Four

I’ve been thinking a lot about my daughter being four lately.

I don’t know why exactly. She turned four in December, so it’s not like it’s a new thing.

She’s just so fully present in the world in a way that I’m not—even now, at 47.

My son is 10, and when I think back to him at four, he felt different. Less here, more somewhere else. Not quite fully established on terra firma, in his clay body. More dream-ward facing.

When he turned four, I wrote something down—just a few words, but enough to remind me. The gift of writing, I suppose.

I’d love to share it with you now, if that’s ok.

This photo of him still mesmerises me. It was taken early in the morning after a night on the beach. No tent. Just our sleeping bags. He’s awake, but he looks like he’s still up there, dancing with the stars.

What follows is something I wrote when he turned four back in 2018. It feels like an attempt to hold onto the paradox of parenthood—so challenging, yet so fleeting.

In a way, it’s also a letter to the future. Should he ever become a dad himself, my hope is that he’ll feel my presence, cheering him on, so that in some way, I’m still with him in spirit.

Happy Birthday Son (August 2018 🎂)

Happy 4th Birthday, Son • Tomorrow, you’ll be 4. But today, you are 3.

I have so many special memories of you at 3—like the night we slept in the dunes at the beach. You won’t remember, because you were 3.

We shared a bag of crisps… well, I opened them, and you ate them.

I was tired; you were anything but.

I wanted to sleep; you wanted to dig.

I pointed to the moon, hoping to convince you it was sleepy-time. You looked up and asked me where the roof was.

Eventually, we snuggled down, and you fell asleep with your head in my armpit.

One day, I hope you get to sleep with a human in your armpit—it’s a beautiful thing. And maybe, just maybe, that day, you’ll remember being 3.

And now, I wonder

We were all four once—before the world asked us to be anything else.

Who are they in the eyes of society? Who are they sociologically in the world?

That’s the question school and society will ask of them. It’s the question they’ll fall into asking themselves—mistaking it for who they are—if they drift off at the wheel.

What job should I do? Who should I marry? What house should I buy?

Two photos separated by 6 years

But I’m far more interested in who they are cosmicologically. Who do they belong to in the vastness of things? And how will they find their way back home—their real home, their eternal Home?