Hamilton for President

I am not throwing away my shot!

I am not throwing away my shot!

Hey yo, I’m just like my country

I’m young, scrappy and hungry

And I’m not throwing away my shot!

This spring, our house has been pulsing to lines like the one above, from the smash-hit musical Hamilton. The show tells the story of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton through hip-hop, dance and brilliant modern-day storytelling. Anyone who has seen the sold-out musical or listened to the bestselling album has probably been hooked on the songs just as my wife, daughters and I have been. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s music, lyrics and dynamic method of bringing Ron Chernow’s Hamilton biography to life are captivating in ways that call to mind other groundbreaking musicals such as Rent and Book of Mormon – shows that dared to be different and offered a new direction for Broadway.

            Part of what makes Hamilton so impressive is the degree to which it speaks to our modern-day world. In Miranda’s hands, we see a show that addresses many of our hot-button issues of 2016, from immigration to race to financial policies to foreign affairs to electoral politics. Hamilton also makes it clear that heated debate – yes, even heated fighting – has long been a part of American politics.

            But despite the musical’s indisputable relevance, I’d guess that even the subject of this show would be surprised at the level of absurdity present in the 2016 presidential election campaign. It’s all been very well documented, so I’m not going to review it with you again. But suffice it to say that no matter how much Alexander Hamilton might be intrigued by the idea of attack ads, Twitter posts and sound bites, he would be disappointed in the tone of this election. After all, this was a man who much preferred taking on his opponents face to face instead of letting others fight his battles for him.

            And that’s where things get most frustrating for me as I follow the current presidential campaign (from a distance, as I can’t bring myself to get too close to something this ugly). When I hear candidates raise ideas that they clearly don’t plan to follow through on, but that serve to rile up an angry base, I am reminded of a memorable line from The Great Gatsby.

By the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel (which, like Hamilton, speaks to the 21^st century throughout every page), narrator Nick Carraway can no longer refrain from judging two of the characters he’s been describing for us. The husband and wife due of Daisy and Tom Buchanan have left a disaster in their wake as they leave town, and Nick knows that they will not be the ones to suffer from this. He says, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

This, in a nutshell, is Donald Trump. He raises ideas and proposals that he will never bring to pass, even if he were to be elected president. He will not actually build a giant wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, nor will he arrest women seeking abortions. But because he says these things, Trump brings out emotions in those who take him at his word. And the mess that someone like this can make overshadows any positive steps he could conceivably take as a leader. But he’s a smart man, and he knows that if he says there might be riots if he’s not his party’s nominee, he is both planting an idea and recusing himself of any blame for such violence. He won’t be the one committing any violent acts, so he’ll just shrug his shoulders and say he’s disappointed at what happened.

This kind of behavior is not just a political thing, of course. It’s human nature. We see it when Kim Kardashian posts a nude selfie, knowing that her influence will lead young teenagers to try the same. We see it when Roger Goodell says that if he had a son he’d love to see the boy play football, when in fact the NFL commissioner doesn’t have a son and knows that many youngsters who play will sustain concussions unless the game is made safer. We see it when Ted Cruz promotes Christianity on the campaign stump, knowing that this is being read by some as code for “no Muslims.” So long as you imply your point instead of directly stating it, you’re as safe as Tom and Daisy.

Humans can be sneaky communicators, and they also know how to use their power, wealth and social status to make a tremendous mess of society. They know that their words and actions can hold incredible weight, and they are willing to use that leverage to watch others start a fire after they’ve left the lighter fluid on the floor.

Alexander Hamilton had plenty of flaws, for sure. But he acted on his beliefs, said what he thought, and made his own mess – even the one that led to his own death. “Every action’s an act of creation,” Miranda sings in the song “My Shot.” It’s not uncommon for works of art to speak to our needs better than the leaders we’re considering for elected office. This year, that is particularly true. Miranda’s miraculous work of art is worth every moment we give it, for through his words we might just find a way out of this electoral mess we’re in, and into the light of engagement, collaboration and hope.

It’s time to take a shot.

Middle-Aged

            According to the U.S. Census Bureau, I am now officially middle-aged. I can’t say I felt much different last Sunday when I turned 45, but the number does seem a bit daunting. A couple decades ago, I wrote a weekly column for the Staten Island Advance about living through my 20s; one of the columns talked about how old 25 felt. I think back on that and laugh.

Of course, 20 years from now I might reflect on 45 as a young milestone. But while it’s true that age is relative, it’s also true that 45 is a much more definitive marker of aging than 25 was. For instance, I am now older than every athlete on a major American pro sports team. The oldest, NHL right winger Jaromir Jagr, is more than a year younger than me. If I were running for president this year, I’d be considered a “young” candidate, but I’m still five months older than Republican Marco Rubio, and just a few weeks younger than Ted Cruz. In terms of entertainment, I’m in the Matt Damon-Ethan Hawke age range, which is not too bad. But still, I was 23 years old when Justin Bieber was born, easily making me old enough to be his parent.

So yeah, 45 is a bunch of years. But it’s still only halfway to 90, so there’s no reason to panic. Yet there are certain physical signs reminding me that middle age is beginning. The most obvious is the eyesight. When I’m reading a book with my glasses on, the words only look focused when I push the glasses down the bridge of my nose. When I’ve swallowed my pride enough, I will buy reading glasses for the times when I’m wearing contacts. After all, I’m already struggling at school when I reserve a laptop cart and need to open it with a combination lock. My students sit patiently waiting for me to open the cart, while I stare down at the lock and wait for my eyes to slowly begin identifying numbers.

There’s also the height thing. When doctors ask for my height, I proudly say that I’m 6-1, although I know that is no longer the case. The disks between my vertebrae have thinned out, and I’m shorter than I was at 22. I try to combat this with exercise, and I know that yoga would help as well. But even so, the ravages of time and gravity have had their way with my spine. When I spend hours outside shoveling like I did yesterday, my back reminds me of just how cranky it’s getting.

So yes, there are numerical and physical signs of aging. But perhaps the most glaring sign of being middle-aged is in the interactions with people younger than me, and the generation gaps that are now fully apparent. Take the popular mobile app known as Snapchat, for instance. I have had computers in my life ever since I was 12 years old. And yet, I just don’t understand the need for taking dozens of photos and short videos that get sent to friends, who can view them for just a few seconds before they disappear. It seems like an exercise in futility.

As my students prepare for class to begin, many of them stare at their phones, give a little smile, and before I know it they’ve taken a Snapchat photo, to be added to their Snapchat “story” that will be sent to their 200 closest friends later in the day. The same thing happens when I’m driving my older daughter somewhere, and she sits in the back seat posing and taking more pictures than you’d see at a Kate Upton photo shoot. She then begins playing her friends’ Snapchat stories, and I hear quick bursts of shouting or singing, and my daughter laughs at these bite-size forms of communication while I struggle to identify what her friends are even saying.

Generation gaps are as common as diminished eyesight and shrinking spines. And with this particular gap, I am reminded of a skill that I have maintained and improved after four and a half decades, but that I fear my daughter is losing all too early: the ability to pay attention. I am still more interested in placing my photos in an album than in shooting them off for a five-second viewing; I’d rather write a blog like this than fire off a tweet; and I’d prefer to read a story or book than an Instagram caption. I want to spend time with my thoughts and communication, rather than treating them like a series of buttons to be pushed. I worry that younger generations are losing the ability to take time with the interactions that help make a life richer.

There is no way to write this without sounding like an old man, even older than one who can’t read his combination lock. But I think the key to generation gaps is going beyond the recognition of them, and moving into bridging the gaps. Is there something that both generations can learn from each other – something about the Snapchat world that I don’t quite get, and something about the joy of sitting with words and thoughts that my daughter doesn’t understand yet? Were there similar elements at play for me 30 years ago, when my parents were advising me to pay attention to the world beyond Commodore 64 video games and fantasy sports statistics? It would take a degree of patience on both sides to sit, listen and learn, yet I’d be up for doing that. My daughter, who is forever closing her bedroom door behind her in true 14-year-old fashion, is a tougher one to pin down; but there’s no reason to stop trying.

Age is both relative and very real; 45 is nothing if not a reminder of that. I’ve downloaded the Snapchat app, but I can’t figure it out yet. And it’s hard to read unless I push down those glasses.

Home

            It’s been an exciting Thanksgiving weekend, as my wife’s parents recently moved to the same town where my parents have lived for the past 12 years. After a couple of attempts at retiring up north, my in-laws realized that the Jersey Shore was more their style. So this Thanksgiving, my daughters were able to gather around the turkey with all four grandparents for the first time in their lives. It was wonderful.

            As I’ve aged out of some of the restlessness of youth, I’ve come to see just how much it can mean to feel comfortable and happy with your home. To have that roof and four walls, and to want to be there, is a special feeling. Thanksgiving, and the holidays that follow, are a yearly reminder of this.

            I was thinking about that feeling as I read a poem the other day. It’s titled “Home,” and it was written by Warsan Shire, a writer who was born in Kenya and raised in London to Somali parents. The poem addresses the world’s current refugee crisis, one that sees more people fleeing war and oppression than at any time since World War II, according to The New York Times.

            Shire begins her poem by writing, “no one leaves home unless / home is the mouth of a shark / you only run for the border / when you see the whole city running as well.”

            The next stanza continues, “your neighbors running faster than you / breath bloody in their throats / the boy you went to school with / who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory / is holding a gun bigger than his body / you only leave home / when home won’t let you stay.”

            Since the flurry of recent terrorist attacks in Europe, Asia and Africa, there has been increased conversation about a topic that is as old as history – whether to allow an exodus of people to enter one’s country. There are always complications to this issue, but time has a tendency to align itself with compassion and openness, rather than with resistance and fences. Those who enter a new country, as my great-grandparents did in America, tend to do nothing more than give thanks and start their new life with ambition and devotion to their new home.

            It’s tempting, during times of fear, to think that countless people are out to get us. But in reality, most people just want what my in-laws found this year – a place that feels like home. When we forget this, we run the risk of becoming sharks ourselves.

Thirteen

            As I write this post, my daughter is hanging out at a boy’s house. She is 13; so is he. His parents are there, as are other friends.

            But still. I want the boy gone. Goodbye.

            I’m just not ready. I have to be ready, but I’m not. I need to father a teenager, not a child. And I don’t get a script. Parents never do, especially for the oldest.

            It seems like a heartbeat ago, we were dancing in the living room to Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” me swinging her in circles while she giggled and called for more. It feels like yesterday we were reading Fancy Nancy picture books together, her eyes beginning to recognize words and sentences as we turned the pages. It seems like last year she’d go to bed asking me to tell her a story, and I’d regale her with tales of my childhood, while she lay in the glow of a nightlight, listening intently.

            Now she takes her shower at nine, says a quick goodnight, sets the alarm on her iPhone, and goes to sleep. She wakes up and checks her Instagram and Snapchat, then dresses in her American Eagle finest, before munching on a quick bowl of cereal and heading off to the hallways of middle school.

            We butt heads pretty often these days. I tell her that I think she needs to broaden her friend base. I take away her phone when the device is taking place of the actual world. I encourage her to step away from the texts and Facetimes to go for walks and read books. She tells me to stop, stop, stop it, Dad.

            Did I mention the part about no script? Yes, I think I did.

            I know that if I push too hard, I’ll lose her. I also know that there are far worse things than a 13-year-old who needs to learn a few lessons about friendships and boys and the allure of devices. Much better that she learn this stuff now than later on in her teen years. But when you want to get the parenting stuff right, it’s hard to know when to pull back and when to go all-out. So, with my wife’s guidance, we pick our battles. Talking back to us? No way, Jose. Watching Dancing with the Stars after you’ve finished your homework, in lieu of reading? OK, your choice tonight.

            Asking if you can hang out at the boy’s house? Yeah, I didn’t make the call on that one, as you can imagine. But she’s there, and she’ll be home soon, and I’m sure she’s having fun.

            It’s getting harder to remember this as I climb into my 40s, but I was actually 13 once myself. And I can remember hanging out in basements with girls, playing “Spin the Bottle” while the more daring kids tried “Seven Minutes in Heaven.” That’s not happening tonight, and my daughter has so much of her innocence intact. But somehow I navigated the thrills and terrors of adolescence and came out in one piece. Why can’t I expect that she’ll do the same?

            Because she will, and my wife and I will be there for her every step of the way. But right now, I have to face the reality: I am parenting a teenager now. It’s a different Ring of Fire than the one we danced to all those years ago. But as I see the hormonal sparks and the flames of independence alight in our house, I need to know which fires must be extinguished, and which ones have to burn out on their own.

            Nothing is easy about this. But it is, in fact, what I signed up for. This is my daughter, my oldest child, my pride and joy. I don’t know the script, but I think there’s a lot in there about patience and love.

            And boys. 

True Companions

     

      
           We were practically children, closer to our teens than to our 30s. She had just graduated from college; I was not yet two years into my working life. And yet, on a Saturday in mid-September, we decided to pledge our lives to each other. Vows, and rings, an organ and a trumpet. A white dress, a black tux, and a whole lot of family.

           

            I recall my groomsmen and I driving out for an old-fashioned barber’s shave in the morning, then heading back to my house to play a game of Wiffle Ball before showering and putting on our tuxes. I remember walking into the church and feeling overwhelmed by the sight of so many of the people who’d filled the first 24 years of my life. I recall dancing more than I’d ever danced before, smiling for more photos than ever, and trying to find a way to freeze so many moments in my mind for all time.

            More than anything, though, I remember her. Amy. We were high school sweethearts who had stayed together – a throwback to the old days. A couple of kids who decided they wanted to grow up, then grow old, together. At our reception, we entered the Great Hall of Sailors’ Snug Harbor to the music of Randy Newman’s score for the film The Natural. Aside from the groom’s passion for baseball, the song also represented the natural fit we felt we were. I held her smooth hand, the one with the new wedding band on it, and saw the red hair flow beneath her veil. We danced to Marc Cohn’s “True Companion,” and chatted with our guests.

            That was 20 years ago today. A lot of time has passed since then, and we’ve lived a lot of life in those two decades. We’ve brought two girls into the world, while also losing grandparents and other loved ones. We’ve traveled and worked and moved and occasionally even relaxed. We’ve agreed, and disagreed, and found ways to work things out. We’ve tried to be there for the folks we love, and tried to do the same for each other. More than anything, though, we’ve grown – as individuals and as a couple. We’ve given each other space and pulled each other tight. We’ve supported and shown up for each other every day. We’ve enjoyed some traditions, while also seeking ways to make it all feel new again. It’s a delicate balance, it’s hard work, and it never stops being worth the effort and love.

            And so, after two decades of marriage, we’re hanging in there. It isn’t 1995 anymore, for sure, and soon it won’t be 2015, either. We’re closer to our AARP days than to our college ones. But some things haven’t changed over the course of 20 years. I’ll still take that sly smile, and the red hair, and the hazel eyes. I’ll still hold her hand, and talk with her about anything. I’ll still trust her and believe in her. I took a chance at age 24 in the hopes that I’d found the love of my life. It turns out I was right. I’m lucky, and I know that.

            So happy anniversary, Amy. It’s only here for a day, but tomorrow should be a good day, too. After all, you keep hanging in there with me. I’m ready to do the same with you for as long as we’ve got. Let’s keep at it. 

Postcards from a Cross-Country Voyage

                For as long as we’ve been together, my wife and I have been a dependable couple who rarely stray from the measured, predictable route. We are people you can count on, but not people who typically inspire others to try new things. As we’ve raised our two daughters, those attributes made for some solid overall parenting, yet with an inclination toward the routine. Movie night on Fridays, dinner at Applebee’s or Chili’s on Saturday, and a weekend trip to Manhattan two or three times a year. During the summer, you’d usually find us visiting our parents for vacation, and occasionally springing for a weekend trip to Boston or Baltimore or Pittsburgh.

                Something starts to happen in your 40s, though, when you notice the clock ticking and realize that if you’re not going to add some spontaneity, adventure and variety soon, you might run out of time. Since we entered our 40s, Amy and I have completed endurance races (me a marathon, and she a triathlon), danced on stage, and swum with dolphins.

                This summer, we decided it was time to do something we’d long desired, yet never tackled: a cross-country vacation. Our girls were on board – even for the camping. And so, acting against type, we climbed into our Honda Odyssey at the beginning of August and drove into the frontier.

                In the end, the map, calendar and odometer show that we covered 20 states in 26 days, totaling 6,655 miles. The photos show that we saw prairie dogs and pronghorn, buffalo and bighorn sheep, mules and mule deer, and just a whole lot of lizards.

                Our younger daughter’s National Parks Junior Ranger collection features shiny badges from Arches, Bryce, Zion, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore and the Flight 93 Memorial. We have baseball ticket stubs from Kansas City, Cincinnati and Toledo, as well as mini baseball bats from the Louisville Slugger factory, and a souvenir patch from the Field of Dreams site in Dyersville, Iowa.

                The road took us from the Gateway Arch to the Delicate Arch, from Santa Claus, Ind., to Santa Fe, N.M., and from Park City, Utah, to Hill City, S.D. There were Badlands and Black Hills, canyons and cairns, as well as Cadillacs, ranches, and one Cadillac Ranch. We took photos at every National Parks sign with a stuffed Teddy Roosevelt doll that we’d gotten at a Washington Nationals game a few years ago, and we had a softball catch in 14 different states. We tossed the ball around outside Churchill Downs, at the Little League World Series, on a bridge in Wheeling, W.Va., in a sunflower field in eastern Wyoming, and on a veranda overlooking the North Rim at Grand Canyon Lodge.

                Restaurant receipts show that we sampled deep-dish pizza in Chicago, sopaipilla and buffalo burgers in Santa Fe, barbecue in Kansas City, and truffle mac n cheese in Sundance, Utah. Memory also shows that we had a lot of Subway sandwiches on late nights, and more than a few delicious dinners cooked over charcoal grills at campsites. Speaking of camping, we pitched our tent in the mountains of Pennsylvania, among the canyons of Utah, in the woods of southern Michigan, and even beside the highway, train tracks and airport of Amarillo, Texas. When not at a campsite or hotel, we stayed with family in Missouri and Utah, catching up on lost time and learning about life across the Mississippi.

                We traveled a lot in those 26 days, and we saw a lot of stuff. I can say that part of my goal was to broaden my girls’ horizons, and help them see how big and beautiful this country is. But parenting does not always give you a clear answer as to whether your intentions were met. I know the girls kept a scrapbook, and I know they told us they liked some of the places we visited. But I also know they complained a lot about seeing “too many rocks,” about hiking too much, and about enduring the dreadful lengths of some of our car rides. I had hoped they would spend time off their iPads, but a nine-hour drive from western Missouri to West Texas cannot be sustained by license-plate games and sing-a-longs. In some ways, the jury’s out on just what our girls gained from the trip. They’ll process it all in time.

                But Amy and I are old enough to digest these things more quickly. We know what we gained from those 26 days. Perhaps it is best described through a moment, rather than a sweeping, overall summary. For instance, take the afternoon we were all floating down the Colorado River, bulky life vests keeping us afloat, while a guide rowed our raft nearby. We stared at the sun-splashed canyons towering above us in a blur of orange and brown. Amy and I looked over at each other in disbelief. We didn’t say anything except “Wow,” but I think what we really meant to say was “What have we been waiting for?”

                Life in the 40s is shaping up to be a whole lot better than I thought. It seems as though a frantic focus on “What’s next?” has been replaced by a more centered query of “What’s now?” Amy and I don’t expect to have the amazing opportunity to drive cross country every year. But we think we can keep up some of this spontaneity and adventure. We are, after all, children of the ‘80s. And while driving through Chicago, we were reminded of Ferris Bueller, who once gave us some advice that might serve as impetus for a cross-country trip or two.

               “Life moves pretty fast,” Ferris said. “If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” We hear you, Ferris. It may have taken some time, but we got the message.

Keeping Score

            My daughter and I sat in a lifeguard chair perched beyond the left-field fence at FirstEnergy Park in Lakewood, N.J. These unique seats offered us a bird’s-eye view of a minor-league baseball game on a sunny Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago. And for my 10-year-old and me, it was the perfect setting for what we were about to do.

After all, it wasn’t just a baseball game we were ready to watch. On this day, we had decided to try keeping score together. This antiquated skill, which I had learned as a kid, was going to find its way into the brain of my daughter Chelsea. She said she was ready and wanted to learn. So we gave it a try.

Why bother with keeping score, you might ask? Even for a minor-league game like this, the play-by-play was available online, in real time, along with a running box score and up-to-date statistics for each player. Why bother sitting there with a pencil, circling “2B” if the hitter smacked a double, or writing in “6-3” if he grounded out to the shortstop? It’s a good question, and one my 13-year-old daughter was more than ready to ask as she chose not to participate in our exercise.

But on this day, Chelsea sensed that there was something about tallying your own numbers that seemed worth the effort. There was no algorithm or app involved in the data we were compiling. It was just us, with our trusty pencil and scorebook, keeping track of the game before us. And instead of blindly relying on others to tell us what we needed to know, we could glance at our scorecard and see who was hitting well that day, and who was struggling. Chelsea was particularly intrigued by the backwards “K” that indicates a batter struck out looking, and she was excited to shade in the full baseball diamond to indicate that a batter scored a run.

Of course, this day of keeping score was always about more than just numbers. The game itself was fun, but nothing extraordinary happened on the field. For my daughter and me, the most interesting part of that game took place in that lifeguard chair, when we sat down together and tried something new. Chelsea said it was fun, and I believe her. What I think she really meant, though, was it was fun to spend time with her dad.

No number-crunching or scorecards are needed to understand the importance of that.