Eulogy for my mom--Martha Frances Frauenheim

I gave this eulogy at my mom's funeral mass, July 30, 2014, at St. Gertrude's Church in Chicago

Hi everyone,

Thanks for being here today to remember my mom; to celebrate her. To say goodbye to her.

We’re so grateful that people dear to my mom have come here from the places dear to my mom’s heart—Syracuse; Buffalo; Minneapolis and St. Paul; the Carmel/Monterey area of California. And of course Chicago—the place where she felt most at home.

As people have sent condolence notes in the past several days, a common theme has been remembering my mom’s smile. Her beaming, sweet smile. And her laughter. My mom was quick to laugh, and it could become this whooping thing—especially when she told stories about her sister Monica getting into trouble; and my mom staying on the right side of the law in the Tobin household.

People also talk about how my mom always saw the best in people.

I think there’s a simple explanation for all her smiling and laughing and seeing people in a positive light.

My mom saw everyone as a child of God. Including herself.

That perspective has much to do with her mom. Anne Tobin, or Nanny to the wider Tobin family. You can’t really talk about any Tobin clan member without talking about Nanny.

Nanny was all about “Joy” with an exclamation point. It’s the word she put in all her letters. Like, “Martha, Chip and the kids came for Thanksgiving and we had chocolate cream pie. Joy!” Nanny also was all about service. To the poor and the old and the sick.

I think you could look at my mom’s life as taking Nanny’s Joyful service and amplifying it. Bringing it to the institution of Catholic education—such that she ultimately touched tens of thousands of children and their families and communities.

As a first grade teacher, as a principal, and ultimately as associate superintendent in Chicago Catholic Schools and superintendent of the St. Paul and Minnesota Catholic Schools, my mom brought it. These were tough jobs. Requiring patience, smarts and perseverance. My mom brought all those qualities, along with kindness. She cared about and listened closely to everyone from kindergarteners to veteran teachers, parents and bishops. Made each feel special.

But she also had high standards. She didn’t cave to pleading or pressure. In fact, the high standards came from the same place as the kindness—she was a steward of minds of souls.

This fierce kindness had a remarkable effect. It allowed her to coax first graders to read, to raise the performance of teachers, to navigate the tricky waters of school consolidation.

One family with something like 7 kids had had my mom as a first grade teacher for a bunch of them when she said she was leaving to become principal at Corpus Christi school in Colorado Springs. The mother and father were distraught—they had a few more kids for mom to teach! They offered to single-handedly pay more than what she’d be making at the new school to keep her in first grade.

But it wasn’t about the money for my mom. It was about the people—and teachers and colleagues understood this. Dozens of them over the years told my mom she was the best boss they ever had.

Just yesterday, I asked my dad why my mom first decided to become a principle. Because she’d never talked about it. Or about setting her sights on a superintendent role. She didn’t seem to have an ambitious bone in her body. Didn’t seem to care when the rest of us in the family would bask in the way she had become what we called a “power person.” My dad said it had to do with her father, my Grandpa Tobin, and his philosophy: if you can do something well, do it. In other words: serve.

So building on her parent’s wisdom and guidance, my mom served. With Joy. Exclamation point.

And that’s what she was like at home, too. Even as she progressed through an ever more demanding career, she was a rock as a mother. She wasn’t the kind of mom who made cookies—she was more the kind who ate them. But she made sure we had them. And enough for all the kids in the neighborhood. Plus the warmth to make everyone feel welcome—as we played basketball and street hockey and dungeons and dragons. Our neighbor Scott “Otter” Waggoner wrote to say my mom was like a second mom to him. My dear friend Paul Rudnick says we basically adopted him when his family struggled when we were in middle school.

My mom had the same high standards for our behavior as she did for her students and later her teachers. But she never really had to punish us much. Kirk, Katie and I just didn’t want to get in trouble much—my gosh, we’d be letting her down. This Saint of a mother. I could maybe complain that she was such a good person that my brother and sister and I never got to have a decent rebellious period.

When I think of my mother’s love, I think of this one time from my early teens. The guys were all going golfing on our municipal golf course, and I somehow got lost in the phone tree planning. They went without me. I was sad and hurt, so my mom offered to drive me to the course. Miraculously, we found the gang on the 3^rd hole, and I said: “I’ll jump the fence with my clubs and join you guys.”  

But Billy Cleary, a great guy generally, broke my heart that day. He said, “We’ve already got a foursome. Go back to the first tee.” In other words, join any old strangers. Thanks, Billy. 

Mom and I drove home. And I think I shed a tear or two. But my tears were nothing compared to my mom’s – she  sobbed for me, with me. Billy broke her heart that day too. She empathized, loved that deeply.

Sometimes I think she loved us too much. Sacrificed more than is healthy. Kirk just told me that it was only when we were in college that mom told him she didn’t like pizza. Or melted cheese in most forms. You’re talking about a family that probably had pizza once a week. Then I asked my dad whether he made her omelettes without cheese—“omelettes need cheese” he responded. But he added that she came to like a minimal amount of cheese. Their cheese compromise, I guess.

On the subject of recipes, I wanted to think about my mom’s recipe for happiness. Because I think she was truly happy. Happiness is big these days. It’s a movement/an industry even. But I think my mom was ahead of the curve in knowing how to get there. And here’s what I think her seven-part, secret formula included.

I mentioned service. I’ve mentioned family and friends. I mentioned faith—and here I would say that besides going to church regularly, mom had her prayer list. Here in Chicago, she and my dad would walk along Lake Michigan in the morning, and stop at a bench for prayers. Her list of prayers was carefully prioritized. The family member or friend in most trouble went at the top. Kirk says he occasionally prompted recalibrations himself, “feeling good mom—lower me down; or having some problems, can you raise me up a little higher?”

By the way, my dad was either much more efficient or somewhat less holy. While my mom prayed away for 4 or 5 minutes, his prayers lasted about 30 seconds.

But my dad is the next ingredient to my mom’s happiness. They were married for 47 years. They epitomized all the “in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad” stuff. My dad cared for her when she had breast cancer. He was her supportive partner throughout her career—doing her PowerPoints, fixing her computer. She did the same for him—supporting him in his career. And they loved their life together—hanging out in piano bars, throwing dinner parties, spending time with family and friends, taking those walks along Lake Michigan.

Many of you know—and my father admits—he can be a difficult personality at times. Shall we say a bit overbearing. But my mother saw mainly his wonderful qualities—considered him the prickly but noble Yul Brenner in the King and I. Wanted to dance with him as long as she could.

And dance is another piece of my mom’s puzzle. Ingredient number five is that my mom was a mover. Not a marathoner or yoga maven or golfer. But she loved to move, to dance to Motown and Jazz and I think she was even grooving to Daft Punk at Carmel and Keller’s wedding last summer. Her walks and her dancing and her hugs were about the joy of the human body in motion.

But she also understood the importance of rest. Ingredient number 6 is the way my mom took it easy. Removed herself even from the world and pressures around her. When we were kids this often took the form of Harlequin romances. This might sound crazy for someone with the intellect needed to run a 30,000-student school district and who could hold forth on all manner of public debates. But my mom loved trashy romance novels. We had stacks of them in our closets. Later, she could be found spending significant amounts of time in front of Entertainment Tonight.

But I think all this low-brow escaping reflected a high level of wisdom. About the need to recharge. To unplug. There’s a wellness and wellbeing movement these days as people feel their lives are too packed. My mom had the wellbeing thing down ages ago. Especially after she went through chemo 20 years ago with breast cancer, she knew she had to pace herself. Knew, in a way, how to make her sweetness sustainable.

That also had something to do with actually eating plenty of sweets. Chocolate chip cookies with lots of milk. Half moons. Ice cream.

She loved the sweetness of life, and she saw it all around her. This is the final ingredient. A positive outlook. Literally, eyes open to wonder and light. And acting as a mirror to show others all the beauty and joy around them. That’s what her bright-eyed smile did for us throughout her life.

Did even the night before she died. People at Mike and Dorothea’s party Saturday said she was beaming. And she was happy. Those ingredients were all mixing together. Relaxing, finally, having retired from a lifetime of service. Moving to music. With dear family and friends. With my dad. Appreciating the joy all around her.

And then faith. Because I believe my mom’s sudden death at perhaps the highest point in her life was a kind of gift from God. As hard as it is for all of us who now miss her, especially my dad, there is something perfect in the way she died. Without pain. Without a drawn-out decline that would have burdened those she loved. Having finished a life of good works. Having raised all her children to good places.

Martha Frances Frauenheim died in the arms of her beloved husband Ed Frauenheim. At St. Frances hospital. Right at the feast of St. Martha—who prompted Jesus to say “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me will live a new life.”

My mom used to say—usually over a chocolate chip cookie—“It’s like dying and going to heaven.” Mom, I trust you are there. As your friend Elena White put it, “If Marty isn’t in heaven, the rest of us are big trouble.”

Trying in 2014--A Good Start, A Big Loss

2014 started off smoothly enough. 

Julius and Skyla had great second-halves of 5^th and 3^rd grade. Skyla thrived on her Chica Cheetahs soccer team and in the classroom of Ms. DesBaillets, who reminds one of the magical Ms. Frizzle of The Magic School Bus TV series. Julius took the spotlight at a school dance, rocked out with his band at the Fun Fest and enjoyed a sweet elementary school graduation.

Rowena found work she enjoyed: leading exercise classes for 55-and-older adults. Her classes at City College of San Francisco and a local assisted living facility blended her loves of improvisation, service and body mechanics—and she was often humbled and moved by her students. I, meanwhile, landed a gig as a contract editor and writer for the Great Place to Work Institute. This job, at the organization that does the research behind Fortune’s best companies to work for lists, not only gave me a chance to promote its mission of making the world better through better workplaces, but to travel to conferences in Miami, New Orleans and Rome.

Reveling in Roma

The Rome trip in May—with its inspirational work and lovely, jasmine-in-the-air fragrant setting—was a high point for me. And it came at a high point for our whole family. That same week, Rowena got a chance to visit our dear pals the Patent-Plums in Nanjing, China. And the kids got to stay with my parents, a.k.a. Grammie and Pop-pop, in Carmel, Calif. for several days.

Grammie and Skyla not long before Grammie and Pop-pop headed to Chicago.

Some other sweetness followed in June. We had a farewell lunch for Grammie and Pop-pop, who left California for Chicago and the prospect of a pleasant retirement for my mom after 40-plus years in Catholic education. The kids also flew to Arizona for 12 days with their other grandparents, Parris and Carl, as well as Rowena’s two brothers and their families. And Rowena and I had a glorious time without kinder, including two days at Orr Hot Springs and a walk amid some of the world’s oldest, largest redwood trees.

It was sublime. But sorrow soon followed.

***

On July 27, my mother died of an apparent heart attack. In some ways, it was a perfect death. She collapsed at my Uncle Mike and Aunt Dorothea’s house, at the end of one of Uncle Mike’s semi-annual music bashes where locals sing and play jazz, rock and pop songs for hours. It may have been the happiest moment of my mom’s life, as I said in a eulogy at her funeral—finally relieved of work stress, surrounded by friends and family, in the arms of her beloved husband.

Still, it was blow to me and our broader clan. Immediately, my concern was for helping my dad function. My mom and he “lived within each other,” my dad said. And her death sucked a lot of the life out of him. Right after she died, he worried to the point of panic over whether he would be able to find my mother in heaven. Friends and family assured him that would not be a problem.

Julius, my dad, me, Skyla and Rowena, soon after my mother's funeral service in Chicago

But he remained out of sorts—unable to sleep and overwhelmed with all the work needed to settle my mom’s affairs and pack up the apartment they had just moved into. I stayed an extra week in Chicago to help him finish giving away belongings before he took off on a road trip with his old friend Tom Mino.

Given their similarly pushy personalities, we kidded that my dad and Tom’s excursion could be titled “The Overbearing Brothers Go West.” But I worried about my dad throughout the summer and fall. He struggled with loneliness and despair. A moving memorial mass for my mom in Carmel and some positive signs in his business pursuits lifted his spirits at times. But he often nosedived, longing to be reunited with my mom. As the year wore on, he would sometimes say to me, “I screwed up. I should have died right after her.”

With my brother, sister and other family and friends, I did my best to prop him up. But I was doing this without the one person best suited to support me. My mom was a source of enduring hope that I didn’t fully appreciate until she was gone. I remember one time getting off the phone with my dad when he was in a dark place. I had tried to point to a brighter future of family and meaningful work, but I emerged from the call in a funk of my own. One I couldn’t climb out of quickly. And in that shadow state, it struck me that my mom had always been there to encourage, to reassure, to see the positive possibilities.

“You sound good, Eddie,” she would often say to me at the end of our weekly or bi-weekly calls. Sometimes I didn’t feel good when she’d say this. And my mom’s glass-half-full take on my life or the world could irritate me as wishful thinking. But she made up for it with her willingness to listen and comfort. “Geeez, Eddie,” she would groan in empathy. And her voice would drop to a Karen Carpenter-like low register. “It’s Ok, Eddie.” Or “Don’t worry, dear.” And I would be transported to kidhood, when her soothing, deep voice calmed me as a highly anxious 5 year old.

But it wasn’t just her optimistic empathy and my nostalgia that allowed my mom to buoy me as an adult. She also had wise words for nearly all dilemmas, especially those involving parenting and education. And I watched her handle problems, including uncooperative grandchildren, with an unswerving blend of kindness and firmness. To top things off, she was quick to laugh and smile, with joy that was hard to resist. Her sunniness passed through phone networks at near-full strength.

Her dying was like losing an anchor to upbeat-ness. Or perhaps better said, a ladder to the light.

Losing that ladder-anchor made it all the harder to handle the other challenges that began to pile up in the second half of the year.

*** 

Trying in 2014--Introduction

Over the next several weeks, FrauenTimes is publishing a series of blog items about 2014, a trying year.

Trying in 2014--Introduction

It was a trying year for us.

My mom died, Rowena got diagnosed with breast cancer and we ran into financial troubles. We had car problems, worries about job security, and body aches I couldn’t seem to shake.

People around the world face much worse than our little San Francisco family did in 2014.

Still, this year was one of the hardest I’ve ever faced. I wondered at times how I, how we as a family, would hold it together.

The answer was at once timeless and surprising. We did our best to stay on our feet, people around us propped us up and faith fueled and fortified us.

Ultimately, we not only avoided falling to pieces but came away more durable and more connected. 

What often felt like a cursed year left us feeling blessed. 

Ford Crashes Our Fiesta Party

Ford is being a party pooper when it comes to our Fiesta.

We put our trust in the company when we bought a used 2012 Fiesta last year. We were loyal Ford fans, having had 10 good years in a Ford Escort. And we initially loved our red Fiesta hatchback, with its sleek design, easy-to-park compactness and good gas mileage.

But Ford is failing us now.

Our Fiesta has a problem. Occasionally there is no response to pressing on the accelerator pedal. Only after several seconds does the engine engage again. Although this happens infrequently—about a half dozen times since April—it is a dangerous problem for my family and other drivers. It once occurred when I was trying to merge onto a highway, leaving me at risk of being struck by fast-moving traffic. Were it to occur when my wife or I are making a left-hand turn, we would be sitting ducks and could be hit by oncoming cars.

We have tried to have the car fixed three times. Once Ford couldn’t find any problem, once it replaced the “throttle body” and a third time it updated the software associated with the transmission.

But after each time we took it into the Serramonte Ford dealership, the accelerator non-response problem occurred again.

Several weeks ago, we asked Ford to buy back the car for the lemon it is. They denied us. They said the car didn’t meet the requirements of the California Lemon Law. Ford seems to be relying on the grounds that their dealer technicians have never been able to duplicate the problem we described. But it’s not surprising that they couldn’t replicate the problem—it happens only occasionally.

And Ford knows there’s a problem with this model of the Fiesta. It recently extended the warranty related to the car’s transmission. This Fiesta has a new kind of automatic transmission. It seems clear the technology wasn’t quite ready for public consumption.  

The upshot is that Ford essentially is calling us liars. Refusing to believe us when we say the car has a serious defect that they can’t fix. A defect that puts me, my wife and our two kids—not to mention other drivers—in danger.  Regarding a car they know has transmission trouble.

We already have spent upwards of $1,000 for rental cars while we asked Ford to fix the car (our only car) and to buy back the car (a process that took longer than the 15 business days they told us it would take).

The salt in the wound happened after Ford denied our lemon law request. Our Ford customer service representative told us “they would work with us” to fix the car. She said that in the past, she had arranged to have a car tested for as many as 100 miles. I said great, that would probably allow the technician to reproduce the problem. But when we took the car to Albany Ford Suburu, they only tested the car in the shop and in a short drive. And our representative backpedaled, saying she couldn’t force them to do the 100-mile test.  Ford lets us down again.

So we’re going to proceed with a lemon law lawsuit. The first time my wife or I have ever sued a company. Incidentally, lawyers are trolling for such lemon law cases. We’ve received two solicitations from lawyers offering their services.

There's one more twist to this tale. I recently co-wrote a report grading Ford as one of the best companies in the Fortune 100 when it comes to their performance as a seller, employer and steward. Clearly they have room to improve. They stalled, as it were, with our family and our 2012 Fiesta.

Fiesta means party in Spanish. But Ford has crashed our party—and has made it clear they don’t care if we crash either.

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.