Losing an Obsession with Winning

The San Francisco Giants celebrate their 2012 World Series victory with a ticker tape parade. Photo by Ed Frauenheim

Suddenly, Scott Norwood’s wide-right kick doesn’t hurt so much.

The San Francisco Giants not only won the 2012 World Series, they also won me a degree of psychic freedom. Freedom from half a life’s worth of futile fandom, including Norwood’s errant kick that sealed the Buffalo Bills’ first of four straight Super Bowl losses in the 1990s.

The 2012 Giants helped liberate me from another sports-related enslavement, a deeper, darker one. Their plucky, lucky win fueled my break from a story I’ve long told myself about being destined to be a loser as an athlete.

That may sound harsh. Perhaps it is a slight exaggeration. But this fear, and at times conviction, that I’m a hopeless also-ran on the court, diamond and field is firmly rooted in an American culture of triumph and shame. I’m talking about the country’s obsession with winning and losing, and the way the latter can be cast as utter failure. “We are the champions,” Queen sang in what was one of the dominant anthems of my 1970s childhood. “No time for losers.”

It may be that Freddy Mercury had his tongue in his cheek when he wrote the song—was poking fun of an obsession with winning. But that made little difference to me and my childhood pals who blasted it out as we dreamed of leading sports teams to victory.

That I never did so in real life came to haunt me. The closest I came in youth hockey was a tie, and in many ways that final championship game at age 12 or so felt worse than a defeat. I was the best player on our “C” line, the group of 5 players with the lowest skills on our team of about 15. My counterpart was a hulking kid. During the regular season, he’d knocked me unconscious with a check against the boards—the only time that ever happened to me in some 5 years of playing. In the final game he scored several goals against me and my C-line mates. A fellow on our “A” line managed to score several goals at the end to force a tie. But I felt I let the team down.

To this day, I can’t tell whether I “choked” in that last game or whether I played admirably against a ringer. My hindsight isn’t 20-20. It’s blurred through the lens of guilt and shame. What I see mostly is that I let the team down. If anything, that lens solidified and that sense that I could not be clutch deepened over time. In college, I took two intramural teams to championship games only to lose in the final contest. On both my ultimate Frisbee team and my hockey squads, I was the most talented player. But I could not overcome some rival star players in the finals.

These events mixed with a preexisting penchant for self-doubt. For fearing things were wrong with me despite evidence to the contrary. Once as a child, for example, I became paranoid that I couldn’t inhale enough oxygen. Only when my parents took me to medical specialists did I calm down about breathing.

While I overcame that physical freak-out, a creeping frustration and self-criticism was sinking in by my early 20s around sports. And then fandom fanned those flames. My home football team Buffalo Bills became a powerhouse just as I graduated from college. I remember watching the 1990 Super Bowl from my Brooklyn apartment, and seeing Norwood’s last minute field goal attempt to beat the New York Giants miss.  That kick hurt. And the pain only grew as the Bill made it to an unprecedented three more consecutive Super Bowls. And lost by at least 13 points each time. Norwood’s kick, it turned out, was our best hope. And we blew it.

It was more of the same with the Buffalo Sabres hockey team and the New York Knicks basketball squad. The Sabres made it to the Stanly Cup in 1997 but lost on what looked to be an illegal goal in triple overtime. And the Knicks, who I adopted as my team when I moved to New York after college, could never get past Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls. When Jordan retired for a spell, the Knicks made it to the finals against the Houston Rockets, only to lose in a deciding seventh game.

When I moved to San Francisco in 1995, I became a San Francisco Giants baseball fan. The team led by slugger Barry Bonds got to the 2002 World Series. Ahead 3 games to 2 in the best of 7 match-up against the Anaheim Angles, they had a 5-run lead just eight 8 outs from the promised land. But they didn’t get there. The Angels staged an improbable come-back in game 6 and went on to win the deciding game 7.

That 2002 World Series was more than a heart-breaker for me. It was a back-breaker. It was the straw that told this camel he is cursed.

So I retreated. Became less of a Giants fan. Which is why it was hard for me to fully absorb and accept the Giants’ 2010 World Series victory. I loved that team and had followed it with increased interest throughout the year. I saw rookie catcher Buster Posey’s first game, for example. But as this group of self-described “misfits,” spurred on by first-baseman Aubrey Huff and his sparkling red “rally thong,” clinched the final game against the Texas Rangers, I was conflicted. Did I deserve to partake in the joy, to savor the championship? Was I merely a fair-weather fan? And did the victory really constitute a lifting of the curse?

This year was different. That’s partly because I followed the team more closely. But I think it also is because this year’s World Series championship had a calming message to me: it’s a lot about luck. The 2012 Giants benefited from some stranger-than-fiction breaks. A crucial hit by outfielder Hunter Pence where his bat broke, and then the broken half of the bat bonked the ball two additional times--giving it a circus spin impossible for the St. Louis Cardinals to field cleanly. A high-stakes bunt against the Tigers that 99 percent of the time rolls foul but in this case stayed fair by inches. Three homeruns in a single World Series game by the Giants’ Pablo Sandoval, even though he’d hit just 12 in the 162-game regular season.

The combination of the Giants good fortune and the repetition of my baseball team taking the World Series has me thinking that fandom luck may even out after all. That after 43 years of tough breaks and no championships, Fan Ed Frauenheim is finally getting his due. It helps that one of my closest friend is a long-time Boston Red Sox. Those fans, too, had decades of frustration relieved when the BoSox won two World Series in the past decade.

Luck wasn’t the only message of the 2012 Giants team. Pluck also carried the day. These Giants faced elimination six times in the playoffs and pulled out wins each time. Talk about persistence and performance under pressure. Then they hammered the best pitcher in baseball in the Tigers’ Justin Verlander and generally beat up the favored Tigers. Particularly inspiring was the way the Giants embodied a team-first spirit, complete with rousing pre-game speeches and the playful ritual of tossing sunflower seeds on each other like little kids.

I’ve had that story in me as well. Sitting next to the nasty narrative of personal sports failure is one where I trust that effort and teamwork eventually win the day. That winning truly isn’t as important as trying hard. It’s the mantra I teach my kids. And the soccer team I’ve coached for five years now.

I’ve even lived it out a few times on the basketball court. Although I haven’t played organized sports much since college, I did play basketball every Sunday with the same group of guys for more than a decade. And as ludicrous as it may sound, a single drive to the basket I made during a game a few years ago disarmed much of my athletic self-doubt.

During this game, my team got off to a strong start. But our opponents made a strong run of unanswered baskets and were close to overtaking us. The score was probably 16 to 12 in our favor and the game was to 20. I had the ball near the foul line, matched up against a guy who was generally my equal in skill. And I determined I would try to stop the bleeding. I drove to the left, got by him and made a layup. That basket put us one away from winning the game, which we did. I was clutch! And that was part of a winning streak of 4 games that gave my team what we called a “dynasty”—a mini-championship.

That successful drive to the hoop gave me a degree of freedom from the painful narrative of fading and failing during crunch time. And the liberation widened with the Giants’ 2012 championship. It feels like an unexpected gift, this greater ease with myself as a fan and an player. This ability to home in more on the bigger, better story of progress rather than points on the scoreboard.

In fact, I’m now gravitating toward physical activities that aren’t so much about winning. A series of injuries has all but ended my basketball career. But I’m largely at peace with that because I’m determined to return to and explore the realm of running. And to continue with a yoga practice that over the past 15 years or so has helped me become stronger and more fit than I ever was as a college athlete.

Oddly enough, the Giants’ victory is fueling this non-competitive fitness focus. I’m less tormented by Scott Norwood’s kick. And more glad to be alive and kicking. 

Our Polar Bear

There’s a polar bear in my closet.

A statue of a polar bear, that is, with its neck outstretched, its head twisted slightly in a quizzical look.

It’s a 10-pound statue of a polar bear. But it’s also my friend Josh.

Josh gave me the statue about 25 years ago. And both he and it have remained in my life since, each becoming a quiet but dear presence. Josh and his polar bear also have taught me unexpected lessons about self-acceptance and about persistence as a pal.

Let’s start with the polar bear. The thing is clumsy. Standing about 8 inches high and running about 15 inches long, the bear perches on top of the short dresser in my closet. And it’s often in my way. Even though it occupies the edge of the dresser top, the polar bear makes it harder to stack clothes on the dresser en route to putting them away. And since it is at the edge, I worry that it will tip over into the adjacent wall, making a mark and wearing down its own battered white coat.

I feel stupid, in a way, for having it there.

And that same sense of some shame goes back to the bear’s origins in my life. Josh gave it to me one day during our sophomore year in college. He said it reminded him of me. That made a certain sense. I was always asking questions--as this polar bear appeared to be doing. I stood out from Josh and our other two roommates for voicing many more questions than they did. Josh especially. He rarely articulated questions. He read voraciously but he was quiet. Inscrutable even.

He found my constant querries amusing. But I couldn’t tell if he was laughing with or at me. And so I could feel stupid around him. Did he appreciate my curiosity or look down on me as a rube? The polar bear gift neatly captured my confusion. Was it a sweet-hearted present or a mocking jab? Maybe a little of both?

If you would have asked me to predict which of my college friends I would have remained close to, Josh wouldn’t have made the short list. To get a sense of how I felt uncomfortable around him, take music. I considered myself to be open minded about music entering college. I had ventured, for example, into alternative, New Wave groups in high school when most of my friends were focused on classic, more mainstream rockers like The Who, Bruce Springsteen and The Police. I dug The Style Council. But Josh was way more alternative than me, and I felt him looking down on much of my music. To him, the Style Council was a travesty.

We just didn’t get each other on some level. I thought I was doing my sophomore roommates a favor one time by tidying up our bug-infested living room. Inadvertently, I tossed out some of Josh's “fanzines,” homemade newsletters central to the underground music scene before the Internet. Josh blew up at me when he found out. “I can’t believe you did that,” he screamed. My trash, his counter-cultural treasure.

Because of these differences and my discomfort, I distanced myself from Josh. I chose not to room with him junior year. We headed into different “eating clubs” at Princeton, the places where upperclass students eat and socialize. My senior year we grew even farther apart. I became a resident advisor living in an underclass student dorm, while he graduated early, moved into an apartment in town and took a job as a policy analyst.

Still, Josh and I maintained a kind of remote friendship. We never lived together again, but always stayed in touch. Eating together among friends at our eating clubs or his Princeton apartment. Seeing music acts every once in a while, like Prince’s Lovesexy tour in Philly in 1989. Going en masse to his parents’ farmhouse home in Pennsylvania.

The pattern continued after I graduated. He was a regular visitor at the Brooklyn apartment where a bunch of college friends and I flopped after graduating. The four of us sophomore roommates took an epic 6-week trip to Southeast Asia. And after I moved out to San Francisco and Josh settled in Brooklyn, we continued to look each other up on trips—meaning we saw each other about once a year. Through visits, email and ultimately Facebook, we have remained in each other’s lives.

It’s the same with the polar bear. I don’t quite know why, but it has persevered over the years. For a significant stretch, I think it sat in the dark confines of an old suitcase in a storage room. Even when it surfaced, I haven’t always known what to do with it. It’s been placed on the floor, where it got in the way, and on a desk, where it took up too much space. But I’ve never thrown it out.

And I’m glad I haven’t. For one thing, it proved useful when I rehabilitated a dislocated shoulder. I used it as a weight in my exercises.

But other knick-knacks collected over the years have played practical roles and haven’t made the cuts of multiple spring cleanings and home rearranging. Why has this statue of an endangered species survived as a personal item of mine?

I suspect the secret is that the polar bear is a mirror to me. Its expression captures a curiosity that I identify with at my core. I’m not sure I always valued that quality, especially when I occasionally felt foolish for asking a “dumb” question. But as I became a teacher and later a writer, I came to treasure inquisitiveness as one of my greatest strengths. A trait I’m trying to pass on to my kids, a key to world peace even.

This polar bear may be bulky, may trigger memories of mixed emotions, may have almost ended up in a landfill.

But it’s next to me now because it reminds me of my best self.

Like his bear, Josh also has come to occupy an important corner of my life. It started in college, when Josh helped teach me the importance of doing my homework. One time he and I attended a rally calling on Princeton to divest itself of investments tied to apartheid South Africa. A counter protester approached us and asked if we were sure the black citizens of South Africa really wanted international companies to pull out of the country. I didn’t know the answer to that question—I was there out of a vague sense that apartheid was wrong. But Josh knew the facts cold. He cited evidence that South African blacks backed divestment.

And even though I chafed against what I saw as his music snobbery, Josh has introduced me to some of the most important songs in my life. I might never have heard of Joan Armatrading, The Feelies or Big Star if not for him. But Armatrading’s “My Family” always renews my hope for humanity, The Feelies’ “Let’s Go” always raves me up and Big Star’s three albums remain among my all-time favorites. Big Star’s “Watch the Sunrise” has helped carry me through trying times, including the break-up of my first marriage.

In other ways, Josh has multiplied joys and mitigated pains. He invited me to go skiing in Utah when my first wife and I were on the verge of breaking up. He came to both my first and second weddings. I remember hugging him and our other college roommate Raul on the top of San Francisco’s Tank Hill at the close of the second one—tears of relief and happiness flowing and Josh able to appreciate those as well as anyone. I came to his Brooklyn home weeks after his first child Gus was born, my own son Julius mere months older. And for nearly a decade now we have continued to connect on the highs, lows and quirks of parenting.

Josh deserves more credit for the way the signal of our connection hasn’t weakened over the years. He has been the more likely to interrupt the silence between us with an email or Facebook message, often passing on news about mutual friends and asking what’s up with me. My trips back East grew less frequent, but Josh gets to the Bay Area every year to visit his parents-in-law in Orinda. He faithfully makes plans to get together.

I got a glimpse into his dogged nature at his wedding some 10 years ago. It was a blast of a nuptial gathering, a multiday affair at a family compound in Maine full of waterskiing, badminton, a campfire and Scottish dancing lessons. At one point, I told his mother that I was glad Josh hadn’t given up on me as a friend. “He’s loyal,” she explained.

I’m glad he is. And I’m glad I’ve been loyal in my way as well. Even today, I still have to overcome a hint of my old anxiety around him when we communicate. But I do. And I made sure to contribute to his 40th birthday video—one of those profile movies full of interviews with friends and old photos panned over in Ken Burns-fashion. I spoke about one of my favorite Josh stories. The time during our Southeast Asia trip when Josh, man of esoteric music, chose to sing the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” during a boozy evening of karaoke near the Borobudor Buddhist shrine. He belted out this rock classic with feeling.

That was a sign that it wasn’t entirely fair to see Josh as a music snob. I think any such snobbery in him has softened over the years. And in any event, another friend appearing in Josh's video helped me see his musical tastes in a different light. Eric Weisbard, a pop culture scholar and fan of eclectic music himself, recounted that Josh would listen to albums Eric and his wife, music critic Ann Powers, couldn’t bear to hear. Josh's attitude toward those far-out bands was fundamentally a generous one, Eric said. Josh gave them a chance.

Viewing others as worthy of attention--as likely to contain a compelling story or song--amounts to curiosity. Seeing Josh as a quieter kind of curious has reinforced my own version of wondering about the world.

In the end, Josh and I are bears of the same fur. We’re both that statue sitting in my closet.

Comes a Time

Julius put his arms around me. I was facing the other way, so I turned to him and realized he was crying.

“Dada, I’m scared of dying,” he blurted out. Now he was bawling.

I had never seen him this terrified. My 8-year-old son was staring into the abyss of death for the first time as a not-so-little kid. And the gaping uncertainty horrified him. It was early evening on Father’s Day. A sudden challenge as a father.

Julius and my 6-year-old daughter Skyla have thought about dying before, but typically we’ve discussed it in a calm, clinical way. During those conversations, I’ve talked about my belief that we go to heaven after we die. But I’m not very definitive. I’ll say to them: “I believe we’ll get to see God and our dead relatives.”

It’s not “You will go to heaven and you will see God.” The sort of fully reassuring statement that, I presume, is the kind of message that my brother-in-law, Steve, and sister-in-law, Abbie, give their kids and possibly Julius and Skyla as well.

Steve and Abbie are evangelical Christians. Steve, for example, signs his emails with this Biblical quote: “Believe and be saved.” By contrast, I’m a lapsed Catholic who stumbled into a Protestant church in recent years. My spirituality also weaves in the Gnostic gospels, yoga-class Hinduism and a tinge of Buddhism. Although my wife Rowena and I faithfully attend Old First Presbyterian Church and love our preacher there, we have our doubts about the Resurrection. With such jumbled-up beliefs, we can’t offer our kids great certainty about what happens when they die.

We had just seen Steve and Abbie in Arizona, and during the visit, Julius apparently had been singing a religious song, “Hosannah,” either picked up in Sunday school or heard at Abbie and Steve’s.

Steve then made a CD of religious music for Julius to take home. Matters of the spirit also were central to our drive back to San Francisco. We read “The Green Ghost,” a book about a girl about Julius’ age who dies after wandering too far into the forest to cut down a tree at Christmas. It is an eerie yet sweet book. The ghost, years later, helps a family avoid getting trapped in a snowstorm. Along the way, the ghost reunites with her younger-and-now-elderly sister who had been with the deceased girl the night she died. The younger sister survived because the older one wrapped her in her coat.

Soon after we arrived in our apartment, Julius put on the religious CD from Uncle Steve. It is gentle, uplifting music. That only added to my surprise when I found Julius clinging to me.

The song didn’t soothe him, at least in this moment. As spiritual music it called attention to our mortality, and Julius had a flash of just how scary that concept can be. I imagine the explanations his mother and I have given him of what happens after death suddenly seemed flimsy. Perhaps he noticed the discord between our subjective statements and the greater certainty he hears from others in his life, including Abbie and Steve. Perhaps the story of a little girl about his age dying and becoming a ghost struck him not as charming but chilling.

I should add that Julius disputes most of these theories. I later asked him what had triggered his fear that night. “I heard the word ‘dying’ in the song,” he said. He flat out rejected any influence of the Green Ghost or the way his mother and I talk about heaven compared to the way others talk about it.

Whether my grander hypotheses hold or Julius simply latched on to a lyric about dying, his reaction that night was unusual. He admitted he hadn’t felt that fearful “since he was little.” In fact, the closest parallel I have to his spontaneous terror was when he was about three years old, and we witnessed a scary police action in our neighborhood. Several cops ran from behind a community center, guns drawn, to arrest a pair of teen-age suspects. Although he was so young, Julius intuitively sensed the danger in the air. As the police officers ran by us, he burst into tears.

I heard the same panic in his voice this Father’s Day. And for a split-second, I was rattled. Julius’ fear spoke to a parental helplessness that I hate. Ultimately, my determination—no matter how fierce—to guard my children against harm has to succumb to reality. They will die one day. And trying too hard to protect them backfires in paranoia. I can find that balance between safeguarding them and sending them into the world maddeningly hard to strike.

But somehow, as Julius hugged me in tears, a healthier paternal instinct kicked in. Just as I pulled him close when he was a frightened three-year-old, I picked Julius up by the armpits and held him on my hip. He has become so big, though, that I couldn’t easily hold him up with one arm. I propped one leg up on a chair to help support his weight.

“I understand, Peanut,” I said, using a nickname dating to his infancy. I told him death is scary to me too sometimes, and repeated my belief that when we die we will be with God and relatives who’ve died before us.

Rowena also sought to soothe him and joined us in an embrace. Then Skyla climbed onto my propped up leg behind Julius. She made it a full-family hug. Whether comforted by our physical presence or our words, Julius soon calmed down.

My Father's Day duties weren’t quite done, though. I took on bedtime songs later in the evening. At Julius’ request, I sang the two kids a version of Neil Young’s “Comes a Time.” I don’t know all the words by heart, so I often conclude the song—and my overall nighttime singing routine—by repeating the phrase “comes a time” over and over and over. Julius once told me he finds this relaxing, and he explicitly requested the ritual this evening.

So I granted his wish. And the recurring refrain seemed a fitting response to his earlier fear. Comes a time. Honest about the reality of death, but comforting at the same time. The very repetition of the phrase – the predictability – counteracting the utter unknown-ness of dying. In the face of a scary, solitary ending, a reminder that he is not alone.

Julius had thrown his arms around me, and I was hugging him back with a song.

Skyla the Social

When Skyla Parris Frauenheim was 2 ½, she and I took a walk late one night to soothe her nerves. She had been on a crying jag, and my wife Rowena and I didn’t want to keep up her 4-year-old brother. Skyla was nestled into the scarlet red sling we would carry her in. And while we breathed in the brisk San Francisco air and looked at the starry sky, Skyla had a striking thought.

“Maybe everybody in the world is on a walk with us,” she said.

That comment gets at a cornerstone of Skyla’s spirit. She sees herself as fundamentally connected to those around her. And her vision that night reminds me of an old lesson: we human beings are ultimately one interdependent community. Recognizing that truth allows us to solve problems and satisfy our souls.

***

Skyla is a second child. That might explain the way she experiences herself as so deeply woven into a tapestry of “persons” -- as she often calls people. My friend Raul recently made this observation about second-born siblings: “They've always lived in a complex web of family relationships and bonds. First borns began with a one-to-one relationship with parents, second borns have only known one way.”

For Skyla, that has translated into a dear relationship with her older brother Julius. For the first four years or so of her life, she frequently ended her sentences with “right, Julius?” As in, “It’s sunny out today, right Julius?” or “We’re going to go swimming at Grandpa Carl’s pool in Arizona, right Julius?” It was if her observations and thoughts extended to include him. Making meaning for her was a social activity.

Skyla has gradually outgrown the verbal verification. But she’s hardly less linked to her brother. I recently overheard her tell Julius that she loved him the best in our family, followed by Mommy. I brought up the rear.

But even with my low ranking, Skyla shows me her affection constantly. Hugs. Kisses. A certain head-leaning-against-me, that you see her doing to Julius in the photo above. And requests for time on my lap--as she gets dressed in the morning, while I’m working in my home office and at the dinner table after we’ve eaten. Often, she’ll just climb on without asking. A human lap dog.

Skyla expresses her love for many people besides me. And has done so since she was a baby. “Mama, I love you so hard,” she said a few years ago. And the phrase captures the fierceness of her devotion to Rowena. When Rowena and I have argued and I’ve raised my voice, Skyla has bravely intervened. “Stop it, Daddy!” or “Leave Mommy alone!”

Skyla came up with the phrase “sleep-hugging” to describe a bedtime hug, a sign of how much she adores those evening embraces. While cuddling with her in the morning a few years ago, I told Skyla I was going to wake up. "You can't wake up,” she responded, while rolling on top of me. “You're getting bulldozed by a flower."

That line reflects her personality: assertively sweet and sweetly assertive. The quote also reveals her aesthetic. She is all about flowers. Flowers and hearts. Flowers, hearts and persons dominate her paintings and drawings. And her clothes. Half her shirts and pants have hearts on them. Her latest pajama bottoms read: “All we need is love.” Yes, most of the time grown-ups give her these items. But she’s choosing what to wear herself now. At her recent six-year-old birthday party, she picked a dark-pink turtleneck dotted with rows of white, pink and red hearts, over which she wore a pink dress with pink flowers.

Skyla isn’t alone in being a child full of love. Many kids have a similar sensibility. Her best friend Simone, for example, came to the birthday party dressed almost as a mirror image to Skyla, with a dark blue turtleneck peppered with light-blue hearts. Simone and Skyla met in pre-school, and no longer go to the same school. That caused Simone some trepidation at the start of the party. She clung to her father Nico at the foot of our stairs, worried about not knowing the rest of the guests, who were from Skyla’s kindergarten class. But Simone soon made friends at the party with a sweet girl named Althea. The two of them ultimately shared a seat for cake.

Here’s how Nico described the party aftermath for Simone: “On the drive home she told me that she was so happy that there were tears in her eyes.”

In other words, kids like Simone and Skyla wear hearts on their sleeve that are very real.

That’s not to say children are only about connecting. They can be plenty hateful. And teasy. And they can demand their personal space. Skyla, for example, went through a phase last year where she rejected hugs and kisses. At school, she has been cautious about making new friends. And she certainly has independent and selfish impulses. But most of her tantrums are less about self-indulgence than they are about fairness in the social fabric. Julius got an extra candy treat. Daddy got a Rockstar drink while she didn’t get an equivalent juice or chocolate milk. A promise by one parent was denied by another.

And even as she cultivates her individuality and demands her share, Skyla continues to define herself in terms of her relationships. Not long ago, for example, she woke up in the morning and began chanting: “Daddy, Mommy, Julius and me.”

These words embedding her in our family structure had a physical parallel. She, Julius and I all were lying in Julius’ top-bunk bed--I’d been summoned to the kids’ room by one of them in the pre-dawn hours. Julius and I lay on either side of her as Skyla declared our family-hood and her place in it. “Daddy, Mommy, Julius and me.” Her sing-song voice conveyed complete contentment. And it was contagious--I experienced joy rivaling any I’ve ever felt.

***

We adults are too quick to discount intense feelings of solidarity and affection. When we see them in children, we might call them adorable but usually in a patronizing way. We tend to be hyper-vigilant of sentiments that could veer into the sentimental. That could be cloying.

We know on some level that children possess a deep wisdom, but we’re terrified of appearing childish and overemotional. We ought to work harder to embrace a childlike mindset. A childlike heartset, of seeing ourselves as inextricably tied to others.

For one thing, it is surprisingly scientific in nature. Despite our Western beliefs in autonomous, rational individualism, we are more mutually dependent than we care to admit. New York Times columnist David Brooks is among those who have called attention to the way research in brain science and other fields has made clear that we are profoundly “social animals.”

“The cognitive revolution of the past thirty years provides a different perspective on our lives,” Brooks wrote in the New Yorker earlier this year, “one that emphasizes the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, moral intuition over abstract logic, perceptiveness over I.Q.”

Similarly, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers shows that success in a variety of fields, ranging from law to computer science to professional hockey, has much to do with social circumstances and connections that we have tended to overlook. In one of the most intriguing anecdotes of the book, Gladwell highlights the way impressive health statistics in Roseto, a small Pennsylvania town, could only be explained by the strong community bonds there.

Despite such reminders, we Americans remain stuck with an unbalanced ideology. By overemphasizing “personal responsibility” and the power of “individual initiative,” we have failed to set up an economy that works for all. Squint at our society from afar, and you can’t help but ask how we could allow an unemployment rate of 9 percent--representing nearly 14 million workers--to persist this far along into a so-called recovery.

And that official figure fails to capture the full extent of U.S. unemployment or the dramatic rise in long-term joblessness. As of March of this year, 46 percent of those considered officially unemployed have been without work for 27 weeks or more. That figure had stayed below 30 percent from 1948 to 2009. In effect, we are allowing a minority of millions of people to bear the full brunt of the recession, with many of them falling through the cracks of a flawed social safety net.

And graver threats loom, especially when we widen the lens to consider the entire world. Nuclear annihilation remains a real possibility. As does the prospect of climate catastrophe.

Over the years, our wisest leaders have urged us to view all humans as one family. “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools,” Martin Luther King, Jr. said. Buckminster Fuller spoke of “Spaceship Earth,” with its implication that we are all in it together.

There are signs that we are hearing those calls. In the book I’m co-writing about the future of corporate social responsibility, my co-authors and I document a rise in “ethical” consumerism. People are more concerned that the products they buy are not made by exploiting workers or trashing the environment. We also found found that people are increasingly likely to identify as global citizens. The Millennials are a “civic” generation. And the social media tools they helped make popular encourage connectivity and magnify its power. It seems, for example, that Facebook and Twitter played key roles in sparking the remarkable wave of political protests in the Arab world in the past several weeks.

Those protests and their success so far in Egypt and Tunisia serve as reminders that people can come together to solve apparently intractable dilemmas. And who cannot be moved by the generosity of the human spirit revealed by those demonstrators? They not only risked their lives but they see themselves as part of a wider liberation movement. “We are setting a role model for the dictatorships around us,” Khalid Shaheen, a 39-year-old Egyptian, told the New York Times. “Democracy is coming.”

***

With such inspirational examples, why is it so hard for us humans to remember our fundamental ties and common aspirations? Part of the reason, of course, is that we are unique individuals and rightly resist being forced to conform to others’ visions. And we can be so awful to one another, making us distrust people and limit our love to smaller circles.

Skyla herself has wrestled with how broadly to share her affections. The same morning she chanted “Daddy, Mommy, Julius and me” she also sang this: “I love every person.” When I asked who she meant by that, she clarified that she meant just our family. That’s not surprising, given that she’s been warned that strangers can hurt her and that she should be wary of them.

There’s more to the story of our anti-social impulses. The pain of losing each other also plays a role. If we let ourselves feel how much we truly care about others, it can overwhelm us to lose them. Lose them to a new job in a new city. To a different school. To death itself. So we harden our hearts a little to dull the ache of departures.

Once again, Skyla shed light on the subject for me recently. I had just finished telling Julius and her the latest in a series of stories I made up about a group of bugs living in the San Francisco Bay Area. After having “Crackey the Cricket” and his ladybug and butterfly buddies take trips to China, the White House, the Egyptian Pyramids, Alaska and the San Francisco Zoo, I figured they had about reached the end of their lifespans. So I had Crackey marry and have kids, had the the ladybug and butterfly couples have kids as well, and said the older generation died.

I tried to cushion their passing by saying the next installment of the stories would be about their kids, and I spoke a little about the cycle of life.

Still, the deaths hit a nerve with Skyla. “Daddy don’t die,” she said as we hugged goodnight. “Mommy don’t die.”

“I make magic spell so Daddy don’t die and Mommy don’t die and brother don’t die.”

In protesting the future loss of her beloved family, Skyla declared openly how much she cared for us. Her child heart was beating, bleating loudly.

Even so, the voice she used suggested that she too is “maturing” into someone a little more guarded. She adopted a toddler’s tone and syntax--“I make magic spell”--as if only the youngest of children can safely admit intense love and anxiety at the prospect of separation. By cloaking her emotion in the language of a younger self, she in a way shielded herself from attacks that she was acting like a “baby.”

Yet her sentiment is spot on. Yes, our different spiritual traditions help us make sense of dying. But are any among us immune from soul-wrenching grief when we lose parents, mates, siblings, children? If only we had spells to keep those loved ones alive.

***

Maybe sometimes we do.

A few weeks ago, I almost lost Skyla. We all almost lost Skyla, but for what seems to me a miracle. It was early evening, when our home street of 18th Street becomes a thoroughfare for commuters. Skyla, Julius and I were on 18th Street crossing Guerrero Street, mere yards from our apartment door. As she approached the far side of Guerrero on a two-wheeled scooter, Skyla started heading into 18th Street to get to a curb cut. Into the lane of 18th Street that is normally safe for people because cars are parked there. Just as she did so, an SUV switched from the central lane of 18th Street to that outer lane. It was headed right for Skyla.

“Skyla STOP!” I yelled. She did, and the big vehicle missed her by inches.

It amazes me she didn’t die there. I happened to be watching her rather than Julius at that moment. I managed to yell. She stopped, out of some combination of obedience and self-preservation.

Even so, I couldn’t fully appreciate what had happened right away. I was in shock. It was too much, initially, to contemplate losing her. Little by little it sunk in, in excruciating fashion. Because I realized that to lose Skyla would be to lose part of me. Part of my heart.

When I let myself imagine her dying that day, I suddenly appreciated the way the death of a child sometimes breaks up a marriage. Putting myself in that horrible hypothetical place, I wanted someone to blame for her death besides me and the SUV, and my thoughts turned to Rowena. It’s also hard for me to think about how our marriage could survive with Skyla missing from our family puzzle. Rowena and I have strong, healthy bond. But our littlest one would leave such a large a hole.

My appreciation of Skyla is not just existential. It’s practical. Mundane even. Most days when I come home from work, Skyla greets me with a smile, like so many other children do to their parents. “Hi Dad, look at the fort Julius and I made.” Or “Don’t come in yet, Dad, we’re making a surprise.” Or “Dad, can we play Tiger?” That’s our idiosyncratic game of chase where I’m the tiger in pursuit of Skyla and Julius.

In other words, she almost always brightens my day. Soothes my soul when it is less-than-sunny. Just as I calmed her the night we took a walk some 3 1/2 years ago.

She was right that night. In some sense, we all were out on a walk together then. We still are.

Photo by Pak Han

Masculinity at The Edge

I'm at the edge of masculinity.

I mean that quite literally. The kind of man I am is epitomized by The Edge, the guitarist of rock band U2. I realized this about two years ago, while watching a U2 concert DVD with some friends. I realized my buddy was U2's lead singer Bono--a front man, often the center of attention, someone who thrives in the spotlight. And that I was The Edge--off to the side, happy to harmonize, the man behind the music.

Not being an alpha male hasn't always felt great. But I'm increasingly Ok with an Edgelike masculinity. My society and I are gradually realizing that guyhood at the edges is more than Ok. In many ways, it's central.

***

Categories like alpha vs. non-alpha males are messy and in many ways fluid. My friend Dana points out that in any group of nerdy guys playing Dungeons & Dragons, someone typically will try to assume the role of dominant male. Still, I think we can define alphas as men who generally seek out and seize leadership status. These guys exist--often winding up as CEOs, politicians and sports stars.

And in my 42 years as an American man, I've noticed various kinds of non-alpha males. There are geeks, who are typically peripheral growing up because of their social awkwardness or others' jealously of their smarts. There are men who consciously opt out of the social rat race as much as possible, solitudinal types that might be artists or curmudgeons. Then there are the emotionally sensitive males. The fellows who used to be called "nice guys" and lately have been dubbed "emo" men. However you want to name the category, I'm in there.

We emo-men aren't totally excluded as geeks or loners might be, but neither do we live at the center of attention. At times we may tangle with alphas to lead. But we often fall short, lacking charisma or athletic prowess or confidence. We may pull punches in social jousting because we emphathise with the other parties. We're supporter types. Less competitive than cooperative. Lovers more than fighters.

Some signs of my emo/edge-hood: I've rooted for the underdog as long as I can remember. In elementary school, I irked our visiting Congressman, the former Jack Kemp, by saying communism's philosophy of sharing sounded pretty good. Amid concerns about date-rape in college, I became a sexual harassment peer-educator. Although I've had opportunities to be the top dog at organizations like my college newspaper and a labor union at the Oakland Tribune chain of newspapers, I chose lieutenent-like roles.

To be sure, I've been plenty insensitive over the years. A jerk to girlfriends. Indifferent to a high school pal lower on the social pecking order. Unsympathetic at times to my young son and daughter.

But the callousness has had a lot to do with self-dissatisfaction. With frustration that I wasn't an alpha male. After all, I've grown up in a culture that has lionized the head lion, the solitary hero-winner. As a result, even to this day, I feel some regret and shame that I've been such a behind-the-scenes guy--that I didn't seize the chance to be editor in chief of my college student newspaper, to be president of the newspaper union, to be outright captain of a work softball team I resurrected with a colleague.

It also has gnawed at me that I have never won a championship as an athlete. Compounding the pain is the fact that the times I came closest to such a victory, I was among the leaders or the clear leader in terms of skills. In each case, team sports all, there were plenty of factors beyond my control that helped determine the outcome. But I have tended to view those losses through the frame of the potential hero--me--who chokes in the clutch. The alpha also-ran.

These experiences have intensified, if not caused, an inclination to doubt myself. And at times they have fed a vicious circle, of self-consciousness sabotaging performance, leading to additional doubts. The other night, my wife, Rowena, son, Julius, and daughter, Skyla, came to watch me play basketball for the first time. I wanted to make them proud. Instead, I immediately flopped, missing my first five shots.

So deeply have I identified as as a failed alpha that my devotion to underdogs has a subcategory: underdog alphas. They're people like former basketball player Patrick Ewing. Figures who are outstanding but never quite live up to expectations, never win the big one. New York Yankees baseball player Alex Rodriguez fit this category until this year's World Series. Despite years of cheering against the Yankees and the unfair way they buy talent, I rooted for them and reveled in Rodriguez' redemption as they won.

I also have faulted myself for not feeling comfortable with the competitive bantering you often find amid guys. The trash talk that runs across socio-economic and racial lines, that I've encountered in professional circles, on the basketball court and with some close friends.

One night recently, Rowena and I were talking about alpha vs. emo-male issues. "You're more comfortable in groups of women," she observed.

It's true. I have repeatedly surrounded myself with gaggles of females through work and through social circles. My current writing group, for example, is composed of me and four women I worked with at the Oakland Tribune chain of papers.

Rowena meant no harm with the comment, but it stung. A sexist and dated but nonetheless strong presumption in our culture is that being held in high regard by women is of little worth. That it is men's views that matter.

I hate this idea. But it has some power over me. What's more, when Rowena spoke those words, I immediately pictured myself as one of the "groomer" bonobo monkeys I'd learned about years ago. The groomer are males who tend to hang out with the females of the group, combing their fur. They get their share of sex with females, but it is on the sly, while alpha-male monkeys are duking it out.

I told Rowena about my bonobo association. "That's embarrassing," I said. "Groomers are cowardly. They're deceptive."

"But you're not doing things out of sight," Rowena responded. "Other guys can see you."

***

That helped me reframe the issue. Right. I am comfortable with women. Some alpha guys with few communication skills or little emotional intelligence might actually be jealous of that. I remembered that at my latest writer's group meeting, one of the women had joked that the group amounted to my "harem." It's not a bad place to be, really, in the middle of your own harem.

That epiphany is part of a broader way I've come to make peace with my emo-male personality in recent years. I've come to love "teamy" teams that I play on or watch. At my weekly basketball game a few Sundays ago, I was part of a squad that won a game despite playing a team with the top three scorers in our group of regulars. The key to our success was unselfish play: togetherness on defense and lots of passing to open players for easy baskets. Our opponents were done in by selfish play: not enough ball movement or collective efforts on defense.

Of course, that's the potential trouble with being an alphadog. You can slide into arrogance. Vanity. To being a boor--and being ineffective as a result. That was part of my problem the other night at basketball. I tried to do too much in front of my family. While my strengths are defending well and hustling for rebounds and loose balls, I tried to be "The Man" on offense. Only when I stopped worrying about impressing my wife and kids did I settle into a flow with teammates and start making baskets.

Even though we can try too hard to be alpha-ish, emo-edgers like me also have to fight the temptation to be timid. I have been afraid of the responsibilities and potential failure of being an outright leader. Timidity in my case also includes fear of physical violence. I've always been rather scrawny, and my legacy as a brawler is abysmal.

A skinny frame helps explain why the superhero I found fascinating growing up was Green Lantern. Green Lantern's power came not from his body but from a tool--a ring that allowed him to do things such as fly, create a force field and blast plasma bolts at enemies. Utterly buff Superman was too far a stretch for me to identify with, despite his mild-mannered alias Clark Kent. And Batman, though brainy, relied too much on his fists when battling baddies.

I think I also dug Green Lantern because he had a non-alpha-ness to him. He was part of a group of equals. Earth's Green Lantern was one of a number of Green Lanterns that made up an inter-galactic police force. There's always been an undercurrent of competition between those alpha-heros Superman and Batman, even when they joined forces against evil-doers. But Green Lantern never seemed to care about having to be top-dog.

***

Neither does The Edge. I didn't realize how true this was until I saw the movie It Might Get Loud earlier this year. The film revolves around a gathering of three famous rock guitarists: U2's Edge, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Jack White, formerly of The White Stripes. Differences between emo- and alpha-malehood are on vivid display. Jack White is classic alpha. Everything to him is a fight. As the camera follows him prior to the actual encounter, he reveals he wants to trick the other two into giving up their secrets. Page and The Edge, though, are all about the experience. They come in with an openness to learn from the others, with a cooperative spirit.

In the broader profile of The Edge that emerges in the movie, it's clear this attitude is fundamental to him and has been for years. He recounts that at one of U2's first concerts held at their old school, he took up a spot on the side of the stage. "I've been there ever since," he says.

You can imagine such a statement tinged with regret or shame. Not in his case. He seems entirely at peace with his edgeness.

By one definition, at the edge you are not central. But looked at differently, you may be profoundly so. An edge is always a border to something else. And intersections are often where the most interesting stuff happens. In their book See New Now, authors Jerry de Jaager and Jim Ericson cite a study finding that of the top 50 transformative innovations over a hundred-year period, nearly 80 percent were sparked by someone whose primary expertise was outside the field of the breakthrough.

Edges lead into new territory. U2's Edge has done that with the band's music--riffing off punk and playing with digital effects to establish a distinctive, ringing sound. And he's been instrumental beyond his instrument. Enraged by political violence in Ireland, a songwriting effort of his resulted in Sunday, Bloody Sunday--one of the most energetic refutations of violence in pop music and one of songs that launched the band into stardom.

Being on the cutting edge is probably what The Edge (really David Howell Evans) had in mind when he chose that moniker. The fact that he opted for a brash stage name is a reminder that we emo men have egos--we may not be alphas but we like attention too.

And the world, increasingly, is giving it to us. The release of It Might Get Loud itself is a sign that Americans and others across the globe are recognizing the value of more emotionally attuned, more collaborative maleness. Facebook and other popular social networking tools emphasize the power of communication and connectedness. Hyper competitiveness is under fire in the wake of a recession caused largely by an unregulated free market and to some extent by fraudulent alpha financiers like Bernie Madoff. The you're-on-your-own years of the Bush administration, as well as increased awareness of the perils of climate change have given rise to a more collective sensibility. Barak Obama is ambitious and a competitor, but he's got a heavy dose of emo in him as seen by his penchant for diplomacy and bipartisanship.

In business, it's widely accepted that a command-and-control leadership style--the overly alpha CEO--is less effective than a persuasive, inclusive approach. In sports, researchers in recent years have highlighted how crucial contributions can be from non-superstars. Houston Rockets basketball player Shane Battier, for example, isn't first in any league statistics like scoring or rebounding. But it turns out his presence on the court dramatically improves the performance of his team, because he does things like keeping the other team's best rebounder from grabbing the ball.

There's even a Green Lantern movie planned for 2011.

For sure, there are counter-trends to the all the love shown to emo, edge guys. Look at the popularity of the raw--some would say savage--contests of Ultimate Fighting. Or complaints that American men are being emasculated by an increasingly metrosexual culture.

But you might say we're recognizing an edge-is-central truth. Edge-like, Green Lantern-like, me-like guys are important. We don't always seek the spotlight. But we deserve our share of it.

Michael Jackson, manhood and me

Like most of the world, I spent much of Thursday night thinking about--and, yes, mourning--Michael Jackson.

It started off cerebral. Marveling at the guy's weirdness and influence. Thinking about how not having a normal childhood may have made him obsessed in a warped way with children.

My setting was my San Francisco Mission neighborhood, on the eve of gay pride weekend. Hip hop kids of color, hipsters, heterosexual families, gays and lesbians all shared the streets. It struck me that Michael Jackson had a little bit of everyone in him, and yet remained apart. He was "gay" in his effeminateness and flamboyance, and his body transformations and fashion made him look female. But he never explicitly came out as a homosexual or transvestite. He was "black," but whether out of medical necessity or not bleached away from that race. And though he became "white" he remained rooted in African American musical traditions.

He may have been the ultimate misfit, and the world mocked him plenty. But last night, with hindsight, everyone claimed him as their own. "We love Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson," said a sign outside a bar that caters to the cool cycling crowd. (It somehow didn't seem fair that Farrah got upstaged in death.) The college-aged kids in an apartment down the block put up a sign commemorating Jackson and blared "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" out their window. That Jackson belonged to all of us was confirmed by graffiti I saw on the side of a stove left out on the street: "RIP Michael Jackson my nigga."

That told me that even hip hop culture--often macho--appreciated Jackson. And the tag changed the tenor of my reflections. I started to see the King of Pop through the prism of masculinity, a topic I've been exploring on this blog. And as I returned home and watched some of Jackson's videos on YouTube, I was moved by the way he tried on multiple versions of manhood.

"Don't Stop" shows him as an innocent lover. In what looks to be a pre-MTV video, with crystals and balls floating in the background and Jackson wearing a tuxedo with giant bow tie, he seems lost in the music and mood. The lyrics--"Keep on with the Force...this is love power"--mix the mystical and the romantic (and probably Star Wars, which made a splash two years earlier). The roughly 20-year-old Jackson dances awkwardly at times, putting his hand in his pocket. But his little hops and big smile convey a barely contained joy.

Three years later in "Beat It," Jackson moves on to embody an intriguing male peace-maker. "You want to be tough...No one likes to be defeated" he sings, looking frustrated while two street gangs prepare to battle. But he eventually defies the "beat it" warning to stay away. His character intervenes in a knife fight, transforming it into a dance joined by each combatant. The conflict is defused, but the movement remains primally male, with undulations and stacato moves of speed and strength.

This identity, though, gives way to hyper-masculinity in "Bad" several years later. In that video, Jackson leads a group of gang-bangerish guys through a subway station with a relentless refrain of macho-ness. He looks like nothing so much as the same pathetic toughs that he helped to reconcile in "Beat It."

It's dangerous to judge a person by their art. But the trajectory of those songs and videos suggest Jackson began to doubt his masculinity, and responded by going overboard in a show of testosterone. Perhaps that imbalance foreshadowed the way he later swung wildly between extreme images of male virility--witness his crotch-centric costumes--and femininity--such as the girlish hair.

***

By the time "Bad" hit, I was in college and past Michael Jackson. But he played a key role for me as I grew up--and I suspect he did so for many other men who came of age in the 1980s. He helped us dance. Made us want to, with Off the Wall and Thriller. We Amherst Junior High School guys got sweaty in Lisa Dux's living room to "Working Day and Night." And "Beat It" and the rest of "Thriller" served as soundtrack to hours playing basketball in my Buffalo-area driveway. Basketball was a way I funneled adolescent boy aggressiveness. There was something right about being physical and competitive on the basketball court, and "Beat It" confirmed that.

A few months ago, I found myself thinking about Jackson's song "Man in the Mirror." I was taking stock of life at 40, and it struck me Jackson was right on. Yes, the song has a cheesiness to it. But he hits on that timeless call to brotherhood with some clever lyrics. "I've been a victim of a selfish kind of love," he sings. And then there's that stirring key change and the rich harmony: "make that change."

Jackson's many changes amounted, at least in part, to an attempt to sort through what it means to be a man. The results were mixed, odd and apparently tragic. But I give him credit for trying, and for hitting some high notes along the way.

There's a moment in "Don't Stop" that broke my heart a little when I watched the video Thursday night. Jackson opens his arms widely. Not in the posturing way he later does in "Bad," but in an expression of pure vulnerability. Ready to embrace everything around him. I aspire to that sort of openness--it's a key to the big rewards in life of wisdom and love. But maybe Michael Jackson was too vulnerable, made to be too vulnerable, tortured somehow as a result.

In any event, much of the world is now embracing you back, Michael. As the tagger said, may you rest in peace.