Letters to My Sons

My oldest asked me last week why I work so much. I gave him a reasonable answer. I’m not sure it was a true one.

There’s a version of provision that’s really just hiding. You call it building. You call it season. You call it for them. They don’t see any of that. They see an absence shaped like their father.

I’m trying to learn the harder thing: to provide and to be present. Not perfectly. Just honestly. To let them see a man who works hard and comes home — actually comes home, not just through the door.

If they remember anything about me, I want it to be this: he was there, and he was the same man at the table as he was at the desk.