Who are you?
Whose are you?
What do you want?
Where are you now?
Four fundamental questions. It’s been along time since I’ve written. There are bunches of post on fb, yes. Some of my longer fb posts belong here, or somewhere like this I think.
So, on the heels of a reminder over Thanksgiving. With a gentle push from one of my favorite bloggers and the assistance of the prompts from the folks at reverb10 I begin again.
I introduced Bud to tennis today. I thought I would start him slow. With a manageable activity. Hitting a ball against a twenty foot high wall. I wasn’t going to take him to a court. Too much pressure for both of us. I haven’t played in… well 18 years.
I love the game. Just haven’t played. Finding someone to play with wasn’t something I needed, wanted or thought to cultivate. During the period when I did play regularly I didn’t have to look. It seemed we all played tennis. That was thirty years ago.
This afternoon Sweets had a play date. Bud and I had time alone. It was a beautiful day. I thought of heading to a batting cage. That would be a new experience for both of us! I just love baseball and have been yearning to hit some balls. Bud hasn’t caught on to the sport. I thought the activity might help.
Outside of karate, he doesn’t have much experience with sports. During my two years in California, the local Little League wasn’t an option. That’s for a number of reasons. The ones he grabs at are being hit by balls. When he was seven a missed toss of mine hit him in the face. When he turned nine I signed him up for Little League and he was hit in the side by pitchers several times. In all instances there was no damage done. Just a wounding of pride and the betrayal of trust between he and I. That latter mark is longer lasting.
Every once in a while I can get him to play catch. But it’s tough. Sweets is five years younger and sees any time not spent with her as time that should be spent with her. What I need to do is buy her a glove and begin to teach her. I’m surprised I haven’t done that. Has my Bud’s wound caught me also? No. I think I let managing the two of them get in the way of the activities we do. Some times I choose the easy way. And the path from skipping an activity to never doing it because it’s replaced by another they can both easily engage in, is maddeningly short.
I floated the batting cage idea. He rejected it immediately. I continued to pursue for a bit, then let it go. He can be as stubborn as his parents. The idea was lost. I moved on.
I wondered. What’s close, doesn’t cost money, except for supplies? Mini-golf? I thought about it for a moment. It’s fun, yes. But just that. There’s not enough to it for he and I. It’s also an activity both kids would have fun doing together. Yes. OK. Seed planted. What else then?
“Do you want to play tennis?” The words tumbled from my mouth. Where was my racket? I wondered. I began looking even before I heard his answer. I remembered where it was in my apartment in Oceanside. There wasn’t much room there. Every time I used the broom and mop I had to move it aside. But where was it now? There was only one answer. My big-ass closet. I have a Texas-sized closet in Pittsburgh. I had Pittsburgh-sized closets in California. The world gets stranger every day.
I soon found two rackets. Why do I have two? It’s not like being a musician and having multiple guitars. Not for me anyway. My Mom, remembering how much I loved the game gave me two rackets as presents for Christmas. One for me, the other for Bud (This is before Sweets was a toddler). Two rackets meant I could begin to teach him how to play right there. In my bedroom. So yes, I did. I showed him how to hold a racket. What a forehand shot looked like. Backhand too. The importance of bending your knees, turning your body and not bending your wrist. He was intrigued. It was his first time holding a racket.
We needed balls. We got in the car and I headed for the closest sporting goods store. As we made our way, I talked about the sound a can of balls made when opened. The wonderfully medicinal smell the balls have when they come out of the can. How lively the balls are, etc. He didn’t understand the lively part. I started explaining and used the phrase, “squeezing the balls.” Except I said, “your” instead of “the.” I heard my mistake and laughed at it. He didn’t. There was a pause. Was he embarrassed? Did he not know what to say? Had I inadvertently gone too blue? He said, “that’s just wrong” and smiled. In the next few minutes the car quickly filled with “ball” and “cojones” jokes and puns.
We bought the balls.
He loved cracking the can open.
He did not like the smell.
We arrived at the practice wall. I reviewed the strokes. We played air tennis. I tried to give him a sense of the feel of the ball against the racket by bouncing balls downward towards the ground. We bounced them up in the air off the racket too. Then I told him what the activity looked like and how to do it. I modeled hitting the ball off the wall. As you might imagine my game is pretty rusty. Finally, it was his turn.
I asked him to tell me what he was going to do. “Hit the middle of the wall with the ball, like you said.” He bounced the ball and took aim. He swung. The ball went over the wall and into the next court. He laughed. I laughed.
It was the best outcome for both of us. There wasn’t going to be any pressure to perform to expectations. Not from himself, not from me or anyone. This activity was going to be pure fun. It was.
After, we munched on popsicles. He smiled and said, “That was fun.” He held his smile the way he does when he’s content.
We Had Him
by Maya Angelou
Beloveds, now we know that we know nothing
Now that our bright and shining star can slip away from our fingertips like a puff of summer wind
Without notice, our dear love can escape our doting embrace
Sing our songs among the stars and and walk our dances across the face of the moon
In the instant we learn that Michael is gone we know nothing
No clocks can tell our time and no oceans can rush our tides
With the abrupt absence of our treasure
Though we our many, each of us is achingly alone
Piercingly alone
Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him
He came to us from the Creator, trailing creativity in abundance
Despite the anguish of life he was sheathed in mother love and family love and survived and did not more than that
He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style
We had him
Whether we knew who he was or did not know, he was our’s and we were his
We had him
Beautiful, delighting our eyes
He raked his hat slant over his brow and took a pose on his toes for all of us and we laughed and stomped our feet for him
We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing
He gave us all he had been given
Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana’s Blackstar Square, in Johannesburg, in Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama and Birmingham England, we are missing Michael Jackson
But we do know that we had him
And we are the world.
–
Read by Queen Latifah at Michael Jackson’s memorial service.
I went out for a cup of coffee as night fell. Alright, I went out for a brownie. The coffee was an accompaniment that I ordered out of habit. Post stroke, I’ve cut my consumption to a cup a day. It’s a 12 to 16 oz cup, mind you, but still a cup. Until recently a 32 oz press was scarcely enough to start my day. The funny thing is, I don’t miss it.
It helps that my local shop has switched suppliers. Their coffee is different. New names. The new names are new fangled. They’re names the roaster gave them. These names are given to intrigue you to taste and purchase.’s They don’t tell you where a coffee is from or how it was processed. Not seeing the name of the country/region listed with the bean is unusual for me. Where a coffee is from determines–to a large degree–it’s flavor profile. I can and do ask the baristas, but their knowledge is general. They’re still getting to know the coffee too. It’s a barrier. I buy less coffee here are a result. Last night I ordered a cup and learned on first sip that it was Ethopian. The delicate fruity aroma of the cup, it’s berry flavor and medium body gave it away. The coffee is 30% more expensive. That’s another a barrier. If I’m going to pay $17 for a bag of coffee, I’ll buy a top rated bean from a great roaster. If I’m counting pennies, which I am, I’ll choose another local supplier. So I purchased a cup with my amazing 4×4 brownie and walked back home. As I did, I chased fireflies.
Growing up chasing fireflies was a low-tech summer activity. All we needed was a thirty-two ounce jar with a perforated lid. We’d place grass torn from the lawn at the bottom of the jar. Supplies gathered, we were ready. My sibs and I would run and catch fireflies in our hands and place them in the jar. After a time we’d stop and stare at the jar. We were waiting for them to blink. I suppose we thought we’d made a natural flashlight. They didn’t blink. Given what we know about fireflies, I’m not surprised. We had no idea that we’d become Godzilla, Mothra and Ghidora on their night out. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/science/30firefly.html?pagewanted=all
Tonight I walk, cup of coffee in one hand and brownie in the other. I can only chase the fireflies. I can’t catch them.
We’ll see fireworks tonight. My father-in-law doesn’t watch them. They remind him too much of Vietnam and everything that happened there.
Fireworks, rockets of light designed for spectacle, can point to our darkest times. I had a fiance call off an engagement as we were getting ready to go see some. For years after I would describe the night as being “filled with fireworks, all the wrong kind.”
Tonight they’ll be light again. Airy. Shining and shimmering streams of color. Oh we’re in a deep recession, yes. Things are not easy. Yet somehow, the burden of being an American has lessened. Guantanamo is still open. We’re still in Iraq. Afghanistan has darkened. An election is Iran is a sham.
Still, you can climb up to the crown of the Statue of Liberty for the first time since 2001. It’s significant. When you go, you can be proud in a way that we haven’t been able in a couple of administrations. You might even be bold and recite Emma Lazarus’ famous words: “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” The promise of their embodiment is closer that it has been in too long.
Growing up I always thought that music from the 50’s sounded so foreign. Some of it was good–meaning I liked it–but what stood out most was it’s “ancient” quality. Today, the musical period it parallels is the mid-80’s, somewhere around the time of the birth of music videos. That was a time when I’d willingly watch the same video every two hours as it repeated because the limited number of available videos required it.
A friend I grew up with holds a daily lyric quiz on her facebook page. She chooses a lot of songs from the mid-seventies to late-eighties. It’s the music I grew up with. The facility with which I recognize some of the songs dates me. I wonder, does this music have that same ancient quality to youth today?
I used to pride myself on being an early adopter of new music that pushed boundaries or had a fresh sound. Sometimes I wonder if passing on a seeing a new band in concert in 1980 spurred that desire to explore and discover. It was the first concert in the U.S. by a band named after a spy plane. Why would anyone name a band after a spy plane?
In the early 90’s hosting a segment of a new music show on npr affiliate WYSO kept me abreast of everything new in multiple genres. Since then, it’s become harder to keep track of new bands, artists, etc. Time was when the local record shop was my first stop on payday. Now listening to 30 second snippets on iTunes and at Amazon is often as far as I get. Subscriptions to CMJ magazine and Paste carried me through to the new century, but I am aware that those publications were a lifeline as much as a filter.
At npr’s website, there’s a listener’s poll of the best records of 2008. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98092448 Visiting the site, I am reminded, that while I am out of touch, I’m not dead (yet). Then again, I fit in with their demographic.
That said, in no particular order, here are 10 of my favorite albums from 2008 (including one I picked up as the year began from 2007).
1. Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes
2. Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever ago
3. Adele: 19
4. Los Aterciopelados: Rio
5. Carrie Newcomer: Geography of Light
6. The Hold Steady: Stay Positive
7. Jenny Lewis: Acid Tongue
8. Tim O’Brien: Chameleon
9. Sia: Some People Have Real Problems
10. Missy Higgins: On a Clear Night (2007)
For as long as anyone at Starbucks could remember, there was success. Starbucks was a forward looking brand. The creative juices were allowed to run wild. There were Hear Music stores where you could burn a customized CD. A Starbucks Entertainment division was established to market books, music and movies. A national conference for Store Managers was scheduled in Costa Rica. There was ultra-rapid expansion as Starbucks doubled its size in a little over four years. These contributing factors helped to bring Starbucks where it is today.
Say what you want about how Starbucks lost it’s focus, but when everything you touch turns to gold, you start to touch everything. A robust organization can afford a drinking chocolate bust in Chantico on its way to another wonderful product.
The economy’s been stumbling for some time now. This recession hit Starbucks early on. Not successful? That was a new experience for the company. Reflex says, “go back to what we were.” How? “The way we’ve always done it.” That was the sense behind efforts towards building a “merchant mentality” or “getting back to basics/core/coffee.” The calls went out. Banners were waved and unlike in the past, business did not improve.
Here was a new business climate that couldn’t be changed by a CEO’s note or a Howard Schultz voice mail. The company had to move through a transition to meet the needs of the new environment.
Change happens (you’re fired or laid off). Transitions are things you move through over time (the realities you have to live with after change happens).
The first step you have to take to move through a transition successfully is to admit that an ending has taken place. That means you have to let go of the past. Of the way things used to be.
A former store manager I know said it’s taking longer for her to get over Starbucks than it did her first husband. I will venture a guess that the passionate connection she has for Starbucks even now, is much greater than the connection she had with her husband at the end.
I still write about Starbucks because I spent many wonderful years there. At the same time, I write less often than I did, not because I think less of Starbucks. As time passes the sense of myself as a partner is becoming a smaller part of me. I’m letting go.
If you’re in a similar place, it might be helpful to think of other transitions you’ve experienced and successfully moved through. Perhaps you lost a favorite relative or family pet. At seven, when my sister flushed my goldfish down the toilet I was traumatized in a seven year old’s way. Maybe you moved to a new town and had to say goodbye to all your friends? Tough stuff, right? What got you through then might be helpful now.
Remember too, that you’re not the only one experiencing this. It’s the whole economy. Everyone. What do you do? How do you (all) hold on? How do you know you’re doing everything you need to do your job well? When is it going to get better? Is it getting worse? How do you know? If you’re feeling like you’re being micro-managed at work in a way you never have before, it may be that your supervisors are asking these same questions. Like you, they don’t know.
William Bridges, in his book “Managing Transitions” calls this experience the “Neutral Zone.” It’s an in-between time where you know you can’t go back to the way things were. At the same time, you’re not comfortable where you are. You can’t move forward either, because in order to do that you have to live fully in the present.
At Starbucks, Howard Schultz’s recent statement that the “transformation is complete” is at one level gutsy and at another the best message he could send to his employees and shareholders. He’s saying, structurally, that Starbucks is pretty much done with the changes. If that is true it means what everyone has to do is embrace the new Starbucks. There is no going back. What the company is like now–that’s the company. It’s Starbucks. Whatever changes have happened where you work, the same is true. The way your firm is now, is your firm.
If you want to get out of the Neutral Zone and into a new beginning, you have to do everything you can to accept and embrace your company as it is now. Only then will your firm be able to live into it’s mission in its new form. Only then will things get better for everyone. At every level.
There’s no school today. The kids play for a bit then amble down the stairs. Too reflexively Bud pops in a DVD and asks two questions: “Can we watch something?” and “What”s for breakfast?”
To the first I reply, “Isn’t that a question you should ask before you put a DVD in?” There’s no answer. I’m not concerned. This should be a lazy day. Beginning it with a discussion as to whether the TV should be on or not will change that pretty quick. It’s easier to call out a turn-off time after breakfast.
That leaves the second question. Of course they haven’t eaten. So what to make? What is there in the house? I quickly realize that there can only be one thing for breakfast this morning. Both because it befits a breakfast on the morning of our anniversary and because I know the ingredients are likely present. The qualifier owes to our separation. I really don’t know what’s in the cupboards. So . . . I’m making waffles. My first ever.
While Sweets is a cereal girl and Bud a hot breakfast boy, they find common ground in their love of waffles. Waffles are a food that has never been part of my life. The kids mom loves waffles and makes them two to three times a week. Before the kids, she’d make them for herself. I wouldn’t eat them.
It’s not that waffles were unknown to me. My Dad eats the frozen waffles you throw in the toaster. It’s something he discovered after I’d left for college. I watched all the “Let go of my Eggo” commercials too. They didn’t work. The only way I will eat a frozen waffle is if there is nothing else available and they’re soaked in enough syrup that they become a sponge for it.
Instead, I’ve always been a cereal guy. Sunday mornings are the exception where omelets, french toast or pancakes are the order of the day.
Still, after years in their presence I’ve come to like them. They’re part of my picture of being home. I’m still not sure I like the flavor of waffles themselves. There’s a blandness to them that I can’t get past.
The texture of the waffles is another story. Deep crispy ridges protecting delicate pillowed interiors. Warm pockets holding fresh fruit, any one containing more jam than you’d ever consider spreading across a slice of toast. Oh, yes. Waffles are an amazing comfort food.
And these? They pass muster.
“These are good, can I have more?” says Bud.
Sweets adds the right qualifier,
“Good, but not as good as mama’s.”
I’m thankful for the grace of the morning and the grace of the day. And of this day fifteen years ago. Home remains the same, even as it is different than it’s ever been.
The clearest explanation I’ve found comes from a scene in one of my favorite films, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” If you know the film, you’ll recognize it immediately.
[during the run on the bank] “You’re thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Joe’s house…right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?…Now wait…now listen…now listen to me. I beg of you not to do this thing. If Potter gets hold of this Building and Loan there’ll never be another decent house built in this town.”
What freaked folks out two weeks ago is that funds (Lehman, AIG) didn’t pay back the money they were loaned. They broke the bank. Banks loan money through the commercial paper market. It’s a system that depends on trust. With that trust lost, banks didn’t want to lend each other money. As a result credit has tightened. It’s now harder for banks to loan each other, businesses and everyone else the money needed to keep the economy going. Essentially, that means a rewrite of the “It’s a Wonderful Life” scene for our time might look like this:
“Starbucks money is in Microsoft’s business. And their money is in your utility company’s, and in Home Depot’s, your local hospital’s, and a hundred others. Why, everyday through the commercial paper market of our financial system they lend each other the money they need to do their business, and then, they pay it back as fast as they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?”
If we didn’t bail out Wall Street then in effect we’d be foreclosing on them. If banks don’t lend each other money then they can’t lend businesses or people money. If your local retailer can’t borrow the money it needs to buy what it sells, then it may close, or scale back it’s business and reduce it’s workforce. People who aren’t working buy fewer things. That shrinks the need of the retailer to have as much stock on hand or as many stores in operation. That means more folks are out of work and you get a snowball effect that leads to recession.
Is this bill the best we could have done? Probably not. Is it better than the first bill, yes. And this isn’t something we could take our time with.
Does the bail out fix everything? No. This could happen again. The Potter’s of the financial world are real. There will always be people willing to take risks to make money. That’s why following up the bail out with regulation is a good next step.
At the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” all the townspeople come forward with gifts of money and put them in a large basket. Together they bail out the Bailey Building and Loan. As Clarence the angel says earlier in the movie, “… you’ve really had a wonderful life. Don’t you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?”
A few weeks back I lopped a few feet off the hedges in the back yard. I’m always amazed about how quickly they grow back. Of course, I trampled several of my wife’s strawberry plants in the process. Unintentional yes, but still a loss that I heard about and have to live with.
In the present economy, it’s obvious that others have stepped on some strawberry’s too. The pruning is hard for those cut and those who weren’t. The bar’s been raised everywhere for everyone. So not only is there a pruning but the hedges have to grow better and truer than they have (that adds Mendel to the mix).
The paradox of being an inspirational leader means that you get to lead and inspire and pour your heart and soul into what you do and that you have to able to turn on a dime from inspiring someone in two and a half minutes to making hard cuts that effect folks lives. And then because you are so personal and passionate, folks react and respond to everything you do and don’t do with similar passion and verve.
A friend asks, “All these years, I felt I was making a difference, was it all just my EGO?”
Anthony Demello has a story that may help here.
An older and younger monk went on a journey. They came to a small river where a beautiful woman stood. The older monk asked her if she needed help. She told him that she needed to get to the other side of the river but couldn’t swim. The monk said, “I can help you.” He then carried her across the river. She thanked him and the monks continued their journey. As they walked the younger monk complained bitterly, “Do you realize the occasion of sin you put yourself in when you helped that woman? When folks hear about this at the monastery, oh my. The scandal will be terrible!” After listening for an hour, the older monk stopped, looked him in the eye and said, “Son, I left that woman on the bank an hour ago. Why are you still carrying her with you?”
That’s one of the hardest parts of this journey. Forgiving people. I think it’s important to forgive everyone. Another harder part? Forgiving your self.
I share those to encourage you to live from the good truths, the facts that you know about yourself. Not because a call is coming, from your boss or an unhappy customer calling in a complaint.
Maybe someone dropped the ball. Maybe life just happened. Our happiness has to come from a deeper place than what someone else says or does or promises to do. The call may yet come. It may not. If it does, maybe it will be a good call. Maybe it won’t. Either way, you are still you, at once glorious and deeply flawed. We all are. In our lives there will always be some who say, “God help us all.” There will always be others too who say, “Thank goodness.” Whether your branches grow stronger and truer is not for them to say. That’s yours alone.
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