To the girls:

These are the things that I hope you can forgive me for:

I hope someday you can forgive me for pulling out the demon mother voice on sunny Saturday mornings when it seems as though nothing in the world should be wrong. Forgive me for not appreciating the perfection of the ideal first-day-of-spring weather on the first day of spring, the Harry Potter marathon on NBC, and how the chores are not really a big deal. I am sorry for letting you stay up so late that you can't make your brain process simple things without complete meltdowns, and then getting mad at you.

I hope you can forgive me for not being able to listen to anything but the Avett brothers from December 2007 until ?. I have tried. I have dabbled elsewhere. It really is compulsive. It makes me happy, divinely happy, and when I am away from it, I come back remembering how much I love it. I don't know why this group of unpolished poets has so completely stolen my heart. Maybe it is just that my heart was so susceptible to stealing, and they were there. And they were safe. They weren't going to run away, or call me names, or find a more attractive audience. They are unconditional. I hope you can forgive my twistedness. I suppose it's not healthy, but it might be my only link to some version of sanity. Mom says that they don't love me back, the Avett Brothers, and she is right. They don't, technically, specifically, love me back, but they give me, in their lyrics and their melodies, the shoulder to cry on, the arm around me that I so much want. So in some way they do. In a way that is just as tangible as a bible bound god, or pink-church promises. Maybe it is my religion, this music. Maybe it is my link to salvation. Is it that much sillier than an invisible deity that somehow outranks the easter bunny and santa clause? I don't know. I don't know that anybody does. I know many people who think they do know. And kids, I hope you can forgive me if I ever made you believe I am one of the people who knows anything. The only thing that I am certain about is that nothing in this life is certain. I also hope you can forgive me for subjecting you, repeatedly, to the people and institutions that push their doctrines of so many shapes and sizes down your soft and pliable throats. But this is our world, and maybe then I should apologize for bringing you into a life full of judgement and ridiculous beings full of arrogance and ignorance. No. This is life, it is our life, and from all of these places and people we learn more about who we are and what we want to be. If we don't, then we are the judges that we despise. We are the arrogant ignoramuses who cannot see past the box we grew up in. Forgive me, girls, if I don't raise you to see over the edges of our box. I want to, so badly I can taste it.

I hope that you can forgive me for not giving you the solid platform of forever in one place, one lifestyle, one family structure. I want it so badly for you, for me. For us to be one thing forever. The same thing. The same every day. And we are, we will be, if we can live wherever we are, consistently, unconditionally, passionately, just like the music that is always the same regardless of where it plays.

Forgive me girls, for not having answers for you. Answers that I want so badly for myself. Answers to questions of heartbreak and wise choices. Questions of love and belonging and wishing. Right and wrong. For you I would find the answers and carve them into stones that would guide you. But the answers that are handed to me from all sides do not equal the evidence of this life. I have not found them yet. Some people think they have. I am glad they feel that way. I even hope someday maybe you girls will know the answers, or think you do. Then you can have the solidarity that I envy so much. I am sorry that I cannot give you that.

There are so many things that I am sorry for, so many things that I can only hope and pray to the god who is there, whichever one he is, that someday you will value as the color of your background that made you into the incredible people you are, and for all of the adventures you are having, you will draw from the drawbacks of your upbringing and bask in the light of the shadows of our darkest days. Some days I see this, I know that even the bad times serve us well. Other times I lose sight. But every day I try to remember to be grateful. Grateful for you four crazies. Grateful for my overflowing growler of unexpected twists and turns in life. Grateful that I can't look back and wonder how it could have been more exciting. Grateful for a roof while it is ours, food while we are full and music for as long as it will play. Life goes on, in spite of the failures and disappointments. It just trudges through, sometimes losing a shoe in the mud, or a hat in the wind, but it pushes on. And the stories to tell just pile up. And for that, I am not sorry.