So you didn’t have a father. You didn’t have a shining example of what it means to be a man, and by the time the other one came to show you how to do this growing-up thing, you’d already lived too many years, and it was too late. You were too closed up. And sometimes you regret this. Sometimes you think that if you had just opened a little, pried those hands loose, you might have learned a little something. You might have been a little different. You might have understood more.
But, brother, I want to tell you what I see today. I want to show you how much you are loved.
We grew up together, like two twins born ten months apart. My earliest memories are of you, coming home from kindergarten, the way I felt when I saw you coming up the walk. I’d missed you while you were gone, but you couldn’t wait to teach me all you’d learned. You would read those early readers out loud and open up whole worlds to me, and you would try to help me see the letters and sound out words, a teacher even then. I remember writing a story in first grade about how if I had a million dollars, I would buy a car, but I wouldn’t share it with you because you were mean (but only sometimes). I remember how scared I was the first time you drove down that gravel road for kicks, going way too fast, and fishtailed your way into an accident.
I remember tearing across a pasture to get to our secret club house where we hung the cow skull because we were cool kids with big imaginations. I remember weeding the garden with you and running to find Mom because there was a snake on our front porch. I remember spending the night in a box in our living room because there was a thunderstorm and Mom knew we wouldn’t be able to sleep in our own rooms. I remember wanting you to like my boyfriends, even though you always thought they were punks, and I remember trying to beat you at the ACT, and of course you were more brilliant than I was (even though I beat you at the SAT—my only win in all those years). I remember listening to you play the trumpet and thinking there was nothing more beautiful in the world than that melody and no one better to play it than you.
My life is full of our memories, but mostly what I remember is loving you.
We’re adults now, with lives of our own. You’ve gone your way, I’ve gone mine, and I’ve watched, in anger, what life has flung your way.
There are tragedies in all our lives, sure, but you’ve had more than your fair share of them. So many of your children have been lost. What does a guy do with tragedy? How does he wade through it? How does he overcome?
What I want you most to know is it was not your fault. It is not because of who you are or who you aren’t, and it’s not about whether or not you were worthy, whether or not you were favored, whether or not you were good enough. It’s about our own separate journeys. And I know how unfair that sounds, but we are all made and shaped by the road our lives take, and whether we pull through or stay knocked down is entirely up to us.
I know what it’s like to wonder what might have come your way if maybe you’d done something differently, or been someone different or believed something else. Would things have turned out better? Would your life have lightened a little of its load? Would you be a business owner or a wealthy man or a loving father or a sought-out friend or a patient husband or a lifeline to someone else?
The truth is that these things come and they go and they roll over us and they bowl us over and they scrape our faces and they bruise our arms, and sometimes we can’t even find our breath after they’ve stolen that, too. That’s what pain and heartache and sorrow can do to us. It can strip us and tear us and burn us and stab us and shatter us. Sometimes it feel like we’ll surely die.
And when we’re in that place, the one that is dark and closed-off and frozen, it feels, too, like we are alone in the suffering and the wondering and the dying. But we’re not.
What I see in you is a man who desires nothing more than to be known, but he is afraid to be known because he is afraid that all those people he wants to show himself to will not love him after he bares his broken heart.
Dear, brother, you are loved. You are loved just for being you. You are loved for being wild and fierce and intelligent and conspiring and self-conscious and skeptical and sometimes weird and irreverent and all the time wonderful and loving and worthy. Yes, most of all worthy.
It’s not easy to believe it in a world like this one, because it’s hard and it’s unfair and it’s demanding with its rules and expectations and impossible measuring bars, but you are loved simply for being you.
When there are so many walls around you, raised between all the other people, it can feel like you’re a million miles away, but I’m telling you today, you’re not. It doesn’t matter how many walls you build around yourself, we can still see you. We can still see who you are and what you desire and what you dream of and where you’d like to be and how you’d like the world to change. We can still see your greatness and your spirit and your shining example of what it means to be a man—because in all your years of searching for that “definition of a man,” you have become one.
Be careful what you say, dear brother. Your daughter watches and listens and waits to be told who she is by a man like you. I know, because I was once a daughter, and the words I heard were not words that built me up but words that tore me down, and it took me years to find freedom from that. Be careful what you think, dear brother, because the minds that we have, the minds we use to go about our days, the minds we use to imagine and dream and believe are minds that can be easily swayed into cynicism if we’re not careful, and there is always, always, always room for hope, no matter how far down we find ourselves.
Be careful what you do, dear brother, because there are things that can hurt us that we didn’t even see coming, and we’ll regret them the rest of our lives. No one wants to live a life of regret.
You are a magnificent human being. The day you were born, the world gained a true man in every sense of the word. I know that sometimes you feel like you’re forging your own way, that you’re walking down uncharted territory, because there was never a person to truly show you how to do all of this, and I know that sometimes you think you’ve got it all wrong, but let me tell you something, brother: who you are today is a man, and who you are today is exceptional, and who you are today is wildly wonderful.
Sometimes we don’t need another to show us who we are or who we could be so much as we need another to believe in us, and I believe in you. Do you hear me? I believe in you. I believe in your brilliance, and I believe in your mind, and I believe in your love, and I believe in your decisions, and I believe in who you are.
You might not know it, but this is what we all see when we look at you—a worthy, significant, brilliant man. And so on the days you can’t see it for yourself, on the days you don’t believe in your own greatness, I hope you’ll let us remind you. We are your song when you have forgotten how to sing. And our song sounds a little something like this:
Who you were yesterday, who you are today, who you will be tomorrow, is remarkable.
Who you were yesterday, who you are today, who you will be tomorrow is loved.
Who you were yesterday, who you are today, who you will be tomorrow is worthy.
No matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter what you think. No matter what.
You are loved.
Happy birthday, dear brother. May it be the best year yet.
