To My Future Kid:

This is your father when he was 18 years old. Hard to believe I was once this young, but then again, I can’t imagine your grandfather being 18, to tell you the truth. This is your father when he was 18 years old and I also can’t imagine how much wisdom and experience and advice your father would have accrued by the time he had met you.

But I can imagine how stupid your father is because I’m willing to bet a month of your allowance that he’s still as stupid as I am. Hell, maybe age has done wonders for his and your father is stupider than I am, God knows.

I can imagine all the mistakes your father has made to alienate, upset, outrage you because, man, sometimes I really don’t have a clue. Your grandfather, when I was having a massive fight with him and your grandmother, once told me, “Say what you want now, but when you have kids on your own, you’re going to make the same mistakes we did. You might not understand that now, but you will when you have kids.”

I told him, “You don’t know that.” As much as I don’t know that your father isn’t going to make the same mistakes your grandparents made, your grandparents don’t know that your father is going to make the same mistakes they made. For your sake, I truly hope your father has not made those mistakes.

I hope your father gives you the truth, the whole truth. I hope your father gives you the whole world, but that he doesn’t spoil you with it, shelter you from it. I hope your father levels with you, that he tells you that the world can be inexplicably unfair, that there are pain and suffering and that there are often other’s who are hurting more than you are even if you feel like you’re the only one to have ever felt this pain.

Still, I hope you father emphasizes how beauty the world can be, how the love of the best of humanity is sweeter than the bitterness left by the hatred of the worst of humanity, how life is meant to be a triumph over obstacles and that nothing good has ever come easy. I hope your father emphasizes how much love he has for you, that it will never be that you are not worth his love but that he hopes his love will be good enough for you.

I hope you call your father out on his bullshit and I hope he’s receptive to it; otherwise, I hope you knock some sense into him. I hope you’re open to him about all your problems because I know for a fact that all he wants to do is help. I hope you never have to feel like you can’t ever go to him about anything at all, no matter how bad, because you think the second you tell him is the second he’s gone. I hope your father will respect you eventually wanting the autonomy, space, pride in making your own choices even if they are mistakes, because you’ll only grow from them, and because God knows that’s all he ever wanted from your grandparents.

I hope your father doesn’t have to say he loves you because his actions already say so. I hope you never feel like he doesn’t have your back. I hope he’s the first shoulder available for you to cry on and the last person who would ever want to abandon you, the last person you would ever want to abandon. I hope your father doesn’t have to say he loves you all the time because you already know but says so anyway to make sure you never feel like you are not loved.

I hope your father protects you from all he can, but for all the things that he can’t, he’ll prepare you so much that there will be nothing to ever be afraid of. I hope he gives you every avenue to find out who you want to be rather than just sticking you to a single path. I hope he doesn't force you to smile for photographs you don't want to smile for. I hope he’s an example of all the love you should share to everybody else because, despite the unique and maybe upsetting differences we all have, we’re all united by our desire to receive and share love. I hope he doesn’t take too much credit for the great human being you are and the much greater human being you will become.

I hope you aren’t too hard on your father. I can tell you, at the age of 18, your father was facing the same anxiety, confusion, pain, heartache that you are facing or will face, hopefully, less intense than what he was feeling. Your father is not trying to make the same mistakes your grandparents made.

I hope that I’ve made you proud.

With So Much Love,

Justin