With that said, I have a few other requests for your consideration:
1. Don't shop at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is directly representative of everything that is wrong with this country economically and socially. I don't care if you have to drive 45 miles out of your way to get a new bathmat. I'll send you gas money to cover your losses.
2. Respect and honor the little man. Go out of your way to have the local shoe cobbler fix the soles of your favorite shoes; old fashioned, I know, but someday you'll understand. Frequent the littlest hole in the wall restaurant you can and tip the server generously. Buy your vegetables from a little shack along a rural roadside. I promise you that you will not regret doing any of these things.
3. Vote. Educate yourself first. Then vote your wallet. This family never has been, nor is it likely to ever be, anything but middle class. This means you are stuck on the left. Feel free to stay here with Mom somewhere in the vicinity of Ralph Nader, or join your Dad in the realm of Che Guevara, but never try to walk the middle. Should you break through the family glass ceiling and become a millionaire, stay on the left anyway. The little people need your voice because they do not have one.
4. Remember when I made you watch documentary films about the U.S. food industry when you were in elementary school, and taught you how to read ingredients labels on your food? Remember running around trying to find foods that *didn't* contain corn syrup or corn oil, and telling me that corn was "bad news" and that we will have to get our food at Trader Joe's from now on? Remember talking about how the corn is infected with pesticides, which is then eaten by the cow, which then becomes part of your hamburger at McDonald's and your Frosty at Wendy's? At the least, may you both become herbivores; but if you can take it beyond your own dinner plate, feel free to change the world.
5. Hold doors for people--old people, young people, disabled people, pretty people, ugly people, slow people, people that smell good, people that smell bad, and people who are making you late for another appointment.
6. Let others go ahead of you in long checkout lanes, especially if they are pregnant (or old, or disabled). If they don't have enough money to pay for their groceries, pay the difference for them.
7. You will likely each marry someday and it will become glaringly evident to you why in some cultures, parents still arrange marriages. Remember that long before Johnny or Jill invaded the family, there was only Gavin and Talia and that they loved each other. The most important thing you can ever do for your family, as siblings, is to make it clear to all parties that you love everyone and nobody is going to be shunned from the family. Should a wound be caused by your relationship, the longer you let
it bleed and fester, the worse off you will be. There will come times when you just want to call your brother, but you will be afraid that he won't answer. And there will be moments you'd like to share with your sister that you'll avoid because you think she hates you. She doesn't--she can't--and she never will. Remember, children, that no people in this life form bonds like those of a set of siblings. Blood such as that is hard to leave behind.
8. Eventually you will come across people--people you will be forced to deal with--that you will strongly dislike. Maybe they are negative, or unhappy, or rude, or mean...be nice to them. They will have no idea how to handle it.
9. There will come a day when your father or I will disappoint you. I'm not talking about forgetting to put your milk money in your lunchbox or failing to show up at the Cub Scout crossover ceremony. I mean that we will do something really irrepairably stupid for which you will not want to forgive us. Forgive us anyway, not just because it is the morally upright thing to do, but also because someday you're going to let your kids down, too, and you'll want them to do the same for you.
10. Read Harry Potter with your children. Every night until you finish all seven books. Discuss the books with them--especially the parts about making the right choices in the face of adversity. Instill in them the honest belief that in the end, even when the wait is long, good always triumphs over evil.
11. Every day, tell your daughters they are beautiful and that they are loved, and don't let them see you fretting about your own body image.
12. Value your natural talents, value your education, and value your friends, family, and community. Then share.
13. Sit with me quietly to hear the vibration of the universe. I promise you it is there.
14. Grow things. Grow flowers, grow vegetables and herbs, grow turtles and puppies--but most of all, grow yourself--your sense of self, your pride in yourself, your spirituality, your intellect, your talents, and your understanding of others who are not like you. Grow to love all those things you cannot do well as well as the ones you do. It is the only way you will continue to grow.
15. Help those who are in need in some way, be it in a grand way or a small one, every single day. Give away your unused toys and clothes at Christmas time. Offer to help serve food at a food bank for a day. Shovel little Old Lady Smith's sidewalk for her when it snows.
16. Be fearless and uninhibited. Dance. Sing. Do something zany and unexpected. Take an unannounced roadtrip or work with the circus for a while. Backpack though Europe, or climb Machu Picchu, or mush some dogs across the Yukon. Live more liberated, less stringent, less stiffled lives than your father and I lived. Do it all and live with no regrets.
17. Call your grandparents. You've already lost one--you never know when the next will be called away.
18. Make family of friends who want to be your family. The times where families all lived communally and respected each other are long gone; perhaps they are even a mythology. There will be people in your families who will hurt and betray you, who will drive wedges between you and other people that you love. F-ck those people. If you find people who love you and treat you as if you were part of their family, let it ride for a while. Okay, on the one hand you might have just joined a cult, but it is far more likely that you have found your best friends for life. Love is not restricted to bloodlines and DNA matches. Love is having a mutual respect with someone for whom you'd walk into a threatening position--gladly--if it meant that you could help that person in some way.
19. Side with the righteous. By this I do not mean that you need to be a sanctamonious asshole. But you do need to determine, with clear head and heart, which side is the right one and once you've figured it out, stay there.
20. We are going prom dress shopping TOGETHER, Talia. And bathing suit shopping, too.
21. Gavin, pay for your date. It is corny and old fashioned. She will be impressed and find it quaint. Prove that you want be a part of her support structure.
22. You are both smart and talented. Beware of arrogance. It will earn you few friends. Many, many other people are smart, too, and they expect that to be ackowledged. So what if your classmates don't know about the mummification and entombment of an Egyptian Pharoah? What, you think that's common knowledge for a 7-year-old? It's not. If the other people around you don't share your prior knowledge, it doesn't make them dummies.
23. Someday you are going to find a spouse and you are going to start a family of your own and you are going to forget about the woman who washed your butt and took you to ballet and made sure you always had healthy food in your lunchbox and helped you with your homework and loved you more than she thought she had room in her heart to allow. Call her. She misses you terribly.
24. When given a choice to make, you always have the choice to do nothing. ALWAYS do something.
25. [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
