Letters From Home

My daughter remarked the other day that this year her birthday falls on a Thursday, the same day as the day she was born.

That led me to thinking about something I discovered about my… what do you call the family you were born into? They’re not your immediate family any more, are they? … anyway, one of many interesting things about my parents, my brothers and me is that my birthday, my mom’s birthday, and my two younger brothers’ birthdays always fell on the same day of the week, and my dad’s birthday and my oldest brother’s birthdays always fell on the same day of the week (a different day from the rest of us). I don’t suppose the odds against that are as phenomenal as having everyone’s birthday always be on the same day of the week, but I suspect it’s pretty unusual. The more so because ten years separates me from my youngest brother.

Both my kids were born on Thursday, but three years apart, so they will never have same-day birthdays.
However, my son’s birthday and my husband’s birthday fall on the same day of the week. No such luck for the female half of the family.

It was hard enough on me when my son went off to kindergarten for the first time. What will I feel like in two years when my daughter hits 30?

Regardless of what day or year I was born on… I feel old.

photo credit: Richard Parmiter

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One of the best ways to take a stand against ignorance is at the same time the most difficult. We all believe what we believe, and know what we know. And yet, we become more and more ignorant the longer we stick with the status quo. To take a stand against ignorance, one has to be willing to ask one simple question:

But what if that’s not true?

Think of all the advances human knowledge has made because someone was willing to take what “everybody knows” or “everybody believes” and start asking questions. Where would we be, for example, if Copernicus and Galileo hadn’t considered the idea that the Earth is the center of the universe and hadn’t asked “But what if it that’s not true?” What if doctors had kept thinking that dirty hands were just fine? What if Martin Luther had never looked in the Bible and started thinking about Church doctrine in a whole new way?

Ask the question. Think about the answer. You might just learn something.

And we should likewise ask questions about our own talents and life paths. What may be “true” for us might not be so for our children. We should never force our children into our own mold. Our children have to know more than we know, or human progress stops. What if Bishop Milton Wright had insisted that his sons Wilbur and Orville follow in his footsteps? What if Abraham Lincoln’s parents had made sure their son was also an illiterate hick? What if Benazir Bhutto’s family had forced her into purdah? Think, again, about all the people in the world who achieved something their parents never dreamed of. It may be an apocryphal story, but Leonard Bernstein’s father is supposed to have groused, “How was I supposed to know he’d grow up to be Leonard Bernstein?”

The minute you find yourself thinking that you know all there is, or that what was good enough for your parents is good enough for your children–that’s where ignorance begins. Take a stand. Ask questions. Take a stand against ignorance.

(note: I have disabled comments on this post because for some unknown reason it’s drawn what my daughter would call a cubic ass-load of spam. If you’d like to send me a comment, please use the comment form. Thanks!)

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When the kids were little, we did not, as a general rule, allow candy in the house. For one thing, I didn’t want them to end up with lots of cavities like I did. And for another, F’zer and I didn’t think that consumption of mass quantities of candy was a good idea even with good teeth.

The results were predictable, though–on the holidays where the consumption of mass quantities of candy was traditional (Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween) the kids tended to go berserk eating the stuff. (No, we did not celebrate Easter in any other way than playing bunny with the products of Hershey, Brach, Mars et al.)

Of course, the fact that we were usually flat broke during those years meant a delicate balancing act between having candy available to be eaten On The Day and buying the same candy at half price or less The Day After. A kid who expects a stuffed Easter basket is not going to be happy with the same chocolate bunny a couple days later when Mom and Dad find it on the clearance shelves. In fact, the kid might just come roaring in on Easter morning to castigate the parental bunnies at the top of her lungs for gross Easter basket deficiencies.

We also gave out non-edible treats on Halloween for many years (and, believe it or not, got mostly favorable responses from the kids at the door) but this caused major grumbling from the kidlets in the house who then did not get mass quantities of leftover Halloween treats to snarf along with the bags full of stuff they’d collected on their own nightly rounds.

Even now when the kids are more or less old enough to be parents themselves, we still get poked at now and again for our Candy Rules of the past. I don’t suppose any parent really gets it right.

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