My Life

His ankle ligaments are torn, I believe, so my son again missed a game tonight. The advice I've received from various quarters is contradictory:

(1) tape the ankle and let him play,

(2) get him to a hospital and have a MRI,

(3) have him rest it, ice it, elevate it, and take Ibuprofen.

We chose option three today after he strapped on his cleats and tried to run in our backyard.

He couldn't run, he couldn't put enough pressure on the ankle. It's torn up, and all we can do now is wait it out and let him recover.

This sucks, for a competitive athlete, especially because he knows his team needs him. But perhaps next Saturday, he will be ready to play again.

***

My daughter wore as her nightshirt last night an old uniform of mine. The Michigan Mafia. For 29 years here in San Francisco, this was my main social network, not the Facebook kind but the real kind.

We were a mediocre softball team but a very nice social team. Our slogan was "only the medicore are always at their best."

Tomorrow she is leaving on an adventure -- an all-girls wilderness trip, where the goals include learning survival skills, risk-taking and self-confidence.

I will be missing her. She will be fine.

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Slip-Sliding Away

I walked to the Sports Basement store near here today. On the way I said Hi to my daughter, as she supervised younger kids from the SPCA camp at lunch in Franklin Square in her role as a junior counselor.

At the store I bought tape for my soccer playing son, who injured his ankle yesterday stepping off a bus on his way to work.

Today the ankle knob is swollen with a big circular bruise around it.

I'd hoped we could tape it and he could play. That's what his coaches hoped, also, and what his team needed.

But the moment I picked him up from work, I knew it was not to be. He is wincing even as he steps, let alone runs.

It is so hard to be the parent of a young athlete at moments like this. There is an attitude that he should play at all costs in a big game (which tonight's is, for his team), regardless of the longer-term consequences.

But I'm both his parent and his biggest fan. Tonight, I decided to be his parent and told his coaches he should not play.

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Take Care of Your Spaceship

Driving back from Reno last fall, I startled when something flying off a truck ahead of me on the interstate smashed a tiny hole into my windshield.

Yesterday, after some gardening, I read my grandson a couple chapters from a book written in the '50s called The First Boy On The Moon. This obscure book imagines a kid and his friend being stowaways on a rocket.

The plot includes the team of astronauts setting off a small atom bomb on the moon in order to determine what materials compose its core. They do not shield themselves from the radiation with anything more than a pile of rocks.

Although the book has few illustrations, my grandson listened spellbound, no doubt absorbing and interpreting at least 25 percent of the words as new vocabulary at his age.

Regardless, he could follow the story.

Anyway, on their way back to earth, the astronauts face disaster when a meteorite the size of a speck of dust penetrates their spaceship's outer layer, causing an oxygen leak.

I won't give away the exciting conclusion, but suffice it to say, there was a happy ending.

As I recounted the plot of this book, complete with its naive depiction to my youngest son, who is 16, at one of his favorite cafes today, he couldn't believe the part about the atom bomb.

So I explained to him that when I was growing up in the '50s, Americans were bombarded with government-led propaganda about the wonders of atomic power, including a pamphlet circulated at our elementary schools called "Our Friend the Atom."

We had never been told about the dimensions of the horrors suffered at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They didn't teach us that kind of stuff.

He was appalled. I am appalled. Yet history is history.

Anyway, maybe it was that leak in the spaceship that prompted me today to finally listen to my 13-year-old daughter and stop by an auto glass shop to inquire whether they could fix that hole dating back to last fall's Reno road trip.

They can, and it will take 40 minutes and cost about 20 bucks.

P.S. She'd been reminding me for months. Tonight, I called to thank her, but I also should thank the author of that little kids' book from sixty years ago for imagining an event that helped me find the motivation to do something about my own personal spaceship.

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Catch a Falling Plum

The plums are ripening on our tree, so its branches grow heavy and droop. Every day, I anticipate the first few to drop. Multiple times a day, when I'm around, I go out there and stand under it, hoping to catch one of the fruits before they crash below and split open.

It's a hopeless mission, but writers often specialize in hopeless missions. It's one of the ways we preserve our hope.

I may never catch a falling plum, but I'll know that I tried.

***

The nature of life and work are changing around San Francisco, and across the world, though here they are perhaps the most pronounced.

Now people are meeting, finding little jobs, and creating new businesses on their iPhones. I get to find out about these initiatives in my role as a blogger, here at the epicenter of the technology boom.

That's fairly cool. But that's not what I feel like writing about tonight.

***

Tonight I feel like writing about writers and artists of all types. In contrast with the wonders of technology and how it is altering, even transforming our lives, is the serious havoc many forces are playing with our collective creative spirit.

If there could be one, and only one definition of art, I seriously doubt "commercially successful" would make the final cut.

Art is presumed to come from some other part of our soul.

It's also apparent that art is not logical, it is not data-driven, it will never satisfy an engineer's desire for control and result.

Art is messy. It involves more emotion than cerebral/logical/math and metrics.

You don't know you are successful as an artist because someone buys your work. You only know when your work has touched someone's heart.

Then again, fans can be fickle. So how does the artist react when one who claimed to be affected deeply by your work changes her mind and no longer cares to be?

***

There are many kinds of violence in this world. This is a post about many kinds of violence -- nature's violence, allowing fruits to swell and ripen only to crash below to a dirty and bitter end.

Never truly tasted. Of course, after they rot, the seed can split and multiply and reproduce, so a bigger (p)art of nature's plan is met, we may presume?

Or human violence, emotionally, on artists. About how a human can offer the connection that's equivalent to standing under that bending fruit tree, hoping to catch your words, only to blow away with the wind, as if none of this ever really happened.

What is fiction and what is not? Is this nature's plan as well?

And does any of it matter?

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On a Roll

Way out in The American Canyon, in the wind and sun tonight, the Seals won their game, 3-2.

They're now 4-1, and having their best season ever.

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Just Like a Rattlesnake

Even if you don't follow baseball, you might have heard of Tim Lincecum, the diminutive starting pitcher and ace of the San Francisco Giants. He's won two Cy Young Awards already in his young career and helped lead the Giants to their World Series title in 2010.

This season, inexplicably, Lincecum has fallen apart. He has the worst earned-run-average in baseball, a terrible won-loss record, and it seems like every game he hits an inning where everything explodes against him.

Last night started out as the most painful game of a perplexing season of painful games for Timmy. The first six batters all reached base against him, three had scored already, the bases were loaded, and it looked like the game would turn into a blowout.

But somehow Lincecum dug deep and struck out the next three batters. After that he never gave up another run and the Giants rallied in the 9th inning to win the game.

What was touching was after the first inning, while he sat in the dugout, Lincecum was approached by his fellow starter Ryan Vogelsong, who's about a decade older but who until last year had never been successful in any comparable way to Lincecum.

Last year Vogelsong became a consistent winner, finally, late in his career, and was selected as an All-Star. They are contrasts physically -- Vogelsong is a big guy. Last night he put his arm around Lincecum and talked with him, perhaps trying to boost his spirits and encourage him to perdure.

You rarely see that in baseball, everyone stays away from starting pitchers between innings. That is the norm.

This was different. Maybe it made the difference, who knows. In any event, maybe Lincecum's slump has finally ended.

***

I watched all of this through the eyes of a father of athletes, not as a player. Last weekend, as we drove to and from the National Cup, my 17-year-old center back talked with me a lot about his emotions on game days.

He said he gets nervous on behalf of his teammates -- "I don't want to let down my team, and I know if I make a mistake, I will."

That's because he is the last line of defense between the big, fast talented strikers streaking toward his net, except for the keeper at his back.

The cardinal rule is to stay between the net and the opponent. You also have to keep your eye on the ball, not oh him. There's a lot going on, including pushing and shoving and jockeying for position.

He has to either run backwards as fast as the other guys is running forward or turn and outrace him before turning again to face him from a crouch. It's an amazing set of moves to execute, and fascinating to watch.

When the striker finally makes his move, i.e., commits to try a shot with one foot or another from one angle or another, it's the moment for the defender to strike -- like a rattlesnake.

(This is why you stay focused on what is happening to the ball rather than getting potentially distracted by how the striker is moving his body, which involves a lot of faking and feigning moves.)

***

Whenever my kids are away, given what a big part of my life they are, I get the opportunity to reflect about things like this. It's the combination of the emotional connection with them, and being witness to their growth and work -- in school, in sports, in life -- that connects up my experience as a parent.

People say parenting involves a lot of work, and it does. But way out beyond the work is the connectedness and the witnessing.

And, when we dare, sharing the story.

I always worry about breaching my kids' privacy, but at the same time, I sometimes think families can remain too private. I'm aware that some who read these words are not parents, although everyone has at least had a parent of one sort or another.

Maybe the hope is that by sharing my experiences, some piece will resonate with that part of all of us who have been children.

The risk with being a deeply involved parent is that you won't know how to let them go when the time to separate arrives. You've become every bit as dependent on their love as they are on yours.

This can pose a real problem, especially as we age, and our alternative options for emotional connections start to narrow.

A friend recently called to ask if I was single (I am) and if so would I like to meet somebody. She proposed a dinner so I could meet a person who sounds like a lovely woman, a bit younger than I am, deeply engaged with young children as her profession.

I said sure but later I got cold feet.

***

Every range of emotion I write about as a parent could be extended to love between adults, and then a bit more. But those relationships, if they are to work for long, cannot be asymmetrical as the ones we have with our children.

Lovers do not literally need to be equals, but we need to complement each other in ways that enhance our strengths and reduce our weaknesses.

One of my grave social weaknesses is I hate to go to events alone. I've always been like this, I'm congenitally shy, and it is hard for me to endure the awkwardness of being alone in a room full of strangers, or of people who all seem to know each other better than they know me.

I usually flee at the first opportunity.

This is not a prescription for ever being able to meet someone new.

Then again, the freedom of not being in a relationship has some rewards that I've gradually grown to appreciate. Nobody feels neglected as I watch my beloved Giants on TV, or feels that I am not focusing enough on her when I attend my kids' games or school functions.

There are no power struggles, or arguments over where to go, what to do, who to see, and so on.

But I do miss the intimacy of having a partner, not just to go to events with, but to share life with.

My last real relationship allowed me to learn so much about another culture, and to watch my friend grow into a new American, learn the language and customs, learn how to drive a car, and explore new types of work.

I was able to share four years of my hopes and dilemmas with her.

But she left and never returned. All that was shared, from her perspective, has probably been forgotten by now, or buried and denied, because that is what allows people to jump from one relationship to another -- denial.

By contrast, I've chosen to not move on.

Why?I don't know the answer to that question. I don't know what is holding me back from moving on. I've moved on before. Maybe, as a professional acquaintance, herself a lovely woman, suggested gently to me recently, "You're just not ready yet."

***

As a man, somewhat traditional by nature, in other ways, radically unconventional, I always like to be able to provide for my partner, just as I provide for my children. Hell, I enjoy providing for my ex-partners!

No single accomplishment has given me more joy this year so far than defending my ex-wife from the IRS in her audit. We succeeded -- I succeeded! She could breathe more easily, and feel free to take the kids on a vacation.

Yesterday, for the first time in years, I glimpsed a new path to the future, one not growing narrower and weedier until it ends in Deadend Meadow, homeless, helpless, and poor, but one graced with comfort and yes, even wealth.

The fact that I planted the seeds for this better future years ago reminds me how much all of us, whether we realize it or not, remain farmers at heart. Almost none of us work as farmers in the U.S., but all of us are descended from farmers, in my case just a generation+ back. (My paternal grandfather.)

It may be only a vision at this point but it's a viable alternative to the rather grim future I've been contemplating in my down moments, alone and fearful.

What will I do with wealth when I have it? Let me count the ways. First, eliminate all of my children's debts, including their educational loans. Second, set them up with investment funds for their future needs.

I'll also pay off anyone I owe anything to, and give the nonprofits I love donations.

Then, I'll buy a condo near the ballpark, with a view of the Bay, sell my car, and buy season's tickets to the Giants games. I'll also get a press pass and begin writing several books in my old age.

One about baseball. It is a terrific metaphor.

One about parenting. My favorite topic.

One about love. My most toxic topic.

And, finally, the long-brewing memoir.

If you wonder what the memoir would read like, reread this post. This is my memoir speaking.

Striking at your own heart, teeth bared, just like a rattlesnake.

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Keep On

The fog has rushed back in to blanket the tip of this peninsula, as it so famously does every summer. This can be a very quiet and lonely time here in many ways. Especially when my kids are out of town, this apartment grows still. I spend such a large part of my time, normally, with them here that their absence, even just for a week, opens a huge hole in my world.

But that's also a good chance for reflection, for some extended privacy, and for writing. This blog, for example, is getting some much-needed attention.

***

News: My first e-book is closer and closer to becoming a reality; I think it may be available for purchase within a few weeks. As I was sifting through some of the proposed chapters today, reviewing updated versions of blog posts I originally wrote over the past nineteen months, something occurred to me, and that was how drawn I am to entrepreneurs simply because they so often convey a deep sense of hope about their futures.

You need to cultivate lots of qualities within yourself to be an entrepreneur -- persistence, open-mindedness, and the ability to discern good advice from bad -- but you also have to be optimistic.

Of course, almost everyone is at times persistent and at times less so; at times flexible and at others, not so much; and in one state hopeful while at another quite hopeless. So it is not so much trying to carve out a new "you" from the constant mix of emotions that literally define us as living creatures, but how to encourage the ones that might better help sustain you through the startup experience.

Having met and interviewed hundreds of these folks recently, I've started to recognize these patterns, and others.

***

It is horribly quiet here, however. I never have confused the online experience of connecting with friends on Facebook, for example, with the real world experience of sitting down with a friend and talking over coffee or tea.

The latter is vastly preferable, so much so that I sometimes wonder whether we might all be better off by turning off our Facebook connections to force ourselves out in to the real world more often.

I don't know what is best. But every day I try to make sure I have at least two real interactions -- in person or by phone with at least two real people. I also text with my closest friends and family members daily and exchange emails in something approaching real-time with a few others.

All of this represents staying connected to me. Because in my view the most dangerous thing in the world is to find yourself disconnected from those you love and care about.

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