My son,
I called one of these letters final because I wanted you to have something whole if I wasn't here to say it later.
That was true. It also let me imagine fatherhood as a finished statement instead of a life I still have to live.
I don't want the best version of me to exist only in a letter. I want him at breakfast, at bath time, in the car, and at the edge of your bed when your questions don't fit inside one night.
You can still reach for me. You can still hear my keys in the door. You'll learn from the way I enter a room whether my arrival feels like relief or whether everyone needs to adjust.
I'm learning that the line still runs through me. It's in my impatience, my need to be understood quickly, and the way I sometimes mistake providing for being present. It's in my desire for credit for carrying things no one asked me to carry. It's in the silence that feels easier than repair.
I wish love made those things disappear. It doesn't.
That's why I'm still writing. I keep finding places where the lesson hasn't become my life yet.
I don't know which version of me will embarrass you most when you're old enough to read these. I do know that I'm not trying to leave you a perfect record. I'm trying to become easier to find in my choices and in the way I come back after I get something wrong.
So yes, I wrote you a final letter.
And now I'm writing after it because we're both still here.
~ Dad