Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

I don’t tell you this nearly enough, but I love you and I am so incredibly proud to be your daughter. Thank you for loving me more than I deserve. Thank you for being proud of me when I have accomplished little. Thank you for singing “You are my Sunshine,” because you will always be one of the few people that we be able to make me happy when skies are grey. Thank you for the Bible verses and reminding me that I should “Learn Everything,” so I can “Be anything.” Thank you for continuing to say that to me even when I felt like I was capable of nothing, much less anything. Thank you for building me up and being wonderfully critical at the same time. Thank you for never making me feel stupid even when I made stupid mistakes. Thank you for giving me faith because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Thank you for torturing me with NPR and Allison Krauss. I will always be your Prairie Home Companion. I will always sit in the car with you to wait for Car Talk to finish. Thanks for saying it best when you say nothing at all.

             100 miles away, sometimes I sit outside when they mow outside of my apartment, just so I can pretend to smell your grass decorated skin after landscaping.

Thank you for teaching me to swim and how to not drown in this world. Thank you for always responding, “look it up” whenever I’d ask what a word meant. I owe most of my vocabulary to you.  Thanks for passing down your OCD; people mock me for my keeping doors closed and lights off. I am okay with that.

            Thank you for listening to me even when you are busy at work; thanks for calling me back to listen to my insignificant life details. Thanks for existing in my life.

            Thank you for teaching me to be stronger than those that have hated me. Thank you for loving me when I was not strong enough. Thank you for not forgetting about me.

Thank you for supporting me through my silly endeavors. Thank you for approaching these endeavors like they were the most important thing in the world. Thank you for not comparing me to my brother so that I could find my own passions.

Thank you for not disappointing me. Thank you for not hating me when I have disappointed you.

Thank you for letting me fail miserably.

Thank you for encouraging to be better.

Thank you for understanding. Thank you for fighting.

Thank you for loving me relentlessly, a mere imperfection in this world, as if I were not this little flawed person. 

Fortune Cookies

I hate fortune cookies.

I really hate them.

I have a problem. I always get bad sounding ones. I can remember a time when they weren’t so awful “Riches will come your way,” and the generic “Your future is bright” shenanigans. Now, as I have become an adult, they have gotten steadily less bright. One of the last ones I remember reading “You’re laughing now, but wait until later.” I don’t know about you dear reader, but I’d rather receive threats elsewhere. Imagine my dismay after a delicious Americanized-Chinese food meal, I unfurl that little piece of paper from shell of a cookie. My expectations for the taste of the cookie and the fortune are vaguely similar; one would assume that what awaits me will be generic and bland but hopeful.

Fortune cookies creep me out. They shouldn’t. They are just little strips of paper manufactured in some little factory. They are still creepy. They predict too much. Opening them begins with promise and it ends with a weird sense of gratification and dismay; you could have gotten a better one. Nothing should have that much power.

Somehow, I think of fortune cookies and I think of the phrase “best friend.” Like those cookies, I view something that should be positive as creepy and foreboding. When I look into my personal background, I dislike 90% of the people I have once claimed as my “best friend.” But Les, maybe you are just picking the wrong cookie-people. No, I blame the phrase. I can get away with friends, but as soon as you add that qualitative “best” onto, we have entered friendship purgatory and things will be heading straight to...

I don’t like to fall into that middle school cliche of “I hate labels.” I honestly love labels; they make things orderly and delightful. I think when we try to label things or people, we often overburden them with the expectation of being something great and are disappointed with they are not the “best.” We frame people with a destructive qualitative energy that reeks of “This is what you should mean to me.”

I know I am blessed. I am lucky to be surrounded by people that constantly exceed my expectations when I honestly should have none. I know this when the best compliment I receive from a friend all week is “She writes for fun” as if to say “She kills for sport!” I love this.

Maybe I should stop opening cookies for the words.

Maybe one day, I will just let the cookie be a cookie and appreciate it for what is.