A Question Dad Asked Me

We sat outside Old Empire, drinking cold pints on a warm, humid Monday night. I think we were on our second beer. Mom was pacing herself with half-pints. As we waited for the food to arrive, Dad said he was tired of looking at my blog and seeing the same post, the one where I asked him about what he would say to Lilly.

He said he had a question he would like me to answer on the blog. He then somewhat-guilted me into saying that I would answer it by reminding me of all the things he had paid for over the course of my life, including my four (and a half) years of university. So I said yes, and the question went something like this: 

“Jack has just graduated high school. After the ceremony, he turns to you and asks, ‘Uncle Edward, what do I have to do to be a man?’ What would you say to him?"

Dad asked me that a few weeks ago, and I have given it quite a bit of thought since. If there is a good answer I am not sure I have lived enough to know it yet, and, even if I did know it, I am not sure I could ever put it into words. Is that enough of a caveat? 

The best answer I could probably give Jack defeats the purpose of the question. Because if Jack asked me what men did, and what he should do to become one, I’d tell him what a fantastic question I thought it was, and then I’d tell him that he should ask it to the men in his family—his Dad, his grandfathers, his uncles—and I’d tell him to ask the women, too—his Mom, his grandmothers, his aunts.

I’d tell Jack to ask and to listen, really listen, to all the different answers the people that mattered in his life gave. Think about them, too—the answers as well as who said them. What word appeared over and over? Which word came up only a few times? Then, after he’d heard their words and thought about them, I’d tell him to spend some time considering what he thought being a man was. What words came to mind? What pictures and moments? I’d tell him it was all right if his words were different, and it was probably a good thing if they were, because a big part of being a man is living your truth, no matter what other people say, and especially when it's not just "other people" that are disagreeing with you, but when it's your family and the people you would die for.

I’d add that he should try and write down the words and bits of advice he disagreed with, to do whatever he had to not to lose them. It would be interesting for him to re-visit those when he was my age (if Jack is 18, then I am 42—double-check my math please, Amelia). I think he’d be pleasantly surprised, and it would be a good thing to talk and laugh about over a scotch.

But let’s say Jack pressed me. He nods and says yes, that he will speak with everybody later, but he wants to hear what I have to say now. And let’s say I am unable to bait him into asking Papa about Austin’s bat population, or Joef about why he weighed seven fewer ounces at birth than Uncle Ed.

I’d tell Jack that the world would be a better place if more men would be men. I’d tell him it was a good thing that he wants to be a man, but that it is not easy; just as it is not easy for a woman to truly be a woman. I'd tell him it's about the best thing one can be called—a man.

And I'd try and weasel my way out of answering again. I'd tell him like all the important questions—about love, about life's purpose, about art—language obscures more often than it clarifies (remember all the different answers from before?). That's because we can't even agree on what a man is—is it Hemingway, with his hunting and fishing and tight prose and 4 marriages? Is it MacArthur, the man who defeated and then rebuilt Japan, the same man who had his wife hold the door open for him and call him "General"? Is it the father who labors to no fanfare, provides for and loves his family, and dies happy but wondering what he could have been and done if he'd spent his years in a place other than an office?

Those are loaded questions, of course—those aren't the only options—but they show that "being a man" means a great deal of different things to different people, and that the answer you get depends upon whom you ask.

"Well, I'm asking you, so quit stalling," Jack might say, especially if he is as direct and as strong of a personality at 18 as he is at two.

I would tell Jack that being a man, at its simplest and truest, is being able look in the mirror unafraid. That moment when you wake up and splash water in your face, that second or two when you look directly into the mirror—a lot about being a man is revealed there. If you can hold your own stare, you’re probably on the right track. If you can’t, well, you know why, even if you'd never speak it to anybody else. You’ll find more answers there, in that mirror and those quiet moments, than you ever will find in what I say.

Why the mirror? Because before you can expect a woman to look at you and see a man, and before you can look at your children and have them see you as the man, you must first look at yourself and know yourself to be one.

To phrase it slightly differently, why should you expect anyone else to think of you as a man if you don't?

I recognise this answer isn’t much more helpful than the first one I gave. Jack asked me about manhood, the price of its membership, and I've told him to look in a mirror and ask other people. What are things he could start doing, today?

I'd get the flippant ones out of the way first:

—Drink what you like, but it's better if you stick to beer, whisky, or wine. Scotch on the rocks is about as good as it gets, though do drink it neat every once in a while. Don't drink cheap shit either, unless you are going to consume vast quantities. Quality makes little difference at that point.

—Don't take fashion advice from someone who wears elastic-bottomed pants.

—Learn how to barbecue. And how to change a tire.

—Rock, jazz, blues, and classical.

Then, I’d segue to the stuff that matters:

—You treat women with respect. This is a non-negotiable. You hold the door open; you pay for their meal if you ask them to one. When you are in a relationship, you honor that trust. You will see the opposite all around you—men putting the women they are with down, saying awful things to them and about them, dishonoring them by sleeping with other women—and you may feel tempted to join them. Do not. Your friends may high-five you or laugh with you, and they even may agree with you when you say "it didn't work out," but the men of your family will not. In truth, we will be embarrassed. And the woman you cared about will be hurt, and it will haunt you, and rightly so.

This respect is doubly true for the women of your family. Your mother and grandmothers, your sisters and your aunts—they are royalty. They loved you when you shit yourself and when you cried because you couldn't play in a bouncy castle.

Still, don't be afraid to toss in a kitchen joke their way every now and then. They love it.

—You can also tell a man by how he treats others. I’ll save a lot of words and tell you something Thomas Carlyle said: “A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.” He was mostly right. I say mostly because the people who work for you, or bring you food in a restaurant, or who have less than you—they aren’t little. They are people, with dreams and mothers and things that keep them up at night. You will reveal a lot about yourself by how you speak to them and how you talk about them. There is nothing manly about being rude, or condescending.

—Anything external (a job title, a backyard pool, age, a bank account, a car) does not make you a man. It doesn't make you successful either, but that's a different question.

—A man reads books. Ignorance has never been manly and it never will be. The more you read, the more you put yourself in the way of beautiful quotes, such as this one by Wordsworth: "The best portion of a good man's life: his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love."

I could keep going, and turn this into an endless list with all the big words (compassion; sacrifice; love; strength; family). Being a man requires all of those, and then more. A man's dreams are bigger than his excuses, his life is an example for others, and he honors and defends his family above all. Quite simply, a man does what he believes to be right.

Those sentences require a lifetime of choices and commitment, and listing them one after the other somehow misses the point altogether. They are not groceries.

Jack, I would tell him, nobody can tell you what it takes to be a man. You will live your way to an answer, imperfectly, as we all do. Understand that most men are called men because of what they are, not who they are. If you want to be different from them, then you must first act differently from them. Live your truth, not theirs. And if you do, you'll be ready to face the mirror. Most days, at least.

Q&A with my Dad, Part 2

 My question:

Lilly is 13. She tells you that she thinks she loves a boy, but isn't sure what love is or what it feels like. What would you say if she asked you what you thought?

Dad's answer:

This is a difficult one. It almost qualifies as a trick question. How do you talk about love to a 13-year old girl, whose life has just passed from teddy bears, is now probably obsessed with some boy band, and will soon be learning how to shoot tequila and play beer pong as part of that sacred American rite of passage, getting a college degree? Talking about love is tough enough with an adult, even one who has read books. Over the years, many people have asked me how they will know when they are in love, really in love, and I tend to mumble platitudes and hope they go away before I say something I will regret. The truth is that you know because you know, and you are in love, and that is that. It is a bit like asking how you will know if you are hungry or wet or tired. You will know, although these days there are probably consultants and studies to help you know for certain, and drugs to control everything and stop you from feeling the way you feel, because it is probably bad.

So, if Lilly, at 13, asked me about love, I would probably say that it was beautiful to hear her say that, and he must be someone very nice. I would ask her what she felt, and how she knew him. At 13, as I recall from my earlier days as a father, a child is no longer a child, but not yet really close to being an adult. There is an energy and boldness about 13, a confidence and a hope, and also a strange sense of insecurity and awkwardness. At 13, you have not yet decided you are immortal, nor that all people over 21 are stupid. That comes at about 14 or 15. But you know you have rights, and you want them respected. You know you are not a little child, and you don't expect to be treated like one. The worst thing a parent can do, at any stage, is to communicate a lack of respect. Respect is the foundation of trust and love. Without it, nothing survives, nothing grows. I would convey respect, and speak to this young, good person as she deserved to be replied to.

My temptation, of course,would be to say that at 13 you know nothing of love. You get infatuated, and you think you know more than you do. You have hormones starting to make their presence felt, and you find it hard to believe that emotions that feel so good could in any way lead to harm or sadness. I would be tempted to say that most boys are shallow creatures, more interested in sexual conquest than meaningful relationships, and that a teenage boy is not to be trusted in matters of the heart. Failing that, my temptation would be to visit the boy, and caution him that if he ever did anything to hurt my granddaughter, people would find his body parts scattered across a dozen states.

But I would resist these temptations, and I would hear her speak of love as if she were the first person to have discovered it, which is in a sense true, because love only exists now, and is new for each person when they feel it first. I would encourage her to look at her mother and father as fine people who know a lot about love, and as people she should always feel comfortable chatting too, because they were young too, and felt just as she is feeling. And I would hope that she heard me and spoke her heart, and that in a week or a month she realized that the boy was just a boy, like most boys, and that she would have a lot more fun hanging out with her girl friends and being herself. There is no rush to grow up, and boys don't change that much.

My temptation would also be to sit back and talk to her of what it is like when you finally meet someone special, and how in a strange moment you do just know. You want to be with that person, and you talk of dreams for the future, and in the depth of your soul you know they make you better than you would ever be without them, that they are what you are not, that you honestly would die for them. I would want to talk of walks along beaches in the evening, of holding hands, of the first kiss, and the second. I would want to talk of the great joy of growing older together, of seeing your love multiplied with a family, and of being happy to be in love and married to your best friend.

But this would all go over Lilly's head, and it would confuse her. It would be disrespectful to talk when I should listen, and these are things we all must discover for ourselves, in our own way, at the right time. And after we had chatted, I would probably give her a hug and thank her for trusting me with such an important question.

Q&A with my Dad, part 1

I sent this email to my Dad a few days ago:

Dad,

I have a few questions I would like to ask you over the coming weeks and months. I have a feeling I am not the only one who would like to read your answers. If you don't mind, I would like to publish your responses on my blog. 

There is no rush, nor is there a preferred length. I will not edit your answer in any way unless I see a typo. Maybe I will add a few typos to make you sound like a moron. We'll see.

My first question is: 

What are moments (or a single moment, perhaps), you find yourself thinking about often? You don't have to explain why if you don't want to. Nor does it have to have happened already. 

-Edward

Below is the answer he sent me today:

I had been racing all day, it seemed, and my legs has stopped enjoying the run about two hours ago. I had passed through the moment of truth, and made it back to town. The finish was not far away. I was tired, the way you get tired after more than 11 hours activity.

The day had started at the edge of a still lake, with the classic song "Lunatic Fringe" playing as we waited to dive in. it had unfolded through the swim and a hilly ride, and then on a long, undulating run, 13 miles out and 13 miles back. Somewhere on the run, my body (for reasons best known to itself) had decided that it did not want to accept any more fluid. In fact, it had decided the best thing to do was to hold all the fluid it could, somewhere just about the middle of my diaphragm, and wait for a perfect moment to expel it on the side of the road. That moment came about mile 14, I seem to remember, and it probably contributed to the onset of fatigue and the appointment with truth at about mile 14.5. 

You get to that moment, as you well know, and there is no hiding place. Your legs hurt and your mind starts with the sort of cowardly negotiation that has led many a man to his doom. "Just walk for a while. You'll come good." But for some reason, I didn't walk and just decided that I would keep putting one foot in front of the other until I got back to Penticton and could stop. Each step was a decision, each step was a victory.

So, on I went. Down the small grade into town. Down to the main road along the lake and left, when the finish was to the right. I ran away from the finish to a painted dot and arrow in the road where I made the final turnaround, and then headed back along the lake to end it all. Minutes later, I crossed the line, and enjoyed a combination of satisfaction and rehydration in the medical tent as my body took intravenously the fluid it so stupidly refused through normal channels. 

The moment I have thought of was that dot in the road, that moment when I knew that it was done, and I was finally headed for home. The last decision was made. I had overcome the course and myself, and I would be able to drink beer at breakfast and feel pleased. That dot floats in and out of my mind like a sort of haunting metaphor for my life right now. It is the moment when you know that you have done the right thing or not, when you get to enjoy the last victory mile or slink home. I have just about reached the dot on this journey too. I didn't show weakness. I am tired and ready for this thing to be done. And I know that the dot means more than the end of this phase. It also signifies a process of accepting whatever has been, and planning the next Big Thing. I already have ideas.

Write, write, write

There was a time (not that long ago) when I made an effort to read as much as I could about what writers had to say on writing. How to do it, what the purpose of writing is and should be, what makes a book good or bad or mediocre. 

There was no shortage of letters and books and lists to read. 

To name the ones that come to mind: Stephen King, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Orwell, Kerouac, Sherwood Anderson, Elmore Leonard, Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, Kurt Vonnegut, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ray Bradbury, Henry Miller, E.B. White. I read their routines (did they take breaks? When did they wake up?). Their ten commandments of writing. Their advice for young writers. Their pet peeves and their favourite books. Their inner struggles and what they thought of how others wrote. 

They all seemed to agree on only one thing: if you want to be a writer—a good one—you must write a lot. Reading a lot helps, too. 

When you should write, where you should write, for how long, drunk or sober, by computer or by hand, about life or death or love, in bursts or all day—there was a bit of overlap, but no agreement. 

There, I have saved you the trouble. 

I am glad I read all of those people and their thoughts because I learned from them (when don’t you learn from reading?). But I have no desire to read writing about writing. There are simply too many books I would much rather read; things that aren’t so obvious.

I say obvious because writing is not much more complicated than this: 

Sit down (or stand up) and write what is in your head. This means re-writing, also. 

Read a lot, too. 

The rest you will get better at or you will figure out. 

That is all, and that is everything.

No resolutions. No routines or gimmicks. If you want to write, you will. You will find time, and eventually you will find your voice, too. You won't be good at first (duh). Eventually you will be. Some people write really well. Others do it even better. The amount of money you make is not a reflection of how well you write (duh). The rest is a matter of opinion. I think over-writing is lazy, boring, and self-indulgent. Plenty of people love the books I hate. They are not wrong; they are just not me. 

For god’s sake, just commit and write and eventually you will be worth reading.

Nine Stops

After work I walked to the Black Penny. My cousin Zoe had a long layover in Singapore (her flight for Paris did not leave until midnight) and she had left the airport and come west to Boat Quay so we could meet up and drink some beer. It was good to see her, to hear what she had been doing and how excited she was about finishing up her Masters in Paris. Mom and Dad were there too, and it is always nice when you can walk out of work and drink beer with your family. 

I said goodbye to Zoe and Mom and Dad and took the MRT home. It was crowded, like it always is. Crowded takes on a different meaning in Singapore, and unless you've been on a train here at rush hour or on one in Tokyo I am not sure you know what I am really talking about. I have enough space to stand and read and I was doing both as the train made its first stop on my way home. 

I kept reading as the train headed towards the second stop and only looked up because the people around me were moving and bumping into me. I do not like being bumped into and I wanted to give someone a dirty look. But the people were just making way for a mother and her little girl and they are what I want to tell you about.

Courtesy does not really exist on Singapore trains. Young men sit and stare at their phones while old women stand. The train doors open and people rush on without giving anyone room to actually leave the train. Twenty-somethings listen to electronic music on their phone without headphones so everyone nearby (and even those not-so-nearby) listens to electronic music. I often leave the train with a lower opinion of people than before I boarded. 

It was nice to see two men get up from their seats so this mother and her daughter could sit down. Even though I was only standing I made way too, and they sat down and I went back to where I was standing and the little girl was right in front of me, less than an arm's reach away. Sitting next to her was a wonderfully healthy looking Chinese man whose hair should have been gray/white but he dyed it a dark brown. You could tell he was a grandfather. 

The girl was little, Lilly's size and probably her age too. She wore a pink hat that had a Minnie Mouse patch and the word "diva" stitched on the front. She work pink Tevas and a pink dress that said "girl" a few times on it and I could see she had sparkly nail polish on her toenails. She also carried a pink balloon from McDonalds.

The Mom was early 30s. Looked to be Filipino and her voice gave that impression too. She was in jeans and sandals and a striped polo shirt. 

I went back to reading my Kindle (Brendan Early and Dana Moon were in a shootout with Phil Sundeen and his gang of hired guns). 

But I stopped reading because I could see the little girl playing with the balloon. She was hitting it gently with her hands the way a boxer works a speedbag. The Mom held the balloon while she did this, and that wonderful old man sitting next to them laughed. She did this for a while and then she pinched the balloon and talked to it and whispered into it and her Mom whispered into it and even rocked it in her arms, probably joking and pretending it was a little baby. I could not really hear what they were saying to each other. But then the little girl went back to hitting the balloon and that was pretty funny because as you would expect, she was not very good at throwing a punch.  

As I watched her hit the balloon, the little girl looked right at me and I could see she had a few teeth but no eyebrows and I could just see that beneath her pink hat the faint beginnings of hair starting to re-grow. I know she had a few teeth because she smiled at me when I smiled at her. 

And I can't really explain to you why, but I got a lump in my throat that sat there and then sank into my heart.

The girl soon lost interest in the balloon and so her Mom handed her a smartphone and she began to play a game on it. She knew all the buttons to push, how to swipe across to different screens, and that surprised me a little bit and made me think of Lilly. As far as I could tell, the point of the game the girl was playing was to shoot arrows and hit pieces of fruit. The difficult part was that the fruit was balanced on top of a fat beaver's head and he would move every now and then. At least that's what it looked like. 

That girl did not hit one single piece of fruit but she hit that beaver about 65 times and she squealed with laughter each time she did and her Mom beamed and laughed too and so did that wonderful old man. She even began to count in English, though you could tell she was used to counting in another language. "One," and she hit the beaver and "two," and she hit the beaver and so on. She made it to 11. Then she pressed a button that dropped a bomb or something which blew the beaver all over the screen and she shrieked again with delight and so did her Mom and the old man. I do not think she knew the old man, in fact I'm pretty certain she didn't, but once he even reached onto the screen and touched it and shot the beaver and winked and the girl loved that and so did her Mom. 

Nine stops after they had boarded they got off. The Mom led the way, the little girl followed, in one hand holding her balloon in the other one her mom's hand.The old man waved goodbye but the little girl thought he was giving her a high-five and so she high-fived him. 

I still had two more stops to go. I made it and as I walked down the stairs I was still thinking about that little girl in pink who had no hair and her mother and I felt something that was genuine but not expected. 

There are no words, really, to describe something that raw. Seeing a little person, a little girl, dressed in pink so she would feel like a girl and a princess--a "diva"--even though she did not have long princess hair, or any hair, really. Seeing a little person smile at you because she was with her mom and shooting beavers when she was supposed to be shooting fruit. She was the only person who I can remember smiling at me on the train and she was probably the person who had the best reason not to smile. What would that Mom pay to have my problems and how much would I pay so I wouldn't have to face hers, ever? How do you explain something that big and scary and awful to someone who cannot count to twenty? Those are some of the things I thought about, or at least some of the ones I can write down. 

People say "why?" is such a simple question and "isn't it funny we can't answer it?" But what they really mean is  "why?" is a short question. That is not the same as simple. 

But I think there is a short answer and that is: there is no why. There can't be. 

There is just now and balloons and reasons to smile and reasons not to smile. There is only now. Now is all we have and it is all we can give and those who say otherwise need to stand on the train and tell me what good there is in chemotherapy, what good it does to a little girl or a young family, especially to the ones that don't get to go on the train after eating at McDonalds.