AND JOYFUL NOISE

Dear Spike:

You laugh like a maniac. Like a mad viking sailing over the the end of the world. Like a mathematician who has woken up from a strange and colorful dream — only to find pi solved on a crumpled up napkin by her bedside.

It's frightening. And oh so beautiful.

Never stop laughing like that, OK? Whatever it is that you see in this world. Whatever it is that inspires that cackle, that guffaw, that whoop, that hoot. Whatever you feel, deep down inside when you're suddenly overwhelmed by that great and joyful noise.

Don't ever lose that.

I'm just guessing here — being long of this world, I suppose it's just hard for me to understand — but I think what I'm seeing is the hysterical manifestation of epiphany. You're at this beautiful point in your life in which you've begun to recognize things for what they are and for what you imagine them to be. All at once. You see and smell and taste and touch and develop ideas that belong to no one but yourself. You're creating irony and paradox all of your own making – and only of your own understanding.

Or maybe you're just laughing. What the hell do I know?

No, no — here's what I know: Something is happening in that tiny head of yours. Something miraculous. Something sweet. Something that I'm unlikely to ever understand. Something that, alas, you're unlikely to remember when you are as old as me.

But try. When you're alone, if you must (for yes, it's true, some people will not understand.) Try to laugh as you once did.

Like a frog who has found a princess' kiss. Like a mosquito zipping headlong into a flame. Like a wild beast in defiance of the brightest hunter's moon.

Laugh like a maniac. Laugh.

Love,
dad

A BALL GOWN

Dear Spike:

You: "What's this, mama?"

Your mother: "That's a ball gown."

You: "A ball gown?"

Your mother: "That's right. Where do you think you might wear a ball gown?"

You: "To the ball game!"

Love,
dad

NECKLACES AND BRACELETS

Dear Spike:

Your mother and I were chatting in the kitchen when we suddenly realized that you'd disappeared.

We checked the bathroom, the living room, the dining room and your bedroom...

... and then we heard a rustling sound coming from our room — where you had overturned your mother's jewelry box and were busy trying on her necklaces and bracelets.

Quite cute — save for the fact that you'd managed to tangle up all the chains into one of those mind-numbing Chinese sculpture puzzles.

Your mother was not happy.

I don't wear her jewelry, so I just had a nice, long schadenfreudian belly laugh.

Love,
dad

CHASING YOU NOW

Dear Spike:

I don't know how it happened or when it happened.

But I know why it happened: The sun rises and sets and rises again. The moon comes and goes, waxes and wanes. The Big Dipper — that simple, stalwart sign under which I fell in love with your mother — spins round and round and round again.

Time passes. Children grow.

You're no longer a baby. You're a genuine little girl.

The pigtails may have had something to do with it — not with your transformation from infant to toddler but with my late-in-coming recognition of that change. Your mother fretted over the haircut we gave you until she found that she could gather up your remaining locks into splendid tufts on either side of your perfect little skull. The effect is rather devilish. Naughty. And I dare say it suits you, kiddo. But, alas, it's the hairdo of a little girl.

You talk like a paid-by-the-case public defender who has borrowed just a taste of her client's meth. A thousand words a minute. Ten thousand. A whole dictionary of animals, colors, shapes, names.

Nouns. Lots and lots and lots of nouns.

Our last stroll around the park sounded something like this:

"Tree. Car. People. Running. Doggy. Doggy! Doggy!! Please doggy! Ah, Doggy. Pet? Pet. Doggy. Bye bye. Tree. Sky. Cold. Cold. Daddy! Cold! Daddy! Thank you. Tree. Running. Bike. People. People. People! Doggy. Doggy? Doggy! Doggy!!!!!!!!!"

And you understand. You really understand. Enough to follow directions. And enough to be maddeningly obstinate. You know "no." Oh no, how you know "no."

You play games. You sing songs. You know our daily routine. Even still, you cry when you mother leaves for work in the morning — not, as I once believed, because you fear she'll disappear forever, but rather because you know very well that she'll be back and you know how much you'll miss her while she's gone.

You ask questions. You make statements. You tell jokes. All in one- and two-word bursts.

You run. Ready. Set. Go. You run. Sometimes you hold my fingers and let me run along.

I'm chasing you now, little one. When did it happen that I started chasing you? When did any of this happen? It's all such a beautiful blur.

Sometimes I wonder how on God's Green Earth it all came to this, but mostly I just laugh and smile and marvel at how damn fun it all is.

I do not lament the days behind us. You and I and your mother are making the best of what we've been given. And when every minute is better than the last, why would I stop to fret over the passing of time?

Time passes. Children grow.

You're no longer a baby. You're a genuine little girl.

And I couldn't be a happier father.

Love,
dad

FOREIGN POLICY EXPERIENCE

Dear Spike:

Your mother and I sat down for dinner tonight. Nothing gourmet. Far from it in fact: we had salisbury steaks, tomatoes, peas and poutine.

The latter dish is a Canadian fast food staple consisting of french fries, cheese curds or mozzarella and gravy. I think the word "poutine" might mean "coronary" in French, but I'm not sure.

Before digging in, your mother considered the menu and asked: "Since we're eating Canadian tonight, does that give us foreign policy experience?"

I recognize that, by the time you're old enough to read this letter, this joke will have no relevance to you.

But tonight, it was damn funny.

Love,
dad

REALLY FUNNY TRICKS

Dear Spike:

Someday, when you have a child, make sure to teach it to do really funny tricks for your friends.

Trust me.

Love,
dad

AIN'T NO DOUBT

Dear Spike:

A year ago at this moment I was holding your tiny body in my arms, rocking in you a not-so-comfy chair in your mother's room on the maternity ward at LDS Hospital.

That chair, that room and that entire ward are all gone now — moved to a new hospital a couple of miles down the road.

That's just the way things work in this world. The new replaces the old. Then the new gets old. And so on an so on.

Some people think it all moves too fast. And maybe they're right. After all, one moment I was rocking you in my arms, the next moment I was listening to you say "mama" for the very first time, a few moments later you we're going to swimming lessons.

And then, boom, here we were, eating birthday cake, singing that silly song, blowing out your candle.

Sure, it can all go by in the blink of an eye. Faster even. And particularly when you really don't want it to.

But if you stop to breathe, to watch, to listen, to smell, to touch, to laugh, to feel, to hurt, to know, to learn, to love — yes, especially to love — you can still enjoy the hell out of it along the way.

The past year has been the best of my life.

Yes, because of you, but maybe not in the way you think. You've forced me to turn on my senses in a way I've never had to do before — at least not for minutes upon hours upon days upon weeks upon months at a time. Together, and particularly with your mother's help, we've enjoyed the hell out of this thing called life, slowing down to watch the birds dancing in the lilac bush outside your window; to listen to the rain patter, patter plop against the backyard fence; to smell the lillies that grow in Mr. Vestal's front yard; to laugh at laughing, just because laughing itself is so darn funny; to feel the cat's long black and white fur (and sometimes to yank it); to hurt when we bump heads together in an ill-fated attempt at a hug; to know every single inch of the floor (and to eat most of what is on it - yecckhhh!); to learn about each other, step by step and sometimes by trial and error...

...

...

... and to love each other. To love the heck out of each other. To love the low-down, right-on, sure-as-can-be, ain't-no-doubt, gonna-be-yours-forever-and-then-some heck out of each other.

Thank you. For all of it.

Love,
dad

DROPPED MY COMPUTER

Dear Spike:

I dropped my computer the other day.

It broke.

You laughed.

Brat.

Love,
dad

ALL SACRILEGE ASIDE

More important than the Iowa caucuses. More historic than the New Hampshire primaries. More democratic than Super-Duper Tuesday. It's Spike Poll 3! Make your vote count! (It's just off to the right hand side there... a little down... a little further... there, you found it!)



Dear Spike:

I don’t know where I was when I first heard Desmond Tutu speak. I can’t tell you when I first heard U2’s Bono sing. And I’m not sure when my long and tortured relationship with St. Augustine began.

But I can still remember the very first time I heard a Weird Al Yankovic song.

I was in the third grade. My class was out in the playground, standing around the outside line of the dodgeball circle. Mrs. Tillman was leading an aerobics class. She had a big black boombox, in which was playing a mixed tape of Weird Al songs.

I’d never laughed so hard in my entire life.

Granted, I was only 9 years old, but still.

Sometimes you chose your personal prophets. Sometimes they choose you.

I know, it’s all kind of blasphemous, right? I mean over here, behind Door No. 1, we’ve got the archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, who helped end apartheid in South Africa, won the Nobel Prize, and whose ticket for heaven is rumored to read: “Section 1, Row 1, Seat 1.”

And then over here, behind Door No. 2, we’ve got the guy who sang “Dare to be Stupid.”

To wit:
“Put down your chainsaw and listen to me,
It's time for us to join in the fight,
It's time to let your babies grow up to be cowboys,
It's time to let the bedbugs bite.”

But all sacrilege aside, I’d be really thrilled if someday...

... you know, before you fall in love with some talentless bunch of boy band eunuchs, and beg, beg, beggggg me to buy you a $150 ticket to go watch the corporately contrived group of hacks lip sync in front of 25,000 other preteen girls, all screaming at octaves and decibels that even Dick Cheney would concede violate the Geneva Conventions ban on torture...

... your first concert was a Weird Al concert.

And maybe your first date could be your dad.

And maybe we could sing along to “Yoda,” and dance along with “Fat” and laugh as the rail-thin, accordion playing singing comedian from Lynwood, Calif. belts out his version of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody — polka style.

There will be plenty of time, later on, for us to discuss the lessons of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation commission and to debate whether Augustine’s just war theory is adaptable for modern humanists and to argue over who your generation’s Bono is, the way my father and I once pondered who my generation’s John Lennon would be.

And yes, I expect we’ll have some of those conversations.

But sometimes it’s simply best to...

“Settle down, raise a family, join the PTA,
Buy some sensible shoes and a Chevrolet,
And party 'til you're broke and they drive you away,
It's OK — you can dare to be stupid.”

Love,
dad

LAUGH SO HARD

Dear Spike:

For as long as you’ve been with us, we’ve always known when you are unhappy.

You cry when you’re hungry. You cry when you want to be held. And — particularly as of late — you cry when your little gums hurt.

But today, for the first time, you discovered a new way to communicate with us: You giggled.

It happened first while we were in the kitchen, then several times while we were at the park. You laughed. You laughed so much it made me laugh too — and then I laughed so hard that I nearly cried.

I love the sound of laughter. I love how it fills a room, rising above the din of normal conversation, demanding and contagious. I love how perfectly it translates into any language, any culture. I love how everyone laughs a little bit different than everyone else, but how we all — every last one of us — laugh.

The past three months not withstanding, you will laugh a whole lot more, in this life, than you will cry. You will smile more than you frown. And you will feel joy far more than you feel sadness.

Share that joy. Share those smiles. And share your laughter. Laugh hard, laugh long, laugh often. Laugh so much it makes others laugh too.

Laugh so hard it makes you cry.

Love,
dad