Holiday Lessons from a Tape Recorder

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I could give you a lot of reasons why, and maybe I can't share all of them here, but one of the major reasons is that it is not Christmas.

For most adults, the winter holiday season is one of stress, obligation and financial compromise. We think it's simple for kids, but it can be even more complicated, as I honestly recall some of my childhood experiences. I also see holidays becoming more difficult in the lives of a lot of kids, given what they are going through today. What lesson should we learn from all of this? There are plenty, but we have not been such great students of life on this matter.

I learned one lesson the Christmas when I was 11. For some reason, I earnestly wanted a tape recorder. I am not sure why. There is not a whole lot one can do with a tape recorder, but record sound, and I am still not ingenious enough to understand the art of (or reason for) identifying and capturing sounds. It is enough to say that the technology was not as common-place as it is today, though not terribly inaccessible.

That Christmas, I got the tape recorder. I found it under the tree, unwrapped it with appropriate haste and recklessness, and marveled for a moment, or two—or maybe three. What followed in the next several hours were a series of lessons unfolded that, to this day, mark my understanding of the Christmas holiday, myself, and how I prefer to celebrate—or not.

The first lesson I learned was one that I should have taken to in all the previous years of Christmases: that the shine and allure of just about any gift will lose its luster soon after opening—if not after a few days of play. After a few times of playing my voice back, I realized that even that odd phenomenon was not as exciting and compelling as the thrill of finding and opening gifts under the tree—which my other siblings were still doing.

You have to remember that back then, tape recorders were expensive. While my parents would indulge in the thrill of seeing their kids open gifts they wanted with glee on Christmas morning, they also were frugal enough to not overindulge their children, nor spend so much more on one child to the point that it would be financially compromising or even disadvantageous to grant so many wishes. I don't think we even need to mention the tendency to develop undesirable orientations toward materialistic priorities or the displacement of the most important focus of the holiday.

Tape recorders cost a lot back then. Besides the pajamas, socks and mittens, the tape recorder was all I received for Christmas. My eye darted from gift to gift under the tree until I realized that all of the presents had someone else's name on them. Was there nothing more?

I began to feel sorry from myself. I think I sat for a while, on one of the living room chairs, quiet with my long fingers lightly pressing the buttons of the tape recorder. Then, a moment of self-consciousness overcame me, and my pity turned to a shade of shame.

Somehow, my 11-year-old self came to realize in that instant the shallowness and selfishness of my attitude. I realized the total inappropriateness of my disposition and misplaced value on the season.

I realized that I had even misplaced the value of the fact that our family was there, at home, all together, warm with a fire in the fireplace, on a very cold mid-western December morning. I don't think I could articulated it so well then. I just knew there was something wrong, something about which I could feel some shame, something wrong with feeling that I was getting less when, by any decent set of values, I should have been counting my blessings.

I do not know what I asked for the next year. I do not think I looked at the JCPenny and Sears catalogs with as much the same allure. I was different for the experience.

I was different in other ways. I was in junior high, on the verge of my first real crush, living with uncertain footing, no longer being among the Big Men on Campus of the 6^th grade. I gave up trick-or-treating. I was trying to convince the basketball coach that it was okay for me to play hockey as well—and miss basketball games in order to go to hockey practice.

Still, I have to say, the lesson took. I approach Christmas morning with the anticipation of seeing loved ones and sharing a wonderful dinner later in the day (and maybe a football game playing on the television in the background), much like Thanksgiving. I cannot say, even though I have not a lot of material wealth, I have been cured of materialistic tendencies. But I really do not care what is under the tree nearly as much as I care about who is gathered around it.

It was a lesson much harder learned but equally valuable as when my father told me the truth about Santa Claus. (More on that later, too.) When I finally convinced my mom that we should stop exchanging material presents (a rule that she likes to break), Christmas became a much more enjoyable holiday. (We still make sure kids get presents. Not sure what the impact of that is on them—a distraction from the Christ story, from the importance of family, the joy of having at least one day off—if not two weeks at the end of the year: A day or two week to not leave the house and admire those pajamas that grandma sent!)

So I am anticipating the days of Christmas. For only the second time in almost five decades, we will be missing one person around the tree from our six-member immediate family, which is quite a record. (Aunt/Sister Jennifer will be with in-laws.) We have been spared many of the realities of life beyond geography, in-laws and the burdens of each that make it difficult if not impossible for a lot of families to spend holidays together.

I will watch my child play with his cousins. I will see the contentment of my parents at having their grandchildren happy in their home. I will have a great meal (if my stomach decides to start cooperating by then). I will be around people I love. And maybe I will get a present: I think it will be socks. Thanks, mom and dad.

We Sleep Here

As some of you know, I grew up in St. Cloud, Minnesota. For those of you who do not know St. Cloud, ours was one of three black families that lived—and stayed for more than a year. Such a treacherous setting, ripe for an array of indignities. It is a tough reality to survive without a sense of humor.

My dad has one—a sense of humor. (Do I have one? That is a matter of dispute among my friends. More on that later.) I must have been five or six. It was a Saturday afternoon, sometime in the late 1960s. Dad was in our yard, doing yard work, while I played outside to keep him company. A man stop to talk with dad while he raked. Their conversation lasted less than a couple of minutes before the man walked away.

“Who was that?” I asked dad.

“Some joker,” he said. “The man said, 'Hey, buddy, how much they payin' ya to do this yard work?'” dad told me. “He said, 'Our yard needs some work. Will you do ours next?'” Of course, the question made no sense to me—maybe because it made no sense. Dad turned back to a vigorous raking of the yard, kind of like a grandma, combing a granddaughter's hair while she's upset with her. Then he said, “I told him, 'I'm not getting paid anything, but if I do a good job, I get to sleep with the woman who lives here.'”

45 Years of Snow Days

It has been snowing for almost a day. It is one of those snows that Minnesotans expect but is a little more than what we usually get. What is familiar to most of us is spending a good chunk of the day digging out cars and digging out parking spaces with the upcoming snow emergencies. That is how we spent much of today, neighbors helping each other (for which I am very thankful and grateful) move their cars to a spot where they will not get ticketed, plowed in or towed. We may repeat the drill in the morning, when all the cars need to move again.

I heard an announcer on the radio saying that this storm is comparable to the Halloween storm of 1991. No one is really talking about the real storm, the one from 1965.

As we shoveled out a spot for the SUV driven by a pack of kids from Iowa, I told them about the dump that left my dad to dig out the driveway. It was not work, but entertainment to have such a wonderland in which to play, which is why my dad likely had me join him in the bright, sunny aftermath.

The snow was so much that dad had to reach up way over his head to deposit the shovelfuls from his last scoop. I sat on top of one of the mounds that measured the heft of the storm and the heft of his day's labor. For my part, I applied my shovel, from a beach pail set that grandma had likely sent the summer before. (These were the days before everything was made of plastic. Mine was some kind of metal.) The snow that I kicked back onto the driveway as I played was more than the work of the beach shovel. This fact was the topic of a lament from my father as much as it was his delight.

I explained the storm of '65 to the young guys, who someone thought they might be able to head back to Iowa in the morning. They had not seen a storm so big, even being from Iowa. They were amazed by the storm, but not nearly as amazed as they were that I remember the storm of '65. Could anyone be that old?

They are now at work trying to dislodge the compact car of a “girlfriend.” They have the energy and spirit. Whoops and cheers as they car edges from its snow-lock. (Yelling like neanderthals, my son says in jest and glee.) It's sport. It's fun. Could I have ever been so young?

Your Grant Writer as the Organization's Goalie

Okay, how and why does one really become a goalie?

The reality might be different today, with the modern culture of hockey. When I was a kid, and in most times before that, it happened something like this: In the warming house or in the locker room, the coach would look at all the faces and see who was going to volunteer to be goalie. Of course, no one wanted to be goalie. Everyone wanted to be Bobby Orr. Take the puck from one end of the ice and score the goal.

Goalies don't get to score. They only get to give up goals. Goals for the other team. Goals that everybody can see get scored—on the goalie. No hero. Just heel.

So, who's going to get stuck being the goalie? It's always the dumpy kid who can't skate. Ironic, since being a goalie requires above average, strong skating skills. So, as a nine-year-old amid a score of other nine-year-olds who found themselves faced with the desperate plea from coach Mike, the hopeful gaze finally rested on me—the dumpy kid who couldn't skate too well.

Okay, I'll try it, I must have said. They strapped on all the equipment, which weighed a ton. I got a crash course in the craft (not quite yet an art) of goal tending. Keep you pads together. Hold the stick straight. Stay square to the puck. Move out to cut off the angle. Cover up the puck with you glove hand and put the stick hand on top. If you go down, get up as fast as you can. DON'T WORRY IF THEY SCORE A GOAL ON YOU; JUST HANG IN THERE.

I was then sent off to the lonely post in front of the net. I let in four goals that day, our second game of the year. After, I told coach Mike, “I guess I wasn't meant to be goalie.”

“Oh, noooo. You were just fine,” I recall him saying. He wasn't about to lose his only goalie or spend the next two months browbeating the team until someone surrendered. That was the start of the next decade of net minding, much longer than either I or my father would have imagined.

Over the years, I got better, and got noticed. I became a good skater. I honed an art, if not the exacting craft, of goal tending. Some of the very few successes I had as a child and young adult came from playing hockey.

In the early years, that first coach called me “Gump,” after the famed, no-masked goalie Gump Worsley. My uncle called me “Esposito,” after standout Chicago goalie Tony Esposito. Later, in high school, Daphne Wolfer, who was dating my friend Jerry at a rival school and was one of the popular girls called me “famous.” (Not sure if Jerry asked her to say something nice to me. Both she and he were especially nice people—especially for “popular” kids.) I needed the attention.

It is funny, ironic how we become goalies. Not long ago, I noticed the same process in which grant writers evolve in nonprofits.

How did I—or anyone else, for that matter, become a grant writer. The stories sound familiar. Did I become a grant writer as well because no one else wanted to do it?

Do you need a grant writer? You could advertise, like a lot of adult hockey leagues do to recruit goalies. They do this because they do not see volunteers among themselves. Otherwise, it is time for the coach to look at all the faces around your organization's conference table and see who will volunteer. And maybe the hopeful gaze will fall upon you, the kid who can't skate too well, but one day, the popular boy or girl will call you “famous.”  Okay, grant writers NEVER really become famous. But no matter how hard or discouraging it gets, JUST HANG IN THERE.

Deflecting Anxiety in the Nets

Earlier this week, I went to a hockey game. It was the first game I attended in as long as I can remember with my friend Tom. The University of Minnesota Gophers won over the University of Michigan Wolverines. The score: 3-1. At one time, the score would have been important to me. Former (and more so, current) goalies love a low score. But being long removed from the pads and the ice, I sat a little easier, knowing a goal was not the trigger of gut-wrenching trauma,, shame and yet another personal failure.

“Playing goalie seems to be the most interesting job on the ice,” Tom said.

“Playing goalie is the most anxiety-ridden job on the ice,” I told him.

One would think it odd that a nine-year-old who already lived a life full of more anxiety than a child should have to live with would choose to play goalie. Playing between the posts is an exercise in conspicuous failure. So, how—or WHY did I spend the next decade, including those preciously fragile adolescent years, as a hockey net-minder?

Anxiety is a great motivator. The possibility of humiliation in front of teammates, opponents, family, and whomever found them selves spectating, can go a long way toward spurring action. Anxiety helps one attempt the impossible task: keeping the puck out of the net. And action—that urgent physical activity—helps that anxiety from becoming a dis-abler and from making one sick.

Sick as in the physical and mental deterioration that comes from constant stress. Sick as in, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Former Boston Bruin great, Gary Cheevers was known for several things besides his excellent play in the nets. He used to throw up before each game—a little more than your average nervous tummy. But the anxiety of a goalie can be that big. As a child, I found it convenient.

Playing goalie was a convenient distraction from the more pressing and less hopeful stressors of my childhood. That impossible task, to stop all the shots, seemed to be a more hopeful prospect than deflecting the negative attention I received whenever I stepped from the house. Better to have that attention, an ironically less conspicuous attention, than the attention I received as one of the few Black kids on my lonely childhood planet of ubermajority.

It was better to be conspicuous as a goalie, unlike the other skaters on the ice whose mistakes are jumbled in a the flurry of action. While playing goalie, everyone sees your lonely mistake; everyone knows who let the puck pass by.

Choose your anxiety. Or did I get to choose? I played goalie into college. Almost good enough. Good enough to dress for one Division III college game. Good enough to eek out All-Metro high school honors in a medium-sized town. Good enough to be loved by some and hated by others for my relative success.

Good enough to gain the enthusiastic and empathetic protection of teammates from especially hostile bigots. Good enough so that one angry referee was overheard in a bar telling his drinking buddies how, if I was going to be playing in an upcoming game, my team would be sure to find itself a few goals disadvantaged—or maybe that didn't have anything to do with how good, or not good, my 12-year-old self was.

I was “something” enough for something. Enough to have things yelled at me for which other players where not the target. (I actually didn't hear: I was selectively deaf to a lot of the taunts, but was told what had been said by naively shocked teammates.) I was enough of something to get pucks deliberately shot at my head by college teammates during practice (as I was told years later by one who felt the need to break his silence about his teammates). I was enough of something to have this anxiety available to me to push out the other anxiety created in a cauldron with pockets of hostility easily bred in a sheltered and homogeneous majority.

So, I was happy for ten years being unhappy at my work that masked a greater unhappiness. Tom was right: It is the most interesting job on the ice. (It even beats being the Zamboni driver.) Fighting anxiety with anxiety: maybe not such a novel idea, but interesting work, if you can get it.