Cobb

Are We Cool?

I'm reflecting on this reflection.

But you know what I’ve learned? Raising a boy, my son, scares the daylights out of me at times. I don’t know what he’s thinking most of the time. He has a great social maturity for his age and he is a studious and well thought of boy, but I don’t exactly know what makes him tick. Maybe it’s me. Maybe those schoolyard battles, those not so nice encounters with teachers and those feelings of awkwardness are what scare me about my son. I got through that maze called life due to some stroke of luck. How will my son get through it?

Men have to get through on strength, because there are few things as dangerous as a weak man.  But few things are as frightening as thinking your son might be stronger than you. I think every father has to inevitably face that possibility, and every good father has to prepare for that as an eventuality. The eventuality that the sort of power he has used over his son, will most likely be the sort with which the son will establish independence from the father - and the likelihood that the son will be more powerful.

I have listened to tales of this sort from all angles. But most familiar is the one in which middle aged men think about what they might have to do if and when their son does something that might get them in trouble with the law. Basically kick his ass. Show who's boss. Prove the old man has still got skills. I could go on about a specific black man's dynamic especially vis a vis pledging fraternities and being beat into and out of gangs, but the basic lesson is still there. There is a dominance and subordination dynamic at work with fathers and sons that we hope will both strengthen the son and mature into a respect of equals. And in the world of men, it basically boils down to a question of honor - who deserves a beatdown?

The gateway question: Are we cool?

This is the kind of question that exists on the border of IN vs OUT. It is a question of the weak man to the stronger man. It is a question that a father should ask the son in preparing the son for manhood. It is the question a son is always asking his father whether or not he speaks it aloud. It is the bottomless pit for the man who has no father. The man asking needs to know, now. The man being asked needs to respond now. If the answer is 'yes' then everyone goes his own way. The matter is settled. If the answer is 'no', prices and terms need to be explained.

A son needs to know if he is cool with his father and his father needs to be consistent and fair. I say this as if it were obvious, but it is one of those things we lose track of in our popular de-masculinized, relativistic culture where anything you can get away with is cool because.. well what difference does it make when everybody can 'do their own thing', or as I believe the popular term is 'do me'.

I say that the most dangerous thing in the world is a weak man, and I refer to my old suburban dad chestnut of soccer. When boys play soccer and there is a foul, they immediately get in each other's face and fight. The fight is over, and the next day they play again, the fight forgotten. When girls play soccer and there is a foul, there are tears and evil looks. The next year revenge is still being exacted. 'This is for what you did to my friend last season', is what a girl says. Such are the consequences of a failure to teach courage. Courage allows you to live in the moment - it is the single quality that enables swift justice.

Another way to look at this dynamic, aside from that classic scene in 'Pulp Fiction', is Chris Rock's admonition about how far to trust a man - as far as his options enable him. In all cases, a real man (yike I find I must say that) will try to get away with as much as possible, but he also wants to know that he is cool, if not with you, than with somebody who can apply the beatdown. Maybe only God.

A boy in a society of men, a man in the world, seeks his fortune and seeks to do all that he can - he wants to be free and he will use whatever strength or cunning he can muster to insure his survival in the world that is indifferent to his ego. And so he will explore and test every limit. This is a good thing, for without that there is no learning, no expansion of humanity, we'd all stay in the nest. A clever boy knows it is better to ask forgiveness rather than permission and so goes off on his way filling his pockets with rubberbands, coins, sticks, marbles and whatever he can get his dirty hands on. A man doesn't bother to ask always and everywhere what is going on in another man's mind - except when the rules are fuzzy and the limits are unclear. He just needs to know whether a man is good or bad, if he's going to need a beatdown for breaking the rules or not. It's all that simple.

My 14 year old son gets up at 5 in the morning and is out the door hours before I awake. He's off to wrestling practice and then band practice before his first class. So we don't speak at length on the daily. Last weekend we talked for a while - driving in the car to go get the holiday ham. He told me that his wrestling coach is not as strict a disciplinarian as his football coach. Within the short span of a dozen sentences I was able to communicate an entire set of manly lessons of character, and could see that he had internalized a good many already. We were both passing judgment on his coach and the other wrestlers, some seniors that he depends upon to help run the practices by discussing the nature of the competition and habits.

In order to be a man, it's all about what you do. The dynamic of dominance and subordination is a well-understood dynamic in power and respect relationships between men, between men and the rules, and thus between all of us in society, bound as we are by power and rules. Where a man fits in is a matter of honor and the guidelines for honor doesn't require a great deal of talk, not for men who understand it. It is part of the way we see things all the time, whether or not we speak about it at length.

A Reflection on Power Moms

(from the Archives July 2005)

One of the fundamental questions is the role of the mom. Having lived in So Cal for 8 years in 3 different neighborhoods, I can tell you that unless and until you have moms sharing responsibilities for each other's kids real community isn't happening.

In the first neighborhood, we had our kids interact with other kids at the public park through their various public programs. There were maybe three full-time staff, and my wife made pals with the number one woman who ran the program. We had her over for my barbecues and we wer basically tight.

In the second neighborhood, more of our kids were in school and most things were school based. There was a real friendliness among the parents at school but we weren't there long enough to establish a lot of bonds.

In the third neighborhood, where I live now, we can see things coming to a real fruition at about the fourth and fifth grade level. This is where kids really start to choose their friends, have sleepovers and parents are making the commitments to get to know each other. (You have to if it's going to be a sleepover). There are three or four families where we are close enough to spontaneously have their kids over our place or ours at theirs. This is a very different level of cooperation than just doing the 'activity based' relationships. When kids are playing sports on the same teams or scouting or going to the same church school, that's one level, but the sleepovers and family outings - that's a different level.

So for me personally there has been a progression of integration with other families that really doesn't seem to get into gear until kids are in the third grade. It becomes clear after a while, who the power moms are in the community. It's all about knowing the power moms.

Now I would say there's going to be a big difference in the quality of community based upon how many women are working. In the last two neighborhoods, there were plenty of stay at home mothers, and if you ask me, that is the single most important determining factor in the quality of community life. It's all about what's going on at 4:20, and if mom is not watching... well, you know what happens. If you shift the burden of organizing and watching children to public institutions, you will by definition get results that are not up to par. I don't believe you can invest properly without fundamentally altering the relationship between kids, the school and parents - which is to say that the school has to be greatly expanded. Where there are working or single mother families, the school has to be day care, park, babysitting, homework monitoring, communications exchange and trusted surrogate. I don't think that there is enough public money for that or that there ever will be, but I could see how making school a place where parents can pick up their kids up to 9pm at night would work.

Supermom Cranks It Up A Notch

This morning I am once again in wonderful Cleveland thanks to the safe, but enervating experience of air travel. I took a redeye which was two hours late. But I'm not the only one who is haggard. The Spousal Unit has completed a marathon of momhood, successfully. Again.

The Unit is a supermom. Not just a responsible parent, not just a soccer mom, but one of those backbones of the community. Anybody who watches the TV show 'The Unit' knows Regina Taylor plays Molly Blane who is the wife of Dennis Haysbert's character. That's what kind of woman my wife is, and for the record of those who say there are no strong black women on television - there are at 47 episodes which make all the difference. This time, my Unit got my two daughters through The Wizard of Oz.

Not that I really know, but there must be in Los Angeles, two dozen theatre companies for little kids to cut their dramatic teeth. My brother Deet and his wife are somewhat connected out Pasadena way with such things and have been involved with various professional and amateur productions over the years. This time we were invited to join a production of the Wizard of Oz which culminated in four 2 1/2 hour productions over the weekend. I've seen school plays and talent shows, but this was an extraordinary deal with a live orchestra performed at Pasadena City College. The baby Bowens made a strong representation all around with their cousins, Deet's kids. So we had four in the cast all with multiple roles in two of the casts including the Tin Man.

The Unit, for her part, did extra volunteer work and the kind of gap-filling that makes all the difference in the end. In addition to getting the kids out to rehearsals every week for 12 weeks or so, 80 miles round trip, she managed the whole food thing, as usual. See, the Unit is brilliant when it comes to feeding the masses. As a caterer, half-restaurant owner, and industrial food buyer and cafeteria manager, she's knows it all. It has made her invaluable to the PTA, the soccer league, the baseball teams, the family reunions, the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the church, on God only knows how many occasions. People eat, always. She is there always. I can't tell you how many thousands of dollars we've spent at Smart & Final waiting for a reimbursement from a fellow caterer or charitable organization. She's not a machine, but the results speak for themselves. She puts everybody else to shame, with her organizational skills and yet charms them to putty. She is clockwork, backbone, and the doer of deeds. She puts on the apron and all the right things happen.

A couple months ago I bought a replacement wedding ring. This one is Tungsten. It's not glamorous, but it's stronger than gold. That's how I think about my marriage. It's made of working metal, not bling. And my daughters know very well that they have a high standard to live up to. That chapter of organized drama is now officially over. We'll get the DVDs and I'll have some stills. The flowers will stand in vases for a while staying fresh as the memories. But the continuum of work that the Spousal Unit has assembled will long be felt, not only by our family but others as well. It's an extraordinary blessing to be married to a woman such as this.

Now if I can only get the airlines to recognize.

The Baxter Dissent

I predict that California will have a a constitutional amendment in defense of marriage, and that activists for the cause of gay marriage have made a fatal error. California has insured every right except the express permission to redefine marriage, and now the State Supreme Court has overstepped its bounds in defiance of the will of the people. It's going to get loud and ugly and it is now most definitely a constitutional crisis.

I concur with the thrust of Baxter's dissent:

The question presented by this case is simple and stark. It comes down to this: Even though California’s progressive laws, recently adopted through the democratic process, have pioneered the rights of same-sex partners to enter legal unions with all the substantive benefits of opposite-sex legal unions, do those laws nonetheless violate the California Constitution because at present, in deference to long and universal tradition, by a convincing popular vote, and in accord with express national policy they reserve the label “marriage” for opposite-sex legal unions? I must conclude that the answer is no.

The People, directly or through their elected representatives, have every right to adopt laws abrogating the historic understanding that civil marriage is between a man and a woman. The rapid growth in California of statutory protections for the rights of gays and lesbians, as individuals, as parents, and as committed partners, suggests a quickening evolution of community attitudes on these issues. Recent years have seen the development of an intense debate about same-sex marriage. Advocates of this cause have had real success in the marketplace of ideas, gaining attention and considerable public support. Left to its own devices, the ordinary democratic process might well produce, ere long, a consensus among most Californians that the term “marriage” should, in civil parlance, include the legal unions of same-sex partners.

But a bare majority of this court, not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the People themselves. Undeterred by the strong weight of state and federal law and authority, the majority invents a new constitutional right, immune from the ordinary process of legislative consideration. The majority finds that our Constitution suddenly demands no less than a permanent redefinition of marriage, regardless of the popular will.

In doing so, the majority holds, in effect, that the Legislature has done indirectly what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly. Under article II, section 10, subdivision (c), that body cannot unilaterally repeal an initiative statute, such as Family Code section 308.5, unless the initiative measure itself so provides. Section 308.5 contains no such provision. Yet the majority suggests that, by enacting other statutes which do provide substantial rights to gays and lesbians — including domestic partnership rights which, under section 308.5, the Legislature could not call “marriage” — the Legislature has given “explicit official recognition” (maj. opn., ante, at pp. 68, 69) to a California right of equal treatment which, because it includes the right to marry, thereby invalidates section 308.5.5

I cannot join this exercise in legal jujitsu, by which the Legislature’s own weight is used against it to create a constitutional right from whole cloth, defeat the People’s will, and invalidate a statute otherwise immune from legislative interference. Though the majority insists otherwise, its pronouncement seriously oversteps the judicial power. The majority purports to apply certain fundamental provisions of the state Constitution, but it runs afoul of another just as fundamental — article III, section 3, the separation of powers clause. This clause declares that “[t]he powers of state government are legislative, executive, and judicial,” and that “[p]ersons charged with the exercise of one power may not exercise either of the others” except as the Constitution itself specifically provides.

Download lockyer_decision.pdf

Punching Yourself in the Nose

When my kids exhibit self-doubt I tell them that they are punching themselves in the nose. They all know this story I told them.

The story I tell starts once upon a time there was a princess (or prince) who woke up one day to find a small pimple on her nose. All through breakfast nobody said aything but it was all she could think of. She thought that everyone at the table could see her nose and was simply being polite. Immediately after breakfast, she ran to the bathroom to check her nose again. She decided to pick at the pimple and as she did it began to bleed - so that day she had to go to school with a bandage on her nose.

All that day she adjusted her hair so that it would take away attention from her nose, but her hair got in her eyes and she walked into a pole. Smack on the nose. Now her nose was in pain and started to swell. That evening at home she looked even worse. She took off the bandage and the pimple was mostly gone but now her nose was very sore and a little bit red. The following morning her nose was pretty much back to normal but it felt horrible. She put extra makeup on it, just to make sure and she wore some very loud colors to distract from her face.

All this time, people noticed she was acting strange but not about her nose. Only she knew that her nose was making her behave this way - and yet she never told a soul because by now her story was just too embarrassing. Sure enough some kids laughed at her clothes and pointed their fingers at her. She went into the bathroom and cried. She was so mad at herself that she began to punch herself in the nose. She ran home and checked again in the mirror. She had given herself a bloody nose. The more she tried to fix her nose, the more things went wrong, the more she punished herself, the more embarrassed she became. It went on for a week until she finally broke her own nose. Now it became obvious to everyone that her nose was indeed ugly, swollen and slightly crooked.

There are several lessons to be learned from this story. The first is that perfect is the enemy of good. The second is that vanity is self-destructive. The third is not to second-guess what people think about you. The most important is that you can be your own worst enemy because only you know exactly what torments you most.

The story can obviously be changed around or extended to more tragic lengths, but I always like the punch in the nose idea because as a kid I had a lot of fights. I would come home after crying with my face in pain, and unless I had a black eye or my nose was still bleeding, I could feel the pain but nothing would show. The same thing was true after a really good game of football. And so it always fascinated me that people could feel pain and not convey it - that nobody really knows what's going on with you unless you tell, that overcoming the fear of telling releases you from the pain of your insecurity.

Of course you can become a pain in the ass, but that's another story.

Madam President

It's official. My youngest daughter now has a new provisional nickname, 'Madam President'. Today she won election to student body president at her elementary school. All hail the president.

I Love My Children

I have run out of good things to say and it finds me at odd moments just wishing I had more time and money. Even as I begin to write this it sounds like a parody from the Onion. I'm supposed to love my kids, why would I not? I'm merely excited as the possibilities in their lives.

Once again they have scored top awards and honors in their respective classes. The Sprite, aka F10, my youngest, the Baby Girl has done it again. This time with a snapped finger in my face. She got five awards including Honor Roll with distinction at the end of her fourth grade year. She would have gotten perfect attendance too if I hadn't made her late for class one day. Last week she went camping with her Girl Scout troop and yesterday at a puppy party, a tarantula pissed on her and she screamed. If it hadn't been for her baller bands, she would have had a nice bite on her wrist. I doubt it will change her love for animals, as she told me the story she said she laughed and cried at the same time - she was scared but amused by the hilarity of the situation. Sprite is preternaturally complex and she rarely fails to comprehend the higher implications of her situation. In that regard she is rather the polar opposite of Boy, whose powers of concentration block out all external forces, including common sense. But we'll get onto him momentarily. Sprite is a tomboy, sorta. But she loves her Daddy most of all. When I'm out of town she sits on her bed and cries looking at my picture. As soon as I get home she jets to me and I spin her around in a swinging hug. She sleeps like a rock and she sits at the dinner table half out of her chair, itching for the next adventure.

The First Daughter, our middle child is the dumb bunny of the bunch. She only managed a 3.5GPA with two awards this last trimester. For some inexplicable reason, she has failed to master a musical instrument in her twelve years on this planet. We're thinking about giving her up for adoption. But seriously, Scholar continues to live up to her name and has found a new love in singing. Her little YouTube career has begun and she finally believes what we've always known, that she has an angelic soprano. She continues to be the most understated and sophisticated of the trio, a literal mountain of empathy and. As she buds, becomes more like her mother, a guardian of family values and history. As well, she is constantly on patrol for flecks of spinach in our teeth, literally and metaphorically. She has a subtle way of reminding me of everything I need to do. Dramatic and demonstrative, she continues to pen her epic saga "Hey Mama", which exhibits inklings of Pat Conroy and Flannery O'Connor. I get the most forehead kisses from Scholar who still holds my hand when we walk in the mall.  How cool is that?

Boy continues to shock and amaze.  At 13 he is too tall, too strong and too energetic. He's starting to look older than he is, so that when he doesn't speak you expect him to be able to do things he still lacks the focus to do. This illusion is accentuated by his bearing. He moves with confidence, not quite like it's his world but like Bear Grylls - fearlessly enchanted by the adventure of it.  This report card he knocked out a 4.0 and was accepted into the GATE program for gifted students by scoring 97% on something called the Otis-Lennon SAT. We actually weren't expecting all that. Already he's his scout troops' Bugler having only picked up the trumpet about 4 months or so ago. He's got a disarming humility about him. He never brags, well except at Gears of War, and yet I watch him play amongst the foul mouthed peers of his youth, and he still literally says 'aw shucks'. He told me yesterday that Bruce Willis is his favorite actor but I'm still his hero, and that keeps me in line.

I worry that I'm not going to have enough juice to push up the ceiling. They are all running so strongly that I have to concern myself that I am properly capitalizing them. They already know and deal well with our lower upper-middle class status. Only Scholar has the cell phone and hers doesn't have unlimited texting. But it's not that stuff, but the next hurdle that makes me think I'll be wearing the same shoes for the next 15 years. High School. To private prep or not to private prep, that is the question. Somehow I'm confident that they'll all do well, but maybe I'm not pushing them to have the real hunger. They're all quite well-adjusted and exhibit none of the telltale signs of overachiever's angst. I wonder if that means that Yale is out of the question. Hard to say. We've already got two legacies at Brown, although I would hope their politics... eh. I'm not pushy. But I am.

It's impossible to guess what their world will be like, what their America will provide and deny, what their survival or triumph will demand. I just know they are the kids that I wanted to be, and be around when I was a kid. Capable, genuine, unspoiled and bright.  I think they know that, but I'm going to find another way to tell them today. Today is Sunday and I love my children. It's time to wake them up.

The Beryl Motto

At Beryl, I strive to:
Be the best I can be, to put forth my best
Effort in all that I do, to be respectful and to take personal
Responsibility for the choices I make. I have begun my
Year long journey as a positive role model for
Life-long learning.