Tenderness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Inside a week neither Woodell nor I could remember how we’d ever gotten along without her. It wasn’t just the quality of Miss Parks’s work that we found so valuable. It was the blithe spirit in which she did it. From Day One, she was all in. She grasped what we were trying to do, what we were trying to build here. She felt that Blue Ribbon was unique, that it might become something special, and she wanted to do what she could to help. Which proved to be a lot. She had a remarkable way with people, especially the sales reps we were continuing to hire. Whenever they came into the office, Miss Parks would size them up, fast, and either charm them or put them in their place, depending on what was called for. Though shy, she could be wry, funny, and the sales reps—that is, the ones she liked—often left laughing, looking back over their shoulders, wondering what just hit them. The impact of Miss Parks was most apparent in Woodell. He was going through a bad time just then. His body was fighting the wheelchair, resisting its life imprisonment. He was plagued by bedsores and other maladies related to sitting motionless, and often he’d be out sick for weeks at a time. But when he was in the office, when he was sitting alongside Miss Parks, she brought the color back to his cheeks. She had a healing effect on him, and seeing this had a bewitching effect on me. Most days I surprised myself, offering eagerly to run across the street to get lunch for Miss Parks and Woodell. This was the kind of thing we might have asked Miss Parks to do, but day after day I volunteered. Was it chivalry? Devilry? What was happening to me? I didn’t recognize myself. And yet some things never change. My head was so full of debits and credits, and shoes, shoes, shoes, that I rarely got the lunch orders right. Miss Parks never complained. Nor did Woodell. Invariably I’d hand each of them a brown paper bag and they’d exchange a knowing glance. “Can’t wait to see what I’m eating for lunch today,” Woodell would mutter. Miss Parks would put a hand over her mouth, concealing a smile. Miss Parks saw my bewitchment, I think. There were several long looks between us, several meaningfully awkward pauses. I recall one burst of particularly nervous laughter, one portentous silence. I remember one long moment of eye contact that kept me awake that night. Then it happened. On a cold afternoon in late November, when Miss Parks wasn’t in the office, I was walking toward the back of the office and noticed her desk drawer open. I stopped to close it and inside I saw... a stack of checks? All her paychecks—uncashed. This wasn’t a job to her. This was something else. And so perhaps... was I? Maybe? Maybe.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  So Penny always wanted to cook something special when Woodell came over, and the most special thing she could think of was Cornish game hen, plus a dessert made from brandy and iced milk—she got the recipe from a magazine—which left us all blotto. Though hens and brandy put a serious dent in her twenty-five-dollar grocery budget, Penny simply couldn’t economize when it came to Woodell. If I told her that Woodell was coming to dinner, she’d reflexively gush: “I’ll get some capons and brandy!” It was more than wanting to be hospitable. She was fattening him up. She was nurturing him. Woodell, I think, spoke to her newly activated maternal streak. I struggle to remember. I close my eyes and think back, but so many precious moments from those nights are gone forever. Numberless conversations, breathless laughing fits. Declarations, revelations, confidences. They’ve all fallen into the sofa cushions of time. I remember only that we always sat up half the night, cataloging the past, mapping out the future. I remember that we took turns describing what our little company was, and what it might be, and what it must never be. How I wish, on just one of those nights, I’d had a tape recorder. Or kept a journal, as I did on my trip around the world. Still, at least I can always call to mind the image of Woodell, seated at the head of our dinette, carefully dressed in his blue jeans, his trademark V-neck sweater over a white T. And always, on his feet, a pair of Tigers, the rubber soles pristine. By then he’d grown a long beard, and a bushy mustache, both of which I envied. Heck, it was the sixties, I’d have had a beard down to my chin. But I was constantly needing to go to the bank and ask for money. I couldn’t look like a bum when I presented myself to Wallace. A clean shave was one of my few concessions to The Man. WOODELL AND I eventually found a promising office, in Tigard, south of downtown Portland. It wasn’t a whole office building—we couldn’t afford that—but a corner of one floor. The rest was occupied by the Horace Mann Insurance Company. Inviting, almost plush, it was a dramatic step up, and yet I hesitated. There had been a curious logic in our being next door to a honky-tonk. But an insurance company? With carpeted halls and water coolers and men in tailored suits? The atmosphere was so button-down, so corporate. Our surroundings, I felt, had much to do with our spirit, and our spirit was a big part of our success, and I worried how our spirit might change if we were suddenly sharing space with a bunch of Organization Men and automatons. I took to my recliner, gave it some thought, and decided a corporate vibe might be asymmetrical, contrary to our core beliefs, but it might also be just the thing with our bank.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  Thus absorbed, and concentered in this unutterable delight, I had not attended to the sweet author of it being thoroughly wet, and in danger of catching cold; when, in good time, the landlady, whom the appearance of my equipage (which, bye the bye Charles knew nothing of) had gained me an interest in, for me and mine interrupted us by bringing in a decent shift of linen and clothes; which now, somewhat recovered into a calmer composure by the coming in of a third person, I pressed him to take the benefit of, with a tender concern and anxiety that made me tremble for his health. The landlady leaving us again, he proceeded to shift; in the act of which, though he proceeded with all that modesty which became these first solemner instants of our re-meeting, after so long an absence, I could not refrain certain snatches of my eyes, lured by the dazzling discoveries of his naked skin, that escaped him as he changed his linen, and which I could not observe the unfaded life and complexion of without emotions of tenderness and joy, that had himself too purely for their object, to partake of a loose or mis-timed desire. He was soon dressed in these temporary clothes, which neither fitted him, nor became the light my passion placed him in, to me at least; yet, as they were on him, they looked extremely well, in virtue of that magic charm which love put into every thing that he touched, or had relation to him: and where, indeed, was that dress that a figure like his would not give grace to? For now, as I eyed him more in detail, I could not but observe the even favourable alteration which the time of his absence had produced in his person. There were still the requisite lineaments, still the same vivid vermillion and bloom reigning in his face; but now the roses were more fully blown; the tan of his travels, and a beard somewhat more distinguishable, had, at the expense of no more delicacy than what he could well spare, given it an air of becoming manliness and maturity, that symmetrized nobly with that air of distinction and empire with which nature had stamped it, in a rare mixture with the sweetness of it; still nothing had he lost of that smooth plumpness of flesh, which, glowing with freshness, blooms florid to the eye, and delicious to the touch; then his shoulders were grown more square, his shape more formed, more portly, but still free and airy. In short, his figure showed riper, greater, and perfecter to the experienced eye, than in his tender youth; and now he was not much more than two and twenty.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Know that your body sensations deserve your awareness as much as the phrases or thoughts that emerge from your mind. Gently call forth an image of someone who is currently facing ill fortune or otherwise suffering. Without getting mired in these difficulties, explore their scope. Then, lightly remind yourself of this person’s good qualities, and how much you would wish to ease his or her pain or lighten his or her load. Say the following classic phrases, or your own versions of them, slowly and from your heart. May you find safety, even in the midst of pain (or misfortune, difficulties). May you find peace, even in the midst of pain. May you find strength, even in the midst of pain. May you find ease, even in the midst of pain. Repeat these ancient wishes one by one, with each breath you take. Let each phrase infuse and soften your heart. Visualize yourself simply standing beside this person, recognizing his or her courage in the face of whatever difficulty life now delivers. As your practice deepens, experiment with new ways to soften and expand your heart’s capacity. Shift your focus to new people who are suffering, whether they’re people you know well or not. Keep in mind that your aim is not to make this or any other person’s pain or adversity magically disappear. Rather your aim is to condition your own heart to move in toward others’ suffering when you see it, to open up to it a bit more, so that you may offer comfort and strength, rather than to turn away in self-protection. If you find that the words of this practice stand in the way of your ability to call forth true tenderness, try simplifying your focus. Draw on images. Visualize before you the difficulty that this other person faces, whether it’s physical or emotional pain or uncertainty. Imagine what this difficulty might look like. Give it a color and a shape. Where do you see it in relation to the person on whom you focus? Next, visualize your own heart as it yearns to be compassionate. Imagine that this is your well of healing positivity. Imagine its color, shape, and movements. Is it bright or golden? How much does it expand? Now, with these visual details painted in your mind’s eye, imagine that as you breathe in, you inhale the other person’s ill fortune, lifting a portion of it away from him or her. As you inhale, let this ill-fortune enter in and be transformed by your steady, loving heart, pausing for just a moment before you exhale to witness this change. Then, as you breathe out, imagine that you are giving some thread, however small, of good fortune to this person, relief from his or her pain or suffering. Visualize this process of hope and change with each breath you take. Breathe in pain.

• From Educated (2018)

  When I was young these tussles usually ended with Mother screaming over a broken lamp or vase, but as I got older there were fewer things left to break. Mother said we’d owned a TV once, when I was a baby, until Shawn had put Tyler’s head through it. While his brothers wrestled, Tyler listened to music. He owned the only boom box I had ever seen, and next to it he kept a tall stack of CDs with strange words on them, like “Mozart” and “Chopin.” One Sunday afternoon, when he was perhaps sixteen, he caught me looking at them. I tried to run, because I thought he might wallop me for being in his room, but instead he took my hand and led me to the stack. “W-which one do y-you like best?” he said. One was black, with a hundred men and women dressed in white on the cover. I pointed to it. Tyler eyed me skeptically. “Th-th-this is ch-ch-choir music,” he said. He slipped the disc into the black box, then sat at his desk to read. I squatted on the floor by his feet, scratching designs into the carpet. The music began: a breath of strings, then a whisper of voices, chanting, soft as silk, but somehow piercing. The hymn was familiar to me—we’d sung it at church, a chorus of mismatched voices raised in worship—but this was different. It was worshipful, but it was also something else, something to do with study, discipline and collaboration. Something I didn’t yet understand. The song ended and I sat, paralyzed, as the next played, and the next, until the CD finished. The room felt lifeless without the music. I asked Tyler if we could listen to it again, and an hour later, when the music stopped, I begged him to restart it. It was very late, and the house quiet, when Tyler stood from his desk and pushed play, saying this was the last time. “W-w-we can l-l-listen again tomorrow,” he said. Music became our language. Tyler’s speech impediment kept him quiet, made his tongue heavy. Because of that, he and I had never talked much; I had not known my brother. Now, every evening when he came in from the junkyard, I would be waiting for him. After he’d showered, scrubbing the day’s grime from his skin, he’d settle in at his desk and say, “W-w-what shall we l-l-listen t-t-to tonight?” Then I would choose a CD, and he would read while I lay on the floor next to his feet, eyes fixed on his socks, and listened. I was as rowdy as any of my brothers, but when I was with Tyler I transformed. Maybe it was the music, the grace of it, or maybe it was his grace. Somehow he made me see myself through his eyes. I tried to remember not to shout.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  We would like to know more about the personal relations of these pillar-apostles, but must be satisfied with a few hints. They labored in different fields and seldom met face to face in their busy life. Time was too precious, their work too serious, for sentimental enjoyments of friendship. Paul went to Jerusalem A.D. 40, three years after his conversion, for the express purpose of making the personal acquaintance of Peter, and spent two weeks with him; he saw none of the other apostles, but only James, the Lord’s brother.236 He met the pillar-apostles at the Conference in Jerusalem, A.D. 50, and concluded with them the peaceful concordat concerning the division of labor, and the question of circumcision; the older apostles gave him and Barnabas "the right hands of fellowship" in token of brotherhood and fidelity.237 Not long afterwards Paul met Peter a third time, at Antioch, but came into open collision with him on the great question of Christian freedom and the union of Jewish and Gentile converts.238 The collision was merely temporary, but significantly reveals the profound commotion and fermentation of the apostolic age, and foreshadowed future antagonisms and reconciliations in the church. Several years later (A.D. 57) Paul refers the last time to Cephas, and the brethren of the Lord, for the right to marry and to take a wife with him on his missionary journeys.239 Peter, in his first Epistle to Pauline churches, confirms them in their Pauline faith, and in his second Epistle, his last will and testament, he affectionately commends the letters of his "beloved brother Paul," adding, however, the characteristic remark, which all commentators must admit to be true, that (even beside the account of the scene in Antioch) there are in them "some things hard to be understood."240 According to tradition (which varies considerably as to details), the great leaders of Jewish and Gentile Christianity met at Rome, were tried and condemned together, Paul, the Roman citizen, to the death by the sword on the Ostian road at Tre Fontane; Peter, the Galilean apostle, to the more degrading death of the cross on the hill of Janiculum. John mentions Peter frequently in his Gospel, especially in the appendix,241 but never names Paul; he met him, as it seems, only once, at Jerusalem, gave him the right hand of fellowship, became his successor in the fruitful field of Asia Minor, and built on his foundation.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He had no rabbinical training, like Paul, and in the eyes of the Jewish scholars he was, like Peter and the other Galilaean disciples, an "unlearned and ignorant man."565 But he passed through the preparatory school of John the Baptist who summed up his prophetic mission in the testimony to Jesus as the "Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," a testimony which he afterwards expanded in his own writings. It was this testimony which led him to Jesus on the banks of the Jordan in that memorable interview of which, half a century afterwards, he remembered the very hour.566 He was not only one of the Twelve, but the chosen of the chosen Three. Peter stood out more prominently before the public as the friend of the Messiah; John was known in the private circle as the friend of Jesus.567 Peter always looked at the official character of Christ, and asked what he and the other apostles should do; John gazed steadily at the person of Jesus, and was intent to learn what the Master said. They differed as the busy Martha, anxious to serve, and the pensive Mary, contented to learn. John alone, with Peter and his brother James, witnessed the scene of the transfiguration and of Gethsemane—the highest exaltation and the deepest humiliation in the earthly life of our Lord. He leaned on his breast at the last Supper and treasured those wonderful farewell discourses in his heart for future use. He followed him to the court of Caiaphas. He alone of all the disciples was present at the crucifixion, and was intrusted by the departing Saviour with the care of his mother. This was a scene of unique delicacy and tenderness: the Mater dolorosa and the beloved disciple gazing at the cross, the dying Son and Lord uniting them in maternal and filial love. It furnishes the type of those heaven-born spiritual relationships, which are deeper and stronger than those of blood and interest. As John was the last at the cross, so he was also, next to Mary Magdalene, the first of the disciples who, outrunning even Peter, looked into the open tomb on the resurrection morning; and he first recognized the risen Lord when he appeared to the disciples on the shore of the lake of Galilee.568 He seems to have been the youngest of the apostles, as he long outlived them all; he certainly was the most gifted and the most favored. He had a religious genius of the highest order—not indeed for planting, but for watering; not for outward action and aggressive work, but for inward contemplation and insight into the mystery of Christ’s person and of eternal life in him. Purity and simplicity of character, depth and ardor of affection, and a rare faculty of spiritual perception and intuition, were his leading traits, which became ennobled and consecrated by divine grace.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  I want to emphasize, though, that love isn’t simply one of the many positive emotions that sweep through you from time to time. It’s bigger than joy, amusement, gratitude, or hope. It has special status. I call it our supreme emotion. First, that’s because any of the other positive emotions—joy, amusement, gratitude, hope, and so on—can be transformed into an instance of love when felt in close connection with another. Yet casting love as shared positive emotion doesn’t go nearly far enough. Second, whereas all positive emotions provide benefits—each, after all, broadens your mind-set and builds your resourcefulness—the benefits of love run far deeper, perhaps exponentially so. Love is our supreme emotion that makes us come most fully alive and feel most fully human. It is perhaps the most essential emotional experience for thriving and health. My approach to love is also different because it crosses emotions science with relationship science. From relationship science, I adopt the idea that love draws you out of your cocoon of self-absorption to attune to others. Love allows you to really see another person, holistically, with care, concern, and compassion. Within each moment of loving connection, you become sincerely invested in this other person’s well-being, simply for his or her own sake. And the feeling is mutual. You come to recognize that, in this loving moment, this other person is also sincerely invested in your well-being; that he or she truly cares for you. Relationship scientists cast this sense of mutual care as an abiding attribute of intimate relationships. By contrast, I see mutual care as a momentary state that rises and falls in step with changes in context and emotion.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  The motto of my home state of North Carolina is: “To be, rather than to seem,” or in Latin, Esse quam videri. This aspiration comes from the first-century BCE musings of Cicero, the famous Roman philosopher and statesman. Writing “On Friendship” Cicero made the case that without virtue, friendship is impossible. True friendship, as Cicero saw it, was actually rather rare “for there are not so many possessed of virtue as there are that desire to seem virtuous.” Strikingly, the definition of friendship that emerges from Cicero’s writings bears resemblance to positivity resonance as I’ve articulated it throughout this book (especially in chapter 2). Friendship, to Cicero, involves complete sympathy in all matters, together with goodwill, affection, and kindness. This sort of heartfelt connection with others is not possible without sincerity. Flattery, or “false statements . . . framed purposely to satisfy and please,” according to Cicero, is inherently damaging. Contemporary science concurs. Feigned positivity resonance creates a toxic insincerity that is damaging perhaps most severely to the person who initiates it. To be loving rather than to seem loving is an aspiration truly worthy of your time and energy. The second reason that most of these practices begin in solitude is that genuinely positive social sentiments take time to cultivate. There’s often quite a thicket of self-absorption that needs to be cleared before the fragile shoots of loving tenderness can emerge. Solo activities are vital for this. While these activities do not directly create positivity resonance, they can set the table for an eventual feast of love. I call these practices preparatory. They condition your mind, heart, eyes, and ears to be more prepared for positivity resonance when true connections become possible. With these practices, you become poised to capitalize on opportunities for love when they arise, rather than remain oblivious or blind to them. Intervening off-line, prior to your interactions with others, may in fact be the best route for creating positivity resonance in its most natural form, guided by your own open heart. As Cicero phrased it, “Unless you see an open bosom and show your own, you can have nothing worthy of confidence, nothing of which you can feel certain, not even the fact of your loving or being loved, since you are ignorant of what either really is.” Reflecting on Social Connections The first tool for experiencing more moments of love is one that we discovered completely by chance. It entails simply reflecting, at the end of each day, on the three longest social interactions you’ve had that day, and asking yourself how “connected” and “in tune” you felt with the people with whom you spent your time. These people could be family, friends, coworkers, or completely new acquaintances, and it doesn’t matter whether the same person shows up in more than one interaction. Merely reflecting on whether your potential moments for positivity resonance were in fact realized seems to serve as a gentle reminder about your ever-present capacity for love.

• From Educated (2018)

  Luke made a gargled noise, as if he were choking. I ran back into the kitchen and found the bags that fit the can, then held one open for Luke and told him to put his leg in. He didn’t move, but he allowed me to pull the bag over the raw flesh. I righted the can and stuffed the garden hose inside. While the bin filled, I helped Luke balance on one foot and lower his burned leg, now wrapped in black plastic, into the garbage can. The afternoon air was sweltering; the water would warm quickly; I tossed in the pack of ice. It didn’t take long—twenty minutes, maybe thirty—before Luke seemed in his right mind, calm and able to prop himself up. Then Richard wandered up from the basement. The garbage can was smack in the middle of the lawn, ten feet from any shade, and the afternoon sun was strong. Full of water, the can was too heavy for us to move, and Luke refused to take out his leg, even for a minute. I fetched a straw sombrero Grandma had given us in Arizona. Luke’s teeth were still chattering so I also brought a wool blanket. And there he stood, a sombrero on his head, a wool blanket around his shoulders, and his leg in a garbage can. He looked something between homeless and on vacation. The sun warmed the water; Luke began to shift uncomfortably. I returned to the chest freezer but there was no more ice, just a dozen bags of frozen vegetables, so I dumped them in. The result was a muddy soup with bits of peas and carrots. Dad wandered home sometime after this, I couldn’t say how long, a gaunt, defeated look on his face. Quiet now, Luke was resting, or as near to resting as he could be standing up. Dad wheeled the bin into the shade because, despite the hat, Luke’s hands and arms had turned red with sunburn. Dad said the best thing to do was leave the leg where it was until Mother came home. Mother’s car appeared on the highway around six. I met her halfway up the hill and told her what had happened. She rushed to Luke and said she needed to see the leg, so he lifted it out, dripping. The plastic bag clung to the wound. Mother didn’t want to tear the fragile tissue, so she cut the bag away slowly, carefully, until the leg was visible. There was very little blood and even fewer blisters, as both require skin and Luke didn’t have much. Mother’s face turned a grayish yellow, but she was calm. She closed her eyes and crossed her fingers, then asked aloud whether the wound was infected. Click click click. “You were lucky this time, Tara,” she said. “But what were you thinking, putting a burn into a garbage can?” Dad carried Luke inside and Mother fetched her scalpel.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Later generations of Israelites would try to eradicate such cult places as idolatrous and tear down the local matzeboth , but in this early story, these pagan symbols nourished Jacob’s vision of Yahweh, and Bethel became one of their own sacred “centers.” The story shows how impossible it is to seek a single, consistent message in the Bible, since a directive in one book is likely to be countermanded in another. The editors did not eradicate potentially embarrassing early teachings that clashed with later doctrines. Later Jews would be shocked to imagine God becoming manifest in a human being, but J described Yahweh appearing to Abraham in the guise of a traveler at Mamre, near Hebron. 31 Standing in the entrance of his tent during the hottest part of the afternoon, Abraham had seen three men approaching. Strangers were dangerous people, because they were not bound by the local vendetta, but Abraham ran out to meet them, bowed before them as if they were kings or gods, brought them into his camp, and gave them an elaborate meal. Without any great fanfare, it transpires in the course of the ensuing conversation that one of these visitors was Abraham’s god. The act of compassion had led to a divine encounter. Abraham’s previous encounters with Yahweh had been somewhat disturbing and peremptory, but at Mamre Yahweh ate with Abraham as a friend—the first intimacy with the divine that humans had enjoyed since the expulsion from Eden. J and E were not writing edifying morality tales, however. The characters of Genesis have moments of vision and insight, but they are also presented as flawed human beings who have to contend with a perplexing God. This is particularly evident when Yahweh commands Abraham to take his only remaining son, Isaac, to a mountain in the land of Moriyya and sacrifice him there. 32 Hitherto Abraham had not hesitated to question Yahweh’s arrangements, but this time he obeyed without voicing a single objection. Perhaps he was too shocked to speak. The God he had served so long had turned out to be a heartless slayer of children, who was also cynically breaking his promise to make him the father of a great nation. At the last moment, of course, Isaac is reprieved, God renews his promise, and Abraham sacrifices a ram in Isaac’s stead. This disturbing story has traditionally been related to the Jerusalem temple, which was said to have been built on Mount Moriyya. Yahweh was, therefore, making it clear that his cult must not include human sacrifice. But E’s painful story goes further. Moriyya means “Seeing,” and the Hebrew verb ra’o (“to see”) sounds insistently through the Abraham stories.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  AT THE START of summer I decided my parents’ basement was no longer big enough to serve as the headquarters of Blue Ribbon. And the servants’ quarters weren’t big enough for me. I rented a one-bedroom apartment downtown, in a spiffy new high-rise. The rent was two hundred dollars, which seemed pretty steep, but oh well. I also rented a few essentials—table, chairs, king-sized bed, olive couch—and tried to arrange them stylishly. It didn’t look like much, but I didn’t care, because my real furniture was shoes. My first-ever bachelor pad was filled from floor to ceiling with shoes. I toyed with the idea of not giving Johnson my new address. But I did. Sure enough, my new mailbox began to fill with letters. Return address: P.O. Box 492, Seal Beach, CA 90740. None of which I answered. THEN JOHNSON WROTE me two letters I couldn’t ignore. First, he said that he, too, was moving. He and his new wife were splitting up. He was planning to stay in Seal Beach, but taking a small bachelor apartment. Days later he wrote to say he’d been in a car wreck. It happened in the early morning, somewhere north of San Bernardino. He was on his way to a road race, of course, where he’d intended to both run and sell Tigers. He’d fallen asleep at the wheel, he wrote, and woke to find himself and his 1956 Volkswagen Bug upside down and airborne. He struck the divider, then rolled, then flew out of the car, just before it somersaulted down the embankment. When Johnson’s body finally stopped tumbling, he was on his back, looking at the sky, his collarbone, foot, and skull all shattered. The skull, he said, was actually leaking. Worse, being newly divorced, he had no one to care for him during his convalescence. The poor guy was one dead dog from becoming a country-western song. Despite all these recent calamities, Johnson was of good cheer. He assured me in a series of chirpy follow-up letters that he was managing to meet all his obligations. He was dragging himself around his new apartment, filling orders, shipping shoes, corresponding promptly with all customers. A friend was bringing him his mail, he said, so not to worry, P.O. Box 492 was still fully operational. In closing, he added that because he was now facing alimony, child support, and untold medical bills, he needed to inquire about the long-term prospects of Blue Ribbon. How did I see the future? I didn’t lie… exactly. Maybe out of pity, maybe haunted by the image of Johnson, single, lonely, his body wrapped in plaster of Paris, gamely trying to keep himself and my company alive, I sounded an upbeat tone. Blue Ribbon, I said, would probably morph over the years into a generalized sporting goods company. We’d probably have offices on the West Coast. And one day, maybe, in Japan. “Farfetched,” I wrote. “But it seems worth shooting for.”

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  I stare at the hawk as she grips the dead pheasant, and her mad eyes stare right back at me. I’m amazed. I don’t know what I expected to feel. Bloodlust? Brutality? No. Nothing like that. There are thorn-scratches all over me from where I dived through the hedge, and an ache in my heart I can’t place. There’s a sheeny fog in the air. Dry. Like talc. I look at the hawk, the pheasant, the hawk. And everything changes. The hawk stops being a thing of violent death. She becomes a child. It shakes me to the core. She is a child. A baby hawk that’s just worked out who she is. What she’s for. I reach down and start, unconsciously as a mother helping a child with her dinner, plucking the pheasant with the hawk. For the hawk. And when she starts eating, I sit on my heels and watch, watch her eat. Feathers lift, blow down the hedge, and catch in spiders’ webs and thorn branches. The bright blood on her toes coagulates and dries. Time passes. Benison of sunlight. A wind shifts the thistle stalks and is gone. And I start crying, soundlessly. Tears roll down my face. For the pheasant, for the hawk, for Dad and for all his patience, for that little girl who stood by a fence and waited for the hawks to come. 20 Hiding

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I asked where he lived and his smile disappeared. “Months ago,” he said, “I lose my home. Typhoon Billie.” The storm had completely wiped away the Japanese islands of Honshu and Kyushu, along with two thousand houses. “Mine,” Fujimoto said, “was one of houses.” “I’m very sorry,” I said. He nodded, looked at the water. He’d started over, he said. As the Japanese do. The one thing he hadn’t been able to replace, unfortunately, was his bicycle. In the 1960s bicycles were exorbitantly expensive in Japan. Kitami now joined us. I noticed that Fujimoto got up right away and walked off. I mentioned to Kitami that Fujimoto had learned his English from GIs, and Kitami said with pride that he’d learned his English all by himself, from a record. I congratulated him, and said I hoped one day to be as fluent in Japanese as he was in English. Then I mentioned that I was getting married soon. I told him a bit about Penny, and he congratulated me and wished me luck. “When is wedding?” he asked. “September,” I said. “Ah,” he said, “I will be in America one month after, when Mr. Onitsuka and I attend Olympics in Mexico City. We might visit Los Angeles.” He invited me to fly down, have dinner with them. I said I’d be delighted. The next day I returned to the United States, and one of the first things I did after landing was put fifty dollars in an envelope and airmail it to Fujimoto. On the card I wrote: “For a new bicycle, my friend.” Weeks later an envelope arrived from Fujimoto. My fifty dollars, folded inside a note explaining that he’d asked his superiors if he could keep the money, and they’d said no. There was a PS: “If you send my house, I can keep.” So I did. And thus another life-altering partnership was born. ON SEPTEMBER 13, 1968, Penny and I exchanged our vows before two hundred people at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in downtown Portland, at the same altar where Penny’s parents had been married. It was one year, nearly to the day, after Miss Parks had first walked into my classroom. She was again in the front row, of a sort, only this time I was standing beside her. And she was now Mrs. Knight. Before us stood her uncle, an Episcopal priest from Pasadena, who performed the service. Penny was shaking so much, she couldn’t raise her chin to look him, or me, in the eye. I wasn’t shaking, because I’d cheated. In my breast pocket I had two miniature airplane bottles of whiskey, stashed from my recent trip to Japan. I nipped one just before, and one just after, the ceremony.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  Often Penny and I would have Woodell over to the new house for dinner. He was like family, we loved him, but we also knew we were filling a void in his life, a need for company and domestic comforts. So Penny always wanted to cook something special when Woodell came over, and the most special thing she could think of was Cornish game hen, plus a dessert made from brandy and iced milk—she got the recipe from a magazine—which left us all blotto. Though hens and brandy put a serious dent in her twenty-five-dollar grocery budget, Penny simply couldn’t economize when it came to Woodell. If I told her that Woodell was coming to dinner, she’d reflexively gush: “I’ll get some capons and brandy!” It was more than wanting to be hospitable. She was fattening him up. She was nurturing him. Woodell, I think, spoke to her newly activated maternal streak. I struggle to remember. I close my eyes and think back, but so many precious moments from those nights are gone forever. Numberless conversations, breathless laughing fits. Declarations, revelations, confidences. They’ve all fallen into the sofa cushions of time. I remember only that we always sat up half the night, cataloging the past, mapping out the future. I remember that we took turns describing what our little company was, and what it might be, and what it must never be. How I wish, on just one of those nights, I’d had a tape recorder. Or kept a journal, as I did on my trip around the world. Still, at least I can always call to mind the image of Woodell, seated at the head of our dinette, carefully dressed in his blue jeans, his trademark V-neck sweater over a white T. And always, on his feet, a pair of Tigers, the rubber soles pristine. By then he’d grown a long beard, and a bushy mustache, both of which I envied. Heck, it was the sixties, I’d have had a beard down to my chin. But I was constantly needing to go to the bank and ask for money. I couldn’t look like a bum when I presented myself to Wallace. A clean shave was one of my few concessions to The Man.

• From Educated (2018)

  When I was young these tussles usually ended with Mother screaming over a broken lamp or vase, but as I got older there were fewer things left to break. Mother said we’d owned a TV once, when I was a baby, until Shawn had put Tyler’s head through it. While his brothers wrestled, Tyler listened to music. He owned the only boom box I had ever seen, and next to it he kept a tall stack of CDs with strange words on them, like “Mozart” and “Chopin.” One Sunday afternoon, when he was perhaps sixteen, he caught me looking at them. I tried to run, because I thought he might wallop me for being in his room, but instead he took my hand and led me to the stack. “W-which one do y-you like best?” he said. One was black, with a hundred men and women dressed in white on the cover. I pointed to it. Tyler eyed me skeptically. “Th-th-this is ch-ch-choir music,” he said. He slipped the disc into the black box, then sat at his desk to read. I squatted on the floor by his feet, scratching designs into the carpet. The music began: a breath of strings, then a whisper of voices, chanting, soft as silk, but somehow piercing. The hymn was familiar to me—we’d sung it at church, a chorus of mismatched voices raised in worship—but this was different. It was worshipful, but it was also something else, something to do with study, discipline and collaboration. Something I didn’t yet understand. The song ended and I sat, paralyzed, as the next played, and the next, until the CD finished. The room felt lifeless without the music. I asked Tyler if we could listen to it again, and an hour later, when the music stopped, I begged him to restart it. It was very late, and the house quiet, when Tyler stood from his desk and pushed play, saying this was the last time. “W-w-we can l-l-listen again tomorrow,” he said. Music became our language. Tyler’s speech impediment kept him quiet, made his tongue heavy. Because of that, he and I had never talked much; I had not known my brother. Now, every evening when he came in from the junkyard, I would be waiting for him. After he’d showered, scrubbing the day’s grime from his skin, he’d settle in at his desk and say, “W-w-what shall we l-l-listen t-t-to tonight?” Then I would choose a CD, and he would read while I lay on the floor next to his feet, eyes fixed on his socks, and listened. I was as rowdy as any of my brothers, but when I was with Tyler I transformed. Maybe it was the music, the grace of it, or maybe it was his grace. Somehow he made me see myself through his eyes. I tried to remember not to shout.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  ‘You went back to school voluntarily from the University because you still needed to go to school, because there was something still to find. You went back under the hen’s wing for safety, because you were still too small a chicken, but also in search of something: you want the talisman that would make you fit to leave.’ ‘What am I searching for?’ ‘That you will only know when you find it.’ ‘Is it wisdom or manhood?’ ‘Perhaps it is love.’ Perhaps it is love. Perhaps it is. I imagine him writing those lines in his small kitchen, the light wet on the oilskin tablecloth, the night close against the window. He will stoke the fire in a little while. First he will write a little more. His hawk is sleeping. All the leaves on the trees of the Ridings are still tonight, all unmoving out across Three Parks Woods, across Stowe Woods and Sawpit Woods, over the Black Pits ponds, the carp slumbering deep in the waters. There is peace here. He is a wicked man. A free man. A man who is cast out, the man who fell. Feral. Ferox. Fairy. A man who is content with his lot. He puts the pen down to pour another drink, then picks up his pen and writes some more. He writes of Dr Prisonface asking the mysterious man his name, and of the man telling him it is Lucifer. Lucifer the light-bringer, the fallen angel, the devil incarnate. 14 The line The expression on Christina’s face is unusual. It’s not a happy face, but it’s not unhappy either. Tense, certainly. It is fierce, ambivalent and brave. Today she’d come out to watch the hawk fly and in a burst of inspiration I decided to recruit her as my under-falconer. She’d borne my grief-spurred strangenesses with great good grace over the last few months but nothing could have prepared her for this. ‘The problem is, I can’t get away fast enough,’ I tell her. ‘She flies after me as soon as I start walking away. But she has to come longer distances before I can fly her loose. Can you hold her for me, out on the pitch, so I can call her from your fist?’ ‘You’ll have to show me how,’ she says, paling. ‘It’s easy, really.’ I give her my spare glove, put the hawk on it and bend her fingers into the right shape to hold the jesses. ‘Turn your back to me – yes, like that. Perfect. Now she can’t see me. So I’m going to walk over there. When I shout OK, turn right, stick out your arm and open your hand, so she can fly.’ She bites her lip, nods. ‘Make sure you turn the right way; you don’t want to get the creance caught round your legs.’

• From City of Night (1963)

  The man who brought us here disappeared quickly through the lighted door. We placed the blond boy, propped, on the seat of a booth. As if in renewed, dazed surprise, he stared at the blood on his hand, and he tore at his shirt, holding the piece of cloth to his wounded temple. The queen’s face hangs like a white, painted mask over him. “Poor dear,” she sighs, “and hes so cute too.” Now the shadow of a woman appeared against the light from the other room, followed by the man who brought us here. As the woman approached, I recognized her: Sylvia—the woman at The Rocking Times. She sat quickly beside the blond boy doubled over in the booth; she dressed the wound deftly, urgently. Responding to her authority—and shes in complete command—the two of us who brought the wounded boy here lift him and follow Sylvia through the lighted room, which is a kitchen—with a long table and several chairs, an old coiled refrigerator; through a corridor; into another room. There are several rollout beds, couches, mats on the floor; and we laid the blond boy on a bed. “We gonna git the guy that done this,” says the youngman with me. Sylvia looked at him uncertainly, as if undecided whether to chastise or praise him. She merely turned from him, looking down sadly at the wounded boy. “Let him sleep. Hes just scared,” she said with a note of what could be contempt. She drew a cover over him, at first tenderly. Then she tossed it over him impatiently. Again, relenting in the impatience, she sighs, touches him lightly on the bandaged face. Asleep, the boy looks like a peaceful young kid.... When we returned to the unlighted room with the eyeless panels of removed mirrors, the man was gone; the youngmen, the girl, the queen have disappeared, probably to other sections of this strange building. Like the underground stations for Negro fugitives from the South, this place must provide temporary shelter for the Carnival vagrants. “Are you hungry?” Sylvia asked me and the youngman with me. I said no. The other youngman said yes. She directed him to the kitchen. As he helped himself to food from the old refrigerator, the woman and I sat in one of the booths, facing each other. With her hand she quickly wiped away a few drops of blood that had dripped onto the table—as if to erase the fact of their existence. She looked at me questioningly, knotting her eyebrows as if to ask me something, the answer to which, though vastly important, she will nevertheless find perplexing, or even painful. “Why—?” she began. Instead, she shifts the questioning look. Her face had mellowed for a moment. Now the toughness crept back into it.

• From Educated (2018)

  Mother smeared the salve over Dad’s upper body twice a day. I don’t remember what other treatments they used, and I don’t know enough about the energy work to give an account. I know they went through seventeen gallons of salve in the first two weeks, and that Mother was ordering gauze in bulk. Tyler flew in from Purdue. He took over for Mother, changing the bandages on Dad’s fingers every morning, scraping away the layers of skin and muscle that had necrotized during the night. It didn’t hurt. The nerves were dead. “I scraped off so many layers,” Tyler told me, “I was sure that one morning I’d hit bone.” Dad’s fingers began to bow, bending unnaturally backward at the joint. This was because the tendons had begun to shrivel and contract. Tyler tried to curl Dad’s fingers, to elongate the tendons and prevent the deformity from becoming permanent, but Dad couldn’t bear the pain. I came back to Buck’s Peak when I was sure the strep was gone. I sat by Dad’s bed, dripping teaspoons of water into his mouth with a medical dropper and feeding him pureed vegetables as if he were a toddler. He rarely spoke. The pain made it difficult for him to focus; he could hardly get through a sentence before his mind surrendered to it. Mother offered to buy him pharmaceuticals, the strongest analgesics she could get her hands on, but he declined them. This was the Lord’s pain, he said, and he would feel every part of it. While I was away, I had scoured every video store within a hundred miles until I’d found the complete box set of The Honeymooners . I held it up for Dad. He blinked to acknowledge he’d seen it. I asked if he wanted to watch an episode. He blinked again. I pushed the first tape into the VCR and sat beside him, searching his warped face, listening to his soft whimpers, while on the screen Alice Kramden outfoxed her husband again and again. * It is possible that my timeline is off here by one or two days. According to some who were there, although my father was horribly burned, he did not seem in any real danger until the third day, when the scabbing began, making it difficult to breathe. Dehydration compounded the situation. In this account, it was then that they feared for his life, and that is when my sister called me, only I misunderstood and assumed that the explosion had happened the day before. [image "Chapter 26 Waiting for the Moving Water" file=Image00028.jpg] Dad didn’t leave his bed for two months unless one of my brothers was carrying him. He peed in a bottle, and the enemas continued. Even after it became clear that he would live, we had no idea what kind of life it would be.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I’d never before said good-bye to a true partner, and it felt massively different. Imagine that, I thought. The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye. FOR ONCE, MY former contact at Onitsuka was still my contact. Kitami was still there. He hadn’t been replaced. He hadn’t been reassigned. On the contrary, his role with the company was more secure, judging by his demeanor. He seemed easier, more self-assured. He welcomed me like one of the family, said he was delighted with Blue Ribbon’s performance, and with our East Coast office, which was thriving under Johnson. “Now let us work on how we can capture the U.S. market,” he said. “I like the sound of that,” I said. In my briefcase I was carrying new shoe designs from both Bowerman and Johnson, including one they’d teamed up on, a shoe we were calling the Boston. It had an innovative full-length midsole cushion. Kitami put the designs on the wall and studied them closely. He held his chin in one hand. He liked them, he said. “Like very very much,” he said, slapping me on the back. We met many times over the course of the next several weeks, and each time I sensed from Kitami an almost brotherly vibe. One afternoon he mentioned that his Export Department was having its annual picnic in a few days. “You come!” he said. “Me?” I said. “Yes, yes,” he said, “you are honorary member of Export Department.” The picnic was on Awaji, a tiny island off Kobe. We took a small boat to get there, and when we arrived we saw long tables set up along the beach, each one covered with platters of seafood and bowls of noodles and rice. Beside the tables were tubs filled with cold bottles of soda and beer. Everyone was wearing bathing suits and sunglasses and laughing. People I’d only known in a reserved, corporate setting were being silly and carefree. Late in the day there were competitions. Team-building exercises like potato sack relays and foot races along the surf. I showed off my speed, and everyone bowed to me as I crossed the finish line first. Everyone agreed that Skinny Gaijin was very fast. I was picking up the language, slowly. I knew the Japanese word for shoe: gutzu. I knew the Japanese word for revenue: shunyu. I knew how to ask the time, and directions, and I learned a phrase I used often: Watakushi domo no kaisha ni tsuite no joh hou des. Here is some information about my company. Toward the end of the picnic I sat on the sand and looked out across the Pacific Ocean. I was living two separate lives, both wonderful, both merging. Back home I was part of a team, me and Woodell and Johnson—and now Penny. Here in Japan I was part of a team, me and Kitami and all the good people of Onitsuka. By