My Dearest Noah,

Well, I came to work on a Saturday but I haven’t got much work done. I’ve been far too caught up in playing with the pictures your mother sent me (finally!) and conspiring to find a job in Houston so that I could return without feeling too unreasonably humiliated by my succumbing to what can only be described as homesickness.

When you get older one day you may find as I have that it can be quite difficult to validate the integrity of what you believe to be the heart’s messages. One thing I have always felt strongly regarding, is following its advice even to what may seem a perilous end as judged by the head. It is to this advice I owe my current providence and the conflicting emotions it is bound by.

The truth is I wouldn’t be as very much homesick if it were not my longing for closeness to you given the circumstances your mother has determined. I failed quite miserably to reconcile my life in accordance with that sentence for almost one year now, and with many a questionable scruple I owe my poor judgment. I had doubted my ability to provide a worthy paternal grace without the love and respect of your mother. I was worried greatly by successive failures in my work that I was unable to provide for you on my own terms. I did not visit you for many months in all my agonies, selfishness, and self-pities. (forgive me) So it went...

and

Now I am working in California, 2000 miles away from being near you and unable to think about much else but that distance right now.

And so it goes with listening to one’s heart, that you may infer things about yourself better left to a more righteous ear.

And so it is with the utmost care and patience I must treat this sadness, this loneliness, I have determined only an opportunity to be your father can resolve.

For it is here, so far removed from your smiles and laughter (even your glares and frustrations!), that I understood to be a gauntlet which would validate my independence and acceptance of all the responsibilities and convictions that I thought were undeserved.

For it is also here that I made a commitment, may or may it not be with the devil himself regardless, and that promise yet remains unfulfilled to any reasonable extent.

...I only wish I knew when this trial becomes a new found esteem in my breast and your mother’s in me. One thing is certain though; I have never been at a loss in my esteem for you. I love you more dearly than anything I have ever hoped to know or understand. And it is that hope to know you, and to cultivate a belief in each other, that only a father and a son can share, which no distance can overcome.

Til Niagra Falls,

Dad