Here There Only Be Humans

“Oh, my God! What is with Rick? Again, he does nothing. He’s gotta go,” said the Mama, what I lovingly call my wife.

“I know, I hear you this time. At least this time he talked smack back at Negan,” I said.

“He didn’t do anything! He could’ve at least head-butted him. What happened to the Rick who bit that guy in the throat to protect his son?”

“I know, I know. It sucks because I identify with Rick; doing the right thing when he can but not being afraid to fight back.”

“You’re not Rick – you’re more like Morgan.”

“Morgan. Wow. Okay, I’ll take that, but I still prefer Rick.”

As I said that, I thought, What, am I that frickin’ crazy?

“No, you’re Morgan. Me, I identify with Maggie. Yes, definitely Maggie. Nobody messes with me.” [With all due respect to my wife, she's Maggie, not Carol -- all fixed!]

I thought, Yep, I see that. That’s why you’re the Mama Bear, Mama. 

“Maggie, sure. And I agree with you, too – Rick should’ve at least head-butted him, especially after what happened the first time with Negan. I don’t know why the writers didn’t play it that way.”

“Frickin’ Rick. Ugh.”

“I know. Love you.”

“Love you.”

For those keeping score at home and have no idea what we’re talking about, it would be the zombie-apocalypse-survival-fiction series called The Walking Dead. Based on the graphic comics of the same name, we’ve been hooked on the show for a few years now. One of the few shows we watch in that tiny window between putting our girls to bed and us going to bed.

We didn’t watch The Walking Dead from the beginning, though. Although we’re both end-of-world story junkies (Lucifer’s Hammer and The Stand are favorites from back in the day), I’ve never been a zombie fan. In fact, I hate zombies. Just the idea of the undead freaks me out more than any other horror story ever written. The movie Shaun of the Dead freaked me out years ago, and it was a comedy.

No spoilers here for fans of The Walking Dead, I promise. Like many forms of art and media including books, movies, TV and podcasts – fiction and nonfiction alike – the Mama and I consume quite a bit of stuff and discuss regularly how we relate to them as reality and/or metaphors of our world today.

Recently however, the reality of instability in the world has us worried – the continued conflicts throughout Middle East (especially in Syria), North Korea’s escalation and missile tests, whatever the hell is going on with Russia and us, homegrown incivility due to our last election, continued socioeconomic disparity, racial divides, sexual assault and domestic violence and more. We’re not fatalists and we do hope that America can keep it together, as well as the rest of the world, but the fears anew of potential nuclear strikes on our west coast and elsewhere, and the random nature of recent terrorist attacks abroad, has us a little freaked out.

We grew up with Watergate and the Iran hostage crisis and War Games and Terminator and Red Dawn and Iran-Contra and the Cold War ending and the Persian Gulf War starting and OJ Simpson and the LA riots and more.

Then nearly 10 years later came 9/11.

Today we have children. We want our family to be safe. We want your families to be safe. We don’t want to be in a civil war and/or a world war. We’re more involved in our community today than ever and more engaged with our elected officials. Recently we got our passports renewed and got passports for the girls. We have extra rations of food and bottles of water tucked away at home. We have other items of safety safely put away for now.

For those who think we’re overreacting, well, God bless you. I will pray for us all, Brothers and Sisters. Most of our generation grew up relatively safe in America, sans 9/11 and those of us discriminated against and all victims of crime across the crime spectrum.

We do think about what if, though. What if we must flee like millions have fled throughout history, from Jews of yesterday to the Syrians of today. What if we had to pack everything in our car and drive inland to avoid coastal missile strikes. Or drive to the border to avoid domestic terrorism and civil warfare. Or pack what we could carry and must walk miles and miles to safe havens that may not even be there when we get there.

What if.

We just don’t want to think about it because we still have it pretty good in America. Many of us at least. Even with the rise in racial, social and global tensions. Yes, I know that’s a generalization and still we should be thankful and be involved in our communities and elevate what we believe in regardless of our opinions at odds, and especially without rhetorical or physical violent escalations between any of us.

Yet, in the end, like many of you, we will do what we must do to protect our family, zombie apocalypse and all. And if that includes head butts and neck bites, then so be it.

However, there aren’t really any zombies. Here there only be humans.

God bless us all, Brothers and Sisters. Here’s to the land of the free and the home of the brave, where all men and women are created equal, where we can either empathize and thrive, or just simply survive.

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.

A New Reason to Give Thanks

"And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that our flag was still there..." —The Star-Spangled Banner

The first boom came at 5:28 am. Then a second boom. Followed by a third. I put my laptop to the side and sat up, torn to move in two directions at once: go to the living room window to see what I could see, or go to our phone and call 911.

Being an early bird I had already been up since 5:00 am tinkering away on my MacBook. A fourth boom and I grabbed my phone and went to the window. I could hear the girls talking upstairs; obviously the booms woke them. A fifth boom and then I saw it: the spectacular flower of an exploding firework. Then multiple booms with more reds and whites and blues and a myriad of other colors. 

I aimed the camera to try and capture a firework mid-flower, instead of calling the police, but the booms stopped. I waited, the girls came downstairs (which was around the time they wake up anyway), and the fireworks stopped. 

These weren't just a box of illegal jumbo fireworks bought in Nevada or Mexico. No, these were pretty cool fireworks. Disneyland pretty. The stadium-quality variety. Shot off at 5:28 in the morning for over five minutes down the street in the vacant lot where the local weekly farmer's market is held.

Disruptive? Yes. Annoying? Yes. Pretty? Yes. Dangerous? Maybe, but since they exploded over a vacant lot, probably not. Illegal? Well, yes, considering that fireworks of any kind are illegal in Santa Cruz County. 

The Mama got up shortly after the girls did ask asked what the booms were. I told her and the first thing she said was, "Did they girls get to see them?"

I told her no, that they didn't get to see them. The booms woke them, though. But after we were all up and sunrise yawned and stretched her lavender hands skyward, I reflected and gave thanks with a silent reverent prayer that I had my family with me, safe and sound and healthy, with sustenance and shelter, fairly secure in a seaside community at the South end of the greater Bay Area in the Golden State of one of the greatest nations ever to be created and sustained in the history of the world. A nation of immigrants wanting a better life for themselves, the "huddled masses," to have the freedoms they didn't have in their homelands, whether driven out because of religious and/or political persecution, disease, famine and/or especially war. 

Granted, it was at the expense of those who had already lived her for thousands of years, but that's a story for another time, and not one to be told in any form fully sanitized to validate America's Thanksgiving folklore. 

No, I was just thankful in the moment as I try to do daily reflecting on who I am and what I have, taking little for granted when I'm mindfully present. 

But then the sentiment of a family member interrupted my prayer with an important question, one she posted the day before when referencing a video about the harsh reality of Syrian refugees clamoring for safety in Greece (or insert your Western country of choice here). It was right after my weekly beach run, the one where I share a picture of the remaining natural bridge at Natural Bridges State Park and some creative and cutesy phrase. Of course it was "This week on God Bless everyone beach run."

She had posted:

Imagine this is your family, fleeing for your lives, trying to provide your children with a safe and decent childhood. 

My response was: Amen. But most of us don't want to imagine, so we don't.

Wherever you fall on the ideological and political spectrum, and whatever you believe we should be doing or not doing to address this latest global crisis, most of you will go through your lives unscathed, just as hopefully many of your children and children's children will as well, but as I wrote last week, together the aggregate power of your safety plans may just change the world.

Maybe. But with the rockets' red glare from this morning, to those from this afternoon when my daddy time with the girls turned into a battle of #BhivePower wills (that I lost), the only proof I need is that my home and family are still here with me, and I with them. 

Plus the proof that we still live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The brave who shouldn't fear but be aware, who shouldn't blame but be responsible, who shouldn't resent but be empathic, who shouldn't hate but still be wary and vigilant to protect country, community and family. The brave who, if they can truly provide their children with a safe and decent childhood, should do just that. 

And maybe, just maybe, we'll give ourselves a new reason to give thanks by helping those fighting for their lives abroad because of war and terrorism, and those fighting for their lives at home because of economic hardship and prolonged hunger.

Happy Thanksgiving America. We know you can do this.

The Aggregate Power of Our Safety Plans

“All this time we're hoping and praying we all might learn, while a billion other teachers are teaching them how to burn…” —Rush, Peaceable Kingdom

There are no absolutes. There is no black and white. There are only filtered perceptions and reactions to life experience, the shadows at dusk of what is truly right and wrong.

Until I was nine and my sister seven, we lived with an alcoholic who year after year escalated violence against our mother. Drunken rage drove our birth father to blame her for his self-hatred, and he'd berate her, and he'd beat her, and then self-loathing would spiral him into dysfunctional regret.

That regret led him to always say how sorry he was, and how much he loved us, and how much he loved her. The holidays were the times when the most bittersweet poignancy welled up in his eyes, and ours, with his signature Dorothy phrase, "There's no place like home."

I always want to believe that. To believe that he really meant it, that he'd truly rehabilitate and he'd stop hurting her and we'd all go back to being a loving family. But he didn't. And then we left.

Right after that we experienced a whole other level of dangerous family dysfunction, and yet I always wanted to believe that it would be okay. Hope coursed through me as if hit by lightening (and it still does). We had some family and friend intervention and help through these experiences, and our mother did her best to care for us, but until I was nearly 13, life was far from being a safe family haven. For at least two decades after that I felt helpless and I channeled my impotent rage into depression and unhealthy relationships as an adult.

Thankfully, our girls haven't and won't experience this, since we have everything to do with it. And many other people don't experience this either (although what's reported versus what's not is telling -- God bless those who have experienced it). And although today most of us don't experience other kinds violence -- especially terrorism and war -- it's all around us and being transmitted to us via traditional media and social media, all with the competing slants and filtered perceptions.

Because of what's happened of late in Beruit and Paris, I've thought about how we'll respond to our girls if (and when -- if not now, in the future) they ask about what happened.

Prior to taking Beatrice and Bryce to New York City earlier this year, the Mama read the girls the story about the Man on the Wire, Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. She told them we weren't going to see the buildings because they weren't there anymore. The "whys" ensued and then the Mama proceeded to tell them there were bad men who didn't like the buildings and who brought them down.

The same story was repeated when we visited the 9/11 Memorial Museum. The Mama and I went on solo tours, but we didn't bring the girls through the whole thing together. They did see some of the damage on display, however. But then, we were both overwhelmed and we had to quell our own emotions from our 9/11 memories.

Why did we do that? Why didn't we share them and the why of emotion with the girls? How do you explain that to a four and six-year-old? And unless they experienced it directly, why would you explain it to them in any greater detail?

That answer has been clear to us now more than ever because my wife is a Kidpower instructor. Kidpower is a global nonprofit leader in personal safety and violence prevention education. Instead of using fear to teach about violence prevention, the Kidpower Method makes it fun to learn to be safe, building habits that can increase the safety of young people and adults alike and that can last a lifetime.

Talking about worries and fears creates unnecessary anxiety without making kids safer. According to the Kidpower program, protecting kids from adult feelings helps to reduce anxiety and increase competence. You do what you can to protect children from hearing details, speculation, and any and all media coverage as much as possible.

But when you do have to explain some tragedy to your children, instead of trying to keep them completely insulted and inside, for fear of what may or may not happen, talk about your family safety plan, and take the time to make safety plans and to discuss, review, and practice safety skills with your children and teens if you don't already have one.

You should always project calm and confidence as the adults in charge, and this will help your kids, too. For example, Kidpower references studies that show even during wartime when people went into shelters from the bombing, the children were far better off (less traumatized) in the shelters where adults were singing and being positive that they would all get through this, than in those where the adults were acting and projecting fear. In fact, read this column about singing in an Israeli bomb shelter.

Then go out into the world with your children and help teach them so that they can practice making safe choices together without radical judgement. There are just too many teaching otherwise.

Again, there are no absolutes. There is no black and white. And yet, it's unfortunately always easier for us to take sides and cry out in the wilderness our subjective takes on justice and injustice. The nuanced complexity of family violence, global violence and extremist terrorism is barely accessible to learned adults much less children and teenagers.

So instead let's stand together through awareness and vigilance while making our own safety plans, knowing that we're all susceptible to violent tragedy. Many of us will go through our lives unscathed, just as hopefully many of our children and children's children will as well, but together the aggregate power of our safety plans may just change the world.

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.