My Gift is My Song...and This One's for You...

Though it will just be one click away from your point of view, it has been several months since I have written here.  Today is your second Christmas day, though I have been up fighting evil as Batman and haven't been to bed yet.  I am staying up foolishly late playing video games for the same reason I haven't written in several months: I don't make enough time for it.

Most of the time, I am too busy either working or playing with you to be writing in some dusty blog.  It is, however, important that you understand that I am not going to stop making entries...I'm just choosing to actually hang out with you instead.

This morning, I just want to share a fun little story with you about what Christmas with you means to me.  I am notorious among our friends and family for being a bit of a Scrooge (a bit mistakenly, I would argue, because Scrooge sought to take Christmas from others; I just prefer not to be bothered with the event if I can avoid it.)  However, the fun I am finding in it now is seeing how excited you get about us having time to just be together and about the lights and about special dinners and, yes, tinsel-y gifts beneath a magical tree (about which you whisper "~~masstree" each and every time you see).  The story I want to share is about what gift giving should be and how you helped me find the perfect one.

For some context, it's important that you understand that my Dad (your Grandpa Neil) loves Canadian Tire.  Knowing this as I do, I decided to go there to find a good gift for him this holiday season.  I was grouchy about the weather and being cold and trying to find something from Canadian Tire that my Dad didn't already own!  I left you and your Mom to look about at the pretty lights as I glowered through each isle of handy tool sets with interchangeable thingies and rubberized doodads but it was no use: I just had no clue!

Then, as luck would have it, you came upon me as I was standing around waiting for Divine intervention.  Divine as you are, I looked down at you and said, "OK...what should I get Grandpa Neil?"  No sooner had I asked you this than you said, "Gampa Neil!" and walked straight ahead pointing with bloodhound-like focus.  I followed you and, within a matter of seconds, you led me to the one thing in the store that a) my Dad was certain not to buy for himself and b) that he was certain to think was "neato" (Though I write this at 1:25 am on Christmas Day and Dad is unlikely to read this for some time, I am still not going to reveal publicly what this gift is).  Needless to say, I was immediately enlightened as to the power of giving a gift from a place of love rather than one of fear (fear being operative because it is the goofy fear that your family member will not feel love if you don't get them a doodad).

And so, thank you for sharing some of your seemingly inextinguishable supply of love.  Among the 234,323,546 gifts that you seem likely to receive this holiday season, I am going to give you one right now that may seem lame but, by the time you can read this, should be appreciable by you.  Because you are already a smart cookie and because it is clear to me that learning will be a passion of yours (in whatever form it takes for you on your journey), I am going to do what little I can to help make knowledge free and easy to access for you as you grow up.  For every Christmas of your life, I promise to donate 10 dollars to the Wikimedia foundation, the organization that operates Wikipedia (and so, my donation this year is 20 dollars).  My reason for this odd little gift is twofold:

1. The aforementioned hope that you will always be able to have access to a good jumping-off point for anything you want to know about and;
2. So that the little links I pepper into my posts will stand a better chance of still working when you are able to read this blog. 

 I want you to be able to see what I see when I sit here and write to you.  I want you to know where I'm coming from and about all of the weird peripheral information that I get to just reach out to whenever I want.  I don't want you to have to take my word (or anyone's word) for anything; I want you to live what you know as much as you knew which gift to buy Grandpa Neil.  I want you to have every tool you can have...starting with the endless toolbox that is a vocabulary.

"I know it's not much, but it's the best I can do..."

Love and Merry Christmas 2011

Your Dad.