A Letter To My Niece On Her 1st Birthday...

Dear ----

Your first birthday is a big one.  Soon you will grow and begin to really take wonder at the world around you.  There's a lot to see.  More important than what you see are the questions you'll ask yourself about the happenings around you.  You'll wonder how and why.  Some things won't make sense and may never, but don't stop asking questions.  Asking is never foolish.  Only fools walk this earth going along with the motion and chaos because it seems easier.  Asking is how you become an individual.  As you get older you'll get used to your surroundings and that's okay.  You have to let your mind rest sometimes.  That's one thing I'm still trying to learn myself.  But I never stop asking how and why.

You'll find that I'm a big fan of giving books as gifts.  You may even get really tired of it.  But believe me, books are the best expression of human behavior.  Books will always be written because men and women will always have the need to be heard.  Always make yourself heard!

This book by Rudyard Kipling is one I hope you are read and will read over and over again throughout your life.  Your children will love it too.  Unfortunately I discovered it later in my life.  The reason it's unfortunate I will tell you.  The questions how and why are answered on these very pages.  You see, you are lucky for the simple fact that you are a child and can stay a child forever with the knowledge and lessons in "Just So Stories."  Seeing things through a child's eyes is what you'll do for a few years, but if you can hang onto that beautiful vision forever then you have beat us all.  For to see things through a child's eyes is to see Eden.  This world would be a much better place if we all had the eyes of a child.  You may get word one day that we are all born guilty.  That is wrong.  We are born innocent.  That is right.  We become guilty with such attributes as ignorance, arrogance and being too afraid to ask questions.

As I write this to you I am 28.  Young.  I feel old but 28 is still very young.  I'm sitting on my porch in Nashville, TN at ------ Ave listening to Doves new album Kingdom of Rust.  It's a good record.  But we will speak plenty of music later.  That I am sure of.  I'm also drinking PBR, though I prefer Guinness, and indulging in other things that I shouldn't, but I do.  I tell you these things to let you know a little bit about me.  Now that I think of my age and time, I am reminded of what Kurt Vonnegut says about dates in his book Jailbird.  He says he has to think of years as characters in his life, not just pages of a calendar.  You'll have good years and you'll have bad years.  But if you think of them as simply characters you may not feel as old as I do at such a young age.  But I digress.

So.  As I write this to you, it is your first birthday and I am 28 sitting on my porch asking how and why.


(written in April of 2009)