WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.173 align:middle line:90%
All right, how about one more?

00:00:02.173 --> 00:00:02.800 align:middle line:90%
Yay!

00:00:02.800 --> 00:00:03.300 align:middle line:90%
OK.

00:00:03.300 --> 00:00:03.840 align:middle line:90%
Two more.

00:00:03.840 --> 00:00:04.350 align:middle line:90%
Two more?

00:00:04.350 --> 00:00:06.660 align:middle line:90%
OK, two more.

00:00:06.660 --> 00:00:08.310 align:middle line:90%
All right, I'll read two more.

00:00:08.310 --> 00:00:10.530 align:middle line:90%
I wrote this.

00:00:10.530 --> 00:00:11.340 align:middle line:90%
It was an honor.

00:00:11.340 --> 00:00:14.100 align:middle line:84%
I was able to go to
DC a couple of weeks

00:00:14.100 --> 00:00:19.830 align:middle line:84%
ago for the interment ceremony
for Matthew Shepard's remains

00:00:19.830 --> 00:00:23.610 align:middle line:84%
at the Washington
National Cathedral, which

00:00:23.610 --> 00:00:26.820 align:middle line:84%
was one of the most moving
experiences of my life.

00:00:26.820 --> 00:00:30.780 align:middle line:84%
And I was thinking
about his parents

00:00:30.780 --> 00:00:32.800 align:middle line:90%
and about my own children.

00:00:32.800 --> 00:00:34.260 align:middle line:84%
And I wrote this
in the hotel room.

00:00:34.260 --> 00:00:37.470 align:middle line:84%
So I have never read this
out loud, but here it is.

00:00:37.470 --> 00:00:44.350 align:middle line:84%
The title is my daughter's
birthday, "December 18, 2008."

00:00:44.350 --> 00:00:47.770 align:middle line:84%
"For just a fraction of
a moment that afternoon,

00:00:47.770 --> 00:00:50.275 align:middle line:84%
if we think of time
as being a whole,

00:00:50.275 --> 00:00:55.150 align:middle line:84%
you were the newest
person in the world.

00:00:55.150 --> 00:00:57.910 align:middle line:84%
You were the emptiest
vessel on Earth,

00:00:57.910 --> 00:01:01.720 align:middle line:84%
knowing nothing of this
place or of yourself,

00:01:01.720 --> 00:01:06.250 align:middle line:84%
that you even were a self, that
a self was something one could

00:01:06.250 --> 00:01:09.820 align:middle line:90%
be, that one could be at all.

00:01:09.820 --> 00:01:12.400 align:middle line:90%
And what was being?

00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:15.940 align:middle line:84%
For that narrowest
sliver of a hole,

00:01:15.940 --> 00:01:21.130 align:middle line:84%
you were the least
experienced person on Earth.

00:01:21.130 --> 00:01:23.050 align:middle line:90%
And then you weren't.

00:01:23.050 --> 00:01:27.470 align:middle line:84%
You knew me before you
knew your own body.

00:01:27.470 --> 00:01:33.280 align:middle line:84%
What to do with your hands, your
pink fists battering your face.

00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:37.540 align:middle line:84%
We swaddled you as if
against that confusion.

00:01:37.540 --> 00:01:42.520 align:middle line:84%
Though, I tell you, that
confusion never leaves.

00:01:42.520 --> 00:01:47.940 align:middle line:84%
The body remains a house
unaware of its rooms."

00:01:47.940 --> 00:01:49.000 align:middle line:90%