Father's Day Every Day.

I know that Father's Day 2021 has come and gone, but I wanted to share this regardless, because it felt important. I also want to acknowledge that I speak from a place of absolute privilege, and my heart goes out to every person who has lost a father, is estranged from a father, or cannot become one - on Father's Day and every day I send my love and recognize that I am so very fortunate.

Dear Dad,

This Father’s Day we can’t celebrate together in person, but I think that’s okay, because in all honesty I celebrate the fact that you are my father every single day, regardless of any distance between us.

I often wonder about the miracle that is bringing a child into this world. How the lines between the physical and the spiritual blur, the gates between heaven and earth are opened, and how the fates of people’s souls are tied together irrevocably as a vulnerable little child is brought to life, making two people parents, and changing their lives just by existing.

I think on the one hand, that process must be chaotic. A soul picked at random from the rows of cribs in the sky, sent down on a long and perilous journey, blown east by the wind, and then west by chance, eventually landing in the belly of a woman, and in the heart of a man. But maybe I’m wrong, and we are chosen with care, and placed with just the right people. Somehow I don’t think that’s the case, considering that the mighty maker probably doesn’t have all that much extra time on her/his hands, and if she/he is delegating, the angels really seem to screw up the placement process a little too often, and should really get sacked.

On the other hand, I know that another part of the process is definitely full of purpose - a child is formed through a meticulous genetic phenomenon, each cell that divides, each predisposition that is halved, each feature that is created mathematically by combining a certain percentage of the mother and father’s DNA, all add up to a fully formed body with ten fingers and ten toes. With a brain holding endless potential and firing neural pathways, with lungs that can expand and contract while turning oxygen into carbon dioxide. With a heart that beats and keeps an entire complex system running, despite all the odds.

Despite all the possible complications, a unique individual is created. A whole person - made up of matter - mom and dad mixed together to make up someone new. That can’t be coincidence.

So, then I ask, how did I, the person that I am, end up with you and mom as my parents?

Well, physically and logically I know that you both willed me into existence, you paid the money, took the tests, injected the hormones, and (along with the technician at Tygerberg Hospital, haha) successfully created my body. But how is it, that whatever God is out there knew to send my soul, through the clouds and directly to you? Or how could it be that I was just lucky enough to somehow fall directly into your home, rather than landing in someone else's?

To be honest, I’ll probably never understand it, but I will always, always be thankful for it.

You don’t get to choose how you come into this world, you don’t get to choose what country or environment or age you are born into, you don’t get to choose who your parents are.

But on this Father’s Day I want you to know, that if it were possible to choose, I’d choose mom, and you as my father, a hundred times over.

Everything I am, is because you are. I love you endlessly! And we will celebrate the fact that our little family was somehow thrown together, in person very, very soon. ️

Love GRC