An Open Letter
My Dear Daughter,
The Year 2020
Many people have spoken ill of this year, but I won’t do that. Time is precious. We have navigated many challenges in the midst of the current pandemic, but perhaps one of the most difficult for me to contemplate is missing out on witnessing your wedding vows. I was there when you were born and I have tried to be there for each major development of your life and for many of the mundane ones, too. Watching you grow has been a wonderful experience and watching you leave, a heartbreaking one, although I know that this is what you need.
This year, I have been able to spend a little extra time with you and I treasure that. I reminisce of my little girl. I remember bathtime, wrapping you up in a towel while your teeth chattered from the cold, bedtime stories, and playing with you on the floor. I knew that you would leave someday. I had just hoped that the time would not fly so damn fast. But it did, and it does, and though I never felt that I had enough of it, the time with you has been a joy. I love you.
Stubbornness
You have always had a strong will. I don’t remember you throwing loud fits when something upset you, but you would pout or frown and no one could induce you to crack a smile. This stubbornness has actually been a blessing to you in many ways. It has made you determined to master skills and mindsets which you valued. For instance, when you decided to learn to sew, you took a class in high school but you didn’t leave it there. You have studied the art on your own and practiced it relentlessly. You would climb the stairs with a parcel of fabric in your hand and re-emerge within an hour or so wearing a new dress. You wanted to learn baking and although we couldn’t send you to Paris as you wanted, you have become quite a gifted baker as well. You’re a wonderful teacher also.
Susceptible To Good Advice
You are solid in your commitment to your values. You don’t bend with the breeze, but you are always willing to consider good advice and to implement it where you can. I really appreciate this. You seek wisdom in school, in books, and in conversations with me and others. You faithfully took advantage of the local educational opportunities and whether or not you continue to pursue formal schooling, I hope that you will never stop learning.
You have embarked upon a grand path toward learning about yourself and others. Marriage is one of the most sublime arrangements in human life. In observing you thus far, I am confident that you will lend yourself to it with as much or more fervor as you have done in other endeavors of your life. I have considered it an honor to guide you, but there is a limit to what a father can do. Eventually he must trust in another to love and nurture his daughter. It is not easy, but I have confidence in the man that you have chosen and in the wonderful family that you are joining. I believe they will do what I would do if I could: to love you and to help you grow.
Grace And Virtue
You have expended a lot of effort in becoming the woman that you are. You walked when riding would be faster and easier. You studied when watching a movie would be more relaxing. You saved when spending would be more exciting. Your frugality has created opportunities for you such as investments and travel. As Mark Twain opined, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” I hope that you will continue to develop your beautiful soul. However, while your life until now has been focused on yourself, on creating the delightful person that you have chosen to be, you are now entering into a new phase, like a butterfly breaking from its chrysalis. It is a much more elevated life.
A New Phase
You will now be called upon to place the needs of others ahead of your own. You don’t do this because you lack self worth; you do this because it is more noble by far to endure offense than to offer it. It is more noble to love others and to nurture them than it is to demand the paltry comforts of life for yourself. Many marriages fail or turn sour because of selfishness. A happy marriage is one of life’s greatest gifts, but you must establish it upon noble principles: love, compassion, patience, generosity, and knowledge, to name a few, by growing beyond yourself, by learning to cherish others for the beauty they have to offer. Upon one particular family occasion filled with banter and mild controversy, you proclaimed, “there is enough.” Your simple yet insightful aphorism silenced and thrilled us all. You came to be known for these statements of unbridled wisdom and I simply called them, “susanisms.”
“There Is Enough”
I encourage you to set your heart upon those things which are truly abundant. Love begets more love; knowledge begets more knowledge. Consider the sun, how it shines brightly enough to light the entire earth and sustain all life even though only a tiny fraction of its rays strike the surface. It is a good example of how we should be with each other. Do not be distraught if some good you do goes unappreciated or unrewarded. Be the daughter of your father in heaven who created the universe with all of its beauty and yet reigns invisibly without compelling a soul to return his affection. A virtuous woman is the most beautiful of all God’s creations and the love of her husband, if he is virtuous too, will naturally flow unto her unrestrained.
In Parting, I Love You
Human life can be painful and messy and tyranny is real. When grappling with evil, do not become evil yourself. Face it with wisdom and patience and with the fierce stubbornness that I know you possess. I wish you happiness and a loving marriage. I have enjoyed a few glimpses into your new family and I am grateful for them. I have no misgivings, but I will be watching over you. Hopefully I can do it with a fragment of the grace with which God looks over us. If you ever need me, you know where to find me.
Beautifully expressed. I’m teary eyed… it’s what I wish for mine also…and what I’ve striven for in my own life, even tho at times I haven’t had the grace I’d like to have had.
You have said it right again. What love!
It was to you we gave our daughter The first to hold our hearts. The first to break the path of letting go. The first to turn her heart to another. Thank you for the life, love and family she has had with you. We love you for all this and more. Congratulations to you all.
It has been a true pleasure and thank you to you and your family for demonstrating such grace. It has been a wonderful example.