✎ February 18th, 2026
There’s a glider chair in our house that I know I need to let go of.
It’s a good chair. Solid and comfortable. Neutral fabric. Gliding footstool. It takes up more space than it should now. The girls are growing. The house is shifting. It gets moved from room to room like something I’m not quite ready to face.
But it isn’t a chair.
It’s where your mom nursed both of you.
She picked it out when we were preparing for parenthood and building out our first nursery for a life we still couldn’t even imagine.
It’s where I rocked you in the middle of the night when you were scared Juliet.
When you were sick.
When you couldn’t sleep.
Phoebe, you weren’t even one when your mom was diagnosed. We weaned you early once chemo started. I took over bedtime so you wouldn’t reach for something that couldn’t be there anymore.
After she died, that chair became our altar.
Every night, I rocked you there. Just me and you. I sang to you. I cried into your hair when you were too little to understand why my chest shook the way it did. I remember whispering promises through tears you’ll never remember hearing:
I will stay.
I will fight.
You are safe.
I don’t know if I was promising you or myself.
Aurora, I only got a little time with you in that chair. You were more stubborn about sleep. You preferred movement. After the separation, I never got to rock you there at night again. I walked you in a stroller while you slept up and down the sidewalk in front of our home for over a year when you were with me. That was our rhythm. Different. But still love.
That chair holds chemo.
Milk.
Fear.
Resolve.
Exhaustion.
Devotion.
It holds the version of me that didn’t know if I could survive what was happening, but still showed up anyway.
I know it’s only fabric and wood.
But when I look at it, my body remembers everything.
One day I’ll let it go. Not because the love is gone. Not because the memories fade. But because seasons change, and the work it was meant to do has already been done.
The chair was a witness.
But the love didn’t live in it.
It lived in us.
…
And there is something else I want you to know.
Living is confusing a lot of the time.
There are days when I do not feel much older than you at all. Some days I feel less wise. Being a big person can feel completely counterintuitive. From the outside, adults can look steady and certain. When I was little, I thought grown-ups had everything figured out. They seemed confident. Anchored. Sure of themselves.
It was not until I became your father that I realized most of us are improvising. We are making it up as we go. Doing our best with what we know today.
There is not a night that goes by where I lay my head on the pillow and do not replay the parenting misses of the day. The moments I could have been softer. Slower. More present. I am still learning right alongside you. Trying to be a little better today than I was yesterday.
Keeping children safe in this world can be one of the most terrifying exercises a person can face while inside a body. The responsibility is enormous. The love is even bigger.
I love you with more than my heart knows how to express.
Thank you for being my little teachers in this life.
I’m so proud to be your dad.
Namaste.
From my fire to yours.