Father and Son (pt. 100)

This post is something different. Every week, I write my 3 year old an email, for him to read when he’s grown up. I started over two years ago, and just reached my hundredth email. I’m sharing to encourage others to try out writing to their loved ones, or themselves. It’s helpful, therapeutic, and something I look forward to every week.

Hey Nono, how are you in your future corner of the world? Over two years ago, I made the choice to start writing you, via email, once a week, for you to read at some theoretical future point when you've grown up.

It began:

My Noah. Well, you're hardly just mine. You are becoming yourself, more every day. Reflecting during spare moments over the year you've been with us, over daily moments that are sometimes so inexplicably hard, I know that I need to document some of it. Before you and really before I met your mom, I used to document everything or at least so much more than I do now. Now it goes on in my head, silently, or between your mom and I. The more life there is to live, the less time left to consider and reflect on it.

I took you to daycare this morning and when I got you out of your car seat (or was it when I put you in?), we shared a moment- you tried to touch my teeth and my nose and I nibbled on your fingers and tickled your chest. Then we went inside and you cried when I left, still as hard to leave you as the first day.

That's what being a parent does to you. Every moment becomes a conduit for meaning, a never-ending spectrum ranging from grief to contentment. Life was like that before you, but there probably isn't anything like creating and caring for another human to pull the veil back, if you let it.

Now we're a hundred emails in, just like that. There have certainly been missed weeks, along with bonus emails, short snippets of life that I didn't want to forget. I jotted down when you gave yourself a playtime pseudonym, "Waterstreet" (is it one word like Oprah? It's inconclusive). Or when you named songs that play on your Fisher Price piano "Monkey in the Car" and "Papa in the Car", and one of your stuffed animals "Ricky Raskin" (he's your baby/pillow). I also told you of the occasional hard times. Mostly I tried to document the ordinary as it zoomed by at breakneck speed. The human experience is already so ephemeral without considering the endless tirades of modern distraction. I had the sense that I must document our life, even if you never read it, even if only for posterity. 

An unexpected part of parenting nobody told me about- the constant reincarnations your child undergoes. Once you've gotten used to a version of them, they have wholly shifted into a higher-fidelity person, more online and aware of themselves and this life. It's equal parts bittersweet and beautiful to bear witness to it, a reminder of the ever-changing nature of life. I remember a photo I took of you, at your Grandma's at a family dinner, looking at me with a new kind of understanding in your eyes, as if you grasped your place in all this a bit. Or when you started to respond to questions you couldn't answer with "I don't know...", an innocent grin on your face- waking up to the fact we often don't know much in this life. 

Though I'll treasure those specific memories and details forever, recording them and reflecting on our life every week has afforded me a perspective I now cherish, far greater than the sum of its parts. My writing to you seems to skirt the rules of how time works. I can contextualize the past a bit, sift through the present meaning and pass it along to you, in the future. Lots of physicists and people of faith think time and space is only our minds' way of processing all of this, that it actually isn't as real as we think. I tend to agree. When I ruminate on our life and write you, it's my experience that it all merges into one. Me in my 30's feeling like a child through your eyes, writing to a grown version of you, feeling you and your mom in my heart so closely you might as well be next to me. I try to write from the unchanging part of me to the unchanging part of you- and yet, what can we speak of besides change?

I wanted to share this with others because this practice has been a therapy for me. I feel an investment into not only our relationship, but a grappling with the meaning of all this. All parents know of the rediscovery that can occur when seeing the world from your child's fresh eyes. It's been revelatory, taking me back to my childhood and laying bare the inner-workings of human nature, of your and I's limitations and imaginations. I'm writing you not only for the perspective you afford me, but for one that I could afford you at some point in the future. And though I'm working with all my energy to build a more materially secure future, I can already afford to give my attention and perspective to you, and to this life we share.

So much in life doesn't matter, but paying attention to what does seems to be the antidote to all our troubles. I often quote the gem of truth I found through reading a blog once: “Attention is the most basic form of love; through it we bless and are blessed” (John Tarrant). This has become one of the primary tenets of my life, one I aspire to live up to. It starts with my family, with my work, music, art, beauty, all things good, aka "the part of the garden that I can tend to." Lord knows it goes by quick enough. My attention I can judiciously pay to you and to those I love, to life, to the world around will yield in a higher definition memory, a deeper appreciation of these mysteries, and a better calibrated compass to resist that which doesn't contribute meaning and love to my life (a massive work in progress).

I encourage anyone else reading, explore the idea of regularly writing- daily/weekly/monthly- any regular frequency. Write to yourself, to God, to a loved-one, to the void. Language isn't quite sufficient to express the inexpressible, but it's one of the more available mediums. You'll be amazed at what comes out, what it will do for your relation to that thing. In light of the luxuries we experience (endless comfort, security, safety, boredom, art...), we owe it to ourselves to pay attention and document a bit of it, lest it slip through our fingers. 

I'll finish off with the end of my first email. Here's to the next hundred!

Being a parent is hard, I will say that. But being your parent has been one of the great honors of my life, something that makes me weep immediately when considering it, and something I'm 100% not worthy of. Seeing you grow up and develop your sweet personality is life-giving, and it's too much to consider that now we have put you in the world, you will go on and do great things, even if that is just being yourself and living your life. Your mere existence is the miracle here, and ours too, so we can be a family and do our best by you. I know your mom feels the same. She saw early in me that our pieces fit together, and that we could both grab ahold of the same dream, of a life together. We hadn't even considered having a kid at first but we grew to consider that possibility. Now that you are here it feels both inevitable and a miracle that will never make sense.  

I know we will make mistakes, and I certainly already have. I know raising you will bring challenges in parenting, responsibilities, and dealing with the ever-present ghost of worry that lives in every parents' shadow. There are so many unknown variables for us all to navigate in this life. But I feel a deep sense of gratitude that we are facing those challenges together, as a family. Anyways, I love you. I look forward to sharing more with you, beanie, little dinosaur, light of our life.

More next week, 

Your dad.