Dear Melía

This week I'm writing to my girls. Yesterday, I wrote a letter to Ashlyn, our youngest (by 5 minutes). Today it's Melía's turn....


Dear Melía,

You are sweetness in a powerfully tiny package. Your cries of "Hold me, hold me, hold me!" are gifts, even when we already have both hands full. In our less grateful moments Mommy and I mislabel it "clingy," but when we're thinking straight we eat up your cuddliness. I hope you never stop asking us to hold you--even when you are no longer tiny enough that your 24-month-size pants sag on your 26-pound frame.

You are my sharing and caring girl. When you get access to a treat, you make sure that there are two more for Ashlyn and Brielle. You delight in feeding us bites of your food; just don't foget to eat some yourself, little one. This weekend you were on Kleenex duty for Ashlyn, both fetching clean ones and disposing of dirties. You put up a fight when one of your sisters is trying to take a toy by force, but immediately share it when they ask nicely. You even shared the womb, enduring quietly while your zealous twin breakdanced on your head.

You are all about family togetherness. When the car starts and one of the family is not aboard, you protest vigorously, "No! Wait per Mommy!" "Where is Ashlew?" "Where is Bwielle?" "No! Wait per Daddy!" When it's time to go and Ashlyn is lagging behind playing or destroying valuable objects, we ask her (in that distinctively scary tone) if she wants to come with us or stay. You hear the thinly veiled threat to leave her behind, grab her hand and nearly drag her where she needs to be, crying, "Tome on, Ashlew."

You have no time for television. Instead, you are about doing things involving people, organizing things into bags (by a system known only to you), staying busy. You value relationships, and you have already recognized the degree to which TV can starve them. Even eating lacks that personal connection you savor, unless you can talk us into spoon feeding you. And going to sleep is such a bore for a night-owl socialite like you, especially when you can sleep in till 9 on good days.

Despite your meager food intake (excepting anything sweet), you have managed to grow a giant head of hair that is blond, curly mirth. It streams blithely down onto your face, though never enough to hide the impossible blue of your eyes, several sizes larger than your little mug might suggest. And though you are my "mini-Melía," you stand up for yourself enough to allay any fears we may have had of you being a pushover.

You are just now getting mastery of words, and we like the way you take your time growing up. It is a relief to see one of our babies who still reminds us at times of a baby--although if we slip and call you one you ferociously remind us, "I'm not a baby; I'm a bid dirl." And you're right; your potty-training prowess backs up the claim. You love to anticipate turning four. Who knows how many times you've asked, "What tind birday party I doing to have? A Belle party or a Minnie Mouse party?" Whichever answer we give, you say, "Oh," smile in your winning, bigger-than-possible-for-a-face-that-size way, and ask the question again about another ten times.

Your auntie sees a nurse in you, given your empathetic interest in people's owies. Maybe so. But I think your tender, merciful heart will thrive on any pursuit in which you are loving people the way your Heavenly Father intended we all be loved.

I just pray He helps you sense something near how much we love you, little Melía Grace.

Community over Convenience: Why the Amish have got it goin' on

This weekend, during commercial breaks in our Adult Conversation (i.e. passionate, adoring chatter between two lovers--about their children), Rachelle and I talked about the Amish. (This is sounding like a really steamy couple's get-away weekend, I know.) But the Amish are like my heroes. If I got into the whole reincarnation thing, my goal would be to graduate and come back next life as an Amish person.

They are all about doing things the hardest way possible, which yields this paradoxical simplicity. They are the antithesis of what Staples is hoping to sell us. This office supply store's ad campaign has captured the fantasy of the 21st-century Westerner: an "Easy" button, the postmodern magic wand that simplifies life's complicated tasks. They actually sell them. I have been buying easy buttons all my life: cell phones, computers, cars, PDAs, books, magazines and the rest of the pile of tools and toys that now isolate us from each other. I love all this stuff. I love "easy." I love harnessing my time and getting organized and being a geek.

In the gym, we are wired to personal audio devices leaving us incomunicato, so plugged in that we're utterly disconnected. My affluence affords me the luxury of driving wherever I want on my own schedule, without needing to rub elbows with other passengers or alter my hours to those of public transport. I live in a single-family home inhabited by my nuclear family. I have My Computer, My Music, My Movies, My Documents, MySpace--all so convenient, so confining.

I have been buying "Easy" buttons for my family, and loving them too. The minivan--complete with wireless headphones for kids to hear their movie while we do not--delivers both kids and parents from the inconvenience of sharing sound and space. Today I had the luxury of cleaning up from dinner while two daughters watched a video and the other listened to music on the computer with headphones. We buy Happy Meals, named for how parents feel when each kid has her own setup: toy, drink, entrée, side. Hold the squabbling over who got more fries.

But for the Amish, the perennial absence of an "Easy" button seems to give them something that I would love even more--each other. A dozen years ago I showed a documentary about Amish culture to a religion class I was teaching, and as we discussed it, this lanky, long-haired kid named Oliver--one of my brightest students--summed up Amish values in a phrase I have never forgotten: "community over convenience." And every so often, when the high-tech clutter of my life leaves me feeling lonely in a crowd, I know that this is what I want more than almost anything else.

The vision comes back: a trio of bearded Plain People plowing a field behind a horse--together. No Easy button there. But oh, how I envy them sometimes.