All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir(2)

Having twin baby girls makes you value routine. Wake up, feed them, put them down for a nap, write until you hear the sound of a laugh or cry, and clumsily make your way toward the crib. Rinse, repeat. All noted in the journal he kept back then. One daily tradition that endured throughout our time together was the song before bedtime. He would come into our room—Meagan on top, me on the bottom of our wooden bunk beds—and read us a story. Inevitably we would beg for more. Just one more! He would shake his head and say, “How about a song?” Then he would launch into his simple tune:

    Oh, I’ve got the nicest girls in town

Oh, I’ve got the nicest girls in town

They are so nice, they are so sweet, I love them twice, they can’t be beat

Oh,

I’ve

Got

The

NICEST girrrrrrllsssssss in townnnnnnnn.



As a teenager I would roll my eyes when he would start in on this familiar refrain, but secretly I loved it. He would capitalize on the lore, at one point presenting both Meagan and me with a golden trophy, a gilded plaque that read NICEST GIRL IN TOWN. I wasn’t sure if I deserved the award, but I accepted it willingly.

Memories of the softness and creativity of these moments warm me. They are evidence of his fierce love, devotion, and effort when it came to his girls. I know how rare it is to be so truly considered.





To: Erin Lee Carr, Meagan Marie Carr

From: David Carr

Date: 04/15/2014

Subject: a 26th birthday thought





My precious girls,


We are now at the part I had not anticipated, the part of being your parents when you are still becoming, but very much who you are.

If I say that I am proud of you, it somehow suggests that you are a reflection of my dreams. You are, but you are both so much more than that. I knew you were nice girls, good girls, but you have turned out in ways I would have never anticipated.

You guys are scary brilliant, ferocious and determined in both your intellectual life and matters of the heart. Yes, you are empathetic—I’m looking at you Meagan—and hilarious—put your hands in the air, Eronsky—but you are both deep thinkers, throbbing intellects that are always processing.

I can see each of you making significant contributions to not just our family or your respective communities, but the family of man. There is no limit on how far each of you will go. And I mean that. When you were growing up, I switched from wanting you to be mine to wanting you to be safe to wanting you to be comfortable to wanting you to be happy. Now, I want to watch you take over the world. Hyperbolic, to be sure, but every time I mix it up with you guys about significant matters, I come away smarter and questioning what I thought I already knew.

Erin: I have watched you in the middle of the city with a box of your office crap and alone in a room struggling to make beautiful important things. As someone who has seen a fair amount of talented young people up close, I can say that you are in the far reaches of that bunch. To call you a natural is to dismiss all the shit you ate to get where you are, but you instinctively understand the next right thing that brings you closer to the story you are trying to tell. You cannot teach that or inherit that or game that. That is you. That is who you have become. Your stories will be on the lips of not just your tribe, but many, many others.

Meagan: When you chose your path, I assigned it as a natural outgrowth of your journey. As it turns out, your intuition around humans—always a bit freaky to behold—is matched by an acute sense of intellectual inquiry. You are a scholar in all that entails and soon enough, a professional with a box of tools so big it will be hard to carry. Jesus, are you smart. You are always pulling back the blankets on what is in front of you, wanting to know why, wanting to know how, wanting to know more. In a family that doesn’t do brilliant, you are threatening to change the game. You exist in a rarified cohort, and yet you still manage to stick out. We will, in the end, have a hard time getting to the end of all the things you know about humans and their behaviors.

Who knows where the drive at your level comes from? Both Jill and I have done our bit, working to make sure that our work is meaningful and sometimes remarkable, but that doesn’t explain why each of you is working, striving, pushing to become something uncommon. There is, in both of you, an unwillingness to settle, a restlessness and frank ambition. Can you imagine how much joy that gives us as parents who have watched you grow up? Teeny, tiny little girls, afraid of toilets, or getting in trouble, or not having real friends, and now look at you. Life gives us things, amazing things, to stare at, but you are both the marvels of our life.

I find you both adorable, as I always have. We looked at the wedding album the other day and I was taken away by the trust and love you stared at us with. It made me happy that we have, in our bumpy ways, been worthy of that belief.

Please know that Jill and I are so glad that you have matured into remarkable young women with good values and standards that will serve you for the rest of your lives. But we are also aware that you have become creative forces and serious thinkers. We talk about you, marvel at you, speculate about your futures. We love being your parents, but we also like being your fellow travelers on this part of the road. Our amazement is less about the narrative of your conflicted birth, or complicated backstory, and more about what you have done as the ground turned solid beneath you. I look hard at the choices you have made since in terms of your health, your demons, and your challenges. You are tough young women who refuse to succumb when things are hard. You fight back.