Dear Boy,

I enjoyed my thanksgiving break with you. I'm so glad we could do some things to help my mom and my grandma. I'm glad the kids could have fun with their friends. It was good to see my sisters and the Bordens.  It was nice to have a little break from school.  I'm glad I didn't worry too much about the nursing test. That would have been a waste.  I appreciate your help in getting our room changed around and hopefully less buggish. That's a word. Thanks for more recent walks. I appreciate getting outside and I love wandering (quickly) around little villages.  I like hearing all the water running through the towns around here. I love the old houses, the way people care for them, and even the way people don't care for them. When I see dilapidated buildings I wonder about the people inside them. Are they sick?  Are they addicted to something?  Are they old?  Do they just not care?  Maybe they're poor?  I feel so heartbroken for people. Maybe I project my own experience onto them, but I have the feeling that most people are struggling, that life isn't hard for only a few, but probably most. I feel so weary from it. I hear about people all over the world losing their homes and their lives to disasters of all varieties. I read about people trying to escape violence with their families and finding nowhere safe that will welcome them.  I see so much sickness and sadness in the hospital and it reminds me of the sickness and sadness plaguing my own life.  And it all just breaks my poor little heart.  Well sorry for that tangent. The snow sure is beautiful and all of the new Christmas decorations sure are cheery. I'm so proud of Nolan that he has taken the initiative to improve his room.  It's cute that he even put out some Christmas items in there.  I hope eventually all of our kids will grow into people who enjoy cleanliness and order, who will voluntarily contribute in the home and who will pick up their own trash and dirty socks.  What a dream, huh?  

 I love you.  You're the best thing in my life. 

L

Dear L,

On this day of gratitude and Thanksgiving let me just say that I'm incredibly grateful for you. So very grateful. I don't even know what the right words are to express how grateful I am for you. I suspect that there just aren't words . . .
It's 4:30 on the morning of Thanksgiving and I'm awake and alone downstairs getting the fire going again. I had planned to sleep-in with you today, but the house felt a bit chilly and I remembered how cold it's supposed to be today so I decided I probably ought to come down and get the fire going again before it got any colder and while there were still coals to work with.
I wanted to sleep-in with you because I'm not a big fan of the disparate nature of our sleep habits. I don't like that I fall asleep so suddenly and without warning once evening sets in. I am sorry every time that happens. And I know that you say that you've just come to expect it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Though I will say that I've been trying, lately, to better accept myself for who I am and not wait for who I want to be or who I think I ought to be. After all the old saying is that happiness is not in a destination, but in a journey.
So I've been trying to find less fault in myself. To stop being jealous of the things I'm not and like the things that I am.
Oh, but I am growing out my stubble to be sexier :)
I hope that last bit made you smile, because I absolutely love to think of you smiling.
It's tough for me to see you down.
Like yesterday.
I feel so helpless at those times.
I hope that I'm at least some measurable comfort to you on nights like that. I love you so much. And if there's anyway I can better support you please let me know.
So Happy Thanksgiving to you! I hope it's a day of happiness. I hope you enjoy watching the parade for the first time in years. I hope you enjoy that I got supplies for a meat-cheese-cracker platter like I always had growing up. And I even got the chicken-in-a-bisket crackers of my youth :) They may be disgusting, but if so I also got Ritz crackers.
Again, let me just emphasize how much I love you. How grateful I am for you. And though I'm alone downstairs right now, I am so very grateful to know that you and our four children are warm and safe and at peace in this house in your beds.
You are every greatest moment of my life! You are a part of every moment of my life!

.PtB

Dear Boy,

It turns out life is a lot harder than I ever expected. I feel like it's completely broken me. I don't even know what to do with that. I just keep going, you know? I do as much as I can, but I often feel like I would be capable of so much more if I wasn't so on the brink of crumbling constantly. So then I just keep going.  To be sure, there are good parts of living, too. I am so grateful to spend every day with you. I love our four super awesome, unique kids. I feel so good outside among plants and beneath the sky.  Autumn is colorful and fragrant. I look forward to a cozy winter beside a wood fire. I am glad to finally be working toward a goal that I chose for myself.  I feel comfortable with whatever faith I've salvaged from the wreckage of that mess. I'm grateful to be of some bit of help to my mom and my grandma. This little corner of the world we've made home the past many years is so comfortable and feels so safe. There are so many good things. Thankfully, I am surrounded by them, because all of it helps me to keep it together. It being myself. 

Thanks for doing this with me. Thanks for all of the late night walks recently. Thanks for all the million things you do in our home for me and our kids.  Thanks for somehow remembering so many details that I forget -memories from long ago and current tasks like Auby's antibiotics and changing the cars' oil. And on and on. You're amazing. I'm sorry that you are frustrated by yourself frequently. I wish I could take that from you. I'm frustrated with myself often, too. So, I guess we're just two peas in a pod. Ha ha. 

L

Dear L,

Life sure is different, huh?
Like no one and nothing really prepared me for what it was like to actually be an adult. I feel like the first eighteen years of life are lived in a rather sheltered manner that it I, in reality, fairly similar from birth through 18. Simeon else provides your food. Your shelter. Your nearly everything. And, yes, school and parents make vague allusions to what is actually coming for us, but nothing really prepared me for the weight and reality of it all.
Not really.
And this isn't me complaining.
Just thinking.
And I know that I keep most of my thinkings to myself, but I'd like to think I'm tying to do better about sharing them with you.
So my thinking today is just that in the most personal of respects I've felt rather adrift for a decade now. I know who I am as a husband and friend. I know myself as a father. But as an individual . . . I seem to have lost track of exactly what the definition of me is. And your comment from the other day wasn't too far off I don't think.
You said that it seemed like I'd given myself over entirely to an identity that only used to be a part of me. A part that has now seized control and become an entirety. You referenced my time at CFCU and our move to the East and how that may have acted a catalyst to this change. And I suppose that may be true.
Here's what I would say: I think that somehow, somewhere along the way I either lost or gave up on a lot of things. There could be any number of reasons for this. But in short I'd summarize by saying that being an adult took me off guard. I suddenly found myself caring for others (ie. our family) more than I ever cared for myself alone. And I rather rashly abandoned many of my plans and ambitions in favor of our family. And while I have certainly never regretted favoring our family first, I do think (in retrospect) that I could have handled that shift much better.
You've often said that I'm a bit too black and white about things.
All or nothing.
And I suppose I chose my family as the All and that left room for nothing else in my young mind.
Which led us here.
With no plans.
No job.
And a rough few years.
Through it all you and our children have been such a source of happiness and joy to me. I love you all so much. I feel so very blessed every morning I wake up.
But the life of an adult has always meant a lot of time away from my family. And for a while it meant that time was spent and CFCU. And even now that means time is spent at INHS.
And there's not a lot for me at either place.
Not really.
I mean I love the people I've worked with.
And I love that what I do now is truly helping people.
But neither job has ever truly challenged me. Neither has exceptionally interested me. And so I think that what happened was that I became focused on excelling. On being the best. At everything I was asked to do.
And I would not so humbly say that I've pretty well succeeded. I'm good at what I do. At anything I do.
Anything.
Puzzle solving at its best, right?
I've solved them all.
But the truth is that being the best isn't the point. Right?
The point is only to be the best at being yourself. Whatever that may mean.
Happiness isn't in being the best.
Happiness isn't in solving the puzzle.
Happiness is in the puzzling.
Not the solving.
For sure it feels good to excel. Accolades are nice. And a reputation can go to one's head like a drug.
But it's fleeting.
And what lasts is if I can wake up and just be happy. Whether I succeed or fail at solving the days' puzzle. Because it should be enough that I had the day to begin with.
Another day with you.
And with our kids.
And with myself.
And perhaps if I can really embrace that. If I can let go of my need to solve every puzzle. Then perhaps I'll feel a little less adrift. A little less confused and frustrated with myself.
I'm smiling to myself, sitting here in the library and thinking of you. I think I rambled a lot here, but I'm not going to go back through it to proof read. It just is what it is. My thoughts. From my head and heart as they flooded out of me. And I think my thoughts and points grew rather murky and less poignant along the way, but I just wanted to share something with you.
I love you.
You're the best part of every day.
I absolutely love every bit of you.

.PtB