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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Hot Day in California

Sacramento

Lovely weather out in Golden Gate Park today of the second game of the season for the U-13 girls team and their new coach. He drew up a game plan of all the things he wanted to remember to tell them and wrote everything out on his clipboard.

The never gave up against a better team but lost in the end, 1-2. But he coached well, they played well, and they're 1-1 on the season now.

Afterward, he and I hit the highways north and east on a short road trip. Sacramento tonight, Reno tomorrow.

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Little Boys and Big Boys

My youngest grandson, at two, loves to play with trains and blocks. Tonight, I gave him a small wooden horse to carry around and he kept saying "Horse jump table." Apparently, this is something he saw at the State Fair recently.

His big brother, at four, eats like a bird, and I thought I wouldn't find anything he'd like until he found some "healthy" chips. Those he liked.

Their two big teenage uncles came over to play with these guys during an impromptu family gathering this cold, Wednesday night in SF. Big guys and little guys. Guys of all types and sizes, but guys for sure.

Pizza, carrots, soda, sports talk, music talk, school talk, girl talk. Lots of chatter. Maybe males do talk as much as females, but only once we have gathered in sufficient numbers to set the tone. My poor daughter, Mom of these two beautiful little boys, was the one female among six males, including her husband.

But she's used to it, and with a third boy growing inside her, by later this fall she'll be the mother of a hat trick of boys. I see a lot of soccer games in her future!

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Not Really About Soccer

Yes it was another good day for a certain high school in the Excelsior, which now is 5-0 so far this season.

Next, they face a renewal of their arch-rivalry from last year's championship game Thursday with another 5-0 team.

Anticipating that game for the next two days will be sweet. Watching my son compete in these high school games is, as I am well aware, as good as it gets...and as good as it will ever get.

***

Yesterday, a talented young woman showed up at my front door, as expected, to film an interview with me about events that happened over 30 years ago. Twice last week, I spoke to students in local colleges about journalism past and present.

Later this week, I'll go on a local radio station to talk about the same topic.

These days, there are a regular stream of requests for me to talk about what has been a very long life indeed in the world of journalism. This is what it means to be an elder, of course, and I understand and accept that role.

But even though my body is old, there are few moments when I, my spirit, feels old.

When it comes to watching kids play soccer, or interviewing entrepreneurs, or (on the occasional lucky day) hanging out with a much younger, beautiful woman, I somehow don't feel like the old man I most certainly am.

So what's up with that?

***

Yesterday I also hung out for a while with two young men out front who were friends, perhaps relatives, of my murdered neighbor. They were both struggling to make sense of this awful crime.

One of the young men would be called black in this society, the other would be called Latino. To my eyes, they are both beautiful young people, somebody's sons, and somebody else's future fathers.

The dark-skinned man felt like talking. "I wonder where he is now?" he said about our fallen friend. "He got too big a heart to just be dead. He got to be somewhere. Where he is?"

The lighter-skinned man's eyes were filled with tears and he had no words to offer.

I tried my best to answer the first man's question. "Nobody knows what happens when we die," I offered. "People believe all sorts of things, but I think we just don't know."

Then I said this: "No matter where he is, he's still alive for you, right? You don't have to let go of somebody you love just because they are gone. And he was one of those people who always had so much to say to all of us, maybe all we should just do is remember that, and keep talking to each other, also."

Just keep talking to one another. Maybe that is a lesson for all of us. Because sooner or later, our voices will be stilled, too, and wouldn't it be a pity if we stopped talking too soon?

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Ten Years Ago

(Note: This post is part of a series of articles by various writers organized by my friend Tyge O'Donnell. I urge anyone interested to read them all at his site, The Neon Lounge.)

Ten years ago, my wife and I owned a house in Noe Valley, our kids were 7, 5 and 3; and I had a great job as founding editor of a new city magazine. There were dark clouds on the horizon, however, with the dot-com implosion, and stress lines in our marriage.

Still, when I woke up that morning of September 11, 2001, I had plenty of reasons to be hopeful about the future. The city where we chose to live, San Francisco, has endured a endless series of booms and busts since the Gold Rush Era, and people here know nothing if not how to be resilient.

I was getting ready to head downtown when my wife heard the report of a plane hitting the World Trade Center on NPR. She called out to me to turn on our TV, which was located in my basement office to prevent the kids from exposure to its presumed evils.

Rushing into my office, I left the door open while I snapped on the TV. Our seven-year-old son quietly entered behind me, just as the second plane smashed into the second tower.

I heard his gasp, turned and swept him out of the room. He went upstairs, got a piece of construction paper and drew the image that appears at the top of this post.

***

It took weeks for life to resume any sort of normal rhythm. Barry Bonds was having the greatest home-run hitting season in baseball history, but all sports contests were suspended for a while.

Tourism came to an end, and with that development, the city slowed to a crawl. There was no one in the restaurants that normally would be packed, and the hotels were empty.

City magazines exist by selling ad space to local businesses. Ours, which had launched literally a week before 9/11, now looked to be dead on arrival. After a series of crisis meetings, the small group of us who had launched it decided we would cut back production to every other month, defer our salaries, and accept trade as opposed to cash for ad space in the book.

That fall and winter and the next spring were extremely difficult, both for the magazine, for the city, and for me. I had to take out a huge equity loan to keep paying the house payments, and all of the strains evident before 9/11 worsened in its wake.

While many dot-com companies had survived the stock market bubble that had started popping in April 2000, now the entire first wave of web-based startups started failing left and right, and it turned into an economic disaster for this region.

Tourists stayed away in droves, and it was deep into 2002 before the core element of the city's economy began a fitful recovery. By then, I had been forced to leave the magazine for a position as a visiting professor at Stanford, where the plan was for me to write a book.

***

By remembering all of this, I do not wish to imply any causal relationship between 9/11 and the chaos that visited my world, because it's all much more complicated than that. Besides, others suffered far worse pains than I did, including a friend and former colleague whose sister was killed when the plane hit the Pentagon.

But through a series of setbacks, I eventually found myself without that house, without that marriage, and without what until then had been an extremely successful career as a journalist.

Over the years since, in most ways, life has proved to be a much more difficult challenge than it had previously been. In most ways, it continues to prove more difficult year by year.

I won't chronicle the losses, disappointments, or the many crushed dreams. Many, many people have been struggling mightily in this historical adjustment of the U.S. national economy as it integrates into a global economy where "we" have far less leverage over our economic fate than when U.S. hegemony was clearer, and less under assault from aggressive centers of growth overseas.

But there are many bright spots around here and I post about them week after week. San Francisco is the center of another tech boom, bringing waves of entrepreneurial innovation to the rest of the world, like we always do when on top.

I'm chronicling that boom for the very magazine that I helped launch a decade ago.

The little boy who drew that sad picture on 9/11 is now a junior in high school, and all-city soccer star, and coach of a younger girls' team that yesterday won their opening game, 1-0.

There are flowers blooming in the garden out back, and somewhere way up in an apple tree, I can hear the sweet sound of a pair of birds singing...

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