PLEASE GO VOTE

Dear Spike's Friends:

I was there, in the fall of 2005, standing in the shadow of the tapered golden dome of the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, as Iraqis braved shootings, bombings, and even beheadings to vote in that nation's first constitutional referendum. On that day, 10 Iraqi poll workers were kidnapped, dozens of others were killed or injured, and six U.S. service members lost their lives.

What's stopping you, today, from voting?

Love,
Spike's dad

WINNING THE GAME

Dear Spike:

It's April 14, which means it's time to start working on our family's taxes.

You can call it procrastination if you'd like, but I don't see it that way. For me, Tax Day is a holiday of sorts, not unlike Independence Day or Memorial Day. It's a time to reflect on what this country means to me — and what it's worth. And just as I can't stand it when I see Christmas ornaments on store shelves months before December 25, it's never felt right to rush into April 15, even if I do have a big refund coming.

Of course, this year that does not appear to be the case. I've spent the past three hours poring over our family's W-2s, receipts and student loan interest statements. I've calculated and recalculated the square footage of my home office. I've checked and double checked to make sure that Daddy's Little Tax Deduction (that would be you) has properly been accounted for. And by the looks of things, we're still $500 in the hole. Seems your mother's new job (and it's associated pay bump) swept us right up into a new income bracket. And even with rather large deductions for the interest we paid on our home and the baby we brought into the world, we simply didn't withhold enough over the past year.

The game's not over yet, though. I've still got to calculate out the mileage I put on our family's car for work — that'll save us a few bucks. I'm also trying to figure out whether my daily cup of coffee is a business, child care or medical expense. (A note to the good folks at the IRS, a government agency for which I hold the deepest respect: I'm just kidding! I know very well that coffee is, in fact, a charitable contribution!)

Even if I'm able to zero out our additional tax liability (I call this "winning the game") we'll still have paid roughly $14,000 in state and federal taxes this year. That doesn't include the money your mother and I threw into the great black hole that is Social Security, or the cash we tossed into the even greater, blacker hole that is Medicare, or the 6.6 percent sales tax we pay on just about everything we buy at the store or the 45 cents-per-gallon fuel tax we pay every time we hit the gas station.

All told, it's a lot of cash. But in exchange, we get a lot of stuff.

We get roads. And police officers. And firefighters. And clean drinking water. And safe food.

We get national parks. And school nurses. And dog catchers. And well-regulated slot machines.

We also get some things that I wish we didn't have.

We get ill-advised wars. And billion-dollar weapons. And unconscionable foreign policy. And federally-mandated education policies. And poorly regulated mega-businesses.

When we pay our taxes, we get a bunch of stuff we want and a bunch of stuff we don't. And that's all part of living in a semi-free market, quasi-socialized democratic republic.

For a lot of folks, it's really frustrating to think of all the great things our nation could have if we would simply reevaluate our priorities — and sometimes I feel frustrated, too. But in the years that I lose the game and we have to pay Uncle Sam a little extra, I try to think about all the good our money might do, and I make a wish that in the coming year, we'll become just a little bit wiser.

And in the lower left corner of the check, I write: "For America."

Love,
dad

A SUDDEN CONNECTION

Dear Spike:

Snowing again today. Nine inches, maybe more.

The roads haven’t been plowed yet, so your mother decided to walk to work. We’re upstairs watching this amazing white world from the window in my office (which over the past few months has come to more closely resemble your office.)

A few short and random thoughts on this beautiful winter morning:

• Over the past few days, I’ve spoken to or corresponded with several friends whom I have not seen in some time. I’ve made an effort this year to reengage those friends with whom, for whatever reason, I have lost contact — and there’s a long list. I’m glad I’ve done this. It’s been especially rewarding to share with them your story and to hear about their lives, their families and their journeys.

• I think I may have made a new friend in Kenya this week. He’s a fellow journalist who wrote me in response to an article I penned regarding America’s use of Third-World mercenaries to defend its military and diplomatic bases in Iraq. Seems we’ve got a lot in common and we’ve begun to correspond.

• A song comes to mind... “Make new friends but keep the old,” I think it goes.

• I heard on the radio this morning that machete sales are up in Kenya. And though I’ve never even met my new friend in the flesh, I felt a sudden connection to that place, where candidates for parliament and the presidency have been stirring ethnic divisions in an attempt to win more votes.

• I’ve had similar experiences when reading or hearing reports from many of the places I’ve traveled and many more where I have friends. It is often a woeful experience, but I feel very privileged to be connected to this world in this way.

• Another song comes to mind (and probably won’t leave my head all morning now) “it’s a world of laughter, a world of tears, it’s a world of hope and a world of fears.”

• Outside it looks as though someone has shaken a snow globe, with tiny flakes swirling about in the air up, down, left, right. The trees look like cotton bushes. The street is like a long, flat sheet of white paper.

• It looks like we’re going to have a white Christmas. And so will those we know and love in places like Herat, Afghanistan; and in Frankfurt, Germany; and in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

• Yes, it’s a small world after all.

Love,
dad

HISTORIC AND HOLY

Dear Spike:

I usually vote in the mornings. Your mother usually votes in the afternoons. And often when she comes home she shakes her head and mutters something about how I once again made such an indelible impression on the little old bitties who volunteer at the polls.

“They just loooove you there,” she says, “I sign my name on the register and they just squeal. ‘Oooooh!’ they say. ‘We had another person by that name in here this morning. Was that your husband?’”

She thinks I flirt with the blue hairs. Maybe she’s right. I have been known to wink at the occasional octogenarian.

But do you know why I think they remember me? Really? Because I smile.

Ear to ear.

Every time.

I believe that voting is a sacred ritual. Like Holy Communion, the Hajj and the Seventh-Inning Stretch of a close ball game. And while it’s not popular to say such things these days, I believe that democracy is a gift from God.

Of course, I’m pretty sure communism was a gift from God also. And the the Black Plague. And Cheetos.

Sometimes God hits the mark. Sometimes She misses.

I’m not sure what She was thinking on Oct. 15, 2005, when Iraq’s citizens went to the polls to choose a new constitution. For the most part, Iraqis vote the way they’re told to by their tribal and religious leaders. So in truth, what I witnessed in Iraq on that day was little more than a religious census.

Still, it felt special. And historic. And holy.

I was just outside of the city of Najaf — close enough to see the tapered golden dome and two soaring minarets of the Imam Ali Shrine rising up into the polluted haze above the city. At a rundown village schoolhouse on the city’s west side, I walked along with a proud poll worker (a local teacher, I don’t think they have a League of Women Voters there) as he proudly showed off the box of ballots, the purple ink with which volunteers marked voters’ index fingers — and one brand new, baby blue, perforated cardboard privacy screen.

At that moment, a tall man with a scar on his face walked in, signed his name on a clipboard, picked up a ballot and walked toward the cardboard booth.

“Come around here so you can watch him vote,” the polling worker instructed through an interpreter as he followed behind the would-be voter.

I paused, frozen between what my journalistic sensibilities told be was a really nifty opportunity to watch history unfold and what my western democratic civilities tell me is a clear violation of a very hallowed privacy.

“Come, come,” the polling worker said as he watched from over the voter’s shoulder. “You’ll miss seeing who he chooses!”

Ultimately, I couldn’t bring myself to watch the guy cast his vote. And I tried — albeit unsuccessfully — to explain why to the poll worker. Voting is, after all, a sacred ritual, if only just to me.

Winston Churchill once quipped that democracy is worst form of government, “except for all the others.”

I’m not completely convinced that’s true. Nonetheless, it has been years since I missed an opportunity to vote.

I hope you’ll make a similar effort to be part of your government, if only in the small way of making it to the polls, each election day, with a smile on your face.

Ear to ear.

Every time.

Love,
dad

A BIT NOSTALGIC

Dear Spike:

At nearly five months old, your hair is still just a little tuft of fluff, most of it running down the center of your head.

That’s fine by me, as it makes for a righteous mohawk. Just a little water (or spit, depending upon what’s available) a few strokes and — voilà! — a wicked mane to match your name.

In fact, yours is such a cool ‘do that I started to get a bit nostalgic.

The last time I sported a mohawk — a spiky, Kool-aid red one, it was — I was 17 years old. I wasn’t a punk or an anarchist. I was just a kid who, with a few weeks to go before leaving for basic training, wanted to revel in what little freedom he had remaining.

By the time I’d ended my service to our empire, my hairline had receded to a point that made it rather ridiculous to even consider wearing a mohawk — or for that matter, wearing hair at all. Fact is, the last time I had any hair on my head was around the time I married your mother. Shortly thereafter, I started shaving my head completely. And I’ve been doing so ever since.

But with my paternity leave, last month, came an opportunity to let my hair out, so to speak. I had no bosses to impress. No one needed to take me seriously — least of all myself. And your mother, bless her heart, said she couldn’t care less how I wore my hair, so long as I promised to make sure that you were getting fed and changed on a regular basis.

It wasn’t really much of a mohawk. Not the way you might imagine one, anyway. My hairline starts at a place near the apex of my skull — perhaps an inch toward my nose from there.

I called it a halfhawk.

It was pretty ugly. But I kind of liked it. Still, I knew I’d have to shave it off eventually.

And I knew exactly when that would be.

I used to dress up for work every day. Slacks, shirt, tie, suspenders — even a fedora hat, sometimes.

The whole bit.

These days, though, I spend a lot less time in the office. And on the days when I actually do make an appearance there, it’s typically in shorts, sandals and a T-shirt— often the one I slept in the night before.

Most of the folks with whom I work know that, if I do happen to come to work in a tie, it’s because someone died.

One of the more somber parts of my job at the newspaper is writing about local soldiers who are killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Most things get easier with time and experience. This job is the exception.

To date, I’ve written the front-page obituaries of more than 30 slain service members. They have died in mortar attacks, roadside explosions, shootings, accidents and suicide bombings. After a while, I know, the readers of my paper have stopped distinguishing one dead soldier from another. It’s my job to give them a reason to pay attention, one more time.

And no, it never gets any easier. It’s a miserable assignment — made bearable only by the faint promise that, in telling these stories, I might in some small way be helping to dispel the utterly fictional notion that war is glorious.

War is not glorious. War is hell. War is the hell of hell.

And if the hell of hell has its own hell, it is involuntarily populated by the soul-crushed families of those left behind to ponder where all the flowers have gone.

I met Carol Thomas Young a day after she lost her son, Brandon, in a bombing in Baghdad. She struck me as remarkably poised for a women who had suffered so great a loss. Later, she would describe that day — and all of the days and weeks following Brandon’s death — as surreal, frightening and confusing.

“I walked around in a haze for the better part of that year,” she recently told me.

Amidst everything else they are going through, I doubt my appearance in shorts and sandals — or even a mohawk, for that matter — could possibly make things any worse for these families.

Still, I prefer not to find out. And so it was that, at about 12:45 this afternoon, I found myself in the bathroom, madly running the electric clippers over my scalp before hopping into a pair of slacks, a clean shirt, tie, jacket and fedora hat.

On the drive out to West Valley City, where I was to meet the family of a soldier who was killed Tuesday in Afghanistan, I thought about the mess of hair I’d left in the sink.

And I started to get a bit nostalgic. For a haircut I’d lost only minutes earlier.

Not because it was fun. And not because it looked good — because it certainly did not. And not even because I enjoyed sharing a hairdo with my daughter — which I certainly did.

No, I missed being able to say, “I’ll shave it off the next time I have to interview a dead soldier’s family,” and being able to imagine that day would never come.

When will I ever learn?

Love,
dad

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

ONLY A PAUSE

Dear Spike:

Deep inside my soul, where my hope and faith in humanity exists unblemished by the common foulness of our reality, is where I’ll forever hold the story of what happened early this afternoon.

The Iraqi soccer team — a motley group of Sunni, Shia and Kurdish semipros known as the “Lions of Mesopotamia” — stunned a much more experienced South Korean side in the semifinals of the Asian Cup held in Malaysia, falling into a pile in the middle of the pitch under the flag of their wartorn nation.

Thousands of miles away in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf and Ramadi, their countrymen poured out of their homes. Iraqis have grown coldly used to eruptions in their streets, but not like this.

Not like this.

It was sheer joy. Jubilation and unity. Dancing. Singing. Crying.

•••

On Christmas Day of 1914, British and German soldiers fighting on the western front in World War 1 emerged from their foxholes during a short ceasefire. Someone produced a football. And as Limeys and Krauts are wont to do when they’re not fighting, a game began.

The “soccer truce” may have lasted as long as an hour.

And then the War to End All Wars began anew.

•••

Nearly a century later — in a nation carved from the wreckage of a war that only begat more wars — a new soccer truce brought pause to a bloody civil war.

But as it was in 1914, it was only a pause.

Within hours of the Iraqi victory, late this afternoon, two suicide bombers walked into separate crowds of revelers, killing 50 and wounding twice as many more.

•••

It’s an ugly game we play, this thing called war. By far it is the most loathsome side of our humanity.

Yet deep inside my soul, my hope and faith remain. And so, short-lived though they were, I choose to embrace the truces, not the wars. I choose to embrace the joy, not the hate.

I choose to embrace the beautiful game over its ugly rival.

As you discover our humanity, I hope you do too.

Love,
dad