Listen well, my unborn son. What follows is a document outlining all the life lessons I sadly will not be able to provide for you as you grow up. Oh, don’t worry—I assume I’ll still be around, but, well, in truth, I might have moved on to other things by then. A boat in the driveway, an acute interest in model trains in our basement, or perhaps a new identity as an oenophile. The point is that the sheer delight in your existence that I am feeling at this very moment may dim in the coming years. So this is a fail-safe, should my mind be elsewhere when you come of age and begin to tug at my pants, clamoring for shreds of wisdom.
Frankly, dearest boy, there is a meekness in you that I suspect will come into full bloom around puberty. For you are destined to be lanky and awkward, scratching at your pimpled face with chewed, jagged nails, and panting heavily at the sight of your older cousins lounging by the pool. That is your legacy, I’m afraid. Your mother’s genes could only make up for so much. Your balled-up posture in that sonogram that we have proudly displayed on the fridge right now already has me concerned. I predict a back brace.
It may sound harsh, but know that I seek only to protect you from future pain when I offer this warning that you are ultimately the inheritor of nothing in particular. Make yourself small and aim for corners when you cannot avoid obligatory socializing at parties. Truly, it may be best to avoid large- and medium-sized gatherings altogether.
Apologize profusely and at every turn! Then, apologize for the profuseness of the apology after you’ve apologized for the sin itself. Whether you’ve committed it is irrelevant—make wet and needful eye contact every time you promise to make amends. You can be strong and bold on the Internet later, anonymously.
My father, your grandfather—now laid to rest at that grave site which we will plan and then fail to visit—often spoke of the notion of manhood to me. He spoke of Men with a capital “M,” those reckless creatures who climb mountains, metaphorically but also in real life. He took great pains in instructing me in the woolly-chested ways of these creatures who clamber to high places just to shrink the world around them.
Once there, I was told, they scream until their lungs are empty! Not to disturb the silence “but to tame it.” To wrestle it down like cattle and tell it that it has no home inside them.
But you, my dear, sweet, lovely boy, you should acquiesce to the silence early. The silence that will find you when your attempt at a joke falls flat in a crowd; when your date pulls out her phone, mid-conversation; when you step forward to collect your hard-earned diploma and the crowd’s clapping audibly dies down to perfunctory. The silence always comes for our kind, my child.
He was always saying silly things, your grandfather. Things like “A man doesn’t judge but instructs!” “A man doesn’t fidget when dancing with tall girls because he is a tower himself!” “A man doesn’t call anything under ten pounds a dog or anything other than a dog a best friend!” Once he ran out of lessons, he would go back to chewing his cornflakes. “A man doesn’t die before his wife, either,” he once added, after slurping the thickened milk at the bottom of the bowl. “Because he’s not afraid of anguish.”
You will inherit no such burden from me, my dear, ordinary boy. All I can perhaps give you by way of fatherly grace is the prenatal certainty that I never expected much from you in the first place. Only wailing and filled diapers, debt and ingratitude, and inevitably sour teen years. The temperament of an artist without the skills to match. It won’t be your imagination—those kickballs will be coming at your head and the spitballs will be made of tinfoil. Eventually, a kind soul will take your virginity out of a mixture of boredom and empathy—the only cost will be a pact that you not tell a freaking soul.
Know that, like my father before me, I too will sit in the car with you when you do not want to go inside—but do not hold it against me if I turn on the radio. In lieu of reassuring conversation, I will simply hand you a well-preserved copy of this exact letter.
I hope you now see that it is downright inadvisable for you to aspire to climb any mountain, my dearest boy. You can fall flat on your face perfectly well right down here on the ground with me at your side.
