It's my Birthday

What Do You Get a Man Who Has Everything?

21 Months Old

Dear Myles,

I remember I used to cry for the things I have now. When birthdays felt like any other day. When my parents never asked me what I wanted because they didn’t have the means to acquire it. I grew up the kind of poor that made me too ashamed to invite my closest friends over. Or when Christmas came, and those friends asked what I got for the holidays, I lied—shamefully. I grew up the kind of poor where the gift my mother gave me was a meal, met with “I’m sorry, son. I just don’t have it this year.”

See, we were poor, but we were always fed. We were poor, but we were always loved.

So today, I am grateful.

When your mother asks me incessantly, “Marc, what do you want for your birthday?” I struggle because, truthfully, I don’t know how to respond or feel. Oh, how the mind knows how to protect itself from pain—how I made birthdays into Mondays even when they fell on the weekend. How, when I get asked this question years later, I’m still looking for a key to a door that was never forged. How I spent years buying things—shoes, clothes, games, things, and more things—to make up for the times when, as a child, I wanted things I couldn’t have. How when she thinks I’m procrastinating or being indecisive, truthfully, I just don’t know what I want—I’m still relishing this question no one ever asked me.

So when she asks what I want for my birthday, I start to name things, random things—some new shoes, this new shirt, this new gadget, I say. But truthfully, I look at her, at you, at our home—at this thing called love I never got to see between my own parents, this thing called love I never got to see between myself and my dad, this thing called love, this thing we get to create every day, that I sometimes can’t believe that I get to look at you both and say “all mine, all mine,” and not lie, but know it gets to be the truth.

This thing called love, that money cannot buy, that she and you and God have sought to give me, this thing called love I do not deserve, this thing called love that, when I pray, I just have to say, “Thank You, thank You, thank You,” because sometimes I feel like crying, differently now, not out of lack but out of abundance, out of the joy and love that remind me that, truly, I am now a man who has a home, a wife, a son, God, truly, I am a man who has everything, this thing that some people live and never get to experience, this thing people fly all over for, dive real deep for, search high and low for, this thing I get to experience every day—I have it.

So when your mother asks me what I want for my birthday, I genuinely just want to say—truthfully, with no need to lie anymore—that she, you, and God make me feel like a man who has everything.

I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Love,

Daddy

These letters are a labor of love. All funds collected from writing these letters go toward Myles' college savings. A paid subscription also gives you access to all letters I’ve written to Myles, including these letters I write every other week or so, where I explore fatherhood more deeply, discuss my own upbringing, and reflect on what it means to be raising a Black son.

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Thanks for being here, and sorry for all the typos.

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