Dear son,
Today is your 30th birthday. Happy day! I’m celebrating with you.
Rather, celebrating without you.
Better yet, I’m celebrating you.
My mind flashes to the day you turned three. Your mother and I had been egging you on, promoting the belief that to turn three is a grand accomplishment, telling you how big you were going to be. To cement the date in your head we used the tune “Mary had a little lamb” and taught you these lyrics:
My birthday is February seventh,
February seventh, February seventh;
My birthday is February seventh,
And I’ll be three years old.
You were a precocious child anyway, and armed with this information, you had a long-form response for anyone who asked how old you were.
You woke up the morning of your third birthday and raced to the sitting room, stood before the mirrored door of Grandma Brown’s antique wardrobe. And began to cry.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I don’t look any bigger,” you said.
You dear child.
+ + +
Do you feel bigger today for having rounded the corner into your thirties?
I remember wrassling with you in the bedroom. We’d play “Tiger” with me as the striped beast on hands and knees and you the feckless hunter who would launch himself from atop the bed onto the unsuspecting feline’s back.
At 30, do you have the world by its tail?
I remember many post-divorce games of Monster at the playground beside the White River. I took the title role whilst you and your younger brothers sought refuge atop the slide, jungle gym, climbing structure. I gave chase. Somehow you were always able to elude me.
Do you still see me as a monster? Do you still live in a world where gay fathers are hell-bent on their sons' destruction and must be avoided at all costs?
Been a long time since you turned ten, since you told me, “Dad, I don’t want to see or talk to you for a while.” Curious, the twists life takes. Curious, how long it takes us sometimes to learn the simplest lessons. Yet there are many opportunities to grow.
We don’t always attain the heights we set for ourselves—or others set for us.
Why not take the world by tail? Launch yourself forth in exuberance, expectation, delight. And see what happens.
Keep your eyes peeled for danger, sure. And do your best to learn where true danger lies. All is not what it seems.
You get to make a fair amount of choices in this world. Make them as wisely as you can. There’s an awful lot beyond your control. Accept this with all the grace you can muster.
+ + +
These last 20 years have been a lesson for me in love, loss, what it is to love into loss. Love into the void. The red cords that tether heart to heart in spite of time, distance, emptiness. The power of memory, intention.
I've learned love lasts a lifetime. That we are surrounded by love—even from people we don’t know, choose not to know or remember.
Here’s to you, son. In celebration of a milestone. In anticipation of whatever lies ahead. In life, in death, in love,
Dad
