The First Letter To My Son
Special boy, here's why I'm writing to you every Sunday...
“All happy families are alike: each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
— Leo Tolstoy, opening line of Anna Karenina
My special boy,
This morning we wanted to leave at a good hour to visit a farm that produces ecological olive oil with a petting farm and views of the ocean and mountains.
Your mother passed me my old, checked lined trousers as I was sat in my armchair watching the new season of Drive to Survive and, just as I had put both feet into the trousers, you climbed onto the chair, sat on its edge, feet dangling, and slipped your own little legs into those of the trousers.
Unless you’re eating you never sit still, not even for 60 seconds.
I tell people that and they think it’s an exaggeration — until they meet you.
Wherever we go, you want to say hello to everyone, touch every button, explore every hole, stroke every dog, feel every plant, enter every store, and drag every chair somewhere new.
You never sit still.
And that doesn’t change when you’re at home.
If you want to play in your play room you grab our fingers, lead us to there, and pull us to the ground exactly where you want us.
And when I’m working at my desk, you climb up and sit on my lap and tap the space bar on the keyboard stopping and starting videos.
You bite the camera cover off the webcam, you take my Montblanc and remove the lid and chew it and draw on yourself and replace the lid and rinse and repeat.
You chew my leather wallet and empty it of its contents. You test every button on the screen, the speakers, and my stand up desk.
You slide down and cry to climb back up and take babble into the microphone while tapping it on top to turn it on and off and on and off again.
You really never sit still.
But today you were calm and we sat there together, my arms around as you, as we watched a 45-minute episode from start to finish.
Where did your patience come from?
And why am I telling you this?
Like Father, Like Son
In your mother’s womb she wished for a son just like his Father.
I warned her to be careful what she wished for.
You’re 16 months old now.
Cautious to bless you with my virtues and warn you of my vices, it was clear early on that you are your Father’s Son.
Unusually espabilado, curious, and disagreeably stubborn, you are generous, kind and charming too.
I never knew my Father, but the stories I’m told are the same, and the genetic thread weaves on.
Why am I telling you this?
Your great-grandfather was an artists and used to tell me and your uncles stories on his living room mat as we played Sumo wrestlers back-to-back trying to knock each other off.
That was about as close to feeling normal or right as I remember in childhood.
Your great-great-grandfather wrote an autobiography of his time during the Great War and his return home and subsequent founding of his family business and I enjoyed reading that story 100 years after the War ended.
Your great-great-grandfather, my great-grandfather, died before I was born; as did your great-grandmother, my grandmother.
But I find it meaningful to read his life story.
I can only imagine how much more meaningful it would be if I had known the man.
The Importance Of Fatherhood
It is important to me to be a good Father to you.
I find that putting pen to paper makes things real.
The mind has a habit of playing tricks on itself but writing the truth removes the devil and his lies and lets you see things as they are.
There are a million ways to be unhappy but there are universal principles for how to live well.
That’s why I’m writing to you each week…
It leaves me nowhere to hide in my goal of being a good, loving Father to you and, as your great-great-grandfather’s autobiography gave to me, it gives you something to read when you’re older…
Something that documents our journey together as Father & Son.
It’s a way of discovering and sharing the universal principles of a fulfilling life with you as we live go.
I love you, special boy,
Your Father.
P.S. I’ll be posting letters to my son each week, short stories each month, and short thoughts each day or so. Subscribe for free below to be notified when I do.