The first time ever I....

We all have pivotal moments in our lives when things change and many times we don’t recognize what is going on or how it will impact us; it’s just life moving inexorably forward. Later it will occur to us that something happened. To the best of my knowledge, nothing is happening to me right now, but I do know that things are changing for my daughter. Two things to be exact.

First, and this is the lesser of the two, she has just been selected to join a soccer team that is competing at a national level. She is going to find out how good she is, how dedicated she is, and what she has inside of her. She is going to find out that talent isn’t always enough. She is going to learn something about herself.

Secondly, and this is the one that I’m really excited about, she has to read To Kill A Mockingbird for school.

That’s it. She gets to read a book, and I’m excited for her. Because to me, To Kill a Mockingbird isn’t just any book. It is the book that can start a teenager on the road to adulthood. Told in the voice of a wise child, it is the tale of being an adult. How we lose things as we grow older and have to find lesser things to fill up the space. I can distinctly remember the first time I read this book and I wondered how all the thousands of authors who came before Harper Lee could have missed out on telling this story. It just seemed so…perfect. Just sitting there waiting to be told. I envy my daughter for getting to read it for the first time. Haven’t you ever read a book and wished you could read it again as if it were the first time? I do all the time.

I remember when I was a kid lying in bed listening to the radio late at night with the lights out and the disc jockey saying that they were going to premiere a new song by Simon and Garfunkel, and then I heard Bridge Over Troubled Water for the first time. After it was over I felt like I hadn’t taken a breath in five minutes. Imagine that. Hearing something like that for the… very… first… time. Something amazing. Something immaculate. Something never heard before.

Years later I read another book that ended this way:

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Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

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Perfect. It still takes my breath away. Thank you, Norman MacLean. I still remember closing the book, then reopening it to read those last words again. I remember that exact moment.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I hope that my daughter reads To Kill A Mockingbird and sees in it what I saw. And I will do my best not to influence her. Good books like good music have to be discovered on their own. And if it's not Harper Lee who speaks to her, maybe it will be Joseph Conrad or Doris Lessing or Flannery O'Connor.

I just hope that she finds what is good in this life and makes it a part of her life. And then I hope she remembers….