{ 2 bars + 3 stars }

A little rain will fall.

Dearest Vivian (aka the Lean Bean),

Turns out we had nothing to worry about after all. You see, what was supposedly a “confirmed” tornado-producing thunderstorm, was just the average, late summer supercell.

We’d just dropped Mom off downtown, and you were falling fast asleep in your carseat, as you are wont to do. So, instead of going home, I decided, like your typical dad, to drive aimlessly, affording you ample opportunity for an extended nap, which is something that you, as an incredibly energetic 10-and-a-half-month-old, don’t get nearly enough of.

We drove out of the city due west on U.S. 50, a smooth-as-silk blacktop that could carry us all the way to California if we wanted. Cruising along, a curtain of doom suddenly enveloped the sky. The color reminded me of pencil lead, grey but with a supernatural luster and sheen. Even though it was only 3:00 in the afternoon, sunlight was nowhere to be found. I could see a couple traffic lights in the distance swinging to and fro like drunk teenagers or ships’ masts on a violent sea. We were all but alone on the road, going a steady 50 mph — the speed most conducive to napping! — but our little car felt utterly powerless, contstantly buffeted by urgent headwinds. I downshifted, as sheets of rain overpowered our wipers, splashing and swooshing, pointlessly. So I pulled over to the side of the road, thinking it’d be safer to wait it out than to press on.

Sitting on the side of the road, it sounded as if we were being pelted by golf balls; the car felt like a covered wagon, rocking back and forth on it struts. Just as I was about to check on you, reassure you that we were fine despite all the sturm und drang, my phone began bleeping a beep I’d never heard before. I turned it on and, quite alarmingly, here is what it said (paraphrastically): you and I, little one, had somehow managed to place our fragile bodies, unknowingly, in the direct path of ARMAGEDDON and needed to find shelter RIGHT QUICK. Odd that my phone would give such stern advice, I thought to myself, so I heeded it, and swung us about, flooring it back to whence we’d come.

It’s fortunate U.S. 50 is more or less a straight arrow out of D.C., Viv. A 747 landing right in front of us would’ve gone unnoticed.  Cracking sounds of falling timber punctuated the thunderclaps. We seemed as much wind propelled as gas driven, requiring the brakes, as if in steep descent, in order to stop from accelerating. After a couple miles, I exited the highway again and found an underground parking garage for us to hunker down in. My heart was racing but you, my precious child, whom the barely audible has pulled on many occasion from the deepest depths of slumber, had managed to snooze through our entire meteorological misadventure! A few minutes passed, the worst of it having come and gone, and we were back on the road, completely intact and no worse for wear.

Anyway, kid, even if a real tornado had found us and flung our car into the abyss last weekend, I want you to know that we would’ve been just fine. I want you to understand, as you grow into a little girl, teenager, woman, that there is no panic, just equilibrium, in our mighty, unknowable universe.

I’m telling you this because no one ever told me: Forces beyond our control constantly shift, align, and realign, more often than not without even the slightest hints or explanations. And there is absolutely nothing worrisome about that.

Absolutely. Nothing.

Love you to pieces,

Your daah-daah-daah-daah.

Not afraid of getting corn stuck between her teeth!

Leave it to the NYT to host a blog centered on human anxiety.

I read (and sometimes reread) these entries every week with knowing recognition of so many of the authors’ inner fears, worries, and doubts. I wouldn’t say I’m on a first-name basis with any of their carefully described demons, but I wouldn’t have to try very hard to imagine my life mercilessly ruled by one or more of them.

Which is to say, I’m human — a template cruelly hardwired for vividly imagining worst case scenarios.

But if I have one goal for my human existence, it’s to help set a lasting pattern for my daughter, virtually fearless at nine months old, of consciously rejecting all but the single justifiable anxiety: the fear of wasting our time, and other unearned gifts.

Writing blog posts can be burdensome for the mainly introverted, which has something to do with why 2b+3s is often left whithering on the vine. Its author has plenty to say but it’s mostly said inward, to himself, in short bursts of pseudo-language — an improv script for an audience of one. He is verbal to the nth degree, but on most days, except for authoring gibberish on the internets, converses only with his wife and infant daughter, since little he thinks, in his opinion, is worth saying or writing. At work he avoids exchanging pleasantries, preferring instead to greet colleagues with a nod and a smile as he quickly passes from meeting to meeting. In commerce, he rarely makes eye contact with strangers, let alone small talk with his fellow consumers. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least to learn that most people he works or otherwise interacts with on a daily basis considers him rude or hopelessly aloof. Maybe so, but what keeps him mum, unless with family or a group of close friends, is his nature’s seclusion of his thoughts.

He doesn’t know and isn’t concerned with how many of him there are, what percentage of the world he composes — that would be a condition too extroverted for him. But he is troubled that the overwhelming majority of what he thinks — the very elements of his human cognition – goes completely uncommunicated and thus unknown by virtually all but him. It troubles him not because the world will never know what he believes, in precise and exquisite detail and grandeur, but because he may never know. Because he understands that without dialogue, or writing to an audience, our minds atrophy and ossify. Logic deteriorates in an ever-looping monologue. And soon observations are mistaken for objectivity, and therein lies the soft grey matter of ignorance and indifference.