io was toying around on the piano last night. this hideous looking thing that she got for nothing off facebook. she only had to pay for a moving specialist to bring it into our home. I was thinking, while she was composing something new, utterly her own, how is she going to remember that? Then I saw she was recording it for her friend JoJo and still the thought bothered me later, how does she know it’s the right keys, the piano isn’t even tuned properly? But later, just before bed, trying to sleep: but that’s why it’s wonderful. It happened once and she was the music and the music was her and something moved within her. She might never be able to reproduce it. She might even make it into something more polished, but that didn’t matter. What mattered is she was the music and she was beautiful.

Sometimes I wonder the burden I place on you. Then again I don’t know if that’s even more obnoxious, to think what I write has that kind of weight.

But writing to me means so much. It’s who I am, who I have been, who I could be. And I share these things with you, I write to you, to connect, to say, “hey, this is who I was, who I am, who I could’ve been”

Perhaps by being seen, you see yourself. Perhaps these words, these flashes, resonate. Perhaps they come from a place you recognize. Perhaps they don’t. But even if that is the case, you’ll come away with an understanding of us that you’ll hang onto when you need it most.

we cannot be redeemed, i cannot be redeemed, it’s a lost effort, it’s pointless. we are not coins, we cannot be traded. the past cannot be traded, it cannot be repurposed, a battered piece of silver leveraged for something plushy, shiny or new. it is obscene archeology. we dig up bones, we dig up dirt, pressure under the finger nails, grit between the folds, the deeper we go, the more uncomfortable we become.

we cannot be forgiven, i cannot ask for forgiveness, it’s impossible. to ask the you who you are today for sins committed by who i once was. to solicit the ghost of you, the corpse of who you once was. and what if you are truly gone? what if you are buried, or far off, in another world, a better place? who am i, suddenly awake, hat in hand, to visit your door step and rip open that wound, scarred over and faded.

we can only ask for grace, i can only seek grace. inward spiral. to turn within, to suffer in silence, to come out the other side. to measure the effort, the lack of effort, to apply extraordinary effort, to be relentless in acceptance: this is who you are. you are flawed. you are vicious. you are cruel. you are human. you are capable of more. you are capable of love. you are capable of kindness. you have yet to find out what you truly are.

dearest mikey,

this is the struggle: who you are, who you’ve been.

year after year, the consideration, the moment of reflection. have i moved? the needle, the gap, have i crossed the bridge? am i in a new place? there, the crux: have i arrived?

and you look over your shoulder and it seems all you’ve done is drag your baggage with you, cut deep grooves across old worn out floors buckling up at the seams. you yearn to leave this house and it’s as if you haven’t even reached the front door.

you think you’re still carrying a you that is lacking, that is too young, too impetuous, too quick to judge, too quick to anger. you haven’t gotten anywhere. you are still here. and it’s a rubber band snap of disappointment, a whiplash of frustration that erupts with the question: when, dammit, when?

the problem is who is doing the looking. yes, this sounds stupid, but hear me out.

i marvel at you. without even trying, you unassumingly take center stage. how hard this must be for you, for someone who feels their flaws are self evident and wretched. in your moments of weakness you must desperately want to disappear. but this is not who you are. you are a wonder and somehow between then and now, you have convinced yourself otherwise.

and you know it. deep down, you know what you are capable of and it scares you.

because i see who you are, all your flaws and shiny bits. the cracked earth and the resplendent gardens. the softness and the jagged edges. the deep compassion and flippant remark. and every year, there is more forest than cliffs. every year, there is more understanding than judgement. every year, there is more color than black. it feels slow, you want to get there. but it’s not about crossing thresholds, it’s about depth. it’s not about getting from point A to point B, it’s about standing still, it’s about letting it wash over you.

i’ve really struggled with what i want to say to you, to write to you. to say something that you haven’t heard before. so let me end with: i love you and am in love with you. this year perhaps more so than any other, we have grown even closer. and it’s not because of me, it’s because of you.

so thank you michael, thank you for being the most wonderful son i could ever have imagined.

oh, and happy birthday.

love, always
me

My love,

Years on years, layers on layers, the places change, people come and go, but the players remain.

Side quests, boss battles, backstory, scene cuts. Leveling up. It feels like we’ve been leveling up. Does that feel like that for you? That we’ve been leveling up?

I feel closer to you every day. The tension between us a gentle one, keeping us in orbit, not gristle rubbing the skin raw. Heavenly bodies with elliptical journeys that in their moments of great distance are inevitably drawn back together.

What are we orbiting? This, this thing we stumbled upon by chance, this life we’ve lived, the heat and warmth and flares that threaten us but never break the surface.

It’s hard to explain, this thing I want to say to you, that I’ve been wanting to say to you every year, every day: I cannot explain us. I still don’t understand what the trigger was on that night. What was the compulsion.

you’ve asked me, how do you know? I didn’t know then, I just knew that you were the one, I just knew I wanted to be near you, with you, live a life with you. I still don’t know, I haven’t figured it out.

and I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. I just want to keep spinning.

Always,

me

ba, look closely.

my ioanna,

It must be boring having me as a father. Every day, or at least every other day: “I’m proud of you.”

It must get tired. Or old. But I am old. Or a try to be. I’m at the very least exhausting.

But truth to tell it is exhausting to have you as a daughter. You succeed every time. Valedictorian. Jesus Christ, what do I say to that? Ok, let’s get a grip, let’s start somewhere.

you started out sitting on the couch in our home talking non-sense. This dramatic change. And there were dramatic changes, hard changes, difficult choices, but also transformation. You went in wanting to pick, and heal, people’s brains: you came out of it an artist and wanting to share the power of art as a teacher.

This was not a small feat, despite everything, your core did not change. Despite the hardship and disappointments, you still want to give and have found a viable way to give without compromising yourself.

Maybe that’s the lesson to be learned here, you sacrificed without compromise. You figured out the logistics and are factoring a way through. There is a beautiful logic there that I am… dammit, I’m going to say it again, proud of.

You see, you must be sick of it. Not my fault. It’s all on you.

You should be proud.

Love,
me

dear mom,

We’ve been through so much together, grown together, leaned on each other, and sometimes it feels we’ve grown apart. While your childhood was marked by the country and the awareness of a huge loving family, I was raised solely in your care. You were born in a house full of family that was then thrown out into the world. I was born alone and you were alone. You were my only family and you only had memories of one.

You were my world.

Everything I am, my strength, my stubbornness, my resilience, comes from you who had no choice but to survive, who did her best with very little. Look at I’ve built mom, look at this family, the woman I’ve made a life with, the children we have raised. They are a reflection of you sacrifice. They are a reflection of what you made possible for me.

Thank you mother, thank you for giving me the strength to not just survive, but to flourish.



Αγαπημένη μου μητέρα,

Περάσαμε τόσα πολλά μαζί, μεγαλώσαμε μαζί, στηρίξαμε ο ένας τον άλλον, και μερικές φορές νιώθω πως απομακρυνθήκαμε. Ενώ τα δικά σου παιδικά χρόνια σημαδεύτηκαν από την ύπαιθρο και την αίσθηση μιας μεγάλης, αγαπημένης οικογένειας, εγώ μεγάλωσα αποκλειστικά υπό τη δική σου φροντίδα. Γεννήθηκες σε ένα σπίτι γεμάτο συγγενείς, που μετά σκορπίστηκαν στον κόσμο. Εγώ γεννήθηκα μόνος κι εσύ ήσουν μόνη. Ήσουν η μοναδική μου οικογένεια, κι εσύ είχες μόνο τις αναμνήσεις μιας οικογένειας.

Ήσουν ο κόσμος μου.

Όλα όσα είμαι—η δύναμή μου, το πείσμα μου, η αντοχή μου—προέρχονται από εσένα, που δεν είχες άλλη επιλογή από το να επιβιώσεις, που έκανες ό,τι καλύτερο μπορούσες με ελάχιστα μέσα. Κοίτα τι έχω χτίσει, μαμά· κοίτα αυτή την οικογένεια, τη γυναίκα με την οποία έφτιαξα τη ζωή μου, τα παιδιά που μεγαλώσαμε. Είναι ο καθρέφτης της δικής σου θυσίας. Είναι ο αντικατοπτρισμός αυτού που εσύ έκανες δυνατό για μένα.

Σε ευχαριστώ, μητέρα· σε ευχαριστώ που μου έδωσες τη δύναμη όχι απλώς να επιβιώσω, αλλά να ανθίσω.

my dearest Ioanna,

I’ve lied to you. I’ve said over the years that I dreamt you. That I dreamt of who you would be, the joy you would bring, the child that you were, and the young woman you are becoming.

This was a lie. I envisioned you.

it was first through writing. I was playing with this idea, a man and woman on the shore, having spent the night, with their children already playing at dawn, and the resignation of time, of the world, of what does a parent own of their children, of what they inevitably have to sacrifice to the world. The daughter was older than the son, l did not know it was you or mikey, it was an idea I was working through writing, having just been married and what it would mean to raise a family.

a year later or so, I was on the deck, thinking about how Mommy was now pregnant. On the second floor, in Yiayia and Papou’s house. Cigarette in hand, I took a drag, staring off to a horizon made jagged by chimneys and powerlines. I exhaled, and I saw it. I saw you. Not as you are now of course, but at 2, maybe 3. You were the girl on the shore, but you were now in a house, our home, you were the girl I was writing about. I came back in and told Mommy you were going to be a girl. She of course said, I just want the baby to be healthy.

But there you were, I was watching you play in the den and you decided to stumble out into the living room, climbing the scant stairs between here and there. There you were, that vision I had on the deck, the girl looking for shells on the shore. And of course, of course, when we do go to the beach, you are always looking for shells, for beauty in refuse, for that fragile thing that has survived the brutality of the tide.

We speak so often in this house how magical the love Mommy and I share has been, an alchemy of circumstance and time and chaos. But my life has been rife with magic, I had a vision, I tapped into something honest and gentle and extraordinary and oh so precious.

And there you are. Here you are.

Love, always,
me