Where Home Feels Like Home

Trying to Find My Community Because Making Friends in Your Thirties Is Hard

If you’re new to Raising Myles, Welcome!

I write letters to my son, Myles, sharing my journey as a first-time dad and spreading the love I didn't experience myself. If you’ve been here before — thank you for coming back. If you’re new here, here are some good places to start.

• "Wait—Who Taught My Son the 'F' Word?"

• Good dad, decent husband, bad friend

• Am I a Good Dad, or is the Bar Just Really Low?

Dear Myles,

Every morning when I drop you off at your classroom, I love how all your friends greet you. They scream your name like they’ve been waiting for you all morning, like they didn’t just see you the day before. I linger a little at your classroom door, after I’ve just hugged you goodbye, just to see some of them run up to you and even hug you. They parade around you like you just hit a home run and the bases were loaded. I don’t know how deep friendships and love between two-year-olds can be, but something tells me they see you for who you are. There’s beauty and love in watching the communion of smiles and laughter between you and these other kids you met just months ago that I wish for myself.

Because it’s hard making friends in your thirties. Harder when you left a place where you had deep roots, and harder when you have to start from scratch. Because at this age, it feels like people have their people. That if friendships were a plant, at this point the roots aren’t only deep; it feels like there simply isn’t space for new seeds — the soil is set and packed tight.

And it’s not that I don’t know how to meet new people — but meeting new people takes time. Time I don’t feel like I always have. Because going out to meet new people means that instead of playing zone defense at home with your mother, it turns into man-to-man. And if you know ball, everyone knows that playing zone is a lot easier than man-to-man (unless you’re playing against Steph Curry, then defense really doesn’t matter).

I miss the ease of being around people who know me, and I know the people. And while I’m surrounded by people who I know love me, I think for the first time I really feel and understand the adage, “there’s no place like home.” Because here I live in a home I never dreamed of having: space for you to run around, two living rooms, a two-car garage, and even a guest room. We have a front yard and a backyard, we have a deck, and a dining room that we sit in less than five times a year, but sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go back to NY. I wonder how the first apartment your mother and I had together, an apartment not even half the size of two rooms in our house, could feel so full. And then I realize, it’s not where we laid our heads but the people who once held us.

I don’t miss the New York winter, the backbreaking shoveling we had to do to get our car out of the snow, only for someone to take the spot after we left. I don’t miss circling the block praying for a parking spot, and the glimmer of hope when you think you finally found one only for it to be a fire hydrant looking at you like “got emmmm.” I don’t miss the rent that priced us out or the smell of a subway car that told you not to step on. I don’t miss how it took an hour’s drive to go from Bed-Stuy to the Upper East Side, which is only four miles. But I miss the people — my people.

I miss how close my people felt even if they were in another borough. How we could link over dinner or a bike ride, or a bike ride to dinner. How you could catch a vibe with a friend, and as long as you had fare for the train, you were alright. I miss the let-out after a good day party, how we electric-slid out the door to meet the sun waiting for us, only for us to ask, yo, what’s next? I miss how even when I felt alone, I could hop on my fixie and ride in the street heading west until I hit the water under the Brooklyn Bridge. Something about being surrounded by other bikers and people delivering food on scooters and electric bikes, all of us zipping through gridlocked traffic, could make anyone feel less alone.

I miss the feeling of seeing friends — my friends. Especially when I haven’t seen them in a while. It’s just like when I drop you off at school; they act like they’ve been waiting for weeks, even though it’s been years. My friends loved me for who I was because they know who I am.

I’m learning, and feeling even more lately, that home isn’t just a place: it’s the people who make you feel like home.

I’m wondering how long it takes for a place to feel like home.

And maybe if I can’t get to home, maybe I can create it.

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

Love Daddy,

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If you are a dad in or near Birmingham, AL and have room for friends.

Hit me up – I’m looking for friends, I’m looking for community.

Also sending love to these guys right here. I’ve never met them in real life, but the way we have connected over writing has been a balm. I can’t wait to meet you all one day and laugh till we cry. Love ya’ll Robert the contemplative Alex Lewis Jamal Robinson

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If you can’t commit to a monthly subscription, but still want to support Myles’ college plan, here is my Buy Me a Coffee page.

And if you are on Substack, please restack this letter and recommend it so I can share this love with the world.

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Thanks for being here.

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Want more of Myles’ Letters?

• They Say When Man Makes a Plan, God Laughs.

• Myles met his Grandfather in Brooklyn, NY

• Read about Our first Father’s Day.

• A video about beautiful backgrounds: Tell Them Where You're From.

• Read about My Wife’s Love Affair - It’s exactly what you don’t think

• Have you ever been Cooking in the Bathroom kind of tired?

• Check out Carrying the Gift, Holding the Love