While anxiously holding one of my wife’s legs on the delivery table and watching Dr.

Thursday, April 7, 1999

While anxiously holding one of my wife’s legs on the delivery table and watching Dr. Joseph Lombardi lift a quivering and generally &t;I&gtmessy&ltI&gt looking creature onto Joan’s belly, the words struck me, an emotional wave.

A girl. Our girl. Our daughter.

Emma.

It’s funny how a person – speaking personally, at any rate – can go through life not comprehending how others feel in the same situation; having children always seemed a pretty straightforward affair.

The doctor’s three words at 3:17 a.m., spoken calmly, happily, at the end of the push-push-inhale-and-push hard! calamity that is childbirth changed all that.

Now, I understand.

Things are different now, a whole new outlook on life, a new priority, thrust front and center.

And so, for our 6-day-old daughter, with a fresh perspective on life I present some thoughts which may mean something, or not, down the road. Consider it a time capsule, or snapshot, of sorts.

Today, as you lie helpless in a crib, the world’s an intriguing place.

We live in remarkable times, prosperous and uncertain, with perhaps our biggest challenges resulting from our own zeal for consumption.

By the time you’re 18, for example, someone will probably be saying &uot;I told you so&uot; on the question of global warming and man’s undetermined role in altering our environment.

Watching the debate, about all one can do is hope conservatives – who puzzlingly seem to prefer consumption, at least of natural resources – are the ones who win out, and that we haven’t started your world on a dangerous path.

On a similar note, it is equally uncertain how much longer our gluttonous consumption of fossil fuels will last. Whether you’ll be able to fill up a combustion-based vehicle with $1.20-a-gallon fuel and enjoy a drive in the country remains unclear. Perhaps, given emerging technologies.

My lifetime has witnessed nuclear bomb drills and the fall of the Berlin Wall (which you’ll no doubt read about in the history books – or web sites, perhaps.) Today, we live in a relatively peaceful world, the decades-old face-off with the former Soviet Union, now Russia, replaced by regional skirmishes, peacekeeping efforts and the occasional Gulf War to protect American interests (in that case, cheap fuel.)

With luck, the days of world wars and other bloody conflicts will never mar your future. Here, too, remain uncertainties, including China’s growing influence, and the threat of terroristic use of weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, medicine is broaching new frontiers, and facing setbacks of a calamitous nature.

While new medicines and technologies promise longer lifespans and easier treatments – some have even gone so far as to suggest extending the human lifespan to nearly 200 years (imagine that) – new dangers also lurk in antibiotic resistance among bacteria.

The blame falls squarely on our consumption of antibiotics – even for viruses which cannot be affected by the drugs – and their misuse, largely by people too lazy to take all of their medicine.

Indeed, it is easy to focus on the negative today, but well worth noting that science and American ingenuity may find solutions to even the most dire of problems (and always has.)

On April 9, you were born to the most prosperous and powerful nation in the world, a nation clinging to its pioneering spirit and zeal for personal freedoms and responsibilities.

We’re a nation of explorers, advancing technology, reaching out to space.

The possibilities that await you, Emma, are stunning.

Through it all, there is an abundance of hope, and determination.

Hope that your future will be as bright.

And determination to make it so.