On November 5th, 1995, our daughter, Sierra McKay, exited the womb at St. Lukes Hospital in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Dawn, the owner of the womb in which Sierra exited, was 24-years old, and myself, a bewildered bystander to the entire womb exiting event, was the ripe old age of 23. Just a couple of college kids one minute and parents the next. A “Mom” and a “Dad” forever more.

Although 30 years have passed between that day and this, much of it remains so seemingly close that I swear I could open the door to that crappy apartment in Aberdeen today and we would still be there just as we were. Our lives, paused in existence, like a glowing piece of hot iron hovering over the forge just before the blacksmiths hammer has begun to shape it.

Blow by blow, day by day, year by year…and now 30 candles flicker for our little girl. They flicker, they dance in the breeze, they bend in the wind, they illuminate a life that has thus far been very well lived, a life that is always striving to live and experience more fully. A life that is kind, a life that is caring, a life that those two college kids living in that crappy apartment in Aberdeen could have never imagined for their little girl. A life and a person that Mom and Dad are quite proud of.

When we brought Sierra home from the hospital, home to that crappy apartment, I was gathering the last of the menagerie of miscellaneous items that are apparently necessary to feed, swaddle, sanitize, and swab a baby from the car, while Dawn was getting Sierra settled inside. As I stood, arms full of things we had no need for the day before, about to take the first steps in my life as a pack mule, I looked up at the moon, not quite full, but more than half illuminated (“waxing gibbous phase” for you moon nerds), and I said to myself, to nobody, and to everybody, “Help us. Help us raise this child. Help us be good parents.” Then I wobbled inside under the weight of it all.

Young and dumb has its advantages and looking back from the vantage point of someone that is no longer young, under the weight of it all, Dawn and I did alright. We did what we thought was best and we did it how we thought it best to be done. Could some of it have been done better? Of course. When you’re standing on the shore it’s easy to tell someone who is drowning that there is a better way to keep their head above water. So it goes.

30 years ago, under a waxing gibbous moon in Aberdeen, South Dakota, a baby girl began her journey under the loving care of two half illuminated college kids. Just a bunch of kids striving to be a bit more than they were, striving to try and get it right, striving for fullness.

Happy 30th Sierra. Shine on.