Month: February 2013

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Take Me Out of the Ballgame

The best thing about the late winter may be the promise that baseball is just around the corner.

Think of it. The crack of the bat. The roar of the crowd. The crowds and the teams, divided in loyalty, yet united in a love of the game and a conviction that the umpire is always wrong …

Whoops. Wait a second. Hold that thought about unity.

At least, until after you see this bit out of Reuters.

“A baseball game between Cuba’s national team and a South Korean professional club had to be called off when they could not agree on which ball to use …”

That’s right. They argued over the baseballs.

Sometimes I wonder about humanity.

If you wonder what the big deal is, join the club. Apparently, it’s common practice for each team in an international game to supply its own baseballs for pitching and fielding, so that no one gets hurt handling a ball they’re not used to. Odd, but reasonable.

But this time, the Cubans put their foot down. Our spheroids or none at all. And when the Koreans said “no thanks,” the Cubans canceled the game.

Why does this sound familiar?

Oh, yeah. That’s right. Our other great American pastime. The one that spends money by the bale and fills television with images guaranteed to generate exasperation and anger.

No, I don’t mean football.

Let me start by saying that anyone looking for peace and harmony in American politics is either doomed to a long and fruitless search, or destined to write fiction. We have been, from the beginning, a nation of arguers. One historian, studying the colonial period, was struck by how many petty lawsuits were clogging the courts. Ours may be a nation of the people, by the people, for the people, but it’s also one where a lot can stand between the people.

All right. Fair enough. A free country’s about debate, right?

Well, yes. Absolutely. Just like baseball, having competition is part of the game. If you have a stadium where one team offers no opposition to the other … well, you have last year’s Colorado Rockies. But back to my point.

In the end, a game is about resolution: someone wins, loses or gets rained out. Political debates don’t have to be that cut-and-dried, but it’s still supposed to be about getting somewhere, reaching a decision, coming to a compromise, getting something done – or sometimes, not done, if that’s the best thing for everyone concerned.

But that only works if everyone wants it to. If you take your ball and go home, there’s no game. If you say ‘My way or no way’ to everything, there’s no debate.

There’s just noise.

Admittedly, we’re overcoming a lot here. There’s a recent theory among social scientists that we didn’t develop reason to find truth, but to better insist on our version of it. We may actually be hardwired to insist on what we want in the face of all evidence, a tendency that only gets reinforced when our social networks, both real and virtual, start filling up with people who agree with us.

But the wiring isn’t unbeatable. We have made it work. We have played the game. Often with great acrimony, but we’ve played it.

Is it so unthinkable that we could do it again?

There are over 400 friends on my Facebook page. Some go about as far left or right as a person can without insisting on totalitarianism. But even when we’ve argued, I haven’t dropped them.

They make me think. Sometimes what they make me think is “You’re crazy.” But if I have to examine my own preconceptions, even for a second, it’s worthwhile.

That’s how I beat the circuits. Or at least give them a fight.

If enough of us do the same, maybe even Washington can become useful again.

Hey. It’s a season for dreams.

Play ball.

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Simply, Simon

After a week of wonders, from resigning Popes to exploding space rocks, the biggest one of all came Sunday.

Right, Simon?

Simon is my newest nephew. He entered the world around 2 in the morning, not far from Seattle. And if that sounds like a UFO report, well, that’s how it feels sometimes.

Funny. You think I’d be in practice by now.

This is my fourth entry into unclehood, you see. The first three came as quickly as skydivers leaving a plane, two nieces and a nephew, all within the last six months of 2010. It was a barrage of babies, the full immersion approach to witnessing infancy.

And then, it got quiet. I had a chance to get used to Gil’s winning smile and shining eyes, to Ivy’s all-absorbing curiosity, even to Riley’s looks of mischief and calls to “go-go” just one more time in her wagon.

Things became normal. Well, as normal as they get in the land of toddlers.

That probably should have been a warning.

I’ve been a reporter for 15 years now. One of the biggest things I’ve learned in that time is to beware the slow news day. That’s when you get the plane crash, or the break in a cold murder case, or the million-dollar federal grant. It may be good news, it may be bad, but it will have you running in overdrive until it’s done. I’m sure someone has inscribed it on a monument somewhere: Those whom the gods wish to see busy, they first make complacent.

And so, when my sister Leslie put up an online picture of Ivy holding a sign that read “I’m going to be a big sister!”, we knew the headline news was ready to start popping again.

I couldn’t wait.

Apparently, neither could Simon. About two weeks ahead of time, Leslie got word that her tenant might be ready to break the lease a little early. That began the teasing period.

Would he come on Mom’s birthday, Feb. 12?

Nope.

Would the new little boy be a Valentine’s kid?

Uh-uh.

Groundhogs have been watched less closely. Messages flew. So did Mom, grabbing the first plane to Washington.

But just like in childhood, nothing happens until Simon says. And Simon said “Hold on a little more … no, just a little more … almost there…”

In retrospect, I wonder if my nephew has a future in public relations.

He finally became Sunday Simon with a few hours’ warning. With him came a reminder: babies set their own schedules.

Only fair. So does life, really.

We like to pretend otherwise. We schedule to a fare-thee-well, measuring minutes, slicing and dicing appointments and deadlines. We think of time as a possession, something that’s rightfully ours, that we can control, shape and dictate.

But as John Lennon once sang, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” And when hit with the unexpected, those plans can be as fragile as spun sugar. And we find out how much control we really have.

It can be frightening. Or it can be freeing. That part’s up to you.

For me, right now, it’s something joyous.

Even wondrous.

Thanks, Simon. And welcome.

 

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Benedict of the Doubt

When the Pope made his big announcement this week, I was probably one of the few people thinking of car keys.

Not at first, of course. Like a lot of us, my first reaction when Pope Benedict XVI announced he would retire at the end of February was “What? He can DO that?” I guess when a trigger doesn’t get pulled in 600 years, you kind of forget it’s there.

After that? Some sympathy, some jokes, some expressions of good or bad memories of the Pope and what he had or hadn’t done. And of course, some confusion and anger over Benedict’s decision to lay down the Fisherman’s Ring.

“If a Pope is, literally, a father … elected to be a father to the Body of Christ … well, fathers don’t step down,” said one Facebook friend who admitted to being “flabbergasted” by the news.

I can understand the feeling. But I came at it from a different angle.

It’s true that fatherhood isn’t something you can retire from. But it is something you can be forced to lay down. I have at least two close friends who had to become a parent to their fathers because their dads had grown too weak, physically and mentally, to take care of themselves, never mind a family. It was a hard moment for both of them, one born of love and pain, and they weathered it with all the strength they had.

Most of us, I think, haven’t been brought to that point. I hope we never are. But we probably all know someone who has made a smaller decision in deference to age and ability.

Namely, the decision to hang up your car keys for good.

My grandma had to make that decision last year. It wasn’t an easy one. She’s long been used to going where she wants, when she wants: church, the library, the pharmacy, the store. As she got older, she cut out night driving and out-of-town trips, but kept the rest into her 90s.

But when the choice came, it came for a good reason. Her reflexes weren’t what they had been. Small warnings that would have jumped out at her even five years before could be missed now. It wasn’t what she wanted to do – it’s probably not what any of us want to do – but for her safety and that of others, she made the decision.

If I can acknowledge that that’s a good idea for a relatively small responsibility, how much more so for one that could affect the entire world?

“In order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary,” Benedict declared on Monday, “strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me.”

Those had to be hard words to say. That he could say them at all wins some respect from me.

Were there other motives behind the decision? Probably. When a world leader surrenders power, it’s rarely just for one reason. I’m sure there’ll be speculation for months on the whys and wherefores, maybe even a book or two.

But for me, for now, the stated reason is more than sufficient. However willing the spirit, there comes a time when the body can’t back it up.

At that point, there’s a strength in surrender. In knowing, and acting on the knowledge, while you remain able.

It’s a sign of wisdom.

You could even call it a key decision.

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That Thirteen Something

I don’t have a lot of superstitions. I find black cats adorable, broken mirrors are just a mess to clean up, and I could step on a sidewalk’s worth of cracks without screwing up my family’s spines any worse than they already are.

But I have to admit, I’m getting a little edgy about the number 13. Or to be more accurate, about 2013.

Something in this year has it in for us.

Granted, Heather and I have gone in for long streaks of bizarre luck at times. Our honeymoon, for example, was marked by a torrential downpour that washed every “Just Married” inscription from the car, a Mexican restaurant that left us both ill, and a local bird population that repeatedly mistook my wife for a bombing range. You know, the usual.

But this last January … well, where do I begin?

There’s the back I strained (though thankfully not outright pulled) while helping my sister-in-law move to Lakewood. Naturally, work was missed.

There’s the flu that bombed Heather and Missy just as I recovered from the back strain. Naturally, more work was missed.

Then, of course, the flu jumped to me after three straight days of caring for Heather and Missy. Naturally … ah, you’ve heard that one.

Having the bathroom pipes leak through the kitchen ceiling added a bit of spice to my own bout with the flu. (Rain on the kitchen table gives a home such atmosphere, don’t you think?) And I shouldn’t leave out the joys of getting Missy the antibiotic she needed to speed her own recovery … only to discover she was brilliantly allergic to the medicine in question.

Have you ever seen a young woman turn into a human strawberry? I really don’t recommend it.

The irony is that I used to dread Februaries, the half-forgotten tail end of the winter season. Now, I’m leaping into the month like a welcoming bath after a long day.

It’s got to get better – right?

The funny thing is, the belief that “it’s got to get better” can be a big part of making it better. There’s been a few studies of lucky or unlucky people over the years and they seem to reach the same conclusion: more often than not, the lucky make their luck.

“Lucky people are certain that the future is going to be full of good fortune,” said writer Eric Barker, himself citing researcher Richard Wiseman. “These expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies by helping lucky people persist in the face of failure, and shape their interactions with others in a positive way.”

In other words, people who look for the best, even while undergoing the worst, tend to find it. They don’t give up.

The idea reminded me of the Lloyd Alexander fantasy novels I read as a child, where the character Llonio the Lucky kept his nets on the river and his eyes on his surroundings and was able to reclaim all sorts of odd objects as a result – all of which proved to be useful, once a little imagination was applied.

“Trust your luck, Taran Wanderer,” he tells the main character at one point. “But don’t forget to put out your nets!”

My own nets have caught a lot of wonderful things over the years – a good family, a good job, friends I love and value. (Still no $3 million dollar fortune, alas, but I suppose you can’t have everything.) And if there’s been one good thing about this latest streak of trouble, it’s been that it let me spend more time with Heather and Missy, maybe even catch some quiet in the midst of chaos.

After all, nothing that hit us was irreparable. Nothing happened that couldn’t get better. And that’s pretty lucky, too, now that I think about it.

Even so, I may keep a careful eye out this year. Just to be thirteen – uh, I mean, certain.

Sigh.

Well, there goes February.