Column 4 – Or one man’s version of Eat, Pray, Love.
Originally published by reimagine.me
Photography: Brian Lowe

IN THIS ONGOING TALE of a late and awkward arrival at fatherhood, I most recently discussed my near-death experience at the hands of a cancer scare, a sadomasochistic urologist’s assistant and the losses of my wife, house, job, and dog in rapid succession.

While the near-death I referred to was mostly metaphorical, when that much loss happens at once, it does things to you. One of those things is to make you feel like you can’t trust the ground you’re walking on. Every step seems like its happening in one of those fight scenes from the old Adam West Batman series—it’s all sideways and loopy. Meanwhile, the goblins and gremlins of your past and present are busy conducting a symphony of paranoia, anxiety and fear in the concert hall of your mind.

The noise just won’t stop. When you should be sleeping, you’re fighting long lost battles, or having imaginary conversations in which you’re finally heard and everything goes back to the way it used to be. But, somewhere inside, you understand that is just not going happen.

So what do you do?

For me, sleeping pills and antidepressants were temporary fixes that proved crucial to helping weather the storm and right my ship so I could one day woo the wonderful woman who became the mother of our beautiful baby girl. But they were a strategy, not a plan.

The plan (and this probably seems obvious from the outside, but it was really hard to accept in the middle of the mess) required mining the opportunity amidst the rubble. Or, now that I was stripped bare, maybe I could see who I really was and what I really wanted.

I thought I knew. After all, the evidence of a man-in-full was in place—beautiful wife, lovely house, great job. But, maybe I was a guy who had put more effort into building an idea of himself rather than knowing who he actually was? Maybe while I toiled away at maintaining my man-in-fullness, I wasn’t fully living. I sometimes think back at all the things I said no to—job opportunities, travel, adventures, living in other cities—and I shudder.

When the outward manifestations of my identity finally disappeared, I was left feeling like an impostor suddenly stripped of his disguise. Who was I now that I had no evidence to point to?

In order to figure that out, I had to turn to something I trusted. With my emotions running wild and my mental health in a fragile state, I was left with my body. Though I started abusing alcohol and drugs at age 13 (I’ve been sober for 17 years now), I was still a good enough athlete to get recruited for and play division one college soccer. In my late 20s, I put down the booze, bongs and cigarettes long enough to run the New York City Marathon and finish in the top third. In my 30s, I took up snowboarding and surfing. When all else failed, I could usually rely on the lift that comes with being physical to bring some relief.

After her divorce, best-selling author/soul-searcher Elizabeth Gilbert famously ate, prayed and loved. When things went south for me, I surfed, boxed and played ball.

It’s hard to talk about surfing without sounding like Jeff Spicoli or some new-age airhead, but paddling out into the ocean on a surfboard—suspended, floating, small and surrounded by immensity—might be as close to space walking as you can get. When you catch a wave, you are literally riding the pulse of the universe. Your troubled ego can’t survive that moment because in it you don’t exist as anything outside of everything else. Riding a wave, you are, in fact, the world.

As for boxing, my trainer, Joseph Del Real, ran a fairly serious practice in Pasadena and had an amazing knack for figuring out what you were really looking for as soon as you descended the stairs into his gym. I wanted to feel competent and powerful, but in a different way than before—one that was not burnished by outside things such as who I was with, where I lived, or what I did for a living. I wanted to feel it from the inside.

Del Real knew this without asking. In our training sessions, he wouldn’t let me off the hook until we found something in me that was both surprising and inspiring. At times during training, when the combinations got more and more complex and the punches found a previously unknown power and everything became so fast and fluid that it turned into slow motion, I felt connected with something primal and fierce, something instinctive and joyous.

Years later, when I helped my wife wrestle through 14-straight hours of back labor, I realized that my foray into martial arts had only tapped the smallest vein of that primal force, but I believe having done so made me a better partner to her during her labor and our baby’s birth.

Baseball, on the other hand, put me back in touch with my most unfettered self, the boy who played on sandlots, fields and playgrounds. The places where our imaginations had plenty of room and we were all allowed to be superheroes every day.

Funny thing was, I never played organized baseball as a kid. I was fine playing pick up on the playground, but Little League had its own language, codes and nuances. It was too complex and I was too impatient to grasp it. Or else too scared it would make a fool of me. As an adult, though, I came to appreciate those nuances and complexities, especially as explained to me through the poetry of Los Angeles Dodgers’ play-by-play man, Vin Scully.

So, when a bunch of friends who played in an adult, fast-pitch, hardball league asked me to join them at practice one day, I jumped on it. When I hit a monster shot over the fence during batting practice, they asked me if I wanted to join their team for the season. I was still terrified the game would make a fool of me, but I accepted.

Of course, baseball did make a fool of me. It makes a fool of everyone, even its best players. But between episodes of terror and humiliation, there were times when I knocked the cover off the ball, stole bases, threw people out and made running catches, surprised as anyone the ball ended up in my glove.

Most importantly, I played. I surfed, I boxed, I played ball. And with these things, I started to find the man I wanted to be. Someone who said yes. Especially, to love and— dare I admit it?— the possibilities of family.