News

Last week, Arianna Huffington launched a new column in which she chooses her favorite Huffington Post articles from the previous week. In her first installment, she chose our Adam letter.

It made me proud and thrilled because it validated what Monkees know –  that children and kindness are BIG IMPORTANT NEWS. I mean, I don’t know many of them since I don’t watch the news, but do I know that there are A LOT of THINGS going on in the world. And with her choice, Ms.Huffington asserted that teaching children to be kind and brave is NEWS. Breaking news. Just be brave and kind. That is NEWS. Not just to kids but to you and me, too.

It feels like there are so many other things we need to be, but maybe that’s not true. Maybe we don’t have to be hot or sweet or brilliant or talented or even happy. Those things are nice, but they fade and are often out of our control. The idea that all we have to do is be kind to ourselves and others and try, sometimes, to be brave is NEWS. When you think about it, if everyone else adopted this NEWS, there’d be a heck of a lot less Bad News to report.

Anyway, I didn’t want to tell you that Ms. Huffington picked our letter because it seemed too braggy.

But I sent the article to Bubba and Tisha immediately, of course. I always do.

The first time Farah (the editor in chief of Huff Po Parents and now a dear friend) contacted me to write for her I died. I just died. Then I immediately called my parents. Writing that sentence makes me so scared. Who do you call when your parents are gone? Who do people call who don’t have parents waiting to celebrate every tiny and big thing?

My mom answered the phone. We’d just spoken three hours prior. Still, she answered like this:

“Well, Hiiiiiiiiiiiii HONEY!!!” Like it’d been four years since we’d checked in. Like it was a thrilling unbelievable SHOCK that I was calling. Like I was in a third world country and the likelihood that I’d have found a phone was nil. Like I’d been missing for years. She always answers like that.
“MOM, Guess what?” I said.

“OH MY GOD, WHAT? WHAT?” She squealed.

“THE HUFFINGTON POST just asked me to write for them!”

“WHHHHAAAAAT?? Nooooo WAY!! YOU ARE KIDDDDDDING ME, SWEETHEART! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I KNOW YOU ARE KIDDING ME!! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT.”

“No! Mom, I’m not kidding. I promise, I’m not kidding.”

“Oh my Gosh, Hold on. I have to tell your father. He is not going to BELIEVE THIS!!!!” (*squeals again* Yes, Tisha really squeals. All the time. Every day she squeals. And while she squeals she puts her teeny fists up near her face and shakes them and smiles so big it looks like she might crack. Or explode.)

The next thing I hear is Tisha yelling (without covering the mouthpiece) –

“DIIIIICCKKKKKK! DIIIIIICKKKK! The Huffington Post contacted Glennon!!!!! They want her to write something!!!!”

Bubba yells back –  something far off and muffled that I can’t make out.

Tisha squeals, “Wait a second! I’ll find out!”

“Honey?”

“Yep, still here.”

“Daddy wants to know what the Huffington Post is. What is the Huffington Post, honey? Is it a newspaper? A book? We’re SO PROUD OF YOU!”

That’s how it goes. They don’t know. They don’t care. They just listen to my voice and if I’m thrilled, they’re thrilled. I think this means they finally trust me to be excited about the right things.

My dad sent me this email in response to the Arianna Huffington post news AND to this post, in which I called Hoda and Kathy Lee assholes. (In my defense – I apologized to Bubba first.)

G-

“These are wonderful rewards for your hard work and deep faith in yourself and your gifts. I am very proud to be your Dad…99.9 % of the time. Except when you use ASSHOLE in print. But I did appreciate the preemptive apology. They are ASSHOLES but perhaps next time you could refer to them as Ilene Sullivan did to me when she indicated that I was a “Sorry sack of Siberian sheep shit.” It is more entertaining and much classier.

Love you,

Dad