Learning How to Take the Lead and Play Forward

Photo courtesy of Paul Turner

And then she asked me again. "Can I play goalie?"

I took a mental beat and said, "Listen, everybody plays every position on our team. I promise you'll play goalie, but not today. You'll play other positions today."

She wasn't done. "I can't play forward. I not very good at. Please don't make me play forward."

"You're going to play forward."

She gazed out over the soccer field. The game was to start in a few minutes. "I tried to play it last year and I was just too slow. Please don't make me play it."

I took another beat. "Again, everybody rotates on our team so we can learn all the positions. You'll only have to play forward for a few minutes and then I'll move you to defense."

"How long is a few minutes?"

"A few minutes."

"But how long is a few minutes exactly?"

"How about at least six minutes?"

"How about three?"

"No, at least six or seven minutes."

"Ugh. Okay."

"Thank you. Now let's play some soccer."

And so it went with one of my players. And she did a much better job than what she'd give herself credit for. She really did. As did all the girls on our team -- The Blue Flames. Yes, I'm coaching soccer again this year. U10 recreational soccer this time, my team made up of 12 eight and nine-year-old girls including my oldest, Beatrice. We played our first game, and while I'm not really supposed to keep score (again), I do, of course ('cause we won).

But my first priorities coaching are otherwise. I look forward to practicing soccer fundamentals and teamwork and having fun, fun, fun no matter what level their girls are at. That's why everyone will always get a chance to play every game and rotate positions throughout the season. A big plus is that we have really involved parents that feel the same way.

I have such fond memories of playing sports as a child and throughout junior high and high school with many a great coach in my past. Coaches who wanted me to learn new skills and to safe play and teamwork and leadership and to aspire to greatness, no matter my level of play. My own daughter has improved dramatically since last year and is no longer timid in the heat of the moment, kicking and dribbling the ball like it's nobody's business.

The fact that we're free to do this safely on a Saturday morning isn't lost on me, especially on a day later like today in America, the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. And it's not just because of attacks themselves, which were horrific enough for us all then and now, but also the fact that imperfect but necessary democracies like our own are constantly under siege abroad and at home.

Why am I segueing to this dark day in our nation's history? Because I can't get the children out of my head. The children here in America and those around the world whose very lives have been irrevocably changed and those whose very lives are in constant jeopardy every day due to violence, terrorism, war and genocide.

Like the children of those lost on 9/11, where over 3,000 killed and 6,000 injured on that day. Like the children in Allepo, a city in Syria, the epicenter of the worst humanitarian crisis in recent history and a civil war that's killed hundreds of thousands of people over the past five years. Unfortunately this list goes on and on.

God bless them all -- those children lost to violence and those who lost their families to violence and those young and old who live with the memories of it all. Like many of you out there, I'm a hoper and a doer, I really believe we can and do make a positive difference in our children's lives and those around the world. This is again why I support Kidpower, the global nonprofit leader in personal safety and violence prevention education, and September is International Child Protection Month.

It still starts with us, in countries like ours, where we're relatively free to live our own lives and speak our own minds, to challenge the status quo when necessary and to compromise when we need to unify and show true leadership. Where we're able to talk about what happened and why, and where we can still rise above and make a difference for our friends and family, our neighbors down the street and across this great country. We can create the incremental improvements that truly are the catalysts of positive change and progress for our own children, and for others around this fragile world.

Because I want to be able to coach a recreational soccer team of eight and nine-year-old girls who play on Saturday mornings with family and friends cheering us on. Where the only comfort zone the players need to push themselves out of is learning how to take the lead and play forward, not fearing for their very lives.

To Those Fathers Lost Loving What They Do

The voice mails knocked the wind out of me. Literally. After only hearing a few of them back to back I had to move on in the memorial and quickly. I've heard some of them over the years and of course have read, viewed and heard the countless tragic and heroic stories about what happened that beautiful blue sky morning.

But the voice mails, they really tore me up inside (with the "missing posters" coming in a close second). On this Father's Day nearly 14 years since it happened, I imagine those fathers (and everybody else that day) going to work that morning to do what they loved to do so they could help take care of their families. Of course not everyone feels this way, but I like to believe that besides bringing home a paycheck there's something or many things inherently motivating for us in the work that we do.

I talk about that a lot of late -- the fact that we're loyal to the work we love to do. But that's not quite the complete picture, only snapshot from the industry I work in and the work I love to do. Most of us are loyal to the family and friends we love and care about first, then the communities we share with other families and friends outside of ours, and then the work we love to do and/or the business we create that brings work that gives us meaning and a means to an end in those communities we share with many others.

There were those fathers (and everybody else that day) who worked on every floor of the World Trade Center twin towers, and those who worked in and around the streets below, and those who worked as first responders that fateful day.

During our family vacation this week we visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum. At first, the Mama and I were okay with our solo tours (we didn't bring the girls through the whole thing together, but we talked with them about it). But then, it became overwhelming, our own emotions from the memories of 9/11 pulling us under like a riptide.

But it was a double riptide for me listening to the voice mails of those calling loved ones from the planes or the buildings, telling them what was happening.

Then there's the part when the husband leaves his wife a voicemail that says, "I'm going to be okay. I'm in the other tower."

The second riptide is the automated voice at the very end of the loved one's message.

"End of message."

That's it. It doesn't matter which god you believe in (or not), or what part of the political spectrum you fall in, that's it. That automated part of the message marked the tragic end for so many people, eerily punctuating the end of their stories. And to the fathers (and everybody else) who tried to save so many others, God bless them all -- those lost and those who lost and those who live with the memories of horrific terrorism.

Because that's what it was. Crazy and not so crazy people who hated us willing to die to kill innocent Americans and many others from other parts of the globe. It doesn't matter what came before and what role our government may or may not have played in what led to it. What matters is how we mobilize to heal.

Like terrorist acts all around the world for thousands of years, they're crazy and not so crazy people who hate other people and would rather have them eradicated than actually have to co-exist with them. It's also about power and control and keeping those despised powerless and in constant fear of injury and/or death. These acts span a myriad of civilizations, religions and political factions, and do not fit neatly into any world view no matter how hard we try (and dear God, we certainly try).

Then there's the part when you're on vacation meeting decent Americans from diverse backgrounds and tourists from all over the world in one of the greatest cities in the world, New York, and then you hear about the terrorist attack in South Carolina, one where a single person took the lives of nine others in what is supposed to be a safe haven -- a church. Call it what it is, kids. This was terrorism, something we avoiding calling our own in this country, and thankfully many reputable media outlets are calling it just that. Terrorism against a black congregation because of a hateful white man's vendetta that blacks and whites should not live together in the same communities, a racist pox this country has yet to be able to cure, much less eradicate. The terrorist brought this pox and sat at with the Bible study group at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, and then he killed them.

I'm writing this today, on Father's Day, to call for the same kind of mobilization we had on 9/11 for these terrorist atrocities in our own cities against decent Americans, whether in the North or South, East or West, Right or Left, Black or White, or any of the ethnicities that make up supposedly still one of the greatest "free" nations today. I call for us to mobilize and help this community and others like it and treat them with the same respect and reverence that we did on 9/11. The 9/11 Memorial Fountains are perfect metaphors for this kind of loss, the endless tears that flow into dark abyss after dark abyss -- while the people who gather around it pay their respects and many hope to make a difference for our future.

Because then I imagine the part when Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine victims who perished in the SC terrorist attack, leaves voice mails the morning of June 17 for his beloved wife and children while on the way to doing the work he loved to do for the community he loved doing it for. I imagine his family listening to it over and over again, mourning there loss, punctuated painfully by the automated voice saying, "End of message."

The other morning while on vacation our youngest daughter Bryce brought the Bible from the hotel room to breakfast. She doesn't really know what it it is, and we're not church-going folk (although I was raised so), but it was sweet how she called it her book of charm bracelets.

As I celebrate Father's Day with my wife and daughters in a hotel in New York City, I am so very grateful and draw upon my early Christian roots, sending healing thoughts and prayers to all the families who lost loved ones in Charleston, South Carolina, this last week.

My affinity is to those fathers lost loving what they do to make a positive difference in this world, and today I choose to celebrate them.

Because we must always remember not only the what and when, but the why and where to

I remember exactly where I was.

Being away on a business trip for the weekend I was still askew from time zone travel, with yet another trip the next day on the horizon.

My mother-in-law had just told me it was on the news, that the President would be out soon to announce it.

So Beatrice and I sat on the couch, her playing games on my iPad and me watching CNN, while Wolf Blitzer told me that he was dead.

As if all our ghosts would finally come home to rest. As word spread, we cheered, but that's not the way it works. Ghosts never fully flee, they just move to different rooms of the heart, usually the darker ones without windows or air, with painted blue sky on the ceilings, where they sit and wait and remember.

I remember exactly where I was.

Working on my computer at 6:30 a.m., years before we built the B-hive. A co-worker emailed me to turn on the TV. There were planes flying into the World Trade Center.

I couldn't believe it.

The sky was so blue that morning. I couldn't get my head around what I was seeing. I emailed her back.

Jesus Christ.

I remember exactly where we were, a month and a half later, ordering lunch in a deli in Venice, when the man behind the counter stopped, his face solemn and washed out around the edges, as if painted with watercolors.

He asked, "Americans?"

We answered, "Yes."

He stiffened; I thought he was going to salute. Instead, he held his heart and said:

"God Bless America."

Nearly 10 years later and another 6,000 sons and daughters...

Bea and Bryce will know these stories someday, and then they can tell their children. Because we must always remember not only the what and when, but the why and where to.

Then maybe someday the ghosts will paint the ceilings black.

I remember hope.

It was spring 2003 and cold.

I remember how Amy cried while she wrote a note on the makeshift construction wall above Ground Zero.

I remember how others stopped quietly at the wall, tilting their heads to read, some adding their own notes.

I remember the signs, candles and flowers along the metal fencing.

I remember watching the construction crews work below in the footprint pits where thousands perished.

I remember children watching along with me.

I remember Amy reading the wall, placing her palm on it as if feeling for a heartbeat.

I remember the shadow ash that laced the buildings facing the emptiness within.

I remember how blue the sky was, just as it was a year and a half earlier.

I remember someone praying next to me, how it made me cry.

I remember when we left, we didn't speak.

I remember we held hands.

I remember hope.