When you are a single father, you think about what you are going to leave behind. Not just in the bank, not just in the will, but in the marrow.
You can hand down a car, a watch, a pile of bills, but those things rust and fade. What stays are the lessons your kids carry after you are gone. Everything left from my parents' lives are packed away in three boxes in the back of a closet, but I chalk often the words passed down from my Oldman and my Ma.
Honesty is the richest of them all. Not the Hallmark version, not the kind that pats itself on the back, but the tough honesty that leaves a scar. The kind where you look your son in the eye and admit you blew it. The kind where you tell your daughter the truth even when you know it will make her mad. The kind where you swallow your pride and say, “I was wrong.”
On the trading floor, plenty of guys tried to bullshit their way through the session. They lasted about as long as a margin call. The ones who stood the test of time were the ones who kept their word.
Same goes for fathers. A kid can smell a lie from a mile away, and once you lose that trust, it is hell getting it back.
So you build your legacy brick by brick, not with speeches or trophies, but with little truths stacked over years. Maybe it doesn’t look like much to outsiders, but for your kids it is everything. It’s the foundation they stand on when their world tilts.
Tonight the moon is in its waning crescent. Thin, fading, almost gone. A reminder that light comes and goes, but the dark teaches too.
You don’t have to be perfect.
You just have to be honest.
That is the kind of light that doesn’t burn out.
