do we really deserve our children?

found this while organizing my wallet this morning:


got this about five weeks ago.

is there a competition for the most distraught birthday greeting ever written? because if there is, i think i have a winner here:



a decoding of the hieroglyphics:

Sorry I cannot give you the drawing because i lost it pls forgive me pls make sandwiches for me i cant stop thinking about it i made a small picture e down there

(then a drawing of a woman and a little girl raising their arms up in worship under a cotton candy tree as a rabbit looks on)

What would you like as a gift a message, TV, story or what please make a decision.

she apparently made this note in a frenzy while dressing up for school, panicked that she lost the drawing she made the night before; the drawing with which she intended to surprise me as i woke up to my 37th birthday.

if, in the future, time magazine will interview me for a profile on jana and they ask me what jana was like as a child, i will simply show them this. this letter is everything jana is: loving, crazy, sensitive, emotional, thoughtful, demanding ("please make a decision"), distracted ("please make me a sandwich"), generous, courteous, creative. this is also evidence of how easily she goes into a frenzied panic (like losing the painting she made the night before to give to me as present), her cavalier attitude to spelling (by "message" she meant a back rub), and how disdainful she is of the god of punctuation marks, the period.