoo parlor business. Here you need only be 16, with your parent’s permission, to get your body defiled – or beautified, depending on your perspective.

“You seventeenish?” was the greeting as we entered the shop.

My son is nothing if not strong-minded. Once he sets his mind on something, he’s hard to move off the ball, just as on the soccer pitch.

The tattoo artist, Brian, tried to convince him to adjust the placement and gave him all the reasons to do so. He gave us ten minutes to think it over, during which a couple giggling teenage girls entered. One wanted a tattoo on her foot re-done.
When Brian said it was our turn, my son said he wanted it in the original place, on his upper left arm, he’d previously chosen.

When it comes to parenting teens, you gotta pick your battles. Come to think of it, that’s necessary with your average two-year-old, as well. Parents who try to hold to too strict an approach often encounter rebellions that disrupt and undermine their relationships with their kids in ways that are difficult to repair over time.

Giving in all the time isn’t an option, either. There are real dangers out there, and no matter what, you can’t parent as if your wish is to be your child’s best friend.

I think it’s more like the buck who shows up in the Bambi story, though hopefully not in that dire a context; you should be there when it matters, and meanwhile, don’t sweat the small stuff.

Many will disagree with me, but a tattoo (it’s a nice one – of the sun) isn’t one of the battles I choose to fight about. In fact, I like the way he connects the image with the meaning of his name (“bearer of fire”) and his naturally competitive nature.

This all seems natural to me.

Helping them mature and ultimately letting them go means navigating that narrow line that runs through the intersection between providing guidance, threatening discipline in the form of consequences, allowing mistakes, forgiving mistakes, exerting needed control and letting go of control.

And no engineering feat along the interstate highway system we navigated to get here rivals anything like the complexity of this mix.

The older I get, the more I admire and love youths, not just my own. It was a long time ago when I was their age, and I didn’t do a very good job of living life, in retrospect, until about the age of 19.

It’s a joy and privilege seeing how my progeny are doing a better job than I did years younger than that. It took me until the age of 24 to experience some things that helped me define a path to the future.

Getting a tattoo at the age of 17 requires thinking ahead, something I didn’t do well at that age.

Today, I suspect, the state of Nevada just won itself a new fan. If in the future, he regrets today's actions, I will bear full responsibility, as the parent who facilitated his first tattoo to happen.

Should that turn out to be the case, we will have both made a mistake.

As we retraced our steps back up and over the Sierra, he soon fell asleep in the wake of the adrenaline rush that led up to the appointment.

When we descended back into the great central valley of California, the temperature outside hit 95 degrees. A 37 degree swing during the course of a few hours -- that's one aspect of living out here that I love.

Slowly we made it back to the Bay Area, where to our surprise, it is a sweltering (for us) night, i.e., in the 70s.

All I know for sure is that it was a beautiful road trip, my boy's dream came true, and as for the wisdom of the whole experience, well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

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