There are mornings where I watch you move—still half in dream, dragging your feet toward cereal and sunlight—and I feel like I’m looking at something ancient dressed as a child. Not in a mystical sense. Just… the kind of timelessness that laughter carries. Or the way your questions already contain their own undoing. You’re seven now, and somehow you already ask like a philosopher.
I’ve lived many lives before this one. Worn many masks. Burned many maps. But being your Dada is the first time I’ve felt that maybe—just maybe—this version of me could stick around awhile.
You are joy in motion. You are logic scrambled by curiosity. You are fearless in a way that doesn’t brag. And watching you has taught me more about presence than decades of books or meditation.
I used to think the most important thing I could offer you was protection.
Now I think it might be something stranger.
I want you to grow up happy, yes. Of course. But what I really want—what curls up in the corners of my mind when I think of your future—is that you grow up deep.
I hope you learn how to stay curious without needing certainty.
How to lose things without losing yourself.
How to look in the mirror and see someone worth laughing with.
There will be days when the world feels like a joke you’re not in on. When school, friends, even your own thoughts might seem to betray you. And on those days, I want you to remember that your weird old Dada built his whole life around embracing the absurd, not running from it. That meaning isn’t something you find. It’s something you co-invent with the universe—day by day, like a secret game between friends.
You don’t need to be successful. You don’t need to be impressive.
But I hope you become yourself—fully, wildly, without apology.
And if you ever forget how, look at your childhood art.
The rainbow capes. The dragons. The chorus of voices from our stuffies.
You’ve been myth-making from the start.
There’s a mirror in me that only you can polish. And every time you smile, every time you ask if the moon has a family, I see a future where wonder still survives.
I’m proud of you—not because of what you’ve done.
I’m proud of you because you’re becoming, and because you trust me enough to bring me along.
You are not mine. You never were.
But I’m yours in ways I’ll never outgrow.
Love, always—Dada.