my love,
Every year, every card, it’s so focused on the past. You’re such and such years old. Do you remember this? Slices of memories, sometimes light brush strokes, sometimes deep cuts. But it’s always nostalgia. It’s always about the past, about something that is gone. As if that’s all we are living for, to remember a past that we can never reclaim, we can never have again, hopeless, lost, out of our reach. And there’s a sadness to that, isn’t there? The immutability of time, the tragicness of how ephemeral everything can be, how fragile.
And that’s not right. that’s not right at all. It’s so inaccurate when it comes to how I feel and think about you, about us. I always think about the possibility. I always think about our future. It’s robust, it’s timeless, it’s engraved in stone that future archeologists will dug up and admire. They will see blow the dust off and marvel the etchings and carvings of our life together and instantly know. They will write stories that will inspire generation after generation.
Here’s what I foresee. I can’t wait until we travel. I can’t wait to see Paris again. I can’t wait to visit Colombia. I can’t wait to share a meal with you whose name I cannot pronounce. I can’t wait to see you on the beach again. I can’t wait to see you standing on a balcony and the breeze makes your hair dance. I can’t wait to see our children start lives of their own. Not to get rid of them, but to see them bloom and grow and stretch even more. I can’t wait for you to scold me for spoiling our grandchildren. I can’t wait to sell this house and buy another closer to anywhere, wherever anywhere could be.
Because that anywhere, that everywhere, that every when is always with you.
Always,
me
2021.08.31

Ba,
When you first came into my life, I didn’t know you, I was happy for my mom, but I didn’t know you and didn’t want to. I was happy for her, she would get off my back and that was good.
But you made her happy, and that was better than I had expected, and you guys were going to get married, so suddenly, I wanted to impress you. I still didn’t want to get to know you. That’s how teenagers are, we’re stupid and self-centered.
Then I got married, and became a father too. I wanted more than anything, for your admiration. I wanted you to admire the man I was becoming, the family I was making, the life I was building.
It was still all about me.
Now, now that the aches are starting to settle in, as the next phase of the kids’ lives is just around the corner. As I look around to everything I am and have, I can’t fight the feeling that I need you more than ever. And not to help with a crisis or a home project, but to hear the stories of your youth, your triumphs and your failures. To be impressed by you, to admire you, as you once were and still are.
I guess this is a long way of saying, I want to get to know you; my father, my dad, my “ba”.
Took long enough didn’t it?
Love, always,
Me
2021.06.18

there was a point in time that there was a point a time. it’s all a blur as to when. it’s all a blur as to now. now it’s all a blur. this is what i’m talking about. nothing is lost. it’s all been lost. time. my friend. my enemy. my elusive lover. my beast. my better. this is what is lost once i start talking. time is lost. the words get lost. there is no atmosphere here, there is only the impending silence. the impending doom of time. i’ve said it so many times it’s lost in time, about time, it’s about time we wrote about what we’ve lost. and it’s ridiculous. higher than ever before despite the pandemic. they’re still here, my children, my mortal reminders of my mortality. i shot up in the dark the other night. the inevitability, the steady course, the unwavering destination, i saw it in my mind’s eye but i felt it in my bones. we laugh now, we all sit around and laugh. yes i can deadlift 300, 400, 500 pounds, but it’s right around the corner, right there, can’t you see it? it’s not an imagined point on the other side of the horizon, it’s not even on the edge of the horizon, it’s the next fucking destination. stiff bones, stiff joints, the difficulty in the hip, in standing, the crick in the back, i kept imagining myself needing a cane. can you believe it? me, a cane, because i couldn’t get off the shitter.

my love,
we think of valentine’s day as one for lovers, soon to be lovers, quiet lovers, shy lovers emboldened to burst free and proclaim their earnestness. we think of valentine’s day as a day for old lovers, cute wrinkled raisons, holding hands on a porch, teasing each other, gently bickering, confident that as they end their lives they’ve made the right decision in each other, as if it was the only inevitable to decision to make.
when we think of valentine’s day, we don’t think of the steady-state lovers. the halfway through this life lovers, the ones who have had ups and downs and hardship and fight and make peace and laugh not knowing why or how but for the sheer joy of laughing with each other. the lovers who have found their groove, who move in and through each other with learned grace and expert care. the lovers who know better, the lovers who know too much, the lovers who are often no longer though of as lovers.
and i am vexed. i’m not ready to be the old-timey’s: there’s a certain kind of fatality with them, a certain resignation. yes they found their souls mates but it was inevitable, it was long decided, it was …hopeless? and i don’t want to a youthful one either: too much anxiety, too much dread, too much how do i look and too much i don’t want to say anything stupid. there’s too much in the way of actually just being with someone that has nothing to do with the someone you want to be with.
i looked it up: st valentine was a martyr. he married people that were forbidden to do so. while imprisoned he cured the sight of his jailer’s daughter. there was also more than one. it makes me think of that song by depeche mode, a man in love becoming a missionary or that other song by seal, future love paradise, embracing all forms of love. and i think of the summer nights that led up to september of 1995, the isolation and determination i had felt to be alone, to be one and only. i think of the darkness of those nights and the ones after, where you shattered it.
where you brought warmth, where you brought a tentative, shy kind of hope. where you freed me by being free yourself. and that’s what i want valentine’s day to be: not to remember and hope, dream and forgive, but to be, to be in love, to be with each other as each other. to be timeless, forever and always.
-me
2021.02.14

my love,
there is a place in the world, where the virus does not touch. there is a place in the world where all things are eternal. there is a place in the world where everything that was once broken is shiny and new again without fracture. there is a place in the world where the trees of the forest sing to one another with limbs entwined. there is a place in the world where children ride ferocious blue bears with glee. there is a place in the world where flowers blossom never the same color twice. there is a place in the world where the sun literally caresses your cheek with the scent of honey. there is a place in the world where porcelain squirrels store food in the cupboards of the old. there is a place in the world where cliffs sprout slides into warm rivers for weary travelers. there is a place in a world where ants cheer the toils of bees as they hitch flights to and fro. there is a place in the world where dolphins teach chimpanzees the wonders of the sea. there is a place in the world where the steel of skyscrapers in vast cities are soft to the touch. there is a place in the world where men and women spontaneously disco to a beat everyone instinctively knows. there is a place in the world where cars at intersections are polite with one another and insist on “no, after you.” there is a place in the world where the next step instantly takes someone across continents.
does it sound familiar? does it echo something primal in your heart? oh wonderful girl, it should.
it’s where you came from.
love, always
2020.11.26

Can I dream of a world where we never had children
Where we walked the earth and turned the corners of a dozen cobblestoned streets
Where we huddled in the rain, in the snow, in the wind, in the breeze of a sunny day
Can I dream of a world where we had dozens of children
Where we couldn’t spread our arms wide enough to hug them all
Where we admired them from afar as they tousled and teased and taught one another
Can I dream of a world where we’re old but strong
Can I dream of a world where we’re young but weak
Can I dream of a world where there is no one else
Can I dream of a world where we made it all up

my love,

years, again and again. winter spring summer fall. again and again. end of summer brings the end of august.

the memory. never nervous, excited to get to the church. scolding me. dancing at the reception. reminding you to eat, smile on your face that outshined everything, saying, ok, ok, you’re right.

the flight to paris. at your mercy at the pharmacy because my ear was in pain from the pressure. walking for hours. taking the metro, working out the maps, listening to you, refusing to wait in line for the eiffel tower, walking in the louvre through the exit, the chunnel to london, the rain but sunny the next day, brighter than paris but we had no idea where to go to see what london had to offer. it accelerates, becomes a blur.

the birth of our daughter, watching her struggle to raise her neck, being told we couldn’t afford a split with a basement, feeling that this house was the one with the most potential, holding your hand on a long drive, the rush of our son, her holding him, sending him off to kindergarten, waiting in line for a ride at disney, being devastated by a looming layoff, the motel with spiders, laughing, crying, the cut of your hair, the lipstick that made you look a pristine sculpture.

years, again and again. winter spring summer fall. over and again, and i hold everything we have been and all we could still be. i hold time with you, over and again, so it never runs out.

it came and went, just like that.
the day, the week, the year.
And soon, eventually, hopefully slowly but it feels too quick: the months, the years, the decades, the life, this life.
we’re are living in a pandemic, people are protesting in the streets. wearing a mask has become a rallying cry. we have a president that engages with social media an par with a tween getting their first smartphone.
Over 10m worldwide, over 500k dead. A quarter of it here: 2.6m infected, 127k people dead.
the day came and went. the virus came but came again. the brutality came and will not stop. literal, figurative. the people came and went. some quickly, some slowly, a fair number suddenly, without pause, without a moment of reflection. surprise, you’re dead.
it came and they went.

ioanna,
at about 6, maybe 7 months, we were still at yiayia and papou’s house in the apartment upstairs, where you were outgrowing the bassinet quickly. I’d put you with your feet on the left and your head on the right side of it. I’d walk away, it was your nap time, baby must sleep, and you’d cry, annoyed. it was hard but dammit of course I gave in and I found you completely turned around. weren’t your feet over there and your head at the other end? am I suffering sleep deprivation? I worked nights at the time, slept even less than I do now. the next day, I made sure, head on the right, feet on the left and I walked out. you cried, etc, etc, I ignored it until you fell asleep and I snuck in and holy cow: head on the left, feet on the right. I looked at my hands, right hand head, left hand feet, but you were reversed. I was sure of it. did it again the next day and the same. how is this happening, how did your head end up where your feet were? you need to understand, this bassinet was narrow, very narrow, coffin narrow, another growth spurt and your legs would’ve hung over the lip of this thing.
so, as first born, all parenting is essentially an experiment. The next day, I put you in this just fitting bassinet and instead of walking away, I stayed in the room. you balling just a few feet away from me but I held fast. just when I could not bear it anymore, I see your tiny fingers over the lip. I see you grasping it, pulling yourself up, the bassinet shaking, tipping side to side, sit yourself up, perilously near the edge of this thing, wavering, and poof, tumbling over to the other side, head from right to left. just like that, literally head over heels, only three feet from the floor but it might as well as been a skyscraper for you.
another time, you were 3 or 4, we were at the playground, you were timid but eventually mustered up the courage to climbed up the slide by yourself. without my hand, without looking for me, it was the first time you didn’t. you had this smile on your face, so genuine, a breeze floating through your hair, you were looking at something in the distance, your future maybe. I saw it all then, I saw you belong to the world and it broke my heart. it’s hard to explain, I wanted to sweep you up into my arms and tell you that it was wonderful but terrible and you should never leave us, you should never grow up or old or have a life of your own, you were our life and you had to stay that way. but I was frozen, I was frozen by this moment of this shy girl finding confidence in herself, forgetting herself, being just herself in the world and my god, what a beautiful thing to see, to witness, to be a part of.
and yes, there was so much in between. reading batman comics, reading the Alice in WundLa book, or whatever it was, Captain Underpants, the China project, the jigsaw map, the explorer killed by pirates and the thing we tried to do with the map and magnets, playing piano while I worked out, playing tennis and bowling on the Wii, our arguments as you turned to your teenage years and we drifted, trying to figure out how to be close but also ourselves, playing in the pool in Florida in the rain, chasing you around the house, seeing you watch me destroy the wall to the room that would become the kitchen, helping me paint your room, disappointing you in one way or another over and over, singing to you, telling you stories as you drifted off to sleep, pushing you, challenging you, being amazed by your sense of humor, being enthralled with this child who became a girl and is now a lady.
but I keep coming back to that day, when you teetered on the edge of that bassinet, bobbling from right to left perilously close to the edge. it wasn’t you who fell head over heels at that moment: it was me, always.
love,
daddy
3/4/2020