A LIFETIME AGO

Dear Spike,

I woke up this morning from one of the worst nights of sleep of my life. And I only say that I "woke up" because I did manage to doze off just enough to have several nightmares, all of which involved a deranged gang of killers that was chasing me and, to my greater horror, a teen-aged version of you.

I rarely remember my dreams. But this one was pretty vivid. Strange.

You don't look bad with purple hair, by the way, but I wasn't so happy with the tattoos. Pin-up girls? On your forearms? Really?

There was a soundtrack, too. A John Phillip Souza march, of all things. I'm not kidding. It was the craziest thing.

But in the early moments of the morning, when I was still trying to separate the dream world from reality, it was at least something to laugh at. I wasn't comfortable talking about the other parts of the dream, at first. Too real. Too early. But the Souza stuff? That was something I could tell your mother about when she asked.

And as soon as the words fell from my lips, I realized what had happened.

Souza. Military marches. Terror. Ten years.

I know lots of people are saying today that it seems like it was just yesterday. But that's not the case for me. It seems like a lifetime ago.

The last decade has brought, in no particular order, an end to my military service. A marriage to your mother. A move to Utah. Three trips to Iraq, among a half-dozen other international reporting assignments. Your mom got her master's degree. Then I did. And then, a few months ago, I got a brand new career.

We've lost your mother's Gaga. My grandmother and grandfather, too. My sister married, divorced, remarried, had a beautiful baby boy. My brother moved in with us. And then he moved out.

And, of course, there was you.

Sure, I remember that day like it was yesterday. But it doesn't seem like it was yesterday.

It was a lifetime ago. For me. For you. For our broken nation.

Guantanamo. Abu Ghraib. Predator drones. Endless war. Black ops budgets bursting at the secret seams. All the while, more debt, more debt, more debt for our nation.

What a fucking legacy.

This is just a date. No more and no less important than any other, despite all of the attention. But I will say this for Sept. 11, 2001: It is the date by which I count, forward and backward, to nearly every other event in my life.

So in that way, I suppose, a decade is meaningful.

I wonder and worry at what the next decade will bring. By the time it passes, you'll be about as old as you were in my dream last night. (But please, dear God, not with those tattoos.) You'll be old enough, by then, to understand what happened on that terrible day. And you'll be old enough to know what has happened ever since.

What a nightmare.

But here, in the spirit of optimism, is to the next decade. May she be a damn sight better than the old one.

Love,

dad