Teaching tenderness on the brink of war

I wish you the courage to be soft.

I must confess, I’ve never been in a fight. Growing up, the other kids led me to believe that it was inevitable – one day, I’d have to scrap, throw down, knock someone out or get knocked out myself.

At school, the scene played out regularly during passing period: the stampede of students zigzagging across the courtyard is suddenly interrupted by two breaking out in a shoving match. Someone gets smacked. Both are stunned for a split second before they transform their arms into colliding windmills. They tear at each other’s Old Navy Performance Fleeces while their backpacks flail violently from their shoulders against the weight of the textbooks inside. A bunch of the other kids immediately circle around and shout “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as if they’ve been practicing to be extras on Saved By the BeIl.

I was never one of the kids that circled. Instead, I’d slow down my pace just enough to lock my eyes on the action while the rest of my body made sure I wasn’t late for algebra. I’d spend classtime pretending that I was absorbing the Fibonacci sequence, while my mind was spiraling over what would happen if I ended up in the equation I had just witnessed. I imagined clocking someone in the jaw, getting jabbed in the ribs, kicking my Airwalks against a pair of baggy jeans hoping to locate a shin to bruise. Will I hit hard? CAN I hit hard?? Will it be painful??? Will I bleed???? Will they escalate and get their older cousins to jump me after school????? Will they find out where I live and go after my little brother???????? Will my whole family die???????????????? I’d daydream about Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day” playing at my funeral, and then the bell would ring.

Avoiding conflict meant getting used to being called soft. By high school, whenever I confessed to never having fought, other guys would say, “Whaaaaat?” and shake their heads as if I had just told them I wasn’t potty trained yet. Even the girls talked about fights like they were impending; some wore only clip-on earrings and grew their nails long just to stay ready. Decades later, I still wonder if I’ve managed to evade physical confrontation because I chose peace or fear.

While your mom was pregnant with you, one of the words our doula incorporated into our vocabulary was “tender.” It was a decent catch-all for the emotions that arose in a household of changing circumstances, relationship dynamics, and hormones. Both of us consider ourselves pretty open to our emotions. But somehow, expressing them with words like “angry,” “scared,” and “sad” felt more clunky and difficult than opting for a term I had previously only used to describe a braised meat.

“Tender” lingered into the postpartum period, and more recently, we’ve deposited it into your word bank too. “Are you feeling tender?” we’ll ask, when you’re engulfed in tears and snot, but not quite sure why. “Uh huhhhhhhh…” you’ll respond, and bury your scrunched face into one of our shoulders.

Your yeh-yeh was never the type of dad to tell me not to cry. Instead, he would regularly tell me it’s okay to, while hardly ever doing so himself (probably because his dad told him not to). To be told by someone who doesn’t cry that it’s okay to cry, is like someone ordering dessert, and then saying, “I’m good, but you go ahead.”

Even in this age of upended gender norms, crying among men is still discussed as something that should be “normalized,” which by definition indicates that if you’re a man who does it, you’re not normal. “Men cry too,” a typical man might say in his most courageous Linkedin post, evoking the image of a guy wearing a waxed beard and a flannel shirt keeling on one knee, with a single trail of tears streaming down each eye, which he wipes with an American flag.

I, on the other hand, still cry like I just got lost at Ross. Your mom will sometimes have to lead me by the hand to lay down like I’m an old lady who’s been in the sun for too long. I’ve cried in front of you quite a few times already, bawling in my palms while you stare blankly from your train set. “Are you sad?” “Daddy’s feeling tender,” your mom will say, patting my limp hand. I’ll think about the kids in school who called me soft, and picture them as sages.

I’ve been writing this on a Saturday afternoon at a pub in Silver Lake. Your mom just texted me, “Hey, US just bombed Iran.” Another fight breaks out. Another circle forms, chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” I’m not a kid anymore, but now I’m raising one. I’m spiraling again. Will it be painful?

The Zen priest angel Kyodo williams says that facing today’s tumultuous world requires “a willingness to be flexible, open, soft-bellied” to the complexity of humans, including those who do us harm. In the face of all those who abuse power with brute force, she argues that cultivating extreme empathy and tenderness is the true show of strength. I have never seen myself as an alpha-male, jock-type dude, but I still struggle to align this lesson with my understanding of who I’m supposed to be. To be tough, unwavering, and indignant are not qualities I’ve held to my notion of manhood, but it’s certainly how I’ve been trained to be an activist. We are supposed to fuck the system fiercely, not softly. We fight war and oppression in hopes for peace – but ultimately, we are still fighting.

How do I teach you empathy in a time when the center of power seems like a moshing sausage-fest? World leaders boast about their readiness to push buttons and grab pussies. We have lowered the bar from world peace to limited ceasefire. Elon Musk shows up at the Oval Office with a black eye, and explains that he told his own son to hit him as hard as he can. When I read about that, I glanced over at you stacking your Duplos, and tried to imagine telling you to do that to me. What lesson would you derive by standing in front of the man who raised you, who taught you how to make banana pancakes and read you In the Night Kitchen for bedtime…and striking him in the face as hard as you can? Brute force. These men…they long to be kings, but all they know is how to dethrone.

I’ve read the thinkpieces and listened to the podcasts about how boys today are in crisis. I sometimes recall the conversation where I first learned the term “toxic masculinity” – with a woman who, when I asked what aspects of masculinity are toxic, responded, “all of it.” I witness the manosphere burrow into the adolescent male collective consciousness, and try to remind myself that these things ebb and flow. I watch culture play out like a game of double-dutch, and pray you don’t get entangled when you jump in.

I love the sense of care you have cultivated for the world. I love that your favorite way to play with your action figures is to dress them in band-aids. I love that, whenever a fire truck drives passes with its wailing sirens, you react by saying, “I hope everybody’s okay…” I want to preserve your gentle nature while preparing you for a harsh world. I want you to discover a strength deeper than a show of force. I wish you the courage to be soft, and to not let hard times harden you.

I’ve been thinking about a clip I saw the other day, of a man in Tehran playing a violin while the buildings in his city were being bombed around him. I think about his decision to take to the streets by picking up his instrument and serenading his neighborhood. I think about all the people who were seeking a show of strength, and found it that night in his tenderness.