The Fire Tribe

Child,
I've been thinking again about teaching, about how much you will learn from the shape of my shoulders and the blade of my voice. I know that I am shaped of habits that I was never taught. They are my blue collar blood. They are hard in my wiring. They are the enduring concern that bills won't get paid and that without work I am less a man.

When I first heard of you I worried that I had no house for you. I don't know why I thought you wanted a house.

I don't want you to see me working a job. I don't want you to see me being worked by a job. I don't want you to be shaped of my failed ambitions or my economic anxiety. I will provide for you, but I will not crush myself in the process. You will need food, but you also need to see that work is play for grown ups and that if you can imagine it, you can make it real.

The other night I was a stranger in a room of artists. They were young and maybe carefree, designers, free-lancers, jack-of-all-trades. They quit good jobs to make art, to wear their slippers to work, to be near their families. No one told them they couldn't.

Damn straight.

pa-

Child,
Last night I worried that I have nothing to teach you about charity. I think of this every time I see the bitter boys begging change at the stop light. Their placards urge me to have a heart. Apparently I don't.

Last night I worried that I have nothing to teach you about faith. Many times I have wondered if my bones are made of doubt, if I am built out of cynicism and fear.

Last night I worried that I am no teacher for you at all.

Last night I put my hand on your mother's belly and listened for you. You are tiny still, but I know you are there, like the fiery core of the earth, like the cool depths of the sea.

I am not your tour guide. I am just a wire, one of many that will bring you to this world and set you on your way.

I teach for a living and yet somehow missed this most obvious notion. My ability to teach is only limited by my ability to learn.

Already you have taught me about faith. I have seen your fierce heart beating, hope of hopes.

Already you have taught me about charity. See how your people gather around you in words, thoughts and prayers.

I have so much more to learn, but I am blessed to have you to teach me.

pa-

Child,
History emerges before you. So many words we receive from so many people. Those who had children, be it two years or fifty-two years ago, are immediately thrown back in time to these moments: when they first knew they would become parents, when they first saw their child, in sonar or in the flesh. You signal a place where past and possibility join up and run together, even if only for a little while.

I am humbled now by the thoughts of what I've accomplished in this life. Despite the conventional wisdom, you do not announce the closing off of any important corner of my life: travel, art or writing. But you do cause me to take stock. And how I wish I had pressed harder, done more, traveled further, if only to have more to share with you. You represent possibility manifest. The entire world is there for you: every color, every sound, every sweet word in every tongue spoken. When I think of all that awaits you, I feel like I squandered too much, bound up in doubt and distraction. But then I look again and see you painted in sound and realize all that has been has brought me to here. That's all good.

Possibility is limited by gravity, doubt and time. It's not that you can do everything, but that you can do anything.

You can and you will.

pa-

Child,
Your father is a wire: long and lean, coiled of endless strands, surviving on tension. Ideas jolt through me like electricity. A wire is full of heartache for the stories and songs and pictures that are lost into air. There are more ideas than time and there are bills and trips to the grocery store and the curse of sleep. Even so, I am endlessly grateful for the electricity that flows through me. Ideas are treasure.

I thought that this wire theory was my own, which just proves the theory as it disproves my ownership.

Your grandparents told me many times that I was not born from them, but that I came through them. They were the wires that delivered my charge into the world, sparks and tears flying. This proud theory of mine is theirs, and now yours.

You do not belong to me. If anything, I belong to you. You belong to God, to this big blue world, to yourself. We are wires carrying your charge. And you too will be a wire, full of sparks and hope. Wire to wire, strand to strand, we are parts of an endless network connected across all time, connected through all things. I see this now so clearly. Thank you for sharing that spark with me.

pa-

We hold our breath for hours and days before these special photo sessions. It's strange and amazing to make contact across these membranes. Even as you are so close, you are in a faraway galaxy. We beam sound waves at you and watch your shadow in sonar. My heart jumps when I see your heart beating. There you are, hope of hopes. I immediately fall headlong in love with you. There you are, hope of hopes.

With the Pocket Dop II, a radio-shack-walkie-talkie looking thing, we listen to your heart beating, fast and furrious, 160 beats per minutes. It sounds like someone wearing corduroy pants walking quickly down a hall. We all laugh, transported by the magic of hearing you. You are the size and shape of a peanut and your heart is powerful strong.

It is fitting that your first portraits are pictures painted of sound. I imagine your world to be a roaring swirl of Kristin's waves: heart beating and blood coursing, belly rumbling like tractor trailers, her strong laugh like a happy, mountainside stream. You should learn that laugh from her; it has magic powers.

Happy to meet you,
pa-