On This First Father's Day

I’m your dad and there’s this big world around you and I need to know how to shield you from it because the news is not always good these days. You are now so sweet and still and full of smiles and I can’t bear to think you will ever come to know that such a world exists. If I had magic powers or a genie’s wish, or if I were a superhero or a master of the universe, I would shut it all down, all the darkness and hurt and the hate, and I would build you a road to the future lined with love and accord and song and people who always do the right thing and people who are as generous to strangers as they are to old friends. And I would fill the air with hope and honesty and imagination and the smell of lemons and lilacs and clean sheets. And I would light a path for you to follow so you can know joy and connection and moment after moment of sublime encounter with the cosmos. I’m your dad and I’m sad to say I don’t have such powers. What I do have, however, is heart and will and all the minutes I have left on earth to try to prime you for a culture that can be both beautiful and base, charming and fiendish, vibrant and unkind. And I will do what I can within my small orbit to make it just a little better for you and the rest of us.

This is my first Father’s Day, and the first without my dad. I am here and near, I always will be, and he is never far. There is a big world stretching out ahead of you, and through all of the coming brightness and haze, I will be a comfort and safeguard, my best attempt at a north star.