On the Occasion of my Daughter's Birthday

Conversation and choices, love and light, hope and optimism

Today is my daughter’s 33^rd birthday. She has been living on the streets for the past four years, under the cloudy veil of mental struggles and substance abuse. This has not been easy—for her or any of the many, many people who love her.

I see her every week or two. We have talked a lot about time. How it goes by faster than we think. How it is time now to get off the streets, find a purpose beyond the daily search for fixes. How society makes it hard to do it, but it can be done. How frightening it is to face things you don’t want to acknowledge, even if in the facing you are likely to find a new kind of peace and acceptance of the deeper, damaged, parts of you.

We have these conversations, and she’ll nod and say, “Yes, I know.” Then she gives me a hug and heads off to a park to meet her “friends,” who of course are not. They steal from her, give her drugs; on occasion she’s been beaten up or harassed. Once, she was drugged by guys in a New York bar, and when she passed out, they dumped her out of the car and into the gutter. Thank goodness someone called 911. She’s been Narcanned more times than I know.

She’s been in treatment twice, and managed to stay sober for five months after Covid forced her treatment facility to close. That was when she left home for the streets.

But here’s what I want you to know: She is a beautiful young woman, a gifted painter (one of her sketches is above) and musician, a better writer than her mom. She won a writing scholarship to a boarding school near Boston when she was in high school, and scholarships to art schools in L.A. and San Francisco when she graduated from high school.

Her dad and I flew to Iowa a week before she was born to an 18-year-old who already had a one-year-old son. We flew home with her 10 days after she was born with all the hopes of new parents; terrified yet confident. We never imagined how hard her life would become. How hard it would be to watch her fall into this life, and how much harder still it would be to let her go, to set boundaries, to say no to requests for money.

Here’s what sustains me: Friends. Community. Poetry. Music. Writing. And reading others’ writing.

Each day seems to bring more horrendous news: strife, war, unjust arrests by masked state police, the loss of our precious constitutional rights.

And yet, good souls abound. Perhaps the poet Andrea Gibson’s death this week was divinely timed, because so many will be reminded of their beautiful words, and many more will be exposed to them for the first time. Andrea really was one of those luminous souls whose work seems to touch people in ways most don’t.

Andrea’s life—and death—give us reason to hold onto hope and optimism. Their poetry—their love—reminds us that the horror of our current times can be subsumed by goodness and light.

One of my favorite Substack writers is Mr. E. I have no idea who he is, but his posts are about the most uplifting things each day can provide. Without his daily reminders of the kindness of humans and animals toward each other, my world would feel ever more dark.

Recently he posted a video of a deer approaching a man. The deer led the man to her mom, who had a plastic jug stuck on her head. The man freed her and she bounded away. The next day, the two deer came to his door, and he fed them. Several days later they reappeared, this time with several more deer. He fed them. The next day he opened his door and there was an entire herd standing there waiting for food.

Now, none of this may have been true. Maybe the man had a herd of domesticated deer and made the whole thing up. But for those few moments of watching the video, I chose to believe it could happen. And I would choose that again.

It’s not such a strange thing, animals helping each other and seeking aid from humans. I believe all creatures are sentient and far more in tune with each other and other species than we humans give them credit for. (Yes, I know all about anthropomorphism.)

How else to explain all these inexplicable happenings? Not miracles, but every-day kindnesses.

Ours is a time of great sadness, and of choice. So much to take in, so much to try to understand. It numbs the mind and heart. And yet, there is so much good in the world, as Andrea’s poetry and Mr. E remind us.

These reminders often make me cry. Lots of things make me cry these days. It is a tough time for empaths—we take so much in and feel so deeply. It is a hard thing, and yet, without empathy the world would indeed be ruled by ruthlessness and evil.

If we were made for these times, and I believe we were, then I want to be a chronicler of light. Of goodness and warmth and possibilities beyond our limited views.

If you want to see the light of our souls, look around.

It’s everywhere.