Kai,

There is never really enough time to say everything, only moments and fragments in the soft haze of memory that allow us to make sense of it all. I write this letter at a time in my life where you are already a little boy readying for school, perhaps not even realizing the wide world around you. But I imagine myself leaving this letter for you in a drawer on the bureau, perhaps with other loved items, only later to be forgotten, untouched for years until one day, you happen upon it in a fit of serendipity. For you to read this as the person you will become, I can only picture bemusement on your face, perhaps embarrassment at the wistful dispatches of your father.

But for now, in this present moment, I can only write you words - words of hope and joy, words from a younger father whose thoughts may seem foolish and naive compared to the one I may become, but words whose resonance will hopefully echo beyond what I put down on paper. What I cannot convey in this letter is to show you just how deep and wide the human heart can be, how open it is to all things, how resilient it can be in the face of loss and how unending it is in its capacity to love.

These are words, perhaps you won’t understand now as a little boy, but you feel them even now: when I hold your hand and we walk along the street as sunlight pours over our faces, the scent of jasmine on our noses like a secret finally unkept after a long winter. You feel it when I get you ready for bed, and I hug you towards me, serene after your nightly bath, and we giggle about everything that has happened during the day. And when I leave for work every morning and you walk me out of the house in your pajamas to wish me goodbye and to say I love you, it is there like a golden strand, from my heart through the tips of my fingers and towards you heart, to even beyond where human eyes can see.

For you to smile at these memories as you read these words as the person you will become years from now, is to say that perhaps I’ve done the right thing after all. That you can see the world as it is, imperfect and troubled, but always wondrous and always beautiful for those who can see beyond the darkness. From the father I am now to the son who is and who will be, I want for you the world as it is always is, and to pass that which connects both of us as a gift towards the future where your heart is always wide open to the possibilities of love.

Dad