On the Occasion of My Daughter’s 40th Birthday

40 years ago to the day, in this same bed in which I now awake, in this same room, in this same house, you announced “Look out, World! Here I come!” Who could have imagined back then the young woman—well, middle-aged woman— you would become! I couldn’t be happier, prouder or more inspired by who you have been, who you are now and who you are yet to be. We have traveled together, played jazz, recorder duets and Orff instruments together, taught together at the same school, backpacked together, shared poetry together, sung together, danced together, played game after game together, cooked together, laughed together, cried together— one delight after another and all a father could have asked for. How to properly mark this occasion? 

 

The poet David Whyte wrote a book called The Three Marriages and named them: WORK/ SELF/ OTHER. I think this is a good way to summarize your 40 years of life on the planet. As follows:

 

WORK

“Happiness in our marriage with work is possible only through seeing it in a greater context that surviving the everyday. We must have a relationship with our work that is larger than any individual job description we are given. A real work, like a real person, grows and changes and surprises us, asking us constantly for recommitment and renewal of vows.”

 

You were born to teach and I’ve rarely met someone so dedicated, so willing to go light years beyond the norm to serve the children you teach. The outward commitments like the walk to school, the poetry night, the camping trip, the summer letters, the messages from Kermie, the summer GG Park camp and yet more and yet more and yet more, is so far beyond what 99.9 % of teachers do that it is simply breathtaking. And the inward commitment, to help your children see the best in themselves because you see the best in them, the way you hold them in your heart 24/7, is equally stunning. The harder you work, the more fulfilling this marriage is and I hope you never take for granted how rare this is, how many people hate their work or just put up with it or enjoy it somewhat but never go beyond the expected. And equally that you know that I know that it requires sacrifice and relentless hard, hard work and I admire you no end for your willingness to do it. 

 

SELF

“This marriage is the internal marriage to that tricky movable frontier called ourselves. As suggested by all of our great contemplative traditions, this requires some measure of silence amid the noise and haste to bring this all-seeing identity to live and find its voice inside of us.”

 

Here again you are hard at work to create that space and silence for yourself in the form of camping, hiking, running, all in company with that most dependable of spouses, the natural world. Yet again, you never do things casually. You run whole marathons— lots of them!— go camping almost every weekend and sometimes in the snow and amidst flooding rivers! All that work to pack and re-pack the backpack, shop for and prepare all the food, hoist it all on your shoulders and set off to meet your beloved— far beyond any norm. And yet again, relentless hard work that pays you back with the silence and solace of trees, lakes, chipmunks, a night sky filled with stars, all inroads to your own sense of belonging to something larger than your working self, strumming the strings of your inner beauty through immersion in outer beauty. And then writing about it— a poem, a prose piece— to further celebrate the self that becomes Self. To give the same quality of attention and commitment to your own self that you give to others, to find your way to a healthy conversation and balance between the two, be married to both without contradiction— again, that is rare and worthy of great celebration. 

 

OTHER

I, too, have been lucky to cultivate both love of work and sense of a larger Self, but have had to accept that in the third marriage, the one to a person, I have not been so fortunate as to find a true Soulmate. I love your mother and I believe she loves me and we’ve found a way to live a life together, but it’s no surprise for you to hear that is not a marriage made in heaven that is brimming over with Love at its highest and deepest. And it hurt my heart that it seemed that this third marriage, this conventional marriage to another, seemed destined never to be for you. As with myself, I consoled myself with “Well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad” and in fact, in a world where so many have 1 for 3 or none for 3, that’s true! But still, I hoped for more. David Whyte writes: 

 

“ A single person may run a thousand miles from the possibilities of marriage, glorying in self-determination. Yet there is almost always a corner of the young imagination reserved for the man or woman who will bring all this wonderful self-determination to a new conclusion. There are those strong characters who will never marry because they never find the outer representation of their inner hopes and they refuse anything less.”

 

That might have been you. But then along came Matt. 

 

Of course, I know nothing about what’s really going on between you two or within each of you. But from the outside, it sure looks like you are each other’s soulmates. Relationship is never a check-list of things you share in common, but it does help and there are so many! Camping, teaching, loving kids, physical exercise, games of all sorts, reading, humor and more—it’s a long list!

 

From where I sit, it feels like you’re 3 for 3! Of course, this will take as much work as the other two, but you have never shied away from that passionate commitment and willingness to work, so I imagine you will bring those qualities to this marriage (whether or not an official marriage) as you do to the other two. And for the same reason— that it brings you all the happiness you deserve. Which is THIS MUCH!!!! (Imagine my stick figure with outstretched arms to the edge of the page.)

 

So on the occasion of your 40^th (!!!!) birthday, this my attempt to capture a little bit of everything I admire about you, everything that makes me proud to be your father, everything I wish for you, everything that gives me hope for the world to come, all of which adds up to: I love you!!!