KT won tickets to see Under the Sea at the Imax yesterday so all of us trundled down South and grabbed some of the last seats in the auditorium. Nick liked the show and Zoey mainly danced around in the aisle to the music. She didn’t want to wear the glasses and dancing seemed like a better proposition. Works for me. Usually I’m too uptight and tell her to go sit, but sometimes I can let go. Sometimes I can’t. It helps that I just finished a good run for me earlier which brings a fair amount of peace to me. I could use it so I think I’ll stick to this running thing for a while.

I’ve been going to sleep many nights lately with anxiety about the realities of life and death and I’ll often lay for some minutes/hours/days attempting to reason or make peace with myself. Ultimately, I understand that it doesn’t matter, but for someone as controlling as I am it is a tough pill to swallow. I come to the same conclusion every time though, the monks have it right with the beauty of impermanence. We draw many paths that will lead us back to ourselves and then we are particles in the stream. What I know now is the great love of my family and friends, good coffee and runner’s high. So thanks for making me Mom!

I was so happy to wish you happy birthday this morning. This time that we share is like no other and I am grateful. We’ve all worked hard to be where we are today and that work has paid off exponentially. Watching you form and grow and learn has been a real joy thus far and it’s wonderful to watch your Mom’s sweetness and my curiosity in things grow in you. Now if only we could slow the growth of your Mom’s stubborness and my need for immediacy (read impatience). Whatever you make of yourself though, it’s you and I’m just glad to be an active spectator in it all.

Happy birthday!

Mr. Ebert, thank you for some fond memories of a different time. I too grew up in Urbana and was a former editor of the Echo. We had archives of past issues and I enjoyed reading your articles in those old issues, wondering if I’d be able to flourish in the same way as I grew as a writer. I also interned for the Daily Illini and News Gazette (the Courier was long gone by then, I’ve only ever known it as a restaurant). Journalism didn’t take for me though perhaps it would have had I been born ten years earlier. Perhaps this is because classical journalism is changing into something else and the writing was on the wall even 15 years ago.

I feel like I’m home when I go back to C-U every year or Thanksgiving. I always think of running as a boy through the trees in Orchard Downs being somewhere else, anywhere or everywhere. I don’t think there was a better place to grow up.

I don’t know if Kansas City will have the same richness for Nick and Zoey that Urbana did for me. I hope so, or perhaps wherever we end up will. No other place fuels more fundamentaly good and strong memories.