On those heavy conversations you have to have with your kids.

I’m a father of daughters.

I love my girls so very much more than I might have ever imagined possible, and I wouldn’t trade them for boys or for anything. They amaze me every day. They are brilliant and witty and entertaining and wise beyond their years. They are kind, loving and gentle souls. They are beautiful, like their mother.

However, they are girls. And one of the peculiarities of being a father of daughters is that every one of us who is a father of daughters was once a teenage male. (Truth: Some fathers of daughters are teenage males. Hopefully, after you all read this, that will happen less often.) My brain still spends an annoying amount of time in its late teens and early twenties. This is unfortunate, but, in my case, fortunately not dangerous. And it does help me as a parent of teenage daughters.

Here are my two short speeches to my daughters and one for me and for you as a parent. Here’s the essence of growing up, boiled down as far as I can boil it down. I think they’re equally applicable to boys as well. I’ll happily extrapolate further down. Brevity is not my gift.)

First, when my daughters were too young to understand, I told them this: “I hope this never happens, but at some point in your life you may be in an uncomfortable position with a boy. When this happens, go for the knees or the balls. Injure him if necessary, but get yourself free. You can deal with the fallout later. Again, I hope it never happens, but I don’t want you to think about it if it does. You need to act. Boys sometimes can’t reason out what’s best for you or for them or for the both of you. I’m sorry. I know this is yucky, but please believe me.” This, of course, at first, prompted only running away and, “Dad! Yecch!” But it also prompted some discussion. I don’t think it made them fearful of boys. (I’ve busted both of them making out in my own house….) And I don’t think either of them has had to bust a guy in the nuts to escape a bad situation. But, I think it’s made them wary.

My more important societal contribution has been my “1-2-3-4” speech. It goes like this: "In life you get choices. When faced with a choice, ask yourself, what are the chances, if I do this, I'll end up dead, pregnant, in jail, or embarrassing my family? If the chances are good of any one of those, get yourself out of there. If the chances are basically nil of all four, have a great time!"

Simple, right? I hold up the fingers and count when I give the spiel: 1. Dead. 2. Pregnant. 3. Jail. 4. Embarrassing my family.

I’ve shared this with so many friends. I’ve told it at dinner tables and school functions. People say all the time, “What is it?” Dead, pregnant, in jail, shame on the family name.” When my girls go out now, I just hold up my hand and count silently with my fingers: 1, 2, 3, 4. The girls know. They do it jokingly with my lovely wife and me when we go out. We’ll be backing out of the garage and they’ll be standing in the doorway: 1, 2, 3, 4, wry grins on their faces. I hope it hasn’t become just a cliche to them. Even though it’s sort of over-used in our family, I don’t think it’s a cliche at all.

See, our kids don’t readily understand that everything we do in life is a choice, and every choice has consequences. You have to be willing to live with the consequences, potential or realized, of every choice you make. This is a topic for another time, but I’ve also always told the kids that they always have a choice. They can skip their meal, but they won’t be treat eligible. They can skip school, but they won’t have as many great college choices. They can not pay taxes. They’ll probably go to jail if they don’t, but they don’t have to pay those taxes.

And some choices have much bigger, much more dramatic consequences than others. Sex, as we all know, has big potential consequences. You need to be ready to deal with those consequences, and/or the relevant prevention (which isn’t as we all know, foolproof, and foolproof becomes much harder when teenage males are involved, doesn’t it?!) before you jump in. So, thinking you’re ready may not mean you’re ready. But you’ve still got to make a choice.

My lovely wife is a trauma nurse, so we had the benefit of sharing with our kids what happens when you do stupid things behind the wheel of a vehicle or when you literally play with fire. Our older daughter had a dramatic fear of fireworks in her younger years, in part from seeing some burned kids my lovely wife helped in the course of her work. That’s why dead is first. It’s all encompassing, and, as a parent, it’s our greatest fear, isn’t? I am so much less afraid of dying myself than I am of losing one of my girls. It rends my heart just to think that it’s possible. I have to prevent that if I can.

Don’t get dead. Don’t drive if you drink. Don’t drive if you’re distracted or tired. Don’t get in a car with people who are drunk, distracted, tired…. Call me. I’ll get you. No questions asked.

I saved a voicemail from one of my girls. My lovely wife and I were at an event separate from our kids, and my younger daughter called. Some kids were getting a little out of hand, drinking at a party she was attending. She called to ask if she could leave and could drive a couple of other kids back to our house where they could establish their own, alcohol free party. Yes. Yes. Yes. Dios mio, Si, y gracias!

Don’t get dead. Don’t get pregnant.

Our oldest came home from her first day of high school freshman biology with a short essay question. “Why should I take high school biology?” She asked me what I thought. This was during the heat of the 2008 presidential campaign. I said, “I have two words for you, honey. Bristol Palin.” You’ll recall that Ms. Palin, daughter of then vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, was pregnant at 17. This was not a political statement or a moral invective about Ms. Palin. I simply wanted to make the point that Ms. Palin either didn’t understand the biology of baby-making at her young age, or she did understand it, but made the choice to proceed dangerously, and that choice was dramatically changing her life. Adorable Daughter #1 repeated the “two words” part in class the next day. Her teacher burst out laughing. (Again - not a political statement, people! We live in a safely Republcan district!) The kids in the class didn’t get it. Fortunately for me, that her classmates didn’t understand only served to reinforce the point for AD#1.

Having kids is awesome. It’s been the second greatest thing in my life. But having kids changes your life completely. You lose freedom. You gain a lot, but you also gain a lot of responsibility. You have to be ready for that. Are you?

This, by the way, applies equally to boys and girls. Whether we have boys or girls, I’m sure we want to teach them to be responsible for their actions. If a boy does what’s required to get a girl pregnant, he needs to know he’s responsible, needs to share that responsibility equally. In that sense, I’d have used the same 1-2-3-4 if I had boys, too.

Don’t get dead, pregnant, or in jail.

Look, there are respectable reasons to end up in jail. Many great people - the Apostle Paul, Gandhi, Martin Luther King - have shown us that. There are also stupid reasons, and you don’t want to go to jail for stupid reasons, because that stuff sticks with you. It changes your outcomes, your prospects, and your opportunities. You have to mention those things to colleges and employers, because if they find out and you haven’t mentioned it, they just wave goodbye. They no longer give you a chance.

For us “jail” has really meant “don’t break the law.” We’re supposed to play by the rules. In order for our society to work - for all of us to get along, we have these laws. Some keep us safe. Some may be a little unnecessary, but they’re the law, and we follow the law. We treat officers and our military and our elders with respect, and we follow the rules.

Don’t get dead pregnant or in jail. And don’t embarrass your family.

My grandmother always said, “Don’t bring shame on the family name.” Now, I have a tendency to be boisterous and goofy. I’ve probably singlehandedly embarrassed my daughters in more ways than I can recall, but I haven’t done it in a way that would see us ostracized from our community. That said, we’ve never defined precisely what our #4 means. We just trust each other not to do it. The girls know that ending up in jail would be embarrassing, or being delivered to our house in a squad car, or getting called into the principal’s office because of something stupid, or sexting, or any of a myriad of other things. So little is hidden these days, thanks to the intarwebs. It takes effort not to end up having something dreadful on the internet about yourself or your family. It takes not doing stuff that embarrasses your family!

1-2-3-4. "In life you get choices. When faced with a choice, ask yourself, what are the chances, if I do this, I'll end up dead, pregnant, in jail, or embarrassing my family. If the chances are good of any one of those, get yourself out of there. If the chances are basically nil of all four, have a great time!"

Try it. It works. Then, when your kids turn out great, send me a couple bucks or a free beer coupon or just a note to say thanks. That’s plenty. That, plus our society getting better.

Here’s the other piece my wife and I adopted, simply put: I guess I call it the parents' corollary: "Trust your children until they give you reason not to. Tell them you are doing this. This will require you to allow them to do things that frighten you."

We talk about what Stephen Covey called the “emotional bank account.” (http://weekplan.net/watch-s-covey-speak-about-the-concept-of-emotional-bank-account/) Basically trust in relationships accumulates as we trust our kids to do the right thing, and they do. We said to our girls, “We’re a little uncomfortable about this, but you haven’t given us a reason not to trust you, so we’re going to let you go. Here are the parameters. Be careful. Have fun. 1-2-3-4.” Fortunately, that has worked beautifully. Now, if they violate your trust, you have to have consequences. If they come home late, we say, “Sorry, we trusted you to be home on time and you weren’t. You can’t go next time, and the time after that, you’ll have to be home earlier. When you show us again we can trust you, we will.”

We really have made a point of talking to our kids. Yes, we tend to do it in a lighthearted manner, but with a force and a frequency that lets them know how important this is to us. I think, my greatest fear is the thought of one of my girls dying. My second greatest fear, I think, is the thought of one of my girls having to live with the consequences of someone else being permanently hurt or dead. And my third is for them to have their lives altered in a dramatic and limiting way. 

Funny thing about this is that it all stems from my memory of being a teenage boy and the resultant worry about how my girls would deal with teenage boys. I want them to know that I worry, and about what, boiled down to a tiny, memorable list. They won't know how much I worry until they have children of their own.

Thanks for listening. Love & peace.

(These thoughts were spoken and written about starting in perhaps 2000 and edited many times since.)

Please vaccinate your kids.

My friend, Cary, posted a link on his Facebook page to a map of recent outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases, standing up for the importance of vaccinations. (The link’s below.) Cary’s a wonderful middle school teacher, an incredibly talented musician, and a thoughtful guy. And in this case, he’s absolutely right. I wrote the following in response to a couple of his friends who were the non-vaccinating objects of his original post and responded precisely as we’ve come to expect from the anti-vaccination movement: "There’s mercury in them thar vaccines! And we give far too many of them to our poor pincushion kids! And their efficacy is overblown with lies and damn lies so big pharma companies can make big money and pay off docs in the process! And they have other incredibly harmful side effects!"

Every bit of that is what, in distinctly un-scientific terms, would be called hogwash or bullshit. The biggest trouble is, real scientists have had to spend their real time and energy refuting this crap. Ugh.  

I know we’re fighting a battle that some people for some reason just don’t want us to win, but here’s what I wrote in reply:

Dear Cary’s-non-vaccinating-friends (and mine): I know you mean well. I think highly of you. You’re my friend, too.  We all want our kids to be happy and healthy, and most of us want everyone else’s kids to be happy and healthy, too. We all also like to be right, and it can be very hard to accept that a long-held belief just doesn’t hold up.

The map Cary posted was produced by the Council on Foreign Relations, whose mission is essentially to make the U.S. a better citizen of the world. The link to the actual map is more interesting, because you can toggle it by year and see the increases in outbreaks as more and more people are convinced not to vaccinate, decreasing herd immunity. (http://www.cfr.org/interactives/GH_Vaccine_Map/index.html#map)

Anecdotes about doctors ignoring reaction and death from vaccines just for money are particularly hypocritical considering that the patron saint of the anti-vaccination movement fabricated data for his own financial benefit, leading to many of the preventable disease outbreaks and deaths on the map Cary posted. They’re also baseless. If they were true, there would be some actual data somewhere.

Herd immunity is not a myth. If it were, smallpox would only have been eradicated by immunizing nearly everyone in the whole world, and India would not have seen zero polio cases in the last three years. Herd immunity is what has thus far kept the completely preventable outbreaks of these diseases (which should have been eradicated already) from being any more widespread.

There is no mercury in the vaccines routinely given to our children. There was never enough to endanger us. There is a trace, as a preservative, in some current incarnations of the flu vaccine. Most childhood vaccines never contained Thimerosal, and those that did have been reformulated without, because, if I’m not mistaken, actual scientists thought they could appease anti-vaccination outcry from y'all without significantly impacting the efficacy of the vaccines. They were right about efficacy and wrong about appeasement so far, unfortunately. (http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228#t3)

I'm so happy that people believe nutrition can have or has had such a wonderful impact on their health. It very likely has, and that's wonderful! It is, however, anecdote. It's not data. The safety of the current recommended vaccination schedule was proven in thousands of trials before it was then safely administered to millions of our children, most of whom are now safe from preventable disease, and without horrible side effects. That's data.

Vaccines don’t cause autism. They just don’t. There have been zero studies demonstrating a link between vaccines and autism. Zero. 0. None. There have been many studies demonstrating NO causal link between vaccines and autism. How many? A lot. All of them. That’s a statistically significant number.

Only in very, very rare instances do vaccines do any harm at all, and those instances are statistically insignificant enough to warrant risking that rare harm in order to protect our children and your children and everyone else’s children from diseases that have wreaked real and significant harm on many prior generations of our children and your children and everyone else’s children. I’m pretty sure that none of this hard won truth will have any impact on you or your choices. I’m hoping someone else might read it and pass it along, helping our herd.

What galls me most about this is the thought of all the time and energy our immunologists and epidemiologists - people who have given their lives and careers to protecting our children and your children and everyone else’s children - have spent refuting these vaccine fallacies. That’s time that could have been spent finding other cures. This anti-vaccine movement has not only caused disease and death where there should be so much less, it’s kept us from preventing even more disease and death. That’s what really hurts my heart about this whole discussion.

New Year's Resolutions

When I checked into Kimpton’s Hotel Palomar Philadelphia a few nights ago, there was a note on my reservation from the Concierge, Ariella, asking me what my New Year’s Resolution was. I was dumbfounded for two reasons: brevity is not my gift, so I could never have just one, and in these instances I felt like I should have had something profound at the ready.

The truth is, I have a set of resolutions I’m working on every day, so here, for Ariella (and Lindsay, the Palomar's wonderful front office manager) and the world, are my resolutions for today and every day of the impending New Year, ordered from least to most important.

• Learn some Spanish
• Get myself in shape (mostly by running and eating and drinking less (but not none!) of the nutritionally crappy stuff in my diet.
• Publish my little 1-2-3-4 treatise on parenting teens.
• Be a model of kindness and love in the world.
• Be an able adviser to clients, friends, & family.
• Raise at least $10MM for Michigan.
• Organize more time alone with my beautiful wife! Spend a couple of weekends sleeping in and eating really great food.
• Make as many moments as consciously possible moments of prayer, where prayer means making a gift to God of the practice and improvement of God’s gifts to me.
• Grow my heart so it resembles an ocean - an ocean you can throw your sorrow and suffering into and watch them dissipate, an ocean of peace and joy that overwhelms you when you really get to feel its size.

"Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving
— it doesn’t matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken
your vow a thousand times,
come, come again, come." - Rumi

Learning How to Feel

I went to see Ingrid Michaelson perform the other night. I didn’t go to see her with any expectation that I might actually be moved by her work. I’m not really a big fan. I’m not very familiar with her canon. I was there because I like music in general and I really like being with my girls, who love Ms. Michaelson.
So a couple of cute songs and stories in, Michaelson’s band vacates the stage, and she sits down alone at her little spinet piano without introduction and launches into “Ghost.” I had never heard the song. It was stunning. I was glad the hall was dark, sitting in my seat, holding hands with my beautiful bride, tears falling down my face. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard. And it’s a musical memory that will live with me, I suspect, for a really long time.
I loved so many of these words, and I heard and remembered every one of them, though this was the very first time I’d heard the song: “do you remember the sound the door made when you closed it on me?” “...I went down to the ground, landed on both my broken hearted knees.” “...pieces of me had already died.” “I’m broken down the middle of my heart, heart.” (I really thought, when she was singing, that she sang “hard, hard heart,” which would be just as beautiful and heavy and sad.)
She said as she began to introduce her next song, “sometimes you feel songs more than others.” That’s so very true. I think in this performance perhaps she got lost in the sadness of her own song for a moment. It was at once painful and wonderful. I am so oddly glad that I had the privilege of being in the room while she shared that heartbreak. I consider it an homage to her artistry that my heart broke again right along with hers.
It’s odd how music flows to and through us. It comes from somewhere we don’t know, and it might flow through us like a trickle of water or like a giant wave crashing. It might clash with whatever we’re feeling in a given moment, or juxtapose it, or turn it on its ear. And it might splash others in a given moment or it might not. I know that I was happily drumming along with songs before and after “Ghost”. I have no idea how many others were as taken by her performance of that song as I was. That’s yet another mystery for me to ponder but never know in truth.
Sometimes we get to have those moments, you know? The ones that take our breath away or fill us with unspeakable joy or peace or pain? Do you know the feeling? If you don’t - and I remind you that I know it’s not my place to tell you how to live your life, but - you need to open up. You need to smile more and cry more. It’s so important to feel and to acknowledge not just what you feel, but that you feel. That’s what gives us our humanity.
I often wonder in these moments where wonder comes from. In moments where I am overwhelmed with a particular emotion, in the midst of whatever the emotion is, I’m always grateful. I’m so glad that I get to feel, because I think feeling is frequently discouraged in our lives, and emotional depth gives our moments so much more value.  
Rumi said, “You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.” Gibran said, “The deeper sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” I like to say, “when life is crushing my soul, I am grateful for the reminder that I have one.” Find moments. Let them wash over you. Wallow in them. And be grateful that you can.

How to Deal with Pressing Social Problems

Here's a public service announcement.
Dear friends,
I just read that the unintended pregnancy rate in the United States is nearly 50%. What that means is that many people are having sex without considering that sex is how pregnancy happens.
Please consider, when you have sex, that you might get pregnant. (No fair, if you’re male, laughing at that notion. It takes two. If she’s pregnant, it’s equally your fault and equally your responsibility, within limits.)
Let me say that again: Please consider, when you have sex, that you might get pregnant. When considering this, however briefly, ask yourself, “Do I want to get pregnant?” If yes, enjoy. If no, stop. Protect yourself in whatever way is necessary to prevent pregnancy. Then, enjoy.
Good?

Also,
Dear friends,
I just read that the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the United States is continuing to climb. What that means is that many people are having sex without considering that sex is how STDs happen.
Please consider, when you have sex, that you might get an STD. (No fair, if you’re male, laughing at that notion. It takes two. You can get and give STDs, and if you get one or give one, it’s equally your fault and equally your responsibility, within limits.)
Let me say that again: Please consider, when you have sex, that you might get an STD. When considering this, however briefly, ask yourself, “Do I want to get an STD?” If yes, enjoy. If no, stop. Protect yourself in whatever way is necessary to prevent an STD. Then, enjoy.
Good?

Thanks. Love you!

A History Lesson from the Opera

Last night, I had the privilege of attending the Washington National Opera performance of Verdi’s Nabucco. It was terrific! It was true, traditional, opera, the way that Italians especially know and do: short bursts of confusing plot development mixed with long, emotive, arias and ensemble singing and beautiful music that doesn’t quite mesh with the story.

Nabucco isn’t Verdi’s most famous opera. It’s far from his best or most mature work. It really cemented him, though, as a great Italian opera composer. This was his 3^rd opera. His first was a minor success, which got him a contract for 2 more. While writing the second, Verdi’s wife and two children died. The second opera closed after a single performance, a miserable flop. Verdi not surprisingly sank into depression. Somehow, someone convinced him to take this quirky libretto, a rather fanciful extrapolation of the biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar and the fall of Babylon, and compose on it.

What comes out is beautiful and tuneful, and it’s easy to see why the Italians love it so. It’s also a huge production, requiring whole choruses of Hebrew slaves and Assyrian priests and soldiers. And the soprano and baritone leads (Abigaille and Nabucco) are extraordinarily difficult, the former known for wrecking the voices of sopranos who take it on too early in their careers. As such, it’s not performed with nearly the frequency of many of Verdi’s more famous operas.

I had two very favorite musical moments in the opera. In the first act, we discover that the younger Assyrian Princess (Fenena) and the young leader of the Hebrews are former lovers, which tortures the older, more power-mad Assyrian Princess (Abigaille). Three very talented younger artists, including a wonderful young tenor I’m privileged to know, Sean Panikkar (http://www.seanpanikkar.com/_/Home.html), played these roles and sang a beautiful version of this trio. It was stunning, more beautiful and well-balanced than this recording, but at least you can get an idea.

The real core of Nabucco, though, is in its history, and the WNO’s staging was designed specifically to present this in a blatant way that would never have been part of this production in its early years. You see, when Verdi wrote Nabucco, Italy was largely occupied by Austrians, and Nabucco became a rallying cry for the young Italians interested in “Risorgimento”, literally “the resurgence,” but, more accurately, a revolution eliminating foreign rule and creating a unified Italy.

What’s most interesting to me is that Verdi probably didn’t intend for this to be the result of his interpretation of this story. Historians think, and I’m inclined to agree, that he was just setting this strange story, hopefully in a way that would give his fellow opera goers some great tunes to sing. Inadvertently, he fortified a movement, and it in turn fortified him as the opera was performed constantly across Italy in its first couple of years, which brings me to my second favorite moment (and third, though they’re the same music.)

“Va pensiero” is also known as the chorus of the Hebrew slaves. It’s a brilliant, warm lament about oppression and a dream of freedom. Perhaps Verdi knew full well what he was doing, but to this day, this chorus is a (not “the”) national anthem for Italy. When the opera is performed, traditionally, the audience erupts into thunderous applause and cries of “Viva, L’Italia!”, and the performance often recycles to the beginning of the chorus for a reprise. Here’s a beautiful example:

Last night’s staging featured no immediate reprise, and in the end, the reason was clear. During the overture and at each intermission, a group of people dressed in mid-19^th century garb danced or processed across the stage to a replica of an opera box, set up along the stage right wing. For the most part, these people just took their places and watched the opera. Occasionally, I wondered why the singers appeared to be sinning to them fairly directly.

When it came time for “Va pensiero”, the stage changed completely. The sets were turned around so that we in the audience were made to feel we were sitting behind the stage, and there were a number of people in 19^th century clothes downstage, between us and the sets – so these people were supposed to be backstage staff at a 19th century Italian opera house. The Hebrew chorus took their places and sang “Va pensiero”, and most of the people “backstage” stopped in the moment, plaintively singing along. After the chorus, and the thunderous applause, and a few cries of “Viva, L’Italia!” everyone cleared the stage, and the sets were moved for the next scene, by crew dressed in that 19^th century style. No reprise.

In those moments, I realized that the director had seized on his opportunity to tell the story of Verdi, Nabucco, and the Risorgimento by creating this little opera within the opera. The fancy people and soldiers were Austrians, granted the good boxes at the opera and the protection of soldiers by virtue of their rule. Nabucco was a gentle but effective poke at the political situation in Italy at the time.

During the bows, when Abigaille took her initial bow, she quieted the audience, and the entire cast sang “Va pensiero” again, holding the colors of the Italian flag. During this rendition, several of the “Austrian” soldiers appeared on the stage, threatening, but the cast merely finished their singing, and then finished their bows, and the show ended.

What a brilliant idea, this little opera within and opera. It was a very special homage to this de facto Italian anthem, composed, almost incidentally, but a 27-year-old Italian just hoping that his third opera wouldn’t be his last.

What an honor it is to learn things everywhere I go, and a blessing to learn while wallowing in this kind of beauty.