I don’t know exactly how old you’ll be when you read this.
Maybe you find it by accident, scrolling through something I wrote years before you were old enough to really understand it.
Maybe I show it to you on purpose, on a birthday that feels like the right one for a reason I can’t fully predict yet from here.
Either way, here’s what I want you to know, written down properly instead of just felt privately, in words I might not always find easily in an ordinary conversation between us.
You were not an easy baby, and I loved you anyway
You cried more than the books said was supposed to be normal, more than any of my friends’ babies seemed to.
You didn’t sleep the way anyone confidently promised me you would once we hit some magic week or month.
I was exhausted in a way I genuinely didn’t have words for yet, having never experienced anything close to it before you arrived.
And somewhere in the middle of all that fog, I loved you so completely it actually scared me a little, in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
Both things were true at once, the exhaustion and the love, neither one canceling out the other.
I want you to know that both things can always be true together, at the same time, without one having to win out over the other, in this and in most of the hard, complicated things you’ll face.
I got it wrong more times than I got it right
I yelled on days I wish, even now, that I hadn’t.
I said things faster than I actually meant them, words that came out before I’d thought them through, and I’ve had to come back and repair more conversations afterward than I could possibly count if I tried.
I’m not telling you this so you’ll forgive me in advance for things I haven’t even done yet.
I’m telling you because I want you to genuinely know that getting it wrong doesn’t disqualify you from trying again, in anything, not just in parenting, not just in raising you specifically.
You will get things wrong too, more times than feels fair some years.
I hope you remember this part especially when you do, whatever it is.
Watching you become yourself has been the actual privilege
Not the milestones exactly, though I genuinely loved those too, every single one, even the ones I forgot to write down in a baby book the way I meant to.
The smaller thing, underneath the milestones, was watching you develop opinions I never gave you and couldn’t have predicted.
A sense of humor that isn’t mine or your father’s but entirely your own. A specific way of noticing the world that belongs completely to you and nobody else.
I used to think, early on, that I was raising you, shaping you into something.
Somewhere along the way, without a single clear turning point, I realized I was mostly just getting to watch you become who you already were underneath.
You don’t owe me a version of yourself that makes my life easier
If you’re reading this as a teenager, furious with me about something I haven’t even done yet as I write this, something still in our future, I want you to know I meant this part especially, more than any other.
Your job was never to be easy for me.
It was to become exactly who you actually are, even when that’s inconvenient for me, even when it means we disagree loudly about something that matters to both of us for different reasons.
I’m afraid of some things for you, and I want to be honest about that
I’m afraid the world will be harder to you at times than it should be, for reasons that have nothing to do with anything you’ve done.
I’m afraid you’ll doubt yourself in moments you actually have every right to trust yourself completely, because that seems to happen to most of us at some point, myself included.
I’m afraid I won’t always get this right, that some version of this letter will feel dated or naive to you by the time you’re old enough to actually read it critically.
I’m telling you the fear anyway, instead of pretending I have none, because I want you to know that fear and hope can sit in the same sentence without one erasing the other.
What I hope you know about your own history
You have people who love you fiercely beyond just me. An aunt who would, without a second thought, drop everything for you. Cousins who already fight over who gets to sit next to you at every single family dinner.
You come from a family that isn’t perfect, that has its own hard stretches and old wounds and complicated history, the way every real family does underneath the parts that make it into photos.
But you also come from a family that keeps showing up for each other, across all of that complication, and I hope that becomes something steady you can stand on, whatever else changes around you over the years.
I hope you’re kind to yourself the way you’re kind to others
I’ve watched you comfort other kids without being asked to step in, share things you genuinely didn’t have to share with anyone, notice quietly when someone else at the table was left out of something.
I hope, whatever age you happen to be reading this at, you’re extending that exact same instinct toward yourself, not just outward toward everyone else around you.
You deserve your own kindness at least as much as anyone else you’ve ever shown it to, probably more than you currently believe.
Some ordinary moments I want you to know I noticed
The way you used to fall asleep with one hand gripping my finger, even in a crib designed specifically so you wouldn’t need to.
The specific, serious face you make when you’re concentrating hard on something that matters to you, a face that hasn’t changed since you were two, even as everything else about you has.
The sound of you laughing at something in another room, recognizable to me instantly out of any other sound in the house, in any other house, for the rest of my life probably.
I wrote these down because the big milestones get remembered automatically. These smaller ones don’t, unless someone makes the effort to hold onto them on purpose, so I’m making that effort here, for both of us.
Whatever is happening when you read this, I’m still here
If things are good in your life right now, I’m proud of you, quietly, in the same steady way I’ve always been, not just on the days it’s easy to be.
If things are genuinely hard, that doesn’t change anything about how I see you or how much room there is for you here.
You are not a project I’m managing toward some finished outcome.
You are a person I love, unconditionally, on the easy days and on the ones that are anything but easy, and that was never going to change based on how any single day or year went.
What I actually hope for you, if I only get to pick a few things
Not a specific job, or a specific city, or a specific version of a life that would make sense to me from where I’m standing right now.
I hope you find work, whatever it turns out to be, that lets you feel useful in a way that’s specific to you and nobody else.
I hope you have at least one friendship that survives real distance and real time, the kind that picks back up exactly where it left off no matter how long the gap.
I hope you fail at something that actually mattered to you at least once, early enough that you learn you can survive it, because that lesson is worth more than most of the ones that come easily.
And I hope, whatever else happens, you always know this house, and this specific corner of it that’s yours, as somewhere you’re allowed to come back to exactly as you are, no explanation required.
I love you.
I loved you before I ever met you, in some anticipatory way I couldn’t fully explain at the time, and I’ll love you long after you’ve stopped needing me to say any of this out loud.
Whatever page of your life you’re on when you find this, that’s still true. It was true on the hardest night of your infancy, and it’s true on whatever ordinary Tuesday you happen to be reading this on now.
Come find me when you’re done reading this, wherever I am in the house, and let me hug you exactly as you are right now, at whatever age you’re actually reading this letter for the first time.
