I only became aware of the dad letters blog this very day because of a woman who is a wonderful writer and will one day make a wonderful mother. For the moment she is lending her skills to dads as a guest blogger, writing quite true and interesting things about this broken order of copulating men I belong to. Read it. The work is sure to inspire, as it did inspire me to channel the site into my own 10 minutes of writing. The Dad Letters is a straight-forward concept. Men write letters to their kids. The following words are my brief effort to share something with my own kids.
To My Sons:
It is most important to speak of my love first. This is very real, even if you cannot see it often enough, even if the screams that pierce your disobedience on occasion seem the only sounds my lips can make, the love is there. I learned what I know of fatherhood from a man who was my father in spirit, and thought, but never in legal name. I can count on two hands the number of times I cried after he died. It is uncountable the number of times I felt safe enough to cry when he was with me. Mothers are warmth and love and giving. Fathers are safety and growth and forgiveness, so I hope you can forgive me the moments of failure when I become too angry or the moments of weakness when I break down and let you slip a rule or several. I also hope you love as I do.