The First

Dear Mason,

It's January 1st, 2011. You're two years, seven months, and six days old. You weigh thirty-three pounds and I'm not sure how tall you are, but compared to your twenty-inch at-birth stature you're a giant. You like Thomas the Train and have taught me the difference between Thomas, Edward, and Gordon, even though they're all blue and (I swear) identical. You love painting, coloring, doing puzzles (it took you five days to master the twenty-four piece ones you just got for Christmas - amazing) and reading. Your favorite book is Green Eggs and Ham. You're a big reader, just like me. You'd sit in my lap and listen to me read all day, if we had nothing else to do - sometimes I make sure we don't have anything else to do. You could care less about the TV (besides Sponge Bob, but then again who doesn't like Sponge Bob?), but Yurtle the Turtle gets you cracking up every time.

So you can get a picture of what 2010 was like, I'm going to try to think of a few of the most memorable news stories of the year. Let's start small - in January of 2010, Conan O'Brien left the "Tonight Show". If you can find Conan on YouTube or whatever you kids are using by the time you read this, look him up. I bet you'd like him.

Gas is $3.19/gallon. My Toyota Prius Hybrid gets an amazing average of 48 mpg. I still think gas prices are ridiculous. Speaking of my car, in February, Toyota recalled four million cars because their accelerators were sticking to the floor and people were crashing into things because they couldn't use their brakes. I bought one in March anyway. We haven't crashed into anything as of yet.

In April, there was a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from an oil gusher under the ocean. 205 MILLION gallons of oil poured into the gulf, killing animals and plants and contaminating everything. It leaked for three months before it was fixed and even now, that mess isn't completely cleaned up. People got all caught up in boycotting BP, because it was their oil rig that caused the spill, but if it wasn't them it would have been someone else. People are just so careless with anything they feel is either limitless or easily replaceable. The environment is neither. Still, we can still go outside and play in the woods and in the lakes and I hope they're always there and I hope you never have to worry too much about melting polar icecaps and I hope you can eat shrimp without having to think about how polluted the ocean is.

President Obama signed a huge health care reform bill in 2010. Even though it won't be in full effect until (I think) 2014, it will basically provide more people with better health care and will make more people in low income brackets eligible for Medicaid. Such a good thing.

Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook, was named Person of the Year by Time Magazine. This guy came up with Facebook when he was in college, and now, at twenty-six, is worth something like 28 billion dollars. Because of Facebook. Insane, right? But his is a good story, because the guy did something he was good at and is successful because of it.

Then there were the miners from Chile - I think they were around October or November. Thirty-three miners were trapped underground for over two months and at first, they were believed to be dead. When they were found and saved, every one of them was alive. The things they did to keep each others' spirits up was amazing and I cried in school when we heard they'd been rescued safely. I think the whole world cried.

Oh, and Wikileaks. Secret military documents (and anything else secret, really) being leaked onto a website where anyone can post and read. It's a toss up between being dangerous and having freedom of expression and I'm not sure where I stand.

What else? Unfortunately, the news is filled with garbage about politicians having affairs and actresses divorcing for the fourth time and teen pop stars going to rehab, so it's tough to find good news. There's my own news, I guess - next week, I turn twenty-six. It doesn't seem like it's going to be much different from twenty-five; it's just another year, I suppose. In April, we went to Michigan for a few months, and being 426 miles away from family made me understand how, even though I could start over in a new state where I didn't know anyone, I wouldn't want to. Not yet, anyway. When we came back, two months later, we moved into "Yellow House", located conveniently next to Grammy's and a few houses down from Pappy. I don't know how long we'll stay around here, but I do love being around so many people who love you.

When we came back, I decided to take the summer off. It hurt (okay, destroyed) the bank account but was arguably the best summer I've ever had - we were able to do so many fun things together and watching you learn was completely worth going in debt over. Then, school. That was a big one. I went back, struggled, got better, earned a very respectable B in student teaching, and graduated after 7.5 years with a 3.68 GPA.

I'm not sure how I just summed up an entire year in a few paragraphs, but that's basically what our world is like, at the moment. I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty of important news, but just thinking about the few events I've mentioned makes me wonder what the world is going to be like when you're old enough to write about it. You're going to be good at something and I hope you're able to figure out what it is and do something valuable with what you've got. Something big, something small... it doesn't matter. The world needs more people who want to do some good.

Happy New Year, Mase.

Mommy