My son,
What still embarrasses me about your grandpa is how little of him it took to keep me hoping.
A sighting. A phone call. Somebody mentioning they had seen him recently. I would act like it was ordinary news, but it never felt ordinary to me. It felt like being reminded that my father was not missing in some tragic, unreachable way. He was still somewhere in the world, living a life I was not part of, close enough to be seen, just not close enough to be my father.
I learned that slowly. Through other people’s stories. Through gaps that got too large to explain away. Through the quiet insult of finding out he had moved to San Diego and started over again while I was still trying to make sense of what he had already left unfinished. New woman. New children. New city. New chance to be a better man for people who had not yet learned the cost of believing him.
Then there were the days I met boys on the street who introduced themselves to me as my brothers, as if blood was supposed to arrive casually, as if I was supposed to stand there and absorb it without feeling the ground shift under me.
That kind of thing does not break a boy cleanly. It teaches him to live in confusion.
My dad taught me to tolerate inconsistency in exchange for connection.
I did not learn that lesson in one dramatic moment. I learned it the way children learn most dangerous things, by repetition. He would be gone long enough to hurt me, then return in some small, believable way. A softer voice. A short visit. A little attention that felt bigger than it should have because I had gone so long without it. He never had to give me much to reopen the door. That is the part I am almost ashamed to admit. He could fail me for months and still make his way back into my heart with scraps.
I remember one afternoon riding with him in a car, the window cracked, warm air coming in, him laughing at something dumb until I laughed too. For a few minutes, I forgot to be careful around him. I forgot to brace myself. I was just a boy next to his father, and the relief of that was so deep it felt like love in its purest form. Maybe that moment did not mean much to him. It meant enough to me that I kept paying interest on it for years.
That is what made him hard to hate in a simple way. He was not cruel every second. He was not absent in a way that let me stop wanting him. He was a man who could still make me feel chosen for a moment, then leave me carrying the weight of that moment far longer than he ever carried me.
The hardest thing your grandpa left me with was not just hurt. It was a lowered standard for what I was willing to call love.
Part of me learned that if someone stayed at all, or came back after failing me, I was supposed to be grateful. Even when the love came thin. Even when it came late. Even when it asked me to overlook what should have mattered more. I learned to call some of that loyalty. Looking back, some of it was fear. Some of it was the old boy in me, still relieved love had not left all the way.
That lesson followed me further than I want to admit. It shaped how long I stayed. What I excused. How often I mistook familiarity for safety. Maybe that is why one of my deepest fears with you is not disappearing outright. It is becoming the kind of father the world can always reach, while my son gets what is left. Present on paper. Missing where it counts.
I do not want to lie to you about your grandpa. He was not a monster. Monsters are easier to write about because they do not ask anything complicated of your heart. He was a man. Charming sometimes. Warm in flashes. Broken in ways he never seemed willing to face for long. I can see that now. I can see the unfinished parts of him. I can even feel sorry for them. But I also know what they cost.
I do not hate your grandpa, but I am still cleaning up the parts of myself he left unfinished.
I am still learning that staying is not the same as being safe. That returning is not the same as repair. That love which keeps making you smaller is not love you have to keep honoring just because it used your name once.
Some of what your grandpa taught me had to be corrected later by people who stayed. Better people. Steadier people. That is a story for another letter. This one is about him, and about the part of me that still feels the old pull of partial love if I am not careful.
That is where I am with your grandpa now. Not at peace. Not at war. Just awake.
I still do not know whether I missed him, or just kept missing the father I wanted him to be. Maybe both. I only know I do not want you growing up so hungry for love that scraps feel like a meal.
~ Dad