A moment leads to a letter

Dear sons,

No matter how hard you might try to package life into something that looks all neat and organized, you will find that Living is messy and often gets in the way of your tidy aspirations. We are usually taught that the messy stuff, the immeasurable, the invisible, the stuff that doesn't fit into our daily grind, our material expectations, is less valid, not as real. Somehow our pursuit of leisure or convenience trumps all that messy stuff. But the messy stuff is life and all the rest is vapidity.

I lived like that for many years; avoiding, dodging, evading looking at myself too closely. I wanted to power through Life and I was willing to make do riding the appearance of things. But now at 44, the appearances don't seem to matter much and I am sunk with this fragmented version of myself. In between who I am and who I want to be.

Except when I'm with my family. That's the only time I know I'm living right. And it's hard. You keep my lid open. Which makes me a lucky dad because I have a hunch if you shut the lid on that messy side (the inside) of Life, you become, in essence, merely an appearance of that with which you were so preoccupied in portraying. An object or an image, without substance, hardly conscious of being human... Don't do that.

You go long enough without turning the inside out and your subjectivity, your self hood, will grow wings and fly away to become an angel. Your body and brain will be all that's left along with a laundry list of imperative propositions that will have to pass the time until the end of days. This is the definition of loneliness. I want to raise you to keep your wings. Nurture them, love them and let them take you places.

I know I haven't written you in awhile. My imagination flattened out there for a few days. I lost track of the minutes, the minutiae. During the heat wave in September, Time got scrambled and stretched into a plane of sameness. The days went quiet and uniform like sunlight on pavement. One moment no different from the next. No shape to it. No shadow. It's hard to remember what we did from one day to the next. It's easy to get caught up in a list of things to do. If you're not careful that list can keep you busy for years. It's the same for everyone.

Writing to you is one way for me to open up my box and peek inside. It's dark in here. It's hard to see but with persistence you adjust. Toby would say there's bears in there. He's right. You don't know what you'll find.

My thoughts recreate themselves faster than I can think them. Before I reach the end of this sentence I've become someone different. I still get discouraged by how insincere my words seem to me. I'm never who I think I am. I'll see a character on TV and I'll want to be like him. What a great dad! Or I'll hear an author on a podcast and I'll want to be more like her. I wake up every morning and promise myself that I'm going to be the father that does"all the everythings" as your mother would say. And then Life...

But I guess what I've learned is you don't give up changing. And you might as well learn to love changing. And by the way try and rid yourself of any misconceptions you might have learned about "being" yourself. Being yourself is an overrated trap set by your ego. A vain need for a sense of identity. Instead, think "becoming" yourself.

So my butt is cold on the hard concrete of the arena bleachers. I'm watching Ollie learning to skate backwards. My eyes well up with water. I'm toasting your beautiful mother at Thanksgiving after she prepared a traditional turkey dinner for Aunt Tina, Uncle Jay and your cousins, Nana, and Aite. My neck hurts under the covers scribbling notes at 3 in the morning. I fill the bath with bubbles. I listen to you read. I pour milk in your Cheerios. I drive you to school. I want to spend every last moment i can with you. I can hear murmuring upstairs as Ollie practices reading with his mom and Toby plays with toys.Read more