I’m typing this out in the dark with Shelby asleep next to me, upside down and as per usual, no part of her is actually on top of any of her many pillows. She’s had a long week. In the daytime we’ve had summer camp, complete with pool days and carnival day. Then it was quick dinners before being whisked off to Vacation Bible School at church in the evenings (yesterday, she told me that Jesus takes care of the bird and flowers and us too). Today, Saturday, she’s pooped from a homemade treasure hunt, a swim class and movie night—all in all, a cozy family summer day. 

The baby is in the other room with Stephy. Soren is cool as a cucumber and has thighs like Giants-era Saquon Barkley. He’s sociable. He’s a good napper. He’s got these cheeks that you just want to bury your nose in forever and ever. He’s chunky as all get out and his poops are legendary. I am a proud dad and a few minutes away from my sixth Father’s Day and my first as a father of two.

Some of these Father’s Day weekends have felt similar and some of them have felt different. This one feels like one of the different ones.

Somewhere between diaper changes and watching the chunkster grow out of all his baby clothes in record time, I’ve sensed something new. There’s something about being a father to a son that feels different. There’s a different kind of weight to it (and I’m not just talking about his thighs). With Shelby, I feel like I have a straightforward role: come home often and early, shower her with more kisses than she wants and sneak her out for donuts and frozen yogurt—treat her with the love, patience and respect that will set the tone for what she should come to expect from the people around her for the rest of her life (you know, easy stuff). 

With Soren, I’ve felt a different kind of weight of responsibility. Not heavier, but different. With him, there’s this need to leave footprints that are worth following. There’s a feeling that it’s not just important who I am when I’m home—it’s important who I am when I’m out in the world being the one whose name he bears. I can’t shake the feeling that I will owe him an explanation of who I am in these weird times. Am I being someone he can be proud of when we look back at this moment in history?

This weekend I’ve been distracted. There are some questions about vocation that keep rattling in my brain. I’ve been struggling at work and so naturally, I’m overthinking and monologuing to myself too much. While this is not uncommon for me, it’s usually a good sign that I need a reset. I’m mostly trying to take my mind off things by binge-watching The Newsroom, ripping booster packs of Final Fantasy: Magic the Gathering and playing with AI tools to make the retro-futuristic graphic novel set in space. I don’t know that these diversions are helping much (although my monologues have gotten snappier from absorbing Sorkin). I’m also pretty sure that sentence alone could get me a script for adderall at Walgreens. 

The thing is, I’m off-kilter. I’m tilted. As the kids might say, I’m crashing out. It feels like I’ve accumulated so much disappointment in leaders and systems over the past few years that it’s like my nerve endings are raw and I’ve become a cagey, bitter curmudgeon. Sometimes I think I can’t nd my church, but is that just a lifetime of disappointment in the Asian-American church snowballing to a head? Am I mad at these folks or am I mad because I think that if it weren’t for some people who look and sound like them, I’d still be a pastor right now? Am I mad at Biola because students are actually languishing unnoticed or am I using it as an analogue for my country that has been hi-jacked by out-of-touch octogenarians that have walked through the door of opportunity and shut it behind them? I’ve got so much anger and frustration built up inside me about so many things.

I was talking to Stephy in the car about some of these thoughts, and in her usual wisdom she asked me, “Did you pray?”

And so, I tried praying. 

Prayer for me sometimes looks like weird conversations where I’m speaking Chinese for some reason (a long time ago, when Stephy asked me why I default to Chinese with her and Shelby despite being terrible at it, I told her that it’s the language I speak to my family). Sometimes prayer is disjointed and distracted and I jump to conclusions on what God’s response is and take off before He can finish his sentence. This time, I felt like I was spamming Him with a torrent of images and feelings, like a montage from Nolan or Aronofsky. That’s when it became clear to me—I think more than anything, I’m mad at God. I’m mad that He’s allowed all these things to happen— the big ones and little ones. I’m mad because I don’t see much hope on the horizon and things are moving rapidly downwards in a chaotic spiral as our society devolves into the sad, entropic flushing of a toilet (you see what I mean about Sorkin?). I’m so mad at Him that most of my bible readings lately have begun with a Bible Gateway search for the phrase “how long?”

But after some prayer (read: flood of profanity-laced rhetorical questions), other things emerged too. Somewhere in there, God incepted me with a deep sense of gratitude. Despite my anger and disappointment, I have to admit that my life rules. It absolutely rules

Soren is healthy and sweet and will out-squat the rest of our whole family once he figures out how to walk. He spends the daytime with the same caring nanny that took sweet care of Shelby when she was his age. Someone we trust. He’s in love with his sister and cackles with joy every time she turns her gaze on him. He’s just a perfect little dude.

This morning, when Shelby was running around collecting clues for her homemade treasure hunt, she did it by reading clues by herself. It’s just three letter words for now, but she’s doing my favorite thing there is to do—reading. This afternoon in the pool, she stuck her arms out to the pool noodle and kicked her way to her instructor and back. She had this grin on her face when she was doing it, and now it feels like her smile took up so much space in my brain, that there was less space for the anger. The church I’m sometimes mad at taught her about Jesus, and she’s doing cute dance moves to “Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,” one of the few Christian songs I genuinely like (I may or may not occasionally accidently cry when I listen to the old Crowder version). She’s wearing a tiny Biola T-shirt that has become a part of her pajama rotation, a reminder of a place that for all intents and purposes has done right by me and my family.

Stephy is a smokeshow—pretty as the day we met and just as leggy. She’s an anchor for the rudderless dinghy of my windswept brain and the truest home I’ve ever known. She’s endured three moves and just as many career changes. She’s taken more than she should onto her shoulders because I’ve chosen to do things I love doing. She should be able to hang out all day with the chunkster, snacking on cream puffs and drinking 凍檸茶, but she married a broke minister, so she’s slinging spreadsheets and footnotes. She’s just the best mom, I can’t even explain. I don’t deserve her and everybody else better shut up so she doesn’t find out.

It feels like God is reminding me that I can settle down a little bit because I’ve got it good. This Father’s Day, I don’t think He’s reminding me of what I’m fighting for. I think He knows I’m in the fight. I’m fighting for a kinder and more equitable world for my kids. I’m fighting for a more decent and hopeful world with real victories that earn that hope. I’m fighting for a world where Shelby and Soren can enjoy and take for granted the things I never had. This year, I think He’s reminding me that if He can take care of me, a manic depressive, loose cannon and make me someone he’s trusted with two perfect kiddos—He can take care of the rest of things too. I just have to keep proving Him o’er and o’er.

I don’t keep very many routines. I don’t think this is a surprise to anyone who knows me, but there aren’t too many things that I do on a regular basis with any consistency. Chalk it up to my wanderlust, my boredom or an undiagnosed learning disability, but I struggle to maintain any semblance of a habit. This comes with its drawbacks—unfinished projects, unused memberships, dozens of skills half-learned. Nevertheless, I can’t complain. In fact, all indicators point to this being by my own design.

Lately, the closest thing I have to a recurring ritual is Saturday morning.

A good Saturday morning starts with waking up at the crack of dawn (often before) and skulking around as quietly as I can through the house. The girls are still sleeping and I don’t want to incur the wrath that comes with waking them. I make a cup of coffee and load up a big bottle with cold water. Then, I make the drive to the weekly pick-up basketball game. Our spot is at a nearby middle school, in the shelter of an outdoor covered court. I brush up on post-up turnaround fadeaways and 90’s era hand-checking. Somewhere in between, from the other guys, I get to glean tiny vignettes of adulthood, life in christian community and being a sports dad. The struggle of waking up stupid-early evaporates as the sun literally comes out and chases the early morning haze away. Then, we’re just hooping.

If I indulge in too much basketball (if I lost too many games, I’m usually chasing a win), it means I need to speed back home. This week, a fog descended down around the neighborhood surrounding South Lake and the rows of cookie cutter suburban houses were unusually cloaked in mystery and wonder. I didn’t have time to admire it all, because I was racing back to start the main event of the day.

When I walk through the house upon my return, the silence I left it in is broken. Usually, it‘s the sound of Shelby watching her iPad, eating breakfast and dressed in her uniform for the day, a frilly pastel pink tutu. Saturday is Princess Ballet day, and it’s time to get going.

We load back up in the car and head towards the community center for Princess Ballet class. Usually, we try to pull up to the community center’s dance studio a couple of minutes early. That way, Shelby can get settled before the hustle and bustle of class. In those quiet moments, I can help her switch from her usual sneakers to her little ballet flats and start talking her up on what to expect for the class. It’s quiet inside, usually with just a staffer sitting behind the desk, playing lofi through the tinny PA speaker system. Eventually, as time approaches, the dancers start to pile in.

About a dozen little girls, aged three to six, clad in similar pink and black tutus, begin to prance their way into the waiting area outside of the dance studio. The class gets underway pretty quickly after that. They do little stretches, practiced moves and silly games with lava-laden floors. The girls seem to have fun, and maybe somewhere in the middle of all of that, they learn a little bit of ballet.

Shelby… she’s getting there. It’s been a bit of a process. She’s always been a little bit slower to warm up to new people and situations and ballet is no exception. I remember her first class, she couldn’t go into the studio alone without crying. We’ve since made headway. First, if she were in the studio without us, she’d cry. Then she would go in but sit at the edge of the room on the floor. Then she would sit next to the instructor, but refuse to participate. If they stood, she sat. If they sat, she lied down. We’re trying to approach it by being patient—allowing her to progress slowly and not pressuring her so much that she hates it. This week, she was reluctant to go along when it was dancing time. Then, she ran to sit in the front row once a book was brought out for story time. I count that as a win, and how could I be mad that she loves books. In the end, anytime I see her having a good time, I’m so proud and happy, I could explode.

Afterwards, we head outside to the playground, where for the next fifteen minutes or so, the swings, slides and sandpit are littered with little girls in tutus. Any sense of inhibition Shelby might have had during the class washes away and she runs full tilt towards the swings. There, she’ll do the usual swinging, then drape over it on her stomach and spin. Next, it’s always the seesaw and then the rock climbing installation. Each week, I can feel her getting a little braver and a little bolder. She’ll swing a little higher on the swings. Climb a little faster on the rock formation.

Eventually, we pry her from the playground and head to our routine breakfast spot. A hawaiian joint nearby with a good breakfast deal. We sit in a booth by the door, and I order at the counter. I battle with myself, because it hurts me to order the same thing, but in the end, I stick to the script because I can’t help but try to optimize the order for what everyone likes. Still, despite ordering the same thing every week, the woman at the counter asks me the routine questions like she’s never seen me before. Two egg breakfast, what protein? Corned beef hash and spam. How do you want your eggs? Scrambled. What side? Fried rice.

Whether it’s the three of us, or just me and the baby, we all share it. I enjoy a slow cup of coffee as I wait for them to finish and eat their leftovers. And I don’t think it’s just the coffee because for those quiet moments, I can’t help but be stupidly happy. I never thought I’d be able to derive this much joy from a simple weekly ritual. Honestly, I never knew if I’d keep one, let alone enjoy one. Now, every week, the same places, the same times, the same scrambled eggs and I’m smiling ear to ear looking over her shoulder at the Mandarin version of Bluey.

I mean, I still feel the itch. Do we want to do something different this week? Do we want to pack it all up and hit the road? But, the road doesn’t call to me the same way. I mean, I turned 35 recently— the age my dad was when I was born. I’ve always been the person who loves change for change’s sake, who has a deep compulsion to do things differently, who is helpless against his own chaotic nature, but for the first time in my life, I desperately want things to slow down. To stay the same for as long as they can.

Because the truth is that our little rhythm is fleeting. Princess Ballet will wrap on the semester soon and the days of sitting with her in an empty community center, putting her shoes on will be behind us. She’ll age out of this class and be off to the next one and outgrow that too.

Every day she’s getting a little more independent, a little more prepared for a life where she’s not holding my hand crossing the street or jumping on me for a piggy back ride from her room to the couch in the morning. The reality is that we are hurtling down this track and everything is changing, never to be the same again. 

Soon, I will have be having new experiences with the kiddo, and finding new ways to be a part of her life, and new things to be shamelessly proud of her about. But right now, we have our little rhythms. We have little respites, little gifts, for just a moment, insulated from the unyielding current of time. Soon—too soon— the change I always seek will be here. But right now, I’m glad I’m stuck in a routine. I’m glad we get to pause in a season of pink tutus, spam breakfast, Princess Ballet and the Saturday morning routine.

This weekend, dozens of protests sprang up all throughout Orange County. This morning, I went to one held in Irvine, the textbook definition of the suburbia. It was a peaceful march that led to a demonstration at Irvine Civic Center where the Irvine Police Department is headquartered. I have five quick reflections from my time, and then I’d like to expound on what I spent the rest of the day thinking about.

1. He shouldn’t have been, but my favorite person at the rally was a South Asian dad. He was there with his daughters. They must have been in their early teens and they had these beautiful, ornate signs and portraits while he had half a piece of oak tag on which he hastily wrote a slogan. He would run ahead of them, so he could take pictures of them in the crowd and he kept his distance so as not to embarrass them. But you knew he kept his eyes on them the whole time. This was very moving to me and he was not the only one proud of his kids today.

2. Towards the end of the rally at the Civic Center, many people shared from a central bullhorn and spoke passionately from their personal experiences. I was struck by how many mentioned being kicked out of their homes and ostracized from their families due to differences in opinions. Families are being torn apart, and when you see the depth of the passion of the people who are involved, you can understand why. It’s just heartbreaking to see, and I want to believe that there’s a better way to deepen understanding and find common ground.

3. There was a moment before the march as the crowd was still gathering. I was sipping on my watery coffee and looking around when I thought I saw one of our church kids. Now, there were a lot of young people at the demonstration, but there was one who looked like a specific church kid. A certain small one, who wears her hair shoulder length and carries a Fjallraven backpack. From far away, a dead ringer. And a thought hit me with a great deal of emotion. I thought about how sorry I am that we’re asking our children to fight the battles we should have already won. I didn’t know what to do with that feeling. I sipped on my coffee.

I have lots of thoughts about the demonstration. But those were some that resonated on a very emotional wavelength with me.

***

Now, despite what people may think, I try to make it a point not to persuade people to my point of view. I like to think that my goal is to educate on both sides. If you can’t find the humanity in someone’s argument, you can’t build consensus. Without consensus, there’s no sustainable progress.

I’m sure that it’s apparent by now that I agree with many of the things that the Black Lives Matter movement. Namely, I believe that black lives matter. I believe that bad policing needs to be held to account. I believe that steps need to be taken to undo systemic bias and injustice. I believe that policy and reform have the power to reshape the relationship that the general public has with law enforcement for the better of our entire society. I believe lots more stuff.

As I marched alongside different people, It was clear that people’s convictions are as diverse as the stories that they carry with them. Our thoughts and feelings are nuanced and while hashtags have their purpose, they could hardly capture a full story. Today, I wanted to expand on a little more of mine.

Like the rest of the country, I am appalled at the actions of many law enforcement personnel. Still, I love the police in principle. These are some reasons why.

1. When there is danger, they run towards it.
I grew up in New York City, and I’m old enough to remember what the smoke looked like on 9/11. You could see it rising all the way up from where I lived in Queens. Police are not predominantly bullies and villains, they are the type of people who can see a building on fire and run towards it. There is a special kind of bravery that compels these brave women and men to see innocent people, danger and say “I’m going to stand between.”

2. It’s An Impossible Job
A while back, I listened to a TedTalk about the impossible task that soldiers have overseas. On one day, they give out aid and build rapport with local citizens. On the next day, they have to stop heinous criminals with lethal force. We praise the police when we see them breakdancing with kids or shooting hoops, but the fact of the matter is that in the next moment their job could involve taking down a violent criminal. Everyone they meet during the day is experiencing the worst day of their lives. It takes a saintly level of composure to do that with fresh patience and poise every day.

3. They Get Spat On By The People They Protect
There are police on the front line who are just as outraged as the protestors. Yet, they put on the uniform, stand on the line and endure abuse by the people they’ve come to protect. Believe me, I’ve seen every video of when a cop snaps, but there are unheralded heroes who bear the weight of guilt for their colleague’s sins despite deserving none of abuse themselves. I think next to cops, maybe lawyers and IRS agents are the most hated occupation, but they don’t have an awesome NWA song for people to blare in your face.

***

I’m still thinking through some things. Here are some of those things.

Unanswerable Questions

Chokeholds & Strangleholds
When I first read this, it was very clear. Don’t choke people to death. Easy. But there’s some nuance here. First, there’s a difference between a chokehold and a stranglehold. A chokehold is meant to restrict air by compressing the windpipe. When this is applied, people stop breathing and die. A stranglehold, while sounding more horrific, is the equivalent of rear naked choke, a move that applies pressure to the blood vessels in the neck and renders someone unconscious. It sounds scary, but if you’ve done Jiu Jitsu, it’s something you’re very familiar with. Rendering someone unconscious, can be incredibly valuable, especially when doing with someone who is dangerous and/or someone whose drug use or mental capacities make them incapable of logical/rational thought. A stranglehold can be a very safe and effective tool, but the margin very error is slim. If I’m to err here, it’ll be on the side of

My concern here is not necessarily for the particulars of this method, but for the idea of limiting which tools are available to law enforcement. I’ve had to teach in a number of different contexts for different things, including a New York City public school. In all of these situations, I did not have the power to change a student’s grade levy and kind of penalization for disruptive behavior (I wasn’t looking to choke them out, I promise). And while you don’t need tools of control/enforcement in most situations, when the situation does arrive, it sucks not to have them. I’m not saying that I think it’s happening here, but it can be a slippery slope if people outside of the field begin to legislate HOW people can do their jobs. There’s a need for external oversight, yes, but micromanagement would be counterproductive.

A Division of Responsibility
An interesting proposal I’ve read/heard about includes a separation of responsibilities. It’s an idea based on data that shows the majority of police calls don’t involve violence. It may sound counter intuitive, but what if we increased the size and scope of, lets say, SWAT teams to include violent crimes that typically local police respond to. If that’s the case, then could we limit the scope of your average police officer to your run-of-the-mill police response. This would be non-violent crimes, traffic stops, etc. It could eliminate the need to switch back and forth between kill-or-be-killed, and you have a broken tail-light. It could also very well eliminate the need for these officers to carry lethal weaponry and make it more clear that their responsibilities don’t include the use of lethal force.

The reason this is in the unanswerable question category is that police who are set on killing people will continue to do so and have done so in the most mundane of interventions. There’s another problem if we remove guns from the typical police officer. In America, it’d likely that the person they pull over or confront in a theoretically non-violent situation might very well be armed. We’d be asking police to be sheep in a world of wolves. To be honest, I don’t know if I rule that out, but that isn’t a decision to be made flippantly.

Accountability / Qualified Immunity
Of course police brutality should be held to account. Of course heinous acts should be met with criminal punishment to the full extent of the law. But, the police are trusted to go into the most dangerous situations in our society. They have to make impossible decisions and they have split seconds to do it. How many of us would handle a dangerous situation well. How many of us would get 100% right if we had multiple a day. What about multiple per day over the course of a career.  How do we legislate this well?

I feel that there needs to be some grace when it comes to the responsibilities of a police officer, just as you would have for soldiers. Not because the police are militant, but because their job requires discretion at the most consequential of levels. If we punish every good cop who makes a mistake like a villain with a pattern of abuse, I think we do those cops and ourselves a disservice. Qualified immunity in theory isn’t supposed to protect every officer in every situation, no matter how heinous, but it’s been used that way. This is a systemic problem with implementation that needs to be addressed, but qualified immunity on face value isn’t necessarily a bad practice.

Closing Thoughts
I suspect that there will be many aspects of this post or others that upsets the people reading it. Some progressives will be appalled that I more or less posted something akin to Blue Lives Matter. Some conservatives will be shocked that I marched in support of Black Lives Matter. My better friends will know that I’m a complicated sort of a person, that I try to give careful thought to things, that I really do try to listen, not just to the words someone speaks, but the human behind the words. My friends will know that the cognitive dissonance I’m holding in my brain could fill the Grand Canyon. They’ll know that I’m trying my best out here. It might not be good enough, but it’s all I got.