Dear Young Man,

I wish you could read this letter before it is too late.Perhaps I should say I wish you could have read this letter before it was too late. Only time will tell. How I wish you could see your life the way I view it through these older eyes. I know that the only two times you and I will ever see things the same are when I remember being your age or if you happen to remember me when you are my age. Yet I decided I had to try. Maybe the hard things I have learned still have lessons yet to teach us both.

I sincerely hope so.

I am not going to tell you much about you. You will become the sum of the decisions that you make. Your choices, good and bad, will shape who you become. Your responses to the circumstances life throws at you will be the measure of your life at its end. We all must ultimately answer for our own actions and inactions. I would encourage you to seek wise counsel whenever possible but the choices will still always be yours to make. That burden is, and will be, completely yours to carry.

I want to speak specifically to a choice you have already made. You have chosen a remarkable young woman to walk through this life beside you. You have won the hand and the love of woman who makes you want to be a better man. I am not speaking ill of you but highly of her when I say that you definitely married up. Whatever decisions you make in the years to come you should remind yourself that this decision was brilliant. What an excellent foundation on which to build a life.

I know of the hours and hours that you have spent talking and dreaming and planning with this young lady who holds your heart. I know you think you know her better than anyone else ever has. That may even be true because you do understand some of the deepest things about her that she has never been able to explain to anyone else. What I want you to understand is that for all of your deep understanding of her you have not even scratched the surface of what she wishes to share with you. I know it is hard to believe.Yes, she is that much deeper than you. Yes, she thinks that much more than you.Yes, she is smarter than you. Do you realize how special it makes you that she has chosen you to share her deepest thoughts and desires with?  No. You don’t. You take it for granted that this is just how marriage works. It’s not though. You have been given an amazing gift, Young Man. You have an opportunity that she will never give any other man. The benefits to you if you accept this gift, this chance to truly know this woman, are absolutely beyond my ability to list.

You may be wondering what the consequences are for failure here? What if you mess it up? What if you can’t understand her? What if you just kind of blow it by default? You know, “girls are so complicated and I am just a simple, straight forward boy so I could never really understand”? I don’t want to scare you, but there are a million ways to get this part wrong. I don’t pretend to be able to tell you how to get it right, but I know that you absolutely have to try harder at this one thing than anything else in your life. This is more important than your education or your career or your relationship with your Mom and Dad or where you live. You will be more blessed by getting this right than you could ever dream.

But you did not ask me that. You were wondering about the consequences of getting it wrong. And because you are young and callow and self centered…that’s not a judgment, just an observation that applies almost universally to young men – you included…you want to know the consequences to yourself. I understand that. I was your age once. But as I have told you already, your life will be the sum total of all of your failures and successes.For you, because that is who you are thinking of, if you get this one part right it will tilt the scales of your life in the best possible way. But if you continue to be callow and self centered, and if that is why you get it wrong,you will probably find a way to balance out your life in some way or another. Most callow, self centered men do. Just keep in mind that there will one day, on the last day, be a reckoning. You are young, but you are a man. I know you will stand up and be counted on that day. Men are like that. We make our decisions and then we let the chips fall. Women are not like that. Not at all. That is my reason for writing you this letter.

You see, Young Man, if you fail to continue to try and understand this amazing woman who has agreed to share your life, the consequences for her are horrible beyond your ability to comprehend. It is a very rare woman who will ever give the keys to all of her heart’s secrets away more than once. She has handed you all of these keys. She has made you the steward of all of her treasures. If you fail to know her then you are most likely condemning her to never truly be known. If you fail to properly understand her treasures then in her eyes…she will have no value. That is a burden I know you cannot understand and I can only hope that you will trust me when I tell you that it is a burden you do not want to bear and it is a consequence you do not want to inflict upon this woman whom I know you truly love.

It is possible that you are starting to think that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Maybe, but I see the way she looks at you.When you are watching a ball game and your team does something stupid and you grimace she watches your reaction and I can’t help but wonder if she thinks you might act that way toward her when she does something foolish. When your team scores and you cheer she almost always reaches out to touch you. Not because she cares about your team but because she wants to be a part of your joy. She wants more than you could believe to make you feel that kind of happiness by her actions.

She is brilliant and she knows it but she will never have the confidence in herself that you do today. It is a strange thing, but as you grow together you will gain confidence in her but she will have less. She is beautiful and in your eyes she always will be. I know that, but she will never quite believe you when you tell her so. She is incredibly talented but she will never meet the impossibly high standards she has set for herself and she will feel like she never measures up.

As the years go by, if you fail to try hard to understand her she will, quite reasonably, begin to feel misunderstood. You have a great advantage right now, Young Man. You have made her feel that you do understand her. The truth is you really do understand her better than anyone else ever has. Don’t drop that great start by not paying attention or by thinking you understand all there is to know. I am here to tell you that it only becomes harder once the misunderstanding exists.

There are many years that separate you and me but our task is the same as a husband. We both have to try to understand the beautiful woman we married. It would be easier had I tried harder all along.

You are probably too young to take this advice. I am too old not to give it to you anyway.

I stand here today as the Young Man that was. My hope for you would be that you not become the man that I am. My hope for you is that you become the man I should have been. But whatever you become, I hope you never stop seeking to understand this woman you love.

Old Hat

What’s in Your Wallet?

I have an old briefcase, my very first one actually, in the back of my closet. It has a nice, almost unworn pair of lace up boots sitting on top of it. I got them for Christmas a few decades ago. I like them and they are very comfortable but they have a squeak I cannot abide. I keep meaning to get them fixed, but there they sit. Silent sentinels for an old leather briefcase and its contents. There is nothing of any great cost in there, but they are each things that are precious to me. There is a set of coins that my best friend in high school brought to me from her trip to France.There is some Confederate money that I found long ago tucked in a book. There are several unopened packs of baseball cards that are quite possibly worth something by now, now that I think about it. I never collected baseball cards but when my oldest was born I thought someday he might like to have a collection already started. There is a belt buckle somebody won for something. There are bits and pieces of my Daddy’s old magic act. A few mementos of places or people I love. All from long ago.

There is also a small, black cardboard box. It says Prince Gardner on the outside. I have no idea what that signifies or what originally came in the box. Inside the box is an old and odd assortment of what mostly appears to be trash. And I guess mostly it is. There are a couple of business cards for a heating and a/c company. A folded and tattered Citizens Radio Station License from the FCC. There is a bill of sale from an auto parts shop showing a $7.85 credit. There is an official looking card signifying that the named person is a staff member of the Hope Cottage Children’s Bureau. There is a stack of small embroidered patches to be sown onto a shirt to signify years of service. There is a tie clip. There are two old pocket knives, both with the tip of the large blade snapped off. There is also a card that says “Here is my card. I am somewhat of a bullshitter myself but occasionally I like to listen to a professional! Please carry on!”

That’s it. With one exception that is the complete contents of that box. Except for the driver’s license and whatever cash he might have had that little box contains the contents of my Daddy’s pockets the day he died. There was one photo in his wallet. I kept it for a few years until my Mom saw it and asked where I got it. She wanted it back and wondered why I would take that picture from her. I told her it had been in Daddy’s wallet. I have seldom seen her speechless. I let her have the photo. We never discussed it again. The last thing in the box is an old and yellowed one and a half inch obituary with my name listed as son.

I have looked through the contents of my Daddy’s wallet many times over the years. It has taken me many years to figure out why. I would look and yet have no real idea what I was looking for. I was just looking. Even though I had looked before.

Now I think I know.

If we could all get together and take one big group photo, which would be wonderful by the way, do you know what the first thing you would look at would be when you saw that picture? For most of us the first place we look in a group shot is for ourselves. That is what I have been doing.I was not looking for myself in any spiritual sense. I was looking for some sign that my Daddy was thinking of me. Was I in his thoughts? I know I was, but I really wanted some proof to hang on too. I never found it reflected in the contents of his wallet.

I cannot tell you today why it was so important to me for so long. I just know that it was. Grief does strange things to people. I figure if it did strange things to me it is possible that my children might also feel similar things when I am gone. With that in mind I am keeping some rather unusual things in my billfold. I want those who loved me most to be able to point to something I carried with me every day that says to them in a personal way “I love you”.

I am closing that box tonight for another decade or so.I will place it back into my oldest briefcase. I will shove all of my ties and the pants I expect to grow back down into someday out of the way and lay the case down in the closet floor. My silver lacers will resume their steadfast guard post.

Then I am going to go look through my own wallet. I am going to make sure that my family could find themselves and my love for them reflected in the contents of my wallet.

What’s in your wallet?

Old Hat