Your Birthday

Your birthday started out cloudy. But the sun came out in the afternoon. It got very warm for a February 27th - so the roads were wet from leftover snow melting. The sun was out for a few hours, while you were in the NICU learning to breathe and figuring out how to open both eyes at the same time. Then the clouds rolled in, black and heavy, and by 8 pm rain was covering everything. In February, you will learn, we are happy when it rains. But they are promising that it will snow on Sunday.

On your birthday the newspapers and radio were full of bad news. (I don't know what was on TV because your father doesn't watch much TV, but there was probably a lot of stuff about bad people doing stupid things.) You were born during the worst economic times since the Great Depression, and probably this will be a very important part of your whole life. That's the breaks. Heiddegger said we are thrown into existence and defined by a world of details and facts over which we had no control. The bad economy is one. I can think of another one too: You can't choose your parents.

On your birthday the world found out that Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen got married. He's an American and famous for playing football, she's Brazilian and famous for being pretty. They will probably have very attractive children. Your mother is Brazilian and she's only famous locally, for being pretty, smart, loving, stubborn, wiley, inventive, artistic and sweet. Your father is American and he is not even locally famous, but in the family he is well known for being wordy, thoughtful, highly tolerant of cold weather, still a fan of the Grateful Dead, a reader of long books, and a good listener. Your mother and father just had three very attractive children.

On your birthday President Barack Obama announced that he will withdraw all American troops from Iraq in 19 months. You will all be able to walk and talk by then but still too young to be drafted. But it's worth knowing that you were born in a time of war. There is not formal declaration of war, we're just at War against Terrorism. For the past eight years we have had soldiers, airmen and sailors fighting, mainly in Iraq and in Afganistan. If you want, I'll show you on the map where these countries are, and you'll notice they are on the other side of the planet. The world is getting smaller, the wars are getting more complicated, and you are going to come of age in a time when huge problems confront us as a People, not just a country.

On your birthday I listened on the radio to a French scientist describe the research station he and his team constructed in Antarctica (near the South Pole), which is completely dependent on sun power and wind power for all its electricity needs. The scientist hopes this will be a model to all of us to turn to alternative sources of energy, sources that don't produce carbon dioxide that fills up the sky, makes it harder for heat energy to escape into space, and contributes to Global Warming. You will be hearing about Global Warming your whole life, I expect, and I hope that you will be working to solve the problem of Global Warming. The way things are going, by the time you are getting out of college and can become really useful engines for progress, there will be many many poor and vulnerable people in the world already suffering tremendously from the effects of Global Warming. We humans are fascinating and brilliant, we have created art and science, saved lives and created prosperity, but for the past 150 years we did it all by sucking up oil and digging out coal and burning it for energy, and we have used up this great one-time energy gift very quickly and only now are we understanding the impacts on the planet's system. It's up to people like you to figure out the next step. Good luck - I'm rooting for you. When you are six years old and I tell you to take out the trash or help clear the table, it's only because I'm training you early to look around, see what needs to be done, and enjoy the tasks involved in making your lifespace clear, clean and pleasant for everyone. Once you've cleared the table, please take out the carbon dioxide. Thanks!

On your birthday there was a picture in the paper of a woman named Laura Pendergest-Holt, a tall and well-groomed and apparently wealthy woman in her early 30s, wearing a nice business suit and a pair of handcuffs, being lead into court to attend a bail hearing on charges related to an international financial fraud that evaporated $8 billion of other people's money. She looks like a person who worked hard in school and went to the right college, who showed up to work early and stayed late. She looks like the kind of person who convinced herself that she was doing the right thing, even though it appears she was up to her neck in fraud and that she had become a very good liar to a lot of people. The world is full of people like this, who look good, live in the right places, go to the right school and sponsor the right charities, and who lie through their teeth and live a life of greed and destruction. Somehow you're going to have to find a way through life that involves a minimum of lying and a maximum of dealing with reality the way it is. The Truth, they say, Will Set You Free, but the truth is a painful path to walk. It turns out, and Ms. Pendergest-Holt can now tell you, the lie is a painful path to walk too. So when we get into wrangles about "did you do your homework?" and "where were you last night?" let's all try to remember: the goal is not for me to have control over your life. I don't want control over your life (a little positive influence would be nice but I don't expect to experience that so much either). The goal is for you to learn to tolerate things as they are, tolerate yourself as you are, and live with things in truthful way as much as possible.

On your birthday the newspapers were full of stories and pictures about things I don't care about. There is a lot of human life and experience going on that I consider vapid and pointless. But don't let that stop you. If you grow up to be someone interested in fashion & clothes, or if you really love sports, or if you think that developing a new recipie for cranberry muffins is the peak experience you must climb, then by all means pursue it. The road to excess is the path to wisdom. I have a great affection for recordings of a band that hasn't done anything significant and new since 1976. I like to quote a British poet who died in 1827, and I like to read about the lives of artists and poets who have been dust for 200, 300, 400 years. I don't know why, and no one else really cares. Life is a long process of finding things you care about and paying attention to them. Just like I seem to have found the three of you. Your mom and I have been paying attention to you since last August, when you were conceived. We have been waiting all this time for conversations and cares and conflicts to begin. And that began in a new way on February 27th, 2009.

Happy birthday, girls! We love you!