Venting is only good for the venter

Baby, I remember this one job I had.
Employees vented all the time.

They’d come into an office,
shut the door and
rant about the stupidity of their coworkers.
They’d rant about the procedure.
They’d rant about the idiots around them.

And then they’d leave.
Leave me utterly winded.

It was addictive too,
before I knew it,
I was venting to my coworkers,
overreacting to emails,
blowing imagined slights out of proportion and
venting
behind closed office doors.

What I needed at that job, what they needed at that job, was someone secure enough to say, “What are you going to do about it?”

They needed someone to stop the endless roundabout venting.

It’s tempting to vent all the time, about every real and imagined slight.
But before you vent to an unsuspecting friend or coworker, take a moment to consider the effect.
Will you just rile up your listener?

Venting is only good for the venter.

Patience is a virtue

When we were little, your auntie and I were often told “Patience is a virtue.”

(We repeated it as Patience is a Gertrude, but we got the gist.)

It’s just so hard as little kids, waiting for stuff to happen just seems indeterminable.
The wait goes on forever.

And then, all of a sudden, you’re a grownup.
Years become months.
Weeks become minutes.
Time starts flying by, so fast you fear that you’ll never fit it all in — really, is it four-thirty already?

What happened to the glorious anguish that preceded Christmas?
What happened to the indeterminable wait in the car for everyone to pile in to head to Country Kitchen?

I once heard an interesting theory about this perception of time.
When you’re five, a year is a fifth of your life.
At 32, a year is merely one thirty second of your life.
The pie slices become mere slivers.
And time seems to whiz past so very fast.

Baby, I hope to help you squeeze all the joy you can out of these big pie slices I get to share with you.
I’m so lucky to be with you during the big ones.

It’s easy to be a victim

It’s so tempting to treat life as something that happens to you.
It’s so rewarding to feel that live is unfair.
Baby, you will be so annoyed with me for refusing to let you play the victim.

My mom did the same for me.
When I said “I can’t do this…”
She would say, “You just haven’t developed the skills…”
And gosh darn if she wasn’t right.

Yes, there will be times in your life when you are hurt, when someone maliciously takes something from you, when you are attacked.
And I will be there to hug you and share in your pain.
But when it comes down to it, you’re responsible for the decisions you make in your life.
You and you alone can control what happens to you.

I’ve seen it with some relatives, I’ve seen it with friends.
I’ve felt the temptation to be the victim myself.
It’s an easy way to get attention, to feel special.

This is not to say that victimization isn’t real.
There are horrible people doing horrible things to folks that don’t have the resources to defend themselves.

Baby, I hope we can help those people

But if you say that due to some external force,
some unfairness in the universe,
if you say that you can’t,

I’ll reply with,
“You just haven’t developed the skills yet.”
And I’ll be right.

Useful plants are my favorite

Baby, growing up in the Midwest, I feel like I miss out on some of the joy that Californians take in beauty for beauty’s sake.
I can’t just have a footrest, it also has to hold books and open beer.

I feel that way about plants.

We’ve had a recent run of warm weather and everyone in town’s talks about seeds, tomato types, soil preparation and compost. I went to a big hardware store the other day and tried to find some plants I was comfortable growing, herbs, peppers, beans, squash.

They were very hard to find.

Here on the West Coast, it seems folks are into growing the most beautiful flowers, big shrubs of green and ground cover. The purpose of these plants confuses me. Landscaping? Enhancing the beauty of one’s yard?
I guess it’s the same with lawns.

(My secret dream town would have the only lawn on public space, where it would be reserved for barefoot kickball games and freeze tag. In my dream town, front yards are vegetable gardens. Back yards, chicken coops. Side yards, for composting and hide and seek.

But I’m liberal like that.)

So baby, I’m telling you, when Mother’s day comes around and you’re rooting for a plant to send me.

I’m quite happy with the useful ones.
I prefer lavender to roses, chamomile to lilies, and basil to hostas.

You are unique

You are unique.

There is a chance, however,
there is roughly a one in a million chance that someone will test that they have the same DNA as you.
(But that’s just CSI stuff.)

However, German folklore says there’s a chance you have a Doppelgänger.

Doppelgänger is a German word, meaning any double or an exact look-alike of a person. Lots of fiction has been written about one’s “evil twin”. As I kid, I read a lot of doppelganger fiction and it scared me to pieces. (Is there such a thing as doppelganger fiction? Terrifying.)

Literally, Doppelgänger means doublewalker, a person who is acts exactly the same as someone else.
Doppelgängers are mostly considered bad luck bringers.

I was terrified of finding my Doppelgänger.
Always scanning the crowds, certain that my double was there, ready to take over my life and bring me bad luck,
I never found her.

Being scared of her was a waste of my time.
(And I could have spent that time developing some dichotomies.)

It was only folklore, the stuff of stories.

You are unique.
You come with traits and interests and love in a way that no one in the world has before.
You are you.

You are also ubiquitous

People are everywhere.
We breed and make more people.
Those people have people.
And before you know it, we have crowds and masses and groups.

And although those people are all unique, with their own traits and interests and love, there are also many of them.
You are only one of all of these people.

Part of our job as parents is to prepare you to get along with these people.
How to learn the rules of these people.
How to be one of these people.

Some of these rules won’t make any sense to you.
(Why can’t we take our pants off when we’re hot? I don’t know, really.)

Some of these rules are essential.
(We don’t hit when we’re angry. We don’t pass gas at the dinner table. We greet other humans with a smile and open heart.)

You are also ubiquitous.
Baby, I will do everything I can to help you play well with others.

Tenacity to a point

Baby, be tenacious.
Baby, sticking with a task to completion is good for you.
Baby, I wish I were more tenacious.

I often give up. I often throw in the towel. I often just quit.
I wish I didn’t.

But if you’re tenacious, if you stick with it until you feel
your point has been made
until your idea has realized
until you’re done

You’ll be so far ahead of everyone else.

We’re not really tricks people

I’ll know you take after your Auntie Clare if you like to play tricks.

Your Papa and I aren’t much of a trick player.
It’s kind of like how I’m not much of a gambler.
Just a trait.

But your Auntie Clare delights in fooling people,
in telling tall tales,
in putting one over on other people.

Your cousins are like that.
My dad was like that.
It’s a Yeager trait.

(Just wanted you to be aware of that.)

You only need to try once

When, as little kids, your Auntie and I were presented with food that we found repulsive, our parents would make us try a “no thank you helping.” It could be as small as three peas, but we needed to try at least something from every dish.

Having to take “no thank you helpings” helped your Auntie and I enjoy so much food as grownups. We tried mushrooms, peas, moose, venison, blue cheese, liver, even mussels. A lot of these “no thank you helpings” are now our favorite foods.

This works with trying friends. This works with kinds of literature. This works with sports.
You only need to try once.
Just try it.

Science and Spirit

It’s popular now to argue science vs. spirituality.

Some religious leaders will tell you that you can’t be religious and scientific at once.
Our current president enforces this thinking as well,
“You’re either with us or against us.”

That’s a false choice.

Scientists do this too.
I don’t currently know a spiritual scientist.
I can’t wait until I meet one.

This year, at the TED conference, a brain scientist named Jill Bolte Taylor gave a talk about her perceptions as she suffered a stroke. She was able to research the experience, and through that research, learned much about the brain.

From a recent interview, she said:

“People are ready to hear, “I’m not just this, I’m not just that.” We’re tired of the incredible bipolarity of science saying the spiritualists are nuts, and the spiritualists are tired of the closed-mindedness of the scientists. We’ve got this incredible chasm going on. How about a little corpus collosum love! Let’s get both hemispheres functioning and communicating in all of us so that we are open-minded and we are open-hearted because we’re actually utilizing both hemispheres.”

Let’s hear it for some corpus collosum love! Let’s hear it for your whole brain! Let’s hear it for the reward of open-heartedness, open-mindedness and the ability to be both creative and logical all at once.

My job as a web designer and developer forces me to jump between very linear thinking and very creative thinking. Your Papa’s work with music and scoring requires a very logical need to learn software and learn notes, and a very right-brained need for feeling and new ideas.

We support your development of a whole brain.

You can be good at math and art.
You can be an illustrating scientist.
You can be both brains together.

You are science and spirit.

We eat lots of soup

We eat a lot of soup in this family.

Soup is a great way to use up all the foods that may rot away.
Soup simmers all day, making our home smell delicious.
Soup is eaten with a spoon, the first utensil you’ll learn to use.

Some of the soups in our arsenal include:
Potato leek, vegetable, tomato, cheesy potato, beef and barley, cabbage soup, cream of mushroom, split pea, black bean, cream of cauliflower, cream of broccoli, french onion, thai shrimp, coconut curry, lentil, hot and sour, cream of asparagus, fresh pea, minestrone, gazpacho, clam chowder, turkey wild rice, corn chowder, chicken noodle, we can even make stone soup.

I bet you’ll even invent some soups that haven’t been invented yet.
(From what I know of you so far, I get the feeling you’re that kind of person.)

I can’t wait for you to help me make soup. I can’t wait for you to help me collect the ingredients, cut the vegetables, combine the spices. I can’t wait for us to stir together until our soup is ready.

Spite is a shameful motivation

Spite: malicious ill will prompting an urge to hurt or humiliate.

I’ve acted out of spite.
I’ve acted with the sole purpose of hurting someone else.
I’m not proud of it, in fact, I’m ashamed.

Spite is the weakest urge.
Throughout history, spite has never been proven wise.
It’s always the weakest reaction.

You will be tempted to act out of spite.
When someone breaks your heart, you will want revenge.
When someone takes your posessions, you will want to humiliate.
When you feel you can demonstrate your strength over someone’s weakness, you will want to hurt.

Stop. Breathe. Don’t.
Spite is a shameful motivation.

Act so that you learn from the experience.
Act so that you grow from your pain.
But don’t act to hurt or humiliate.

Two kinds of Righteous

From what I understand, there are two kinds of righteous,
There’s my favorite, the 1970′s term for awesome, rad or cool.
It’s a laid back sort of “Righteous, man.”
To mean something’s dead on, something’s a-okay.

There’s another fierce and angry righteous.
It’s when people claim themselves better than others.
Claim to be free of sin.
Claim to be morally just.
They’re more righteous than you.

They believe more than you.
They are better than you.
They’re more righteous than you.

This is a dangerous slope down which you can slide.
I’m not sure what spirituality you’ll decide upon.

I don’t know if you’ll pick up your grandparents’ devout Episcopalian beliefs,
I don’t know if you’ll follow your Papa’s atheism,
I don’t know if you’ll go along with my spiritual agnosticism,
I don’t know if you’ll join Scientology to further your career and earn a couple of dollars.

I look forward to learning about religions with you, and supporting you no matter what you decide.

Once, I knew someone who firmly believed I would go to hell for not being saved by his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He truly believed (and probably still does) that until I had also been washed in the Blood of His Lord, my soul would suffer eternally.

He believed that he was righteous and I was not.

Now, I can’t say whether or not I’m doomed to eternal damnation.
But I certainly hope not.

Baby, be aware of the risks of righteousness.
Believing that one is without sin, when the rest of the world is crawling with it, is a lazy way to ignore our humanity. It’s nothing more than the oldest way to make one feel superior. Claiming righteousness — which cannot be proven — is like claiming magical powers,
claiming ascendancy to a throne,
claiming superiority.

Baby, be the 1970s kind of righteous.
Baby, be totally rad.

Reason, Season or Life

When a very dear friend completely ceased all communication with me due to her new boyfriend, my heart broke.

I mulled the problem over with a bottle of wine and a new friend. This new friend told me why she never got upset about the end of friendships because she believed they fell into one of three categories,
“Reason. Season. Or life.”

It’s true. I don’t need to have all friends forever and ever.
Friends can be part of a time in my life.
Friends’ contribution to my life (and mine to theirs) can cease.
Friends can be seasonal, a time when convenience finds us buddies.

Yes, it’s something to be mourned, but it’s not something on which to dwell.

We are all Ridiculous

You are ridiculous.
I am ridiculous.
He is ridiculous.
She is ridiculous.
We are all ridiculous.

Please remember that when you’re nervous before a performance review.
Please remember that when you feel ridiculed or embarrassed.
Please remember that when you feel completely alone.

We’re all just as ridiculous as you.