REMEMBER THAT

Dear Spike:

The fireworks were still bursting outside when it struck me: It’s now 2007 — the year in which you are going to be born.

I do pretty well remembering dates. Your mother and I were engaged on Dec. 9. We were married on Aug. 10. We moved to Salt Lake City on Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17.

So when you’re born, I won’t have any trouble remembering your birthday. I promise.

But for whatever reason, I have a bit more trouble remembering years. Just now, for instance, I had to glance up at the date on the picture hanging on our bedroom wall to remember that your mother and I were engaged in 2001. Working from there, I can recall that we were married in 2002.

Then, using the knowledge that I’m about to hit my three-year anniversary at the newspaper and working backward, I can tell you that we moved to Salt Lake City in 2004.

So I hope you’ll forgive me if, in 10 or 20 years, I have to think a bit before coming up with your birth year.

And, in a way, I hope I do have to think a bit about it.

Here’s why:

On the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt, addressing a joint session of Congress, declared Dec. 7, 1941 would be “a day that will live in infamy.” Indeed, for millions of Americans, that day (and year) became a marking point in time — a date by which to remember other events, from marriages to birthdays to bar mitzvahs.

Sixty years later, our nation was given a new marking point: Sept. 11, 2001. And these days, when I’m trying to remember in what year something happened, that serves as a convenient, if not lamentable, starting place.

So ask me when I graduated from college and I’m likely to recall that I was awarded my degree just a few months after the attacks on New York and Washington D.C. (the date on the diploma, coincidentally, is Dec. 7.)

And ask me when I worked in the small farming town of Lebanon, Ore. and I’m likely to recall that I left my job as a sportswriter at The Express just a few months before the Twin Towers fell.

And so it goes. Working forward and back from that date (much like I used the date on the picture on our wall to remember when I married your mom) I can tell you where I lived, where I worked, where I traveled and even what concerts and ball games I attended over the past 10 years.

There are a few other dates that serve as markers for my memory — I joined the Navy in 1996, I arrived at college in 1998, I went to Israel to celebrate the New Year in 2000 — but none so much as 2001.

But this year, I hope, will be marked by nothing in my mind except for your birth. And if I have to think, a bit, to remember, that’s OK.

I want the world to welcome you in peace. Simple, unremarkable, unrememberable peace.

Love,
dad