SHE MIGHT BE

Dear Spike:

If there is a God, several religious traditions tell us, she created us in Her image.

Some folks take that to mean we have a lot to live up to. But I’ve always kind of figured it means God must be just as fallible, dirty, ugly, greedy, jealous, hateful and violent as we are.

But sometimes, I think, God know must know when my opinion of mankind — and thus, of Her — has sunk to a new low. Because whenever I’m ready to write off mankind and God alike as hopeless failures, I see a glimpse of what we could be.

And in a glimpse of a glimpse, I see what She might be.

A few weeks ago, I happened to be in your mother’s classroom when the school librarian came in to schedule a time for the kindergartners to visit the library for the annual book fair.

I’ll bet you’ll love the book fair. I certainly did when I was a child. It was a traveling bookstore — a chance to touch and hold a shiny new book, to leaf through its pages (or even take a peek at the end) before shelling out a few bucks to make it mine.

But something was instantly clear to me as I listened to your mother work out a time to bring her class to the fair. And it almost broke my heart.

Most of your mom’s students can’t even afford to buy a school lunch. And so I doubted any of them were going to have the money to purchase a book at the fair. Instead, I feared, they would be paraded in front of a bunch of great books — and then told that, unless they had money — they wouldn’t be allowed to take one home.

When the librarian left, I asked your mom how many of her students would be able to buy a book.

“Maybe two or three,” she sighed.

“And how many do you think have ever received a brand new book of their own?” I asked.

“Maybe two or three,” she sighed again.

As a matter of fact, she lamented, a lot of her students probably didn’t even have a single book, new or used, at home, except maybe for the ones they borrowed from the school library.

A few days ago, I sent an e-mail to everyone I work with at the newspaper, explaining that I was going to set out a coffee can in hopes of collecting enough money to let every kid in your mom’s class pick out a brand new book of their own at the fair. It was probably a violation of workplace protocol, but I thought it would be funny if they tried to fire me for collecting money to buy books for kids.

Last night I counted the money. There was enough for every kid in your mom’s class to buy a book.

And for every kid in the kindergarten class down the hall.

And for every kid in the class next to that.

And for every kid in the class next to that.

This morning, every single kindergarten student at your mom’s school went to the book fair and picked out a book of their very own, all thanks to a bunch of cynical, cold-blooded journalists.

That was plenty enough to make my day. And it did wonders to restore my faith in humanity.

But I'm not sure that God's all that good at leaving well enough alone.

This afternoon, I spoke to an incredible man named Ahmed Shah Karimi. Shah, as folks call him, lives in Concord — just about 45 minutes up Interstate 680 from where your grandparents live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A few years back, Shah served as an interpreter for a National Guard unit from Utah that I have been following. And that's how I happened to be speaking to him today.

Born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan, Shah attended university in India. Among his classmates was a young political science student named Hamid Karzai. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Shah went to the United States and took a job driving limousines in New York City. Karzai returned to Afghanistan, where he helped raise money to fight against the Russian occupation.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 changed both men’s lives forever. Karzai — who had been exciled to Pakistan during the Taliban regime's rule — was installed as Afghanistan’s president following the U.S. invasion. Shah, who was picking up a client near the World Trade Center when the first hijacked airplane crashed, also found himself back in his native land — working for the U.S. military.

One day, Shah told me, he took an afternoon off to go into Kabul.

“It was my first time back in the city,” he said. “And when I got out of the taxi, I looked around and saw so many little boys, just wandering around on the street. I came into a shop and I stopped to talk with people and they told me ‘yes, these children are orphans. They have no fathers. No parents.”

There are 40,000 orphans living on the streets of Kabul. According to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, the city’s orphanages can only shelter about 2,000.

As the story is told by Shah's friends, the intrepid interpreter pretty much made a B-line to Karzai's presidential palace, emerging from a meeting with his old classmate with a 50-acre land grant on the outskirts of Kabul and a plan to build the nation's largest orphanage and school.

Shah didn’t know anything about fundraising, or building, or managing an orphanage. But he knew what he had to do.

“As a human being I had to act,” he said. He’s now well on his way to raising the funds to move his family back to Afghanistan and begin construction on his project.

Maybe there is a God. And maybe She created us in Her image. And maybe She is just as fallible, dirty, ugly, greedy, jealous, hateful and violent as we are.

But maybe, also, we have a lot to live up to.

If only in a glimpse of a glimpse, I hope you see Her that way.

Love,
dad

DAYS OF SUMMER

Dear Spike:

I knew this was coming. After all, your mother has spent almost every waking moment with you since you were born. It was ineludible that, at some point, she would recognize all summers must end.

She cried at the thought. “Do you think she will miss me?” she asked about the time, a month from now, when she will return to work. “Do you think she’ll be sad that I am not there?”

Of course, I told her, it would be so. I’ve seen the way you sleep, cuddled against her chest as she rocks on the rocking chair. I’ve heard the way you’ve cried for her to lift you from your cradle. And I am not so foolish as to believe my bottle and her breast are the same thing, for you.

I’ve never seen two people happier to be together.

Yes, I’m certain you will miss having your mother at your beck and call. And yes, I know she will miss you, too.

Of course, the reasonable among us would recognize the futility of squandering our happiest moments by fretting over the inevitable. Then again, your mother has never made claim to membership in any gang of reason. Thank God for that, as I’m still here.

By way of trying to make her feel better about things, I reminded her that I was, in fact, not such a bad person to leave in charge of her daughter’s care as she returns to her pre-you duty of saving the world, one kindergartener at a time. I am reasonably responsible, after all. And careful, too (though you’ve taken to sudden squirms and random gyrations as you discover this wonderful thing we call “muscle control,” I’ve not yet so much as stuck you with a diaper pin or dropped you on your head.)

It was, of course, not fear of my parenting that had your mother in tears this evening but fear of how much she would long to care for you herself. And in this matter, there is little I can do to alleviate her angst. For it is simply true that all summers must end.

You’ll learn that, I reckon, at some point between kindergarten and first grade. In the first weeks of August, perhaps, we’ll get to speaking about getting you a new lunch box or purchasing a new back pack and you’ll suddenly recognize the finite nature of the lovely, long and lazy days of summer.

At some point, down the road, you’ll realize that summers not only end but are, in fact, never quite long enough. And at some point not long thereafter, summer will cease to be a vacation at all and simply be — as I am using it at this very moment — a metaphor for other joys of life.

Yes, my child, all summers must end. It is that very quality that makes them so wonderful to begin with.

Love,
dad

WHAT YOU SEEK

Dear Spike:

Let’s see... Two funerals, a national campaign to discredit me, allergy season has officially begun and I feel like clawing my eyeballs out... yup, it’s been a bad week.

But last night, your mom and I went to our favorite Chinese restaurant. And here’s what her fortune cookie said: “What you seek is closer than you realize.”

And with that, everything was good.

Love,
dad

COMMON GOODNESS

Dear Spike:

Your mother and I were back in the emergency room this week, although this time it was for me, not you.

I was playing soccer Tuesday night, dribbling along the sidelines and looking for a teammate to pass to when suddenly — bam! — I was on the ground. I’m still not sure what happened. One moment I was dribbling and the next moment I was on the turf, dizzy and confused.

My teammates tell me an opposing player came from behind me and slammed me — and my head — hockey style against the wall. It was late in the game and so, after peeling myself from the ground, I stumbled to the bench and sat down. After the game, I kept asking my teammates what happened. And they kept laughing.

All of that should have been a sign that I shouldn’t have gotten into my car, but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.

About halfway home, my lips began to tingle and I began to feel nauseous — signs, I correctly identified, of a concussion. I called your grandmother so I would have someone to talk to as I drove home.

Your mom and I got to the hospital about a half hour later. The doctor only spent about three minutes checking me over before sending me home.

My concussion was a mild one, he said. He told me to go home to get some sleep and told your mother to wake me up every few hours, just to make sure I wasn’t dead.

Given how unconcerned he seemed, I felt a little foolish for having even gone into the emergency room. And I felt even more foolish when, as we were leaving, the medical assistant hit us up for a $100 co-pay.

A hundred bucks.

For three minutes with a doctor.

And that was just the co-pay. God only knows what the hospital charged our insurance company.

Still, believe it or not, I recognize that I am one of the fortunate ones — and not just because my concussion was only a mild one.

Today on the radio I heard John Edwards, a senator from North Carolina who is running for president, make a pitch for national health care. That’s something our Democratic politicians have been promising for a long, long time, but even when they’ve taken power they haven’t been able to make it happen.

Our country has the best medical system in the world, but it’s shared unequally among its citizens.

Those who have jobs with socially responsible companies — and I grudgingly include my employer in that group — have access to fairly comprehensive medical care. And though it can still be costly to go to the hospital, we’re fairly well taken care of when we do.

Others — who work just as hard but do so for companies which have decided they cannot afford to provide their employees with health insurance — must purchase their own insurance on the open market. That can be extremely expensive. And so often those people simply do without.

When you are older, your mother and I will tell you about the idea of a common good. We’ll point to our roads, parks and police officers as examples of how, collectively, we can enrich and provide for everyone better than we could possibly expect to do as individuals.

It would seem that universal health care would be a perfect example of this — indeed, it seems to me to be a moral imperative for a society as rich as ours.

Perhaps by the time we’re able to talk about these sorts of things, politicians like Mr. Edwards will have gotten past the talking and onto the doing. Perhaps then we’ll have moved on to the next moral imperatives: Ending poverty and hunger in our nation and around our globe.

But I doubt it. The truth is, we’re very likely to still be working on these problems when you’re my age — and perhaps when your children are my age.

It’s easy to say no to something we know to be right because it seems impossible — or impossibly far away. And being of a privileged class of “haves” makes it even easier to ignore the plights of “have nots.”

I expect you to care, nonetheless.

The power of the common good is immense, but it takes faith, good will and work on the part of decent people.

We’ll get there, I know, because I believe in our common goodness.

And I hope you will believe this, too.

Love,
dad