Let me first say, "You're welcome," for one day you will learn that we almost named you Juliet Ophelia and you will likely thank us for changing our minds. Juliet Ophelia. Two poignantly tragic, yet achingly beautiful names. Initially the combination seemed sublime, like the complementary tones of resonant woodwinds and bird song. Then, on further reflection, we realized that, though lovely in isolation, they were just too much when conjoined, more like the overapplication of perfume. So just "Juliet" remains. We enbowered "Ophelia" in asphodel and let her dissolve into a quiet moon-silvered pond.
Good morning, Juliet.
Welcome to Earth.
I write to you on the very first full day of your life outside the sumptuously furnished and comfortably warm womb where you gradually took form over the last nine months. If you're sensible -and how could you not be- you are somewhat chagrined at having been ushered out so early, far sooner than you should have been. Forgive us your premature expulsion, for it is an evolutionary convention: necessitated by our forebears' ill-advised decision to walk upright. Had our ancestors not been so vain as to abandon the primate posture, you could have remained far longer in your protective hovel. As it is, you went "full term" and are now out here with us. Despite the shock, we hope you'll find solace and comfort in the company of your adoring parents. We're the two who will be fawning pathetically over you, caressing your head, kissing your face and intensifying your longing for a return to the womb.
The pretty one is your mother. As it is said that the baby spirit selects the parent, I congratulate you on your sound judgement. You have chosen well, indeed, for your mother is not merely a good person, but is a cause of goodness in others. When she smiles at you, she'll be smiling at the best part of who you are. This is how she smiles at everyone. In so doing, she naturally draws out everyone's finest aspects and they all feel a sense of gentle elevation in her presence. Though you'll know nothing of this now, the time of your first acquaintance, you'll come slowly to learn the unsounded depth of your mother's character and the infectious efferesence of her spirit. She is like the world, itself. The more you get to know her, the more beautiful she will become to you.
I am reluctant to write much about your father because, as your father, I've been a rather poor judge of him. So, in order to explain him, let me explain his parents. A relationship therapist would have looked at his parents as an aerodynamicist regards a bumblebee: looking with deep puzzlement and not a little consternation at the material existence of a theoretical impossibility. A sweet-natured Southern woman so sensitive and refined she believed that every uttered curse caused an Earthquake wed to a sputtering barrel-chested Boston-bred Irish bonfire. By all rights, they should have annihilated each other in a spasm of gamma-rays on first contact. In fact, they were married for more than half a century and would have persisted in their union for centuries more had the reaper not intervened. Your father, however, inherited their incongruities: an elf-friend trapped in a linebacker's body. Thus you'll often directly observe only his profound sense of existential discomfort. You'll see him most clearly in darkness, hence his chosen profession.
Let me next say "I'm sorry," for the many times when we'll offer unsolicited advice, which, of course, is the age-old parental prerogative. We understand already that it will likely be half heard and unheeded. We also know that unlike knowledge, which can be cheerfully acquired and gently imparted, wisdom is almost always dearly bought. We'd love to save you the pain and trouble by giving it to you instead of letting you earn it. It doesn't work that way. Your Earth odyssey has begun and so you will learn best when your unaccompanied treks become the most arduous.
I'd also explain Earth, if I even knew how to begin. As it is an ancient world endowed with powers beyond our fathoming, it can well afford to sit quietly for a while as its most bold and audacious species -to which you belong- offers it flames and blasphemies. Yet, its quiescence won't last forever. In time, dearest Juliet, may you live to know all its beauties and none of its reckonings. Do know, however, that the two warm, lovely souls who midwifed you into the world are more the rule on Earth than the exception. Of course, in a situation as felicitous as childbirth, they were at liberty to exhibit their benevolence openly. On a predator-laden planet, most find it prudent to conceal their better selves. (What a world it would become if only your mother could smile at it.)
Today is the first of your life's two bookends. The other, presumably and hopefully, won't arrive until well into the 22nd century. By that time your parents will have long since become incorporated into the ages, along with a good many others that you knew and for whom you harbored an abiding affection. As you approach the second bookmark, you will be soberingly aware of life's ephemerality and the inevitability of loss. To be born into a Universe that will persist for trillions of years while each of us is apportioned a wafer-thin segment seems all too cruel a jest: enough to taste, but not savor. All the same, may this melancholy reflection instill in you an irrepressible vigor that will not permit you to simply sigh away your senescence.
But, for now, a helpless infant rests her head on a shoulder, a firm structure in a realm frightfully bereft of securities. We ask for your trust, which we know is asking too much, as we encapsulate you in a makeshift carapace, shielded from the assailing gusts and ceaseless tumults of our unquiet Earth. Tomorrow you'll awaken into the same mystifying world and you'll look at me as if to say, "Aren't you a bit old for this, Dad?"
"Most certainly," I'll answer as I cradle your body and carry you to look out the window to see the anachronism of cars and coffee shops embedded in the heart of a quintessential New England village. "Not much sense in me, I'm afraid." Of course, as Professor Von Helsing once said, and as you will come to learn yourself, We're all G-d's madmen.