Category: Family

If you have ever been to a playground where a significant number of toddlers are present, you’ll understand the sheer volume of noise, snacks, snotty noses, and toys. 30 toddlers and kindergarteners sharing 3000 square feet makes for a lovely scene.

Such was the scene today at Julius Kahn playground here in San Francisco. It’s in the Presidio, a lovely former military encampment in the far turned enormous park. And Julius Kahn playground sits directly across the street from gleaming modern and historic properties each worth millions. And the sweeping view of standing eucalyptus and fir groves next to hilly fields keeps parents inspired and happy as they chase their tinies and mind their boo boos.

It was my first time, today, and I was pleased to watch Silas, our two year old, play as Kaile spent some time with friends playing tennis. I am terrible at tennis, you see. I didn’t get a picture of the scene at Julius Kahn, but here’s a little picture from another park of the star/villain of today’s story.

Silas had been playing with some other toddlers in the dirt as I watched from a little way off. I was standing in the shade to keep the hot sun off Maelin’s head. Maelin is our almost-six month old. He was struggling and crying, so I was attempting to assuage his hiccup difficulties while keeping an eye on his older brother.

Suddenly a tall man appeared. “Excuse me, could you tell your son to give my son his toy back? He snatched it away from my son, and I can’t believe my son was so gracious about it, but he needs his toy back,” he asked/instructed me. He was a decade older, easily, and much taller than me. “Uh oh,” I managed, hoping he heard me over the crying infant on my chest.

I came over and instructed Silas to return the toy. Maelin’s screams forced me to pause my admonishment, and I planned to redouble my efforts in helping this gentleman in his crusade to heroically rescue his son from Silas’s plundering. To be fair to Silas, it was an awesome toy. I mean, I would play with this toy, pictured below. And I’m almost thirty.

Soon, Maelin was quiet. But Silas still had the toy, this deliciously intricate yellow crane truck. I looked up and saw the man glaring down at Silas, who appeared to be utilizing the crane truck for extensive sand mining operations. His son had started playing with the group of boys nearby who had access to a small fleet of vehicles. They also appeared to be in the sand mining business from what I could make out.

And then it happened.

The man swooped in and wrenched the toy from Silas’s hand. Ok ok, I’m overstating it a little, but he took the crane truck quite swiftly and returned it to his son, who may or may not have leveraged it for his sand mining operations.

Silas looked up at the man, perplexed. But he wasn’t as perplexed as me. I was aghast. Anytime parents bring their toddlers’ toys to a playground, they must expect either to share or to ward off a host of interested persons under three feet tall. These interested persons are all learning what it means to share, to learn the latent toxicity of the term “mine.”

I stopped myself from confronting the man, pausing to reflect briefly on my motives and to assess possible positive outcomes. Nothing good seemed likely to come from the conversation that I imagine would have gone something like this:

Ben: “Man, did you really just rip that toy out of my son’s hand?”

Guy: “Man, did you really just let your toddler steal my son’s toy?”

Ben: “He’s two years old, and I’m working on getting him to ask before using other people’s stuff.”

Guy: “He ought to know better.”

Ben: “Maybe your son could try sharing.”

Guy: “It’s his toy!”

Ben: “…”

I couldn’t get past that hypothetical dialogue in my head, so I observed the situation as it stood, allowing my anger to fade into sadness.

It was painful to watch Silas hang his head and wander off to another group of more accepting kids who let him load their little dump trucks with sand. He wasn’t wanted; he was cast out. In the car ride home, he mentioned it: “crane not mine,” he fumbled in his toddler fashion. Of all the events of the day, he remembered that one in particular; he remembered the feeling of having messed up and being very firmly scolded for it-and from a man much older than his own dad. Taller too. And, I’m guessing, wealthier, but who knows, can’t judge by the Patagonia shirt.

Sure, go ahead, hit me with that capitalist jargon from John Locke about the foundations of Western civilization and the right to private property. That’s great. But call me crazy, I want Silas and Maelin to share. Goodness, I want to get better at sharing my own resources. Our playground policy is essentially that Silas must share any toys he takes; and I have to at least hope that other kids-and parents!-to be gracious with the toys Silas wants to use. Only one other time ever have I seen such closed fistedness from another parent [and it was much milder].

If it’s too difficult to share a crane truck, I fancy it’ll be hard to share school snacks too in a couple years, or compare study notes in ten. It’ll be hard to be generous with time and money when he’s 40. It might be hard, even, to be generous with complements.

I’m taking this to the extreme because I have this belief that if we coach our kids well during the early years, the difficult lessons will soak into their little souls.

There’s a biblical Proverb that distills the concept:

Teach a child to choose the right path, and when he is older, he will remain upon it. Proverbs 22:6

I actually put serious faith into this idea. And I do it somewhat selfishly, for I do not want to live in a world where kids never learn to share. Too many of the problems in our country seem to stem from an inability to share. Like, I mean, immigration, health care, jobs, little things like that.

For now, I’m forced to just remind Silas to ask before he borrows toys and still hope for a little grace when he doesn’t. I can hope other parents coach their kids to share even when it might feel like the end of the world, but I can’t make them. And occasionally, I might have to swallow the legion counterarguments raging in my soul and just watch as my son has a truck taken from him by a tall, upper middle class white man who refuses to coach his son to share.

If you read my blog ever, you might have noticed that I rarely “get it right.” Most of the time I find myself writing about blunders I’ve made, failures and mistakes that I learn from. If there was a blunder on my part, it was in failing to coach Silas strongly enough in making sure to ask and say please before using another person’s toy.

But I’m not backing down on the other aspects of today’s events. I will continue to insist that Silas shares toys that he brings to the playground. Because, selfishly, I want Silas and all the other toddlers to grow up having learned to share. I really don’t think parents like the gentleman today need to reinforce their child’s concept of “mine.”

Selfishness comes pretty naturally to most of us, in my experience.

But so can selflessness. It feels good to give away your time without the expectation of something in return, to let go of material resources so someone else might flourish. Imagine a world where this genuinely was the norm, and I imagine it’s a place where you’d like to live.

Me too.

Yesterday began just as the four weeks that have preceded it: Kaile felt heavy, tired, worn and I felt a bit tired but also overly ready to welcome a new life into our family.

I brought Kaile a bowl of cereal after Silas woke up [we haven’t set an alarm clock in over a year]. After she finished, she headed to the bathroom. Soon, I heard a sound I have heard so often over the past month: low groans.

The moaning soon blossomed into early labor. Quite similar to our first birth experience with Silas, over several weeks Kaile’s cervix had slowly dilated and effaced to four, five, then six centimeters. But with Maelin, the process took longer, and Maelin didn’t appear to want to leave the womb. A week prior, we had been at the birth center one evening for a full four hours, only to return home tired and disappointed.

Earlier this week on Tuesday, we had said our goodbyes to my parents who had been in town since September 17th. It hurt to see them leave, especially since we had such a long window of time with them-ten days during which we would have loved to celebrate the birth with their support. We had hoped their trip would be rewarded with the experience of meeting their third grandchild. But their time came to leave, and Silas came back home with us; we both wondered again if the baby would ever come. We now had the responsibility of caring once again for our toddler as the infant inside continued to wait, which didn’t exactly make daily life easier.

Back to the morning groans.

As Kaile continued labor, it became apparent that this was no false labor; this was as real as the moment twenty months prior when Silas was ready to enter the world. I called Mattea, our doula, then Julie, the on-call midwife at San Francisco Birth Center.

Earlier in the morning our friend Taryn had texted Kaile from down the street asking if we needed anything from the market.

Kaile texted to tell her were all set.

Not less than 30 minutes later, I called back asking if she could take Silas-we were having the baby!

The timing was no less than perfect. As it turned out, the window of time Kaile went into labor was in the middle of one of the few breaks Taryn has from her three children every week.

With Mattea, our doula, on the way, I raced downstairs to meet Taryn and explain a few details regarding care for Silas. She gracefully took him with her, and I fiendishly made my way back up to our fifteenth floor abode. Kaile was now retching in pain: contractions were coming too consistently to track. Kaile told me she was feeling the urge to push. I told her to breathe and, well, we breathed [heavily!].

I glanced around the apartment, picturing what it might be like to try to catch a baby there. Would the midwives come to us if the baby couldn’t wait? I called Mattea again to see if she could come *a little sooner*.

Mattea made some minor adjustments to her SUV’s velocity and arrived several minutes later.

Once again, the race was on, but at least now we were together.

The 20 minute ride down Mission Street, over to Franklin, then west on Geary felt more like 20 hours. We circumnavigated some a couple great hills in the city, and this challenged Kaile’s ability to remain centered, but we made it-and just in time. We made our way painstakingly out of the car and up to the third floor.

We had been hoping for a water birth, but since we were unsure of the timing for the baby, we hedged our bets and kept low expectations.

Nevertheless, Julie, the midwife, seemed to read our thoughts. She filled the large bathtub with warm water. Thankfully it had a high volume nozzle. Soon, I was in my bathing suit and Kaile was moving from transition-the final step in labor-into the first stages of delivery. In other words, our stressful moments in the car and our hilly trip to the birth center had contained much more of the labor process than we had imagined. And yet, she was doing perfectly, and her body was tracking right along.

I gave some pressure on her hips during the approximately 12 contractions she experienced at the birth center, and scratched her back in-between.

Before either of us expected it, Julie was preparing us for the inevitable. I subtly asked Mattea if there was a mirror. Since I was behind Kaile, it was impossible to see Maelin from my angle. Later I discovered Kaile wasn’t thrilled about the idea-but she was quick to forgive.

Moments later, I watched as a tiny head appeared. Even through two feet of water I could clearly tell our child had a full head of hair. Julie calmly told Kaile, “Okay, now a couple more big pushes; push your baby out!” That was the first time Julie had said anything about pushing-Kaile’s uterus had been working overtime for over two hours [or, more accurately, 10 months!], and Kaile had trusted her body to carry the process toward completion.

So that’s what she did-she did her first strong push. Joining her cognitive and physical strength with her body’s natural effort, progress became quite apparent. Julie’s coaching and Mattea’s words of encouragement were a soothing balm as Kaile continued her work.

She had been leaning forward on the tub, but Julie suggest she lean back on me for the final moments. She shifted, and as she leaned back, I held her legs out and toward me, allowing space and openness for baby to proceed.

Soon, I could see the whole head-and of course that was the hardest part. Seconds later the shoulders and abdomen followed, and before I realized what had happened, our infant, stubborn as he had been, rushed out into the warm water. Julie carefully lifted Maelin up and placed him on Kaile’s chest. A soft cry followed: he had exited the womb and officially entered our family.   

A slightly awkward moment followed.

Up to this point, Kaile and I still didn’t know if our Maelin was a boy or girl. The only moving piece was the middle name. Had we become parents of a girl, the middle name would have been Junia. As much as I enjoyed taking in the moment, my curiosity was piqued: I had to know!

Carefully, I lifted up our still-purple child, and without as much as a trace of a doubt, I beheld a boy child. Silas now had a younger brother, separated by only 20 months [to the day!].

Kaile and I are both still processing all of the past few weeks [and year as well!], but here is a deep spiritual reality that I’ve gleaned from the experience. In John 16, Jesus explains to his followers that he would be leaving. They’re confused, as they often are, and Jesus unpacks what he means, likening his coming departure from earth to the experience of a woman in labor: 

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.

It’s curious how Jesus uses the gritty events of life to speak to spiritual truths. And yet, though Jesus departed, he unleashed the Holy Spirit to be even closer than he would have ever been. It’s curious too how the Son of God entered human existence not through a magical appearance, but through Mary’s womb. Why the risk on God’s part? I don’t have answer for that, but welcoming Maelin Hosea into our lives reminds me how vulnerable it is to be an infant. It’s certainly curious that God chose to get involved with humankind in the same intimate fashion.

Our hearts had been longing for Maelin to join our family, and indeed he has finally come to us. And as we celebrate his presence in our lives, we are reminded that he is a gift from God, a blessing and a sign of the love God has for all people: big and small, old and young.

There I was, on my cream colored 7-speed bike, pedaling my typical route. Turning a corner, I was cut off-a black Kia came within inches of me. The driver was on his way to the stoplight in some kind of hurry, so that’s where I saw him next.

Once the light turned green, he flew past me yet again, again with far more speed than was necessary, again cutting into my lane without a concern for my safety. Naturally, another red light waited for him ahead.

Finally, there he sat, caught by yet another red light at 9th and Mission. After all his racing and lane changes, I quietly rolled up next to him on my bicycle. And I mustered my courage and knocked on his window. As I did, I noticed the Uber sticker on the windshield. This guy probably lives far away from here and he’s in town to make a hot dollar getting San Franciscans to their lunch appointments, I thought to myself.

Mind you, I have done this before. It wasn’t my first time politely [seriously-I really try to be straightforward with people!] asking someone to slow down, quietly pleading on behalf of families and pedestrians and cyclists for drivers to lay off the gas pedal. The last time I asked was right in front of the building where we live. It was a young guy in a white Ford Mustang. He mumbled something to me, then when the light turned green he was off to the races again.

This time was different.

When I knocked on his window, my ring incidentally made contact. Without meaning it to, my knock likely sounded like a metallic cling from inside the car.

And then it happened.

As I sat on my bike, I could see the man inside angrily put his late model Kia into park. He stormed over to me, cursing. At this point, I was immediately reminded of my work at Pine Rest caring for adolescents from shattered homes. I have been assaulted a number of times before, just never in a situation quite like this.

“Whad’ you do to my f*ckin’ car man? I oughta f*ckin’ kick your @ss,” he bellowed, raging his way toward me. Caught in an awkward physical position yet unsure how to respond I simply stood over my bike. Before I knew it, he was in my face-and he was a lot bigger than me. His punch thankfully turned into a shove and he bowled me over backwards, and I collapsed on my bike. I didn’t expect to need my helmet while standing on my 7-speed, but hey-I’m not complaining.

Gathering myself up from the heap on the ground that I had momentarily become, I formed a response. I was angry, but I did my best to follow through with what I genuinely felt compelled to say. “Listen, I’m sorry man, I think my ring tapped your window. I didn’t mean for that to happen. But you almost hit me three different times. Please, slow down. That’s all I’m asking you. Families live here-kids too. You can go to jail for hitting someone, and I seriously don’t want that for you.”

As I said this, I realized a small group had formed on the sidewalk behind me. No doubt we were a spectacle on an already tense corner, Mission and 9th. A tough looking black guy came over and suggested to the driver, “hey man, you don’t wanna do this, why don’t you just breathe for a second.” A woman in traffic said, “man, you get back in that car and get goin’!”

I couldn’t believe myself. I couldn’t believe the situation. Somehow I was verbally deescalating a potentially disastrous situation. At the same time, I had fostered support from folks who had watched the incident play itself out.

After my impassioned request for him to slow down, he got back in his car. I stayed, letting the gravity of the moment sink in. Moments later, he rolled down his window. “You ok man?” he asked humbly. “You just about hit me three different times, then you knocked me off my bike!” came my response, almost as unexpectedly as my initial, gentler words. “Yeah, and I thought about it and I’m the one in the wrong,” he answered, shockingly apologetic. “Please, man, slow down ok? I’ve got a little toddler son and my wife is pregnant with our second. Just slow down-seriously.” “Alright man, I hear ya.” We shook hands through the open window, looking each other straight in the eyes. And he drove off.

And, walking my bike, I proceeded to announce to the curbside spectators that the show was over.

Go ahead and make your judgment about whether I should tap on car windows-that’s fine. It’s a small thing that I occasionally do to seek after peace and safety in my neighborhood, and it’s not the point of the story.

As a Christian, husband, father, and pastor, I’m now reflecting on my own actions and the bigger picture. Clearly this guy overreacted after I made the mistake of letting my ring tap his window. And I stand behind what I said to him yesterday.

I don’t often use stories from my own life as examples of doing the right thing. Usually I’m the butt of the joke and the one learning the lesson. Read any of my blog posts or listen to any of my sermons and you’ll notice this to be the case. But this time, I really felt like I did the right thing. No, not the ring-against-the-window part. That was my bad-and I faced the consequences.

What I did right was answering gently. The ancient words of Proverbs 15:1 are right: a gentle answer does indeed turn away wrath. Had I spoken harsh words, I would have surely stirred up more anger within a harried motorist.

But the more I reflect on the experience, the more I realize my response didn’t really come from me. Not the me who has got into fights and bullied other kids in junior high. Not the me who was suspended from school numerous times before coming to a saving faith in Jesus when I was 13. Not the me who is still repenting of his judgmental attitude toward certain drivers.

No. I’m not some vigilant, neighbor-conscious hero cyclist. But my unexpected response is reminding me that Jesus really has changed my life. In 2 Corinthians 13:5 Paul asks a question: “…do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you…?”

Yeah, he is, and making a massive difference. He’s taking me on a journey toward my true self, toward the person I could be.

And he’s helping me to see that-and give him credit for it too.