But I love who you are now. And somehow, both can be true.

Dear Truly Jane,

When did you grow up? When did you go quiet and slide into your own private selfhood? I miss you. The old you. And it’s not that I don’t love who you are now—I do.

Desperately.

Completely.

It’s just…you used to belt “Hotel California” at Christmas parties, and now you’re more guarded. I wasn’t prepared for it. They say the only constant in life is change. But no one ever warns you how much that phrase will sting when applied to people. To little people. To your little person.

To love someone is to attend a thousand small funerals of who they once were.

And God knows I’ve been to so many of yours. Eight years of ceremonies. All silent. No black dresses. No funeral potatoes. Just tiny, unnoticed moments slipping through my fingers like that handful of beach sand you proudly gave me six years ago at La Jolla along with sea shells and sand dollars.

I miss all of the “last times” with you.

>> The last time you took two steps to go up every stair.

>> The last time you called the “kitchen” a “chicken” and I didn’t correct you because it was cuter that way.

>> The last time you handed me a dandelion like it was a dozen roses, eyes wide with pride.

>> The last time you said, “Watch me!” on the playground, craving my applause like oxygen.

>> The last time you fell asleep on my chest, warm breath rising and falling like a secret rhythm only we shared.

We don’t get warnings for last times. They never announce themselves. They just…end. And here’s the part no one tells you: Sometimes, parenting feels like grief. The deep, bone-aching kind. A grief you sort of carry, but also pretend like it’s not there at the same time. A grief for the person who once was. And if I’ve learned anything about grief from the people I’ve lost, it’s that grief doesn’t shrink. Grief doesn’t go away. It stays. We just grow around it.

But here’s the messed-up part: with you, the grief is the growth.

You’re alive and changing in front of me like some beautiful sad Giga Pet from the ’90s. And I’m expected to keep up. To let go gracefully. To clap as you vanish into your next stage. But I grieve the you who would run and jump into my arms when I’d get home and scream “Daddy”. I grieve the you who lived more in imagination than in reality. I grieve the little girl who used to say, “Hold you,” when what you really meant was “Hold me close before I change again.”

I guess I should be used to the unconscious change that never stops. Did you know your body has 37 trillion cells in it? And that every second, 810 thousand of them are dying and being replaced? That means that while I’ve been writing this, millions of tiny pieces of you have already become something new. Your digestive lining literally replaces itself every four days so that your own stomach doesn’t eat itself. And 10% of your skeleton is brand new every year.

You and I are literally rebuilding ourselves all the time without even knowing it.

I remember when your mother and I went to Europe and found out our favorite place, Prague, was actually built on top of an old Roman city that had sunk over time. Maybe the best versions of you and me are some form of future Prague. And our old selves are needed for the foundation of such a beautiful city.

And maybe the you I miss (the bug-loving, story-begging, dandelion-offering version of you) isn’t gone. Maybe she’s just buried inside the current you. Waiting for the right friend, the right moment, the right late-night conversation at bedtime to re-emerge. Because the silly two-year-old becomes the wisecracking teen. The shy first-grader becomes the fearless college freshman. Nothing ever really leaves, it just changes costumes.

Maybe all of the old versions of you just exited stage-right, and are back in the dressing room, waiting for their cue to return.

I know the old version of me would split himself in two as an attempt to belong. When I entered Jr. high school, I hated the side of myself that would force a fake laugh as an attempt to fit in with the group, the side that would pretend to have an opinion about a sports team even though the superbowl had never been on in my house with my single mom as the matriarch. The side that desperately wanted to connect and feel included, while at the same time wanting to remain completely invisible and just make it home to read my Spiderman comics by myself.

I saw that same internal battle in you when I dropped you off at school yesterday. You were waiting in line to go into class and instead of driving away, I just sat in the car and watched. I saw you make a half-hearted (but quietly desperate) attempt to connect with the blond-headed girl in front of you, but after she didn’t reciprocate the same warm response, you retreated back into yourself and pretended you didn’t say anything at all, by putting your nose back into your most recent comic of Dogman.

It’s moments like that when I see the irony of how much I wish I could slow down time (because you’re growing up so fast), while at the same time, wish I could fast-forward time to skip the painful struggle of watching you grow and learn for yourself.

And maybe that’s the whole cosmic joke: the shy stage I want to fast-forward for you is an echo of something unresolved in myself. It’s not uncomfortable to observe because it’s foreign. It’s uncomfortable because it’s familiar.

I think that’s what Dr. Becky Kennedy was trying to say in her book Good Inside:

“I often think that parenting is really an exercise in our own development and growth; when we have kids, we are confronted with so many truths about ourselves, our childhoods, and our relationships with our families of origin. And while we can use this information to learn and unlearn, break cycles, and heal, we have to do this work while also caring for our kids, managing tantrums, getting by on limited sleep, and feeling depleted. That’s a lot.”

There are days when the things I want to change most in you (the newfound introversion, the sensitivity, the hesitation to try new things) are exact replicas of the things I hate most in myself. It’s a mind-fuck, honestly. Because I’m not actually disappointed in you. I’m disappointed in how much of the old me lives inside you.

But instead of exiling those parts of you, like I did to myself, this time I’m learning to stay. To create space and sit with them. To let them breathe. Maybe healing isn’t fixing. Maybe it’s just not abandoning the same part of yourself twice.

So when I hold you (physically, metaphorically, emotionally) I’m also holding that younger, insecure version of myself. When you cry, I remember what it felt like to cry like that.

When you wonder if you’re lovable, I remember wondering that too. I’m learning that parenting doesn’t reveal my failures. It reveals my own unfinishedness. And if I can sit with that truth, then maybe I can sit with you too. And all the changing, unfinished parts of you.

After all, I’m the one who danced with you in the kitchen when you were your most confident two-year-old self. I’m the one who knows every version of your laugh. The one who knows all of your past selves, the future of who you can become, and the quietly miraculous girl standing in front of me today.

So yes, I’m sad today. And that’s okay. I’m allowed to grieve for who you once were. But I also need to remember that you are still her. I’m allowed to miss her, even while I love who you are today. And every version of you has been worth the silent sadness I get the privilege of carrying.

Love,

Your Dad

~

When Dad’s nightly Lullaby is Hotel California: