Not Athletic

From the moment my legs could kick, from the moment my fingers could touch the leather stitches and lacing of a ball, from the moment I could watch modern titans put on superhero costumes to reap points, touchdowns, goals, runs for their city, country or university, I have loved sports. My earliest audio memories include my father's voice, my mother's voice, my grandmother's voice and football commentator John Madden's voice. (if you don't know who that is, ask your American friend to imitate Madden's trademark "BOOM"! He would yell "BOOM" for touchdowns, good hits, good blocks, good runs and effective athletes foot fungus removal. "BOOM" is America's answer to "GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!")

My dad took me to my first baseball game when I was just five - Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field, standing room only, industrial stadium nachos, Cubs lost to the Mets. I dressed up like Washington Redskins' Quarterback Joe Theismann for Halloween. My walls were decorated with the likes of Michael Jordan, Charlie Ward and Gred Maddux, among other titans of my youth. Today I can straddle the Atlantic and rage and rejoice with the tides of European and American football. (to those who think one or the other is boring, then you need better cultural understanding: Americans like to hit things and need to take frequent breaks. Europeans think life is too complex for winners, losers and scoring opportunities.) With every major tournament my spine gets sparkly and my eyes get tingly (or maybe I overcooked the barbecue). Athletic feats! Matching uniforms! Philosophical arguments about meaningless things! Yes, from the very beginning, I could watch sports like a champion. Playing sports, however, was a different matter.

You see, the problem, the suffering, the shame, is that I was always awful at sports. Really awful. From the moment the first gentle grounder avoided my baseball glove and went through my legs because I was imagining dinosaurs sitting in the dugout, I tried to keep up, but never quite had that spark. My trophy case is full of participation trophies and the occasional coach's award for team spirit. I tried, but sports required an amount of concentration I could only give to stories and television, as well as a coordination that only existed in my muscular imagination. (My imagination needs no performance enhancing drugs)

Now, this never stopped me from useful childhood participation in team sports. But from the little leagues to pop warner, coaches recognized my deficiency. They would place me in positions that required the least amount of participation. In baseball, that meant left field, the part of the diamond where it was statistically unlikely for a ball to reach me. I'd stand there fantasizing about hitting home runs like Andre Dawson while my teammates fielded double plays. By the way, baseball's the worst for a non-athletic person. In all other sports, I could hide my inability in a cloud of dust, cleats and team activity. But when I came up to bat, all eyes were focused on my stance, my motion and my strength, and this knowledge hung on my mind like an ice brick. It's like every play is a penalty kick. My greatest triumph was whenever I was walked. "Good eye!" my coach would shout, encouragingly, after I trotted to first after not swinging through six pitches. Yes. My "good eye" (where did I leave my glasses?) and the knowledge that not swinging was my best chance at reaching first base.

When I played youth soccer, the coaches always had me play sweeper. Now, in Germany, sweeper is a hallowed position, but in American youth soccer, sweeper is where you put a slower person who doesn't have the hands or the attention span to play keeper. Essentially, I would stand in a defensive position and dream about dinosaurs attacking the neighboring parking lot, and if the ball got close, I was supposed to kick it away from our goal. I remember actually kicking the thing, like, three times. The rest of my teammates would fight tooth and nail for goals and glory. If we won, I was overjoyed for our group effort. If we tied, I was relieved. If we lost, I wept. But no matter how the game ended, there were free soft drinks for everyone, which was by far the best part of youth team sports. I did score a goal, once, when I was seven years old. My coach let me take a penalty kick, probably to fulfill some contractual obligation to have everyone touch the ball at least once. Without any particular strategy in mind, I kicked the ball straight ahead as hard as I could, and the keeper was kind enough to had been standing somewhere else. I was ecstatic, and my father, to his eternal credit my biggest fan wherever I went, erupted in a triumphant scream like I had just struck out Willie Mays.

It's a horrible thing for a boy to be bad at sports. It's like a fish being bad at swimming. It's like a calculator being bad at math. It is psychologically and spiritually important for boys to test their speed, strength, agility and endurance against one another, and to overcome - to triumph. Sure, there are other talents out there, but none so primal as athletic prowess. For such amazing feats, the athletic boys received respect, honor, swoons and early first kisses. I would play in the playground and in the large backyards of Virginia, hoping desperately that at some point, mind and body would kick in to find me home-running, slam-dunking, last-second-diving-catch-for-a-touchdown-celebrating like all the other neighborhood boys, for whom these things just clicked like the button of an old-fashioned coke machine. Instead, I was the easy out, the last pick, the "everybody go long except you" guy.

I kept trying though, and in high school, I ran cross country - a sport that required zero coordination and that valued camaraderie among under-nourished high school kids above talent. A sport for the weirdoes, where I was a four year junior varsity member and a winner of the coach's team spirit award. And I still run today, for fitness and vanity. Fitness, because I want to live a long and comfortable life, and vanity, because I want to give my wife a reason to look up from her iPad whenever I walk to the shower. It's for those reasons that this past Saturday, participated in my first public sports event since my cross country days. I ran the Plochingen 5K.

Saturday was brutally hot. Now, I'm from Florida, and Florida is brutally hot, but Florida is at least decent enough to have a violent thunderstorm every afternoon to cool things off. On Saturday, every air particle hung over the pavement like it was in suspended animation. Every speck of dust, every piece of pollen, every smudge of pollution stuck to the the inside of your lung like old rice in a pot.

But we persevered! My goal was 25 minutes, and in the face of rainforest conditions between three-story houses and the occasional friendly man with a garden hose, I reached it! Crossing the finish line, I tore off my shirt and flexed my muscles like Mario Balotelli, except that my body hair to muscle ratio is much higher than his. Ok, actually I kept my shirt on and walked like a drunk in an obstacle course towards the water station. My wife cheered (we even had our own WAG section!) and my daughter cried (mainly because of the weather). Ok, so a girl overtook me on the last lap. That doesn't matter. What matters is that I reached my goal and I had fun. Besides, everybody deserves a victory dance.

The Different in Europe

A couple weeks ago, my daughter and I went to a friend's house for coffee and cake. The coffee and cake was spontaneous - the original plan was a quick swap: translation of a letter for a couple of ESL books and some hand-me-down girl clothes. But when we arrived, the cake was on the table, the coffee was ready, and the other guests had already arrived. My friend and her family were about to move to Michigan for a couple years. In the weeks before our spontaneous coffee and cake meeting, I taught some English to her and her daughter while bringing in the occasional anecdote about living in the good ol' US of A.

Her other guests were a Turkish woman and her daughter. The Turkish woman wore a beautiful, gold-hemmed headscarf that, along with her excellent posture, gave her a stately presence. Her daughter, save for a slightly darker complexion, could fit in well with any Swabian play group. They both declined cake - there was something about it that made it unfit for the Muslim diet - but they ate generous helpings of fruit salad. The Turkish woman asked if my daughter was a boy - it seems like my daughter's name sounds masculine in Turkish ears - but no big deal.

I love Europe for these moments. In this little strip of land crammed with countries and tribes and dialects finally at peace with each other. Their last wars went too far, so they decided a common economy was a good way to keep the peace and make a little money. It made sense, with everyone so close together. I go two hours in any direction and the people are different. Sure, European, still, but different languages, cultures and mentalities, spiced with Turkish and African immigrants, not to mention the occasional displaced Yankee.

Now, the talking heads prophets are predicting European collapse - or at least the currency and Union, and, more darkly, giving voice to those who despise with The Different as our neighbor and collaborator. Plenty of the prophets, especially from my own country, can't hide their Schadenfreude behind the curtain of grim prophecies. Clearly those snobbish Brussels elites hadn't read their Keynes or their Burke or their own opinion polls or the Greek accounting sheets. The boom times hid all the structural problems and the bubble to bring about debt, stagnation, unemployment and overall hopelessness. Financial hardship is a common ground for a divorce.

They may be right. The whole kitten-caboodle could fall down all around us. Or, the magic elixir will work and we'll all have cushy jobs, a sense of meaning and tickets to Eurovision. But it's worth mentioning that whatever happens, we'll all still be here. Our neighbors will be our neighbors. We'll have to talk and trade and exchange and ask and immigrate and emigrate. The Different will remain both across the border and across the street. The Different are in that country in the north or the south that everyone is complaining about. Sometimes The Different is in the other balcony flying a foreign flag during the football tournament. Sometimes The Different is on the other side of the bed. For better or worse.

Whatever system, past, present or future, the second greatest commandment applies. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Judging by the story that follows it, our neighbors include The Different, especially those close to us. We're close to each other. We're different, and we can break bread together. Or cake. Or if you can't eat the cake, there's always fruit salad.

Bilingualism and Technology

Here's the scene. My wife sits at our dining/living room table curiously manipulating an iPad. My daughter bounces around the room, as two year olds do, curiously manipulating toys, books and the occasional strange grownup thing like a couch pillow, junk mail or stray administrative document that we'll probably need later. Without any apparent reason, my daughter points to something outside of the window. The following conversation ensues:

Daughter: Baum! 
Wife: Yes, that is a baum! And what does Papa say?
Daughter: Papa says, "tree!"
Wife: Exactly! Mama says baum, Papa says tree.
Daughter (pointing to the iPad): iPod!
Wife: Actually, this is an iPad.
Daughter: Papa says, "iPod!" 

The Violinist (A Voice of Our Own)

My weekly journey to Stuttgart ends late in the evening. My last class finished, I walk briskly down Koenigstrasse. Stuttgart's great shopping street is nearly empty. The locals huddle in bars to watch the Wednesday night soccer games and dart in and out of clubs like shy gophers with cigarettes. The muscles in my legs burn with the pleasure of movement that contrasts nicely to the icy central-European breeze against my face. There's freedom in walking, freedom in knowing that the street, the sneakers, the buildings standing in attention all the way were designed to parade me to the train station and take me home, where my daughter sleeps and my lover waits. I am fast, but I don't hurry; I walk in an un-lonely solitude that I experience in big cities at night. 

A line of music breaks my thoughts like an unexpected visitor. Where have I heard that before? Oh yes. That's "Time to Say Goodbye" the song Andrea Bocelli sing's in my parent's speakers and in that Italian cafe I frequented in Freiburg. It's not typical of the violinist. She usually plays songs from movies. I usually hear her play the theme from Schindler's List or "My Heart Will Go On." 

The violinist is blonde, pretty and perhaps a bit too thin. She's young - a teenager? Her hair is straight and nearly tied behind her head in a pony tail that wags in a friendly manner as she movers her bow back and forth over her instrument. She's an amateur, no question, with only the occasional evening pedestrian for an audience. I like to think that she's Russian. I don't know of course, but my prejudice says that a blond girl with a violin must be Russian. Of course, I can't tell. She could be a local. She could have been born down the street from me in the good ol' US of A. Or anywhere else, really. 

Why does she play? Need? Charity? Hope? Hopelessness? I don't know. But as I pace by, I reflect how much she's like a blogger. It's one thing to play in our bedrooms or write in our journals - little pieces of us expelled from our minds with no listener or accountability. But the street and the Internet give us a voice. Regardless of our talent or depth, we get to say something that might be heard by anyone who happens to walk by our night, our street, our website. We may dream of Carnegie Hall or The New Yorker, we may reflect on what changes in history, education or genetics might have gotten us there. But that does stop us from playing and typing, pretending and expressing, saying something that may just cut through the noise of our busy minds. 

I continue home, "Time To Say Goodbye" fading behind my right shoulder. 

Feel free to leave some change in the hat. 

Some Observations After My Facebook Fast

Ok, brace yourselves everybody! Lent is over and I'm back on Facebook. It dents my pride to admit how much I missed a glowing blue social network that was first designed for college students, but I did miss it. Logging in was a bit like coming back to the ol' neighborhood after a long trip. Only a bit.

Every generation is confronted with technological change, and the Internet is our biggest revolution. (though I'm still holding out for Star Trek style teleporters. Beam me anywhere, I'll be back in a minute!) And every generation asks, do we really need this? And with the Internet's capacity for public naval gazing, the question gets asked more and more and more. The answer is mostly no, but on average, I'll take our present hyper-connected world to a pre-Internet age. It's just so interesting, and there's so much stuff I can look at and read for free.

I missed Facebook, because I miss my friends. My travels are among my treasures, and I have several places I could call home, but this means that no matter where I am, there's someone I miss, someone whose face I would like to see, someone who I experienced in a new way and can't experience again in the same way, but we can share a knowing smile, even if the moment is shallow or the joke is no longer funny. Facebook, besides being an outlet for posting clever links and public relations for my family, is public nostalgia and a great excuse for smiles and fondness. The danger of course, is that we fail to be rooted with those around us, that we ignore family, friends, work and place. I fasted in part to distance myself from this danger and to tame the impulse to avoid work or confrontation or other unpleasantries by hungrily scanning my feed for something I like. This helps connect me to the corner of Swabia where I get to live. And if it's God who brought me here, then why not close the browser and pay attention to where he has me? Why not take additional time to celebrate his Fast, His Passion and His Resurrection deepening my local connections, especially to Him. 

Now that Easter has come and gone, here are some (random) observations:

1. I still have a long way to go to be localized. It's to be expected in a foreign culture, and I've noticed that the more I move, the more time it takes for the to sink in and reach a place where the soul is sustained. 
2. The desire to numb my brain on Facebook has not gone away, and let's face it, there are good times to numb the brain (as long as we don't go overboard, now). 
3. However, my desire for attention has been weakened - I fine myself caring much less how or if people respond to something I post - this is freeing, and I'm thankful. 
4. A pleasant side-effect of the fast was a sense of quiet - there was less buzz. What I mean by that is fasting from social networking meant that I was less compelled to hastily follow events that I really had no control over. Whatever is the latest in politics and elections, culture and scandal, however important and compelling, there's a certain freedom to not be "in the know," much less to see them as opportunities to promote my little agendas. 
5. I can't stand timeline. I'm not on it yet, but every time I go on Facebook, I get an apocalyptic warning that it's going to be forced on me. I've normally been in the pro-change team whenever the site updated itself, but timeline pages are confusing, unattractive and disorienting. The pages manage to look (and this is not the fault of the individual users) both less personal and more narcissistic. I get that Facebook is looking for our information (it's kind of flattering - they want to know me!), and that's why we get to use this wonderful tool for free, but can they at learn our basic desires for advertising revenue without the headache-inducing split-screen? Is MySpace too organized now? Really, if you want to know my preferences, just ask nicely. 
6. On a related note, wow, things change quickly in Internet land. One of the things I noticed was how different everything looked - not greatly, but enough to notice. It's like a child you haven't seen since last summer - my how he's grown! Plus, I got bombarded with invites to games and apps I never knew existed. I'm too old for this people - I still think emoticons are clever... #oldmansittingontheporchwaivinghiswalkingstick

Chocolate Eggs

The moment finally came, the spring equinox, the part of the year where the light begins to overwhelm the darkness in the Northern Hemisphere and all the birds start singing love songs. There was a day a few weeks ago where the cafes first opened their doors and put chairs and tables onto Plochingen's cobblestone market street and every child between the river and the top of the mountain went down to the local park (mine included). I saw new friends, sympathized with fellow parents and found out someone had waxed the slide when my brave daughter landed on her bottom three feet (one meter for all you continental Europeans, one metre if you're the writer of the technical English book I use) in front of it. The sun stayed up later, giving everyone color and smiles. (It's not all fun, of course - right now the trees are taking their revenge on my using them for fuel and shelter and lesson plans by warring against my sinuses)

Next week is Easter, and I intend to bite into a big fat chocolate egg (and finally check my Facebook account - what's new?). Here in Germany, they're usually filled with egg liqueur (the taste makes this American think of the Christmas nog), though I hope to get some good Cadbury egg in the mail. You know, the tasty treats that rot your teeth on contact and taste like love mixed with sugar. In any case, I waive my palm in glad anticipation.

These are the feelings of new life: taste, smell, sound, sight, touch. It's appropriate that Christians confiscated pagan fertility symbols for our Easter parties. We eat the eggs and hug the bunnies and then, still shaking from sugar highs and feasting, we go to church and shout, "The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!" Life renewed. Resurrection. New birth.

This is good news. No, this is wonderful news. Wonderful in the literal since, and I find it especially grand here in Western Europe where people have told me they love the feeling of wonder but refuse to believe in wonder itself. After all, how could anyone rise from the dead, the way Jesus did, the way his closest followers risked their lives to say he did.

It means that things like death, suffering, injustice and evil, results of the fall, however they got here, don't have the final say. These things, present as they are to our senses and our newspapers, as real as they are to our lives, especially those who face the worst of it, do not lord over us. This is wonderful news.

It also means that, however messed up we are (and make no mistake, we are) that there's something about us, in our flesh, in our spirit, in our soul and all we are, that God loves and wants to preserve. God sees it, made in his image. He loves us enough to send his Son to die for us, to take the penalty for our sin, and to raise us with him. Jesus' rising means that we will also rise. God wants to renew us and preserve us, for his love, for his unending pleasure.

This holy week, it's worth stepping into a church to observe the worshippers, the smell of spring and new life in their nostrils, celebrate the wild coronation of Palm Sunday, break bread on Maundy Thursday, mourn death on Good Friday and revel in Resurrection on Easter Sunday. If you find you can't believe in wonder, it's a good week to give it a shot. The awakening flowers, the jubilant birds and the chocolate eggs invite us to do so.

The Train to Stuttgart

One of the best parts of my weekly routine adventure is Wednesdays, when I take the train from Plochingen to Stuttgart. It starts with a brisk, 10-minute run to the train station (hey - I'm a parent and I happen to enjoy breakfast) where I'm usually just in time to catch the Regional Express. The Regional Express only stops three times along the Neckar river before we hit the Swabian metropolis. Sometimes I hit the Jackpot and land an Interregional Express, which is a nonstop trip to the mighty Hauptbahnhof (main train station).

I love speeding through past the Neckar hills as they wake up to the gentle glow of the Eastern sun. The hills and the buildings and the trees get thicker as we approach Stuttgart, a testament to Germany's lively effort to weave nature and civilization. I love that I'm not driving so I can watch them. I love that I can read the enormous book that I got at the library and that I'll regret bringing later as I lug my backpack down Koenigstrasse (hmmm... Kindle?..nahhh). I love that I can go through my prayer cards, which help me better love all of those who I think about and who are not on the train. I love that I can see the people.

People on the train are the best. Students buried in their iPods. Hippie punks with dread locks, patches and tattoos. Businessmen with ties and glasses and important newspapers. A bouncy Japanese woman with bouncy hair who bounces her son on her lap while singing a bouncy Japanese song. It's a strange thing about public transportation. During the commute everyone is equal, united in a sense of purpose and destination. Everyone is close. Sure, we try to be far away, choosing the seat furthest from any possible contact with strangers, especially if we have strategies for when we arrive and which car we take. But eventually, the train fills up and people from every tongue, tribe and nation are packed together like a game of human Tetris. It's awkward, funny, uncomfortable and humanizing. And it sure as heck beats vehicle Tetris on your local highway.

Of course, the camaraderie ends at the train station. That's the moment we stop, well, ok, many moments before, we race to the door like it's a fire drill, everyone aware of the trouble each day has and how everyone else should learn patience.

But before that, there's the serene moment of speeding with a book, a prayer and so many flavors of human to look at. The train speeds ahead like a mechanical wild horse. We run parallel with another train, this one carrying cargo cargo instead of human cargo. It's hard to tell which train is faster, but they both seem to be enjoying the chase. I imagine that they greet one another with a sunrise smile, glowing that they're doing what they were created to do.