GET BACK UP

Dear Spike,

You sort of wobbled a bit, legs akimbo, and then you just fell over sideways. I'm not sure how you ultimately managed to and on your face, but that is what you did.

Your sharp little chin hit the big rough asphalt with rather predictable consequences. It wasn't bad – a little road rash, a little blood — but it was enough to send you crying into my arms.

And there you remained for all of 10 seconds.

Then you bounced up, grabbed your handle bars, took a couple of confused moments to figure out that they were spun around backward, and hefted yourself onto the seat.

"OK," you said. "Let's go back."

You're a tough little cookie, and you always have been. I hope that never changes. The world is, of course, a tough place. Sometimes we fall. Sometimes we take it on the chin.

But get back up. Get back up. Get back up.

Love,
dad

INDEBTED TO HER

Dear Spike:

Your grandmother, Diane, died today. You didn't know her very well, but she was important in your life.

Many years ago, when I accompanied my roommate to his new girlfriend's home, I could not have known that I would be meeting my future family.

But when I left that day, I would later be told, your grandmother turned to your mother and said, "well, I like the roommate better."

I'm glad I made a good first impression on my future mother-in-law and, if in any small way her words contributed to your mother's decision to spend time with me after she and my roommate broke up, I am deeply indebted to her.

Because a few years later, I married your mother. And a few years after that, I got you.

Love,
dad



 

"OK, LET GO"

Dear Spike:

It took me a few times up and down the length of our street before I realized that it was a lot easier to hold your shoulders than the back of the bicycle seat. Even still, running behind a wobbly five year old on a tiny bicycle is no simply thing. I rolled my ankle and strained my back something awful.

But I won't remember any of that. All I'll remember is you saying, "OK, OK, let go," and me reluctantly doing so, and you taking off down the street all by yourself.

I realize, of course, that billions of other people have learned how to do what you learned how to do today. But I don't care. Today I was just so impressed, just so proud.

And just a little terrified.

Not that you would fall, (because you will eventually fall, and I cannot do anything about that) but because learning to ride a bicycle is an important milestone on the journey to independence.

Relish it.

Love,
dad

BECAUSE WE BELIEVE

Dear Spike:

Long waits at the polls, last November, may have prompted 200,000 people in Florida to give up, rather than casting a vote.

Some of them might have concluded that it didn't really matter. True, the margin separating Gov. Mitt Romney's votes and President Obama's was a scant 74,000 votes, but it would have taken a statistical anomaly of unfathomable proportions to change the overall results of the election. One researcher estimated that, if the disenfranchised voters had been able to cast ballots, it actually would have increased President Obama's lead in Florida.

So fine. Maybe it doesn't matter in the math. Maybe it's true that one vote, one hundred votes, even one hundred thousand votes don't really matter. After all, if statistician Nate Silver can build a mathematical model that accurately predicted the winner of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, then what does it matter if my single, paltry vote is cast?

That, of course, is not withstanding the fact that Floridians are privileged in the fact that their votes could — maybe, sort of, almost — matter, in one of a small number of so-called "swing states" where the outcome of the election isn't a foregone conclusion until soon before Election Day. Mr. Silver didn't officially "call" Florida for President Obama until a few days before the election. By contrast, he could have called our home state of Utah for the Republican nominee even before Mr. Romney was nominated by his party.

But I vote anyway. And I hope you will, too.

Because sometimes, you know, we don't do things because they make mathematical sense. We don't do things because they are statistically significant. We don't do things because the world will spin differently for us having done them.

We do things because we believe.

In goodness. In equality. In democracy.

In something.

If you grow up to be a Christian, you'll come to believe that God grants salvation to those who ask for it. Not those who go to church. Not those who partake in communion. Not those who sing hymns or wear their nicest clothes on Sunday.

But you might do those things anyway. Because those things might remind you of the promise of salvation. They might make you appreciate it a little more.

If you grow up to be an American patriot of a certain type, you might raise your hand to your heart whenever our flag is raised. You might recite the Pledge of Allegiance as fervently and sincerely as you did in your kindergarten class this morning. Not because you have to – indeed, you do not have to do these things to be a patriot.

But you might do those things anyway. Because those things might remind you how good it feels to be a citizen of a nation that seeks (even as it struggles and so often fails) to be a beacon for freedom and democracy around the world. And maybe those things help you remember how fortunate we are.

If you grow up to be a sports fan, you might sing your favorite team's anthem, over and over and over again. You might wear its colors on game day. You might sit with arms, legs and fingers crossed, when it is behind on the scoreboard and when the last seconds of the game are floating away with a championship trophy. Not because you believe that any of those things matter.

But because it is just plain fun to be a sports fan. And it is more fun when we convince ourselves that we have a stake in the game and a say in the results.

   

There is nothing wrong with belief. There is nothing wrong with ritual. What does not harm others does not harm our souls.

So I hope you'll grow up to vote. Not because it matters, in any sort of statistical way. Not because you  think your vote is going to change the world.

But because, one day in the fall of 2012, a woman named Desiline Victor arrived at her polling station in Miami-Dade County to find a line of people hundreds deep and hours long.

And she waited. And waited. And waited.

At 102 years old, she could have been forgiven for giving up. She could have concluded that it didn't matter.

But she waited. And waited. And waited.

Not because she believed her vote would make a mathematical difference. But because the Hatian-born farm worker, who became a U.S. citizen just eight years ago, refused to be denied the opportunity to participate in a process that fundamentally reflects who we are and what we believe.

And then, you know what? Something a little funny happened. A statistical anomaly of unfathomable proportions. Out of 122 million people who cast votes in the election, Ms. Victor was asked to attend President Obama's Inaugural Address, last night — to stand in (even if she could not stand up) for every voter in the nation and serve as a symbol for the need for ballot reform in our nation.

Her vote mattered. Make yours matter, too.

Love,

dad 

NEEDED A BLANKIE

Dear Spike:

Today you made me a blankie. And today I sort of needed a blankie.

So thank you. That was nice.

Love,
dad
  

THAT TERRIBLE NIGHT

Dear Spike:

Nearly six years ago, in the wake of a mass shooting at Trolley Square, I stood outside that historic building, just three blocks from our home, and watched the coroner’s trucks line up to take the bodies away.

I wondered then, and for a long time afterward, if I would ever be able to pass that place and not think of the terrible things that had happened there.

And for a long time, I couldn’t.

But I have passed there nearly every day since, and we have been there together on many occasions, and time has done its work. I rarely think of that terrible night.

I did tonight, though. Of course I did. How could I not?

I did a few months ago, too, when a troubled young man walked into a crowded theater in Colorado and opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding 58 others.

And I did tonight, when yet another troubled young man walked into an elementary school in Connecticut and killed at least 26 people, most of them children.

How can I explain such madness to you? How can I explain such hate, such evil?

I cannot.

But at some point — some time soon, I suppose — I’ll have to try.

There was a great man who passed from this earth not quite a decade ago, who said that a parent’s job, in the face of tough questions, is to find “the simplest truthful answers.”

Tonight seems as good a time to try to do that as any.

Sometimes people hurt. And sometimes they hurt so bad, that they feel the only thing to do is to hurt other people. That doesn’t ever work, though, and in fact it only creates more pain — pain that goes on for years and years and sometimes never subsides.

Time does not heal all wounds. But nor are we forever stuck on days like today. Find the simplest truthful answers for yourself and for others, and then do what you can to move on, while offering love, sympathy and compassion for those who cannot.

Love,

dad

OF TERRIBLE WARFARE

Dear Spike,

The latest round of fighting between Israel and Palestine has come to a temporary halt. And on this Thanksgiving Day, that's something for which we can all be thankful.

How long will this ceasefire last? I cannot say.

There was a time, about a decade ago, in which I would have told you that a lasting peace was on its way. Slowly, to be sure. But sure nonetheless. There would be peace in the Holy Land.

Now I am not sure.

Today, both sides are claiming victory. For neither is it so. Innocent people, including children, have been killed on both sides. A new humanitarian crisis reigns in Gaza. And Israel is as far estranged from the international community as it has ever been.

It's easy to say that war is not the answer to anything. It's harder to make the case in a world of violence, revenge, patriotism and extremism — not to mention the endless industries, big and small, that profit every time a rocket in launched from Gaza or a bomb is dropped from an Israeli jet.

And it's easy, of course, to say that these are values our family does not share. But it's harder to truly separate ourselves, as tax-paying Americans, from complicity in all manner of terrible warfare.

For this minute, at least, I am thankful for peace in the Holy Land. And if that peace holds for another minute, another hour, another day, I will be thankful for that, too.
 
Love,
dad

SIMPLY WHAT IS

Dear Spike,

By the time I finish this letter, this election could be over.
 

That's the way it works in our federal constitutional republic, where an unelected "electoral college" decides who will be president based on an antiquated formula intended to reflect the will of the individual states (which mostly, though not always, reflects the will of the general populace.) This and our equally antiquated two-party system have created a situation in which a small number of states and a much, much smaller number of so-called "undecided voters" (I prefer the term "idiots") will choose our next president, the most powerful man (yes, the big party choices in this and every year have always been men) in the world. The cable news channels are standing by, poised to call this thing as soon as they can based on what happens in Florida and Ohio, millions upon millions of other votes be damned.

Don't get it? No worries, my child, almost no one else does either.

Momentum and greed and apathy and ignorance and the generally disgusting attribute of our species known as "group think" have brought us here. And make no mistake, the good old days were no better, no matter what we'd like to believe. But treading water is not a sound political philosophy. Eventually, we shall tire and drown.

You can, I suppose, sense my general discontent with the two men we've been told to choose between. Both promise change. Neither can deliver much better that the other. Both make promises to my generation that your generation will pay for.
 

One is called a socialist. The other is called a corporatist. Neither is either, precisely. On the grand political spectrum, they are both American centrists, united by far more than divides them.
There is a lesser of two evils, though. There always is. Maybe he'll win. Or maybe it’ll be the other guy. Either way, the detractors will spin around in furious throes of agony. The sky will fall. The world will stop spinning. That’s what they’ll say.

And then it won't.
 

Instead, we will tread water. Tread water. Tread water. And somewhere in our nation's capital, a man in a curiously small office will call out to us in the most inspirational voice he can conjure.

"Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming."

But if I sound despondent, know this: A decade ago I would have had trouble imagining that our nation would elect a black man to the presidency in my lifetime. You live in a world where that is simply what is.

Things can change. Rather quickly, when we need them to.

When will we elect our first female president? Our first gay president? Our first president in a long, long time who isn’t a Democrat or a Republican?

Probably in my lifetime. Definitely in yours.

When will we elect our first president who cares more about the needs of the next generation than the needs of the present generation?

Probably in my lifetime. Definitely in yours.

When will we elect our first president who can say, without fear of political consequence, that our nation is special, but not divinely special? That we must not only live with our neighbors but truly love our neighbors?

Probably in my lifetime. Definitely in yours.

Maybe I’m a romantic. Maybe I am fooling myself. But I still believe this. We can and must and will get better.

Not because of our politicians, but in spite of them.

We will not drown tomorrow, but nor will we be closer to the shore. We will still be treading water. Still swimming against a current, but not gaining on it.

Eventually though — and much sooner than later — we must put our heads down and begin to kick. 

Furiously. Fervently. Audaciously against the current.

Love,

dad

PAST THE TIARA

Dear Spike:

Halloween is next week. You wanted to be a superhero princess.

I’m not a big fan of that second part, but that first part rocks the party, so I’m looking past the tiara. The mask and cape are awesome.

People say, sometimes, that girls are pre-programmed to like “girly” stuff, and same for boys. As evidence, your grandmother recounts a time, when I was a little boy, that I bit into a peanut butter sandwich, noticed the resulting L-shape resembled a gun, and began to pretend it was one. I didn’t have any gun toys and wasn’t allowed to watch violent cartoons of any sort, but there I was pow-powing away.

I don’t buy it.

From gender-separated toy stores (where dolls are “girls toys” and trucks are “boys toys”) to gender-specific colors and clothing styles to his and hers bathrooms, we’re told from the earliest of ages that boys and girls are different and should seek to group ourselves by sex.

There is no gene that makes boys intrinsically know what a gun looks like or does. I’d seen it somewhere. I’d seen it associated with other “boy stuff.” And I emulated what I thought boys should do with something that looks like a gun.

Likewise, there is no gene that makes girls intrinsically want to dress up as princesses and play with My Little Ponies. Your genetic map doesn’t include instructions on how to wear your hair or what to think when you see the color pink.

Look, if you want to be a princess for Halloween right now, fine. And if I had a son and he wanted to be a princess, that would be just as fine. It’s all pretend for now, anyway.

But a few years down the road it’s going to be become all too real. A recent study shows men and women coming out of college receive vastly different salaries, even when adjusting for work experience and job types. I’ve bucked at such analyses before, but the latest research is extremely compelling. And extremely sad.

And so I hope you’ll forgive me if I fight back, a bit, against make-up, high heels and gender-separated sports (you scored another awesome goal this week against a team stacked with boys, by the way.)   

I know I won’t win all of those battles, but I hope I’ll get you thinking, from an early age, about what it means to “be a girl.”

For my money, it should mean just one thing: Someday, should you so chose, you will have the right, the privilege and indeed the blessing of carrying a new life into this world.

And that’s it.

If introspection and self-determination draws you toward so-called girly things, so be it. But the choice is yours.

Love,

dad

A GREAT DAY

Dear Spike,

You were a little tough to rouse out of bed this morning — at least until I reminded you of what we were doing.

“Soccer,” I said.

“My game?” you asked.

“Yup.”

You rolled out of bed and hit the floor. I did your hair — “racing pig” tails — and helped you slip on your shin guards. We went to the park, passed the ball around a bit, and waited for the other players to show up.

They did. And promptly kicked our butts. Oh well. Afterward, we voted on a team name. The contenders were “Sharks,” “Ninjas,” and “Cosma-Cats.” I couldn’t get a majority for any of those names, though, so I made an executive decision: Our team is the Ninja-Warrior Cosma-Shark Cats. Yup, that’s what happens when democracy fails — a dictator shows up and makes ridiculous decisions.

After the game, our family went to the Downtown Farmer’s Market. We ordered coos-coos and lentils from our favorite Sudanese vendor. We picked up peaches, plums, a few pears and plouts, some onions, poblano peppers, a canary melon and cheese. We walked by a man with no arms who was playing the guitar and singing.

We when got home, we rode our bikes to your gaky and papa’s home to harvest some tomatillos, then returned so that I could grade some papers and you and your mother could work in the yard. A few minutes later you came inside with a pumpkin that weighed nearly as much as you do.

It’s harvest time, around here, and the community garden was holding its annual tomato sandwich party. So we all took a walk to the garden and joined a couple hundred other people listening to music and eating some fresh tomatoes — and pesto! (It should really be a crime to write pesto! without an exclamation mark, you know?)

Back home again. We racked the wine from the grapes you stomped last weekend.

Then you read some books. I graded more papers. You and your mother headed to the farm supply store to pick up some chicken feed and pet some bunnies. I was just happy you didn’t come home with any.

After that, you and I headed over to our friend Bill’s house to watch the second half of the Oregon State-Wisconsin game. The Beavers won in a big upset. The fans stormed the field. You and I sang the Beaver song.

Back home again. Burgers for dinner. (Meat for you and your mom, black-bean patties for me.) Grilled onions and mushrooms. Fresh tomatoes. Toasted mutli-grain bread. Yum.

After that we made roasted tomatillo sauce. A half-gallon of the stuff. It’s good.  

I rode my Harley to the store to get some milk. You took a bath and got ready for bed. When I got home, you and your mother were playing the “World of Zoo” video game.

And then, finally, it was bedtime. Your mom told you a story. I sang you a lullaby.

Usually when I write you I have some higher purpose. Maybe sometimes I try too hard.

Today, I guess, I just wanted to remind you of what a great day we had.

And tomorrow, I’m guessing, you’ll be even tougher to rouse out of bed.

Love,

dad