Happy Birthday, Pops.

Hey Pops,

Is it cool if I call you Pops now? I know it's kind of corny, but I remember you and your brothers often referring to Grandpa in this way, and I like the idea of keeping the tradition alive. You remind me so much of him, ya know.

You're 63 today. Almost exactly double my age, making me the same age you were when you became a Dad.

Over the years, I've often wondered what it might have felt like for you to welcome your first baby into the world. How did a 31 year old version of you think, act, and dream? Were you eagerly awaiting my arrival, planning the countless weekends coaching my baseball teams?

Or were you uncertain of how to be a father, perplexed at how you might balance this new part of your world with the other significant parts, secretly scared as hell?

Now that I've reached the same age, I can't help but put myself in your shoes and imagine what that time might have meant to you, and what it might mean to me.

I imagine you being eager to make that tiny human smile, overjoyed to hear my infectious laughter as you crossed your eyes and filled your cheeks with hot air, time and time again. I imagine the warmth of joy you felt as you pushed my growing body on a swing, my head lolling back in delight. The swelling of pride that filled your chest when I took my first delicate steps.

I imagine you, a passionate and creative guy, being beyond excited to share the things you loved most with me. And not just the typical sports and cars kind of stuff, but the real stuff; the experiences of life.

The feeling of awe that appears with the sun as it rises over the Florida shore, the sudden rumbling of the outboards as they thrum to life, on their way way to the ocean, the icy taste of freshly fallen northeastern snow filling the driveway on our New Jersey street.

Maybe it wasn't consciously intentional, nothing so prescribed and considered. Maybe you didn't realize that your son, the sponge, would take in so much of the less obvious parts of the life you would one day provide to him. Maybe it just came naturally to you, and you let it be so.

However it might have felt, whatever trials and tribulations you and Mom might might have experienced in the journey of raising me, whoever you chose to be throughout the lot of it, I do know this.

You have succeeded, my friend.

I live a life of increasing peace, growing joy, and what feels like infinite love. I have suffered great pains as I've grown into the man who is your son, and yet I've found myself able to march on forward, believing in my own capacity to become whoever it is that I am meant to become.

And you provided the way.

You made sure, for the last 31 years, to protect me, to love me as best as you possibly could, and to show me in every way how much I mean to you. You showed up. You stuck around. You were genuinely there for me.

And that - THAT - was, exactly, what I needed.

Thank you, truly.

And happy birthday, Pops.